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rosa_acicularis) wrote2011-01-16 12:06 am
rosa_acicularis) wrote2011-01-16 12:06 am
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character meme: doctor who edition
Because I'm very much in a Doctor Who sort of mood today, here's my first three responses from this meme. The others will follow shortly.
I got a bit carried away on these. Feel free to poke me if I sound toopretentious absurd quietly brilliant.
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lalaithlockhart and l_a221 requested the Ninth Doctor.
Nine
Do you know how many times I have written Nine? Twice. Do you know why? Because I have no idea how to do it. Nevertheless, here’s some Ninth Doctor personal canon.
1. Nine’s self-control is one of the most precious things he has. Other Doctors can rant and rave and throw fantastic temper tantrums at whoever offended his delicate Time Lord sensibilities that day, and then a moment later can snap back into fun-time banter guy. Nine doesn’t do that. Nine is on the edge of losing it completely all the time, and there’s a very real fear that if he loses control, he isn’t ever going to get it back.
2. Part of him wants to lose control. Wants to just say fuck it and stop pretending that he’s still the man he was before the War. Wants to stop running for good.
3. He doesn’t because he has Rose, and from the beginning he's terrified of disappointing her. Loving her is almost incidental, unimportant – above all, he needs her faith in him.
4. He is deliberately as unlike the Eighth Doctor as possible. Eight was the one who fought in the War, the one who used the Moment. Everything he thought or felt or was is tainted.
5. He genuinely wanted to die on the Game Station. He was ready.
kudzita andlieutenants requested Rose Tyler.
Rose
In contrast, I have written more about Rose Tyler than any other fictional character ever, in my entire life. That should make this pretty easy, right?
Oh dear.
1. Rose was not truly unhappy in the life she had before the Doctor. Jackie is easily five times as wonderful as she is ridiculous, and Mickey Smith is a good man, right down to his bones. Rose knows this and loves them both, even when she takes them for granted.
So when the Doctor came back (when he asked her a second time, and oh, who does that?) and said, “Did I mention it travels in time?” Rose wasn’t running from a life she hated. Telly and beans on toast aren't a terrible fate, not when you share them with people who love you. And you don’t have to be unhappy in the life you have to be ready for change – for something beautiful and terrible and immeasurably harder than anything you’d ever dreamt for yourself. She wasn’t running away, and you know it because she didn’t think once about what she was leaving behind.
2. Rose loves the Doctor almost from the beginning, but she might love travelling more. The girl is a walking, talking sponge, and she soaks up every bit of knowledge and adventure and insanity he can throw at her. She’s hungry for it. She’s an adrenaline junkie, and the Doctor is her enabler.
3. In Father’s Day she learns what it feels like to destroy the world and then sit by and watch as it ends. That’s not something you forget.
4. In the time between that first day at Bad Wolf Bay and the second, her life is driven primarily by anger. It’s a good sort of anger – clean, cold, productive. She uses it like a tool, controls it carefully and never lets it show. Mickey sees it, but no one will ever know her as well as Mickey does.
5. She never goes back to being the girl she was. She’ll always be a little harder, a little colder. A little sadder. But as she fights to protect Pete’s World it becomes home in a way her own universe never was. Pete and Jackie and Tony and Jake and the Doctor become her family, her heart and hearth. The only world she needs.
thunderemerald requested the Tenth Doctor.
Ten
There is something in my brain that just likes writing Ten. Something chemical or electrical or just plain damaged that has decided that’s exactly how the world should sound. Don’t think this doesn’t worry me.
1. Ten is born full of adoration and easy affection, and the first thing the object of that affection says is you are not him, give him back. I think those words are fixed somewhere inside him, etched on bone. On the inside curve of his skull. I think he talks just to drown them out.
2. Words are everything to him. Sound, meaning, order, rhythm, rhyme – the whole goddamned part and parcel. The Tenth Doctor feels about words the way most humans feel about sex, and is equally as likely to embarrass himself when he gets carried away.
3. And yet, when it comes to emotion he’s about as expressive as a giant clam from the planet Skaro. Actually, he’s worse – at least a giant clam will snap shut on your foot and start to digest when it wants you to stick around. This, I think, is part of the reason why he and Donna are so perfect together – she never needs him to say anything. As little as she thinks of herself, she always knew how much he adored her.
4. There is a part of him, small and shunted aside though it is, that genuinely believes that one day he will restore the Time Lords. The possibility is offered to him again and again – in School Reunion, in the Master’s terrible New Gallifrey, in Rassilon’s last desperate effort to survive – and every time he’s forced to destroy it. But maybe, someday. There’s no one left to stop him.
