A Thought on Last of the Time Lords

[carmen_lj]

I've never been very happy with the Doctor = Jesus comparison (if only because Martha = Jesus, the Son, Doctor = God, the Father, if you're going that way really) because it's casting the Doctor in a role that he's never really been in, and I sure as heck don't want to retcon him in my head into that role. He's the trickster-god, Loki, Seth, Odysseus (er, yeah, I know he's not actually a god, but he's very Doctor-like, yes.) Even if you're arguing a fundamental character change based on the Time War, he might see himself as the ultimate authority, but I'm not comfy with the text agreeing with that and I don't think it does.

The reason, with LotTL anyway, relies on looking at specifics rather than the general trend of events in the finale. Particularly the fact that in order for the Doctor to do the rising again and saving the world from Satan thing, he is reliant on the power of others. Jesus rose from the grave all by himself, who he was and the power he had was not a matter of the faith that others had in him. Their faith would save them, but Jesus was the Son of God no matter what anyone else believed and he would have risen on the third day whatever. He healed, and those whom he healed often only believed after he had healed them, not before. ("You're the Son of God, eh? Prove it.")

Now, the Doctor can do nothing himself, he's pretty much impotent from the moment he's aged. Who's got the power (for good) here? It's Martha, and those she can inspire. So rather than casting the piece as religious allegory, I'd rather go for a fairy-tale, where, for instance, the prince has been cursed (as, indeed, has the kingdom itself) by an evil wizard and it's up to the princess to rescue him and lead the kingdom's revolution. Or how about the Doctor as Merlin, cast into the ice caves by Morgaine, and only able to use his powers to defeat her once he's rescued by his apprentice who's learned enough of his arts (that would be saving the day) to free him.

And it's a thematic continuation of the last time Martha saved the world, in tSC, where she did it with a word, creating the spell that vanquished the evil. Here, she teaches another word, just as powerful, but the quest is infinitely more difficult. (Never mind the whole apprentice Doctor/medical student thing that fandom's been discussing since we knew about it.)

And if I hear one more time about her doing this because she loved the Doctor or some such nonsense, I'll... well, I'll huff a bit. Because, ffs, it's her planet, her people, her family, her friends and everything and everyone she's ever known, prior to TARDIS-adventuring. She couldn't possibly have another reason for trying to save it other than hoping for a quick shag with the Doctor afterwards.

I'm sure she loves the Doctor very much (and, certainly, by the end, when she's telling her story, I felt as though it was in a non-romantic sense, but rather she loved him as the mentor whose courage, intelligence, tenacity and skill had taught her and kept her going throughout her practically impossible quest to save the world with an utterly mad plan) but she's busy doing what the Doctor couldn't: she's saving her homeworld. And given how the entire series has been about how losing his planet and people affected the Doctor, and shows us just how close he comes to truly terrible things for the chance to get them back, you'd think it'd be obvious what was actually driving Martha on.

So, yeah, mostly I'm all for looking at the finale in terms of a heroic quest in classical mythology or a fairy-tale, rather than in terms of Christian theology, which, for me, doesn't work because of what forty years of Doctor Who stories have told me about who the Doctor is.

That was my thought.

Comments

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

1. I fucking hate Jesus imagery in media entertainment so much that I can't even pretend to discuss it rationally, so...yes, the stuff you said. He's always been Loki to me as well (and if that makes Martha into Sigyn then fine, that's still better than the alternative).

2. I'm not the least surprised people attribute everything Martha does to Doctor-love--it's the same phenomenon that leads to unrepentant batchipping, everything and anything for Teh Love of Teh All-Important Mans. Blecch.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

And thank you, too, for noting that Martha saved the world twice and not once--everyone always forgets about the end of "The Shakespeare Code." So of course, you'd rationally want to take a character like this and who has killer UST with the Doctor and shove her to the sidelines for aaahhhh forget it you know the drill.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Martha's arc is this:

Here is a person who can only help save half the planet (Smith & Jones), now we shall tell you the story of how she saved the world really easily (tSC), and then we shall show you everything she has to go through in order to be able to save the world under more tricky circumstances, thus demonstrating how Martha Jones > Everyone, 'part from babs.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

So, again, I can see where you'd totally want to get rid of a character like that in favor of a shouty mediocrity in a wedding dress okay I'll keep that to myself from now on, what could she possibly add to the show? Especially now that it's all apparently got to be FUN! FUN! FUN! from here on out, huzzah, she said flatly.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I am eternally optimistic about beloved show, and am going to believe it will be Smashing until I have evidence to contrary, despite my adoration of Martha.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I watch because of the relentless peer pressure. If all the Whovians suddenly start smoking and hanging around pool halls, Loki help me.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

I used to play pool quite a lot, y'know.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

My point proven!

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

everyone always forgets about the end of "The Shakespeare Code."

perhaps because of trying to forget the rest of it as well?

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Hey, I liked it. It was cheesy in a fun way. (Of course, I think the same of the "Guys and Daleks" two-parter and hated "Gridlock" so I'm probably hopeless.)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Aye, I liked it a lot more second time through when I knew how much cheese to expect.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

1 - Even though it doesn't work in story context, Martha's Freya, in my head.

2 - I'd mind a lot less if it wasn't used to dismiss what an extraordinary thing she did, but it is, and I find that...irritating.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

1. As you probably saw in that entry of Nos's, I'm entirely serious that Doctor = Loki, Rose = Frigg and Martha = Freya. Doubtless this somehow oppresses every character involved, but hey, I gotta be me. (Also re the Doctor, let us never forget that Loki's real sin in the eyes of the gods was laying bare all their hypocrises for the world to see...shades of old Gallifrey, I say. Crap, this may mean that Romana = Balder. That poor woman has no luck.)