5. In Boomtown Nine said, “I’d make a terrible god,” but Ten is burdened neither by Nine’s guilt nor his self-control. Time Lord Victorious was inevitable from the moment he decided to travel alone.
I got a bit carried away on these. Feel free to poke me if I sound too
lalaithlockhart and l_a221 requested the Ninth Doctor.Nine
Do you know how many times I have written Nine? Twice. Do you know why? Because I have no idea how to do it. Nevertheless, here’s some Ninth Doctor personal canon.
1. Nine’s self-control is one of the most precious things he has. Other Doctors can rant and rave and throw fantastic temper tantrums at whoever offended his delicate Time Lord sensibilities that day, and then a moment later can snap back into fun-time banter guy. Nine doesn’t do that. Nine is on the edge of losing it completely all the time, and there’s a very real fear that if he loses control, he isn’t ever going to get it back.
2. Part of him wants to lose control. Wants to just say fuck it and stop pretending that he’s still the man he was before the War. Wants to stop running for good.
3. He doesn’t because he has Rose, and from the beginning he's terrified of disappointing her. Loving her is almost incidental, unimportant – above all, he needs her faith in him.
4. He is deliberately as unlike the Eighth Doctor as possible. Eight was the one who fought in the War, the one who used the Moment. Everything he thought or felt or was is tainted.
5. He genuinely wanted to die on the Game Station. He was ready.
kudzita andlieutenants requested Rose Tyler.Rose
In contrast, I have written more about Rose Tyler than any other fictional character ever, in my entire life. That should make this pretty easy, right?
Oh dear.
1. Rose was not truly unhappy in the life she had before the Doctor. Jackie is easily five times as wonderful as she is ridiculous, and Mickey Smith is a good man, right down to his bones. Rose knows this and loves them both, even when she takes them for granted.
So when the Doctor came back (when he asked her a second time, and oh, who does that?) and said, “Did I mention it travels in time?” Rose wasn’t running from a life she hated. Telly and beans on toast aren't a terrible fate, not when you share them with people who love you. And you don’t have to be unhappy in the life you have to be ready for change – for something beautiful and terrible and immeasurably harder than anything you’d ever dreamt for yourself. She wasn’t running away, and you know it because she didn’t think once about what she was leaving behind.
2. Rose loves the Doctor almost from the beginning, but she might love travelling more. The girl is a walking, talking sponge, and she soaks up every bit of knowledge and adventure and insanity he can throw at her. She’s hungry for it. She’s an adrenaline junkie, and the Doctor is her enabler.
3. In Father’s Day she learns what it feels like to destroy the world and then sit by and watch as it ends. That’s not something you forget.
4. In the time between that first day at Bad Wolf Bay and the second, her life is driven primarily by anger. It’s a good sort of anger – clean, cold, productive. She uses it like a tool, controls it carefully and never lets it show. Mickey sees it, but no one will ever know her as well as Mickey does.
5. She never goes back to being the girl she was. She’ll always be a little harder, a little colder. A little sadder. But as she fights to protect Pete’s World it becomes home in a way her own universe never was. Pete and Jackie and Tony and Jake and the Doctor become her family, her heart and hearth. The only world she needs.
thunderemerald requested the Tenth Doctor. Ten
There is something in my brain that just likes writing Ten. Something chemical or electrical or just plain damaged that has decided that’s exactly how the world should sound. Don’t think this doesn’t worry me.
1. Ten is born full of adoration and easy affection, and the first thing the object of that affection says is you are not him, give him back. I think those words are fixed somewhere inside him, etched on bone. On the inside curve of his skull. I think he talks just to drown them out.
2. Words are everything to him. Sound, meaning, order, rhythm, rhyme – the whole goddamned part and parcel. The Tenth Doctor feels about words the way most humans feel about sex, and is equally as likely to embarrass himself when he gets carried away.
3. And yet, when it comes to emotion he’s about as expressive as a giant clam from the planet Skaro. Actually, he’s worse – at least a giant clam will snap shut on your foot and start to digest when it wants you to stick around. This, I think, is part of the reason why he and Donna are so perfect together – she never needs him to say anything. As little as she thinks of herself, she always knew how much he adored her.
4. There is a part of him, small and shunted aside though it is, that genuinely believes that one day he will restore the Time Lords. The possibility is offered to him again and again – in School Reunion, in the Master’s terrible New Gallifrey, in Rassilon’s last desperate effort to survive – and every time he’s forced to destroy it. But maybe, someday. There’s no one left to stop him.