2. Well, they have to dismiss it, otherwise it fatally compromises the Rose > every companion ever equation and we simply can't have that, now can we.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

1 - I choose to believe versions that do not mention Loki in the killing of Balder then, woe.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

1. It works, though, doesn't it? That's the creepy part. Even works if you're a batshit Doctor/Romana 'shipper like me, considering that Balder was killed by a mistletoe arrow.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

But it makes me all sad!
Oh, Doctor and Romana, skipping round wee meadows with lovely flowers, tralalalal *denial*

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I just said it worked, not that I wanted it to work. *whisks both characters off to Paris where it's safe*

[darchildre.livejournal.com]

no, no - it's okay. (batshit lokean time, hurrah!)

see, loki has to kill baldur so that baldur's in helheim during ragnarok, thus allowing baldur to come back after ragnarok and be a god again for the children of lif and lifthrasir.

admittedly, in this analogy i'm not quite clear on how we get romana-baldur out of helheim. but i will happily leave the logistics on that to someone else. the point is that we totally do get romana-baldur back and that the doctor-loki's killing her was important and possibly beneficial.

[/possibly annoying minority heathenry]

[melengro.livejournal.com]

Hello. This post makes you a genius. I should like to friend you.
Oh, and Helheim=Hell=The Void, which leads me back to that weird Void-ship thing that Romana is in at the end of the 'Gallifrey' audios.

[darchildre.livejournal.com]

hurrah! my obsessive interest in norse mythology is finally good for something. 8)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Ahh, helheim is the Void, obv, which is all dark and scary and such, and she was sent their by the Doctor's actions, so it's more a metaphorical killing.

[darchildre.livejournal.com]

oh, good.

and apparently i should listen to the gallifrey audios.

[fyrdrakken]

1) Possibly fandom is so used to knowing that Rusty did that second coming of Christ thing that we're overeager to compare his work on Who to it (along with QaF and Casanova) and extrapolate themes that maybe aren't there? Because yeah, I'd like to believe that Ten is still being written as Loki and it's just our Christian-imagery saturation that has more people thinking about resurrection than about avatars of truth and chaos.

2) See, that's kind of a catch-22 there, because the romantic narrative structure specifies that women people prove how all-important Teh Love is by prioritizing it and the other party over everything their lives touch upon. :Suppressing memories of plotline in FF2 that annoyed me so fucking much where wedding > alien invasion for superhero main characters: Doing the right thing for herself/the world would have "proved" that she didn't really love him if he didn't want her to do it (like, say, the assumed fannish reaction had Rose voluntarily left the Doctor), but doing the right thing that he also wanted her to do doesn't mean she did the right thing because it was all for love/him. (I'm getting kind of distracted here because I'm remembering one of the bits from A Knight's Tale that I liked where the female love interest tells Heath Ledger that she's absolutely unimpressed by men claiming they win tournaments for her love because she knows they're doing it for themselves and just trying to score cheap points with her as a side benefit. If I thought about it more I might chase down a valid point, but this comment is long enough for mere thinking-as-I-type.)

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

"Possibly fandom is so used to knowing that Rusty did that second coming of Christ thing that we're overeager to compare his work on Who to it (along with QaF and Casanova) and extrapolate themes that maybe aren't there?"

Oh, I don't think the themes aren't actually there, I just think that they're so wrong wrong WRONG for this particular character that I would like to shake Rusty until the goddamned New Testament falls out of his mouth (and maybe carve Thomas Paine's Profession of Faith into his forehead while I'm at it). The Trickster is not the Messiah, the archetypes are nowhere close to each other, and it's such cheap, clumsy faux-populist imagery that I can't believe he hasn't been called on it before this--and maybe it's just that as an American, you get so much exposure to this kind of shit in popular media that you're hypersensitized to it elsewhere, maybe in a more secular culture like the UK it's considered something new and novel? If so, just a friendly warning to them to ward it off at the pass while you can!

"Because yeah, I'd like to believe that Ten is still being written as Loki and it's just our Christian-imagery saturation that has more people thinking about resurrection than about avatars of truth and chaos."

The phrase "wandering Armageddon peddler," to me, was always all the proof we needed that the Doctor is the Loki/Coyote/Trickster Rabbit of this tale, not a healing Messiah whom one is either with or against (and the son of what God is he exactly, Gallifrey?--what irony). Now, that fact that he clearly thinks he's the latter I had once thought was written as a deliberate critical plot theme for which there would be serious consequences down the road, but that was clearly overestimating Rusty's abilities to build a plot throughline with any effectiveness so I have to conclude that he's Christ solely because he's Rusty's Marty Stu, and vice versa. Yet another reason I'm eagerly looking forward to the day when he, and Rusty, are off the show for good.

"The romantic narrative structure specifies that women people prove how all-important Teh Love is by prioritizing it and the other party over everything their lives touch upon...doing the right thing for herself/the world would have 'proved' that she didn't really love him if he didn't want her to do it (like, say, the assumed fannish reaction had Rose voluntarily left the Doctor), but doing the right thing that he also wanted her to do doesn't mean she did the right thing because it was all for love/him."

Which would have allowed for some rather interesting internal commentary within the script itself on all those themes, were we working with a writing staff that had any real clue about them, but...ah, well.

[fyrdrakken]

My particular method of dealing with the things I haven't been happy with from the last couple of seasons has been to blame it all on RTD's being in love with the Doctor and having a fucked-up concept of how love's supposed to work. It makes me happy that both Tennant and Moffat seem to be aware of the flaws in Rusty's viewpoint, which is why I continue to hold out for the hope of a Moffat-run s5 with Tennant still on the show. Because I really really want to see Ten for at least a season as Moffat steers him, rather than having RTD continue to give me new shit to fanwank away.