5. In Boomtown Nine said, “I’d make a terrible god,” but Ten is burdened neither by Nine’s guilt nor his self-control. Time Lord Victorious was inevitable from the moment he decided to travel alone.
no subject
I also love your #1 for Rose. Her life wasn't bad; it just wasn't what she truly wanted. She didn't even know what that was until the Doctor waved it under her nose. It takes a lot of courage to change your life when you hate it, but it might take even more to change it when you don't--but you see what you truly want just a leap of faith away.
no subject
Yes. You're right - that's a terribly important part of it. He's genuinely afraid of what he might do if he loses control. (And as it turns out, he had every reason to be.)
It takes a lot of courage to change your life when you hate it, but it might take even more to change it when you don't
THIS. I should probably write this on a post-it and stick it on my mirror. ;)
no subject
(You really never run out of awesome insight when it comes to the Doctor and Rose, do you?)
no subject
*shuffles feet*
Well, I do spend a rather worrying about of time thinking about these things. ;)
no subject
What especially struck me were these:
1. (for Nine) "He is deliberately as unlike the Eighth Doctor as possible. Eight was the one who fought in the War, the one who used the Moment. Everything he thought or felt or was is tainted."
Never really thought of it that way before, probably because there was so little of Eight that I've seen, but that makes a lot of sense. It's classic dissociation from trauma, a coping mechanism. A new regeneration, a completely new person (but not new, not really) who bears the memory and the guilt and the grief, but somehow the actual event can be compartmentalized and distanced as having been done by that other bloke, who was him but not him. The sad thing is (says she who gets WAY too involved in the mental processes of fictional characters) that in some ways, this compartmentalization may be what keeps him from completely falling apart.
2. (for Rose) I'm not sure I can choose which point I love more, but I'll give it a stab. lol...
Rose was not unhappy in her former life. She wasn't running from misery. "And you don’t have to be unhappy in the life you have to be ready for change – for something beautiful and terrible and immeasurably harder than anything you’d ever dreamt for yourself."
Oh, how I love what you've said there. Everyday, mundane life isn't exactly terrible, but the point is that there is so... much... more. Beauty and horror and passion alike, and it's so very worth it. Like Sarah Jane said in School Reunion, some things are worth getting your heart broken for.
3. And, finally (lest he get impatient waiting for me.. lol), your points for Ten.
"There is a part of him, small and shunted aside though it is, that genuinely believes that one day he will restore the Time Lords. The possibility is offered to him again and again – in School Reunion, in the Master’s terrible New Gallifrey, in Rassilon’s last desperate effort to survive – and every time he’s forced to destroy it. But maybe, someday. There’s no one left to stop him." And, "In Boomtown Nine said, “I’d make a terrible god,” but Ten is burdened neither by Nine’s guilt nor his self-control. Time Lord Victorious was inevitable from the moment he decided to travel alone."
That is chilling, yet so very, very true to his character, I think. This entire incarnation, especially it seems after the loss of Rose (though like you said, there were moments in such episodes as School Reunion), seems to have been a steady slide into the mentality of self-divinity. But it's the Doctor-- his intentions are for good, his compassion and his desire to see everyone live fueling his need to make that a reality, and knowing he has the ability to do so, if he were to just release those inhibitions and constraints placed on him by his people, by that extinct society of which he is the only survivor. Of course, we saw what happened when he finally did, just for that one moment. Was he testing how far he could go, during Waters of Mars, how much the universe would tolerate the Time Lord Victorious, and hoping he could take the next step and reverse the death of Gallifrey?
And those are my thoughts on the matter. I'd better stop before I've written a dissertation... heh. :)
no subject
No need to apologize at all; I really enjoyed reading your thoughts!
...a steady slide into the mentality of self-divinity.
SUCH an excellent way to describe it. It was almost amusing at first (oh, (Last of the Time Lords, you ridiculous thing) but as the show went on it became more and more disturbing. Though I have some problems with Waters of Mars, I was really genuinely proud of the show as I watched its conclusion. The ending of that ep is so horrifying, and it didn't flinch away from showing us the inevitable consequences of that hubris.
Wow. I finally get to use my Ten-with-a-halo icon in a context in which it actually makes sense. This is awfully exciting. ;)
no subject
And I similarly enjoy writing Ten. It makes my brain happy. *G*
no subject
no subject
I love every single thing you have to say about Ten. Every single thing.
no subject
I think you're exactly right. The Rose I was thinking of when I wrote that bit was definitely series one and two Rose, and no later. After Doomsday (no matter what 'verse you're writing in) I think Rose has to be a more grounded, mature character whose focus is more on responsibility (to her planet, to her family) and taking her relationships seriously. After that point I think of her as a sort of steward (a protector of the earth) and I think that fits in very well with your characterization of her as a mother.
Or something. You know what I mean. ;)
no subject