The Doctor saved my life last night (no really, he did)

If you’re ever at the grocery store, or a department store, or anything of that sort, and you see a woman with small children in her shopping cart with a weary, glazed over, not-all-there look in her eyes, send her happy thoughts.  She probably needs them.

She’s probably, desperately, trying to remind herself that she does love her children, and just why.  Because she’s probably about ready to rip her hair out.

I’ve mentioned before that Punky, my 4 year old, is extremely strong willed.  Usually, I see this as a good thing.  She is also an extrovert and, in a lot of ways, very much an actress (in the way that she is almost always “on” when she is in groups and hasn’t really learned about turning that off yet).  Last Thursday, she started Pre-K.  She went to preschool last year, but it was only 3 hours a day.  This one?  She’s dropped off between 7:30 and 7:45 am and picked up about 2:30.  That’s a lot of hours to be “on”.

She was exhausted when she got home yesterday, which did not manifest itself in sleep.

It manifested itself in a reemergence of the Drama Queen (temper tantrums) and the child that can’t focus on anything for more than 5 seconds but needs everything nownownownownow.  Mommy and Nana can only do so much to keep up.

By the time I got home from work, my mother (who keeps the kids during the day) looked totally shell shocked.  I’m sure not feeling great did not help in the dealing with Punky, nor did the fact that Little Man fed off the energy and was, therefore, in a “mood” too.

I was in the house less than 5 minutes before I realized it was going to be a long night.

We had an errand to run.  I can’t run errands and leave a 4 and a half and almost 3 year old home alone.  Yeah, not happening.  So after dinner, we put on our jammies, got our stuff, and went to run errands and go to rehearsal.

Punky had not shut her mouth for more than 10 seconds (and that was for eating) since I had walked through the door.

I’m sure by the time we finally got done at the store I looked either dead on my feet or like I was contemplating killing my child.  I was not, let me tell you, but I was, very actively, going over all the things I do love about her in my head because I was not going to lose it on my child.  I try not to lose my temper with them and was doing everything I could not to.

So it’s “Mommy” this and “Mama” that and everything expects an answer but she doesn’t give me time to do so and my head is spinning and I feel like I’m going to fall and all of a sudden I hear “Mommy, is that the Doctor?”

I stopped short on that one and looked at her to see what she saw.

 

A few weeks ago, the youth group I’m a counselor for had a Doctor Who marathon on Friday afternoon (yeah, we have an awesome group of kids).  I had lent them my Series 1 DVDs in case they wanted to watch some Nine.  They were still in the back seat of my truck.

“Mommymommymommy,” she says, “that’s the one in the leather jacket!  OOOH, can I watch Rose?”

She had seen the DVD and immediately recognized it.

I’m not surprised.  That child will happily tell someone, on the right day, that her favorite color is “Tardis blue”.  She will point out a Tardis in anything she sees it on, or anything else she recognizes.  Daleks.  Adipose.  Bow ties (“The man in the bow tie” is her favorite of the Doctors so far – she started sobbing when I told her he was retiring from the show and would regenerate.  Yeah…..that whole thing will be another post).  Sonic screwdrivers (she has Good Night Pond which refers to it as a “green glowing wand”.  Every time we get to that page she says “that wand is the sonic screwdriver”.)

Now, I will admit that I have a portable DVD player in the car, with monitors on the back of the headrests so the kids can watch.  Usually, it’s used for long trips.  I had put in A Bug’s Life on the way to the store hoping it would give Punky something to focus on (no such luck).  But I thought, just maybe.

“You want to watch The Doctor?”

“YEAH!!!!”

So I put it in and turn on the car while I finish unloading our things so it can start up.  I get in and pull up as Rose starts.

I get all the way to rehearsal, about 15 minutes away, before realizing that I haven’t heard her say a word since it started and that my stress level has been cut substantially in just those few minutes.

So, thank you, Nine, for that little bit of peace and quiet.  It’s good to know that my daughter is so fascinated by and loves you (in all your forms) so much that she will give you her full attention, even on an episode she’s seen (a few times) before.

My daughter truly is a Whovian.

So that, my friends, is how The Doctor saved my life last night.

Rose Tyler, Defender of Earth, and why I quite adore her (fandom tribute)

It seems that, when it comes to companions in Doctor Who, there is no middle ground.  Either you love them or you hate them.

Now, I’m sure there are people who are completely indifferent about certain characters, but such people, reasonably, are not all that vocal.  So all you get, whether on the internet or at various cons, are the vocal supporters, or the ones loudly trashing their least favorite characters.

Rose Tyler gets a lot of hate from a lot of people for a lot of reasons.

None of which I understand.  Nor, after reading some of the “Why I Hate Rose Tyler” rants I looked up in trying to form all this, will I try – because they and I have totally different opinions on pretty much everything she does.  And that’s okay.  They’re allowed their opinions – but I do NOT have to agree with them.

 

Neither Rose, nor I, are all that impressed with their reasons.

Rose was the first companion of the new 2005 series.  She met Nine very early in his timeline (there is debate on that, but during that first episode, we see him pulling on his ears and just being interested in what he looks like, which the Doctor only really does the first episode after a regeneration, so the assumption is that Nine is very recently regenerated) and was, really, as far as we know, his only companion (I mean, Mickey and Jack, yeah, but I don’t consider them as counting).  All the research that Clive does into “The Doctor” (which all appear as Nine, even though we meet him early in the incarnation – I have a theory on that.   Maybe I’ll post it in Thursday (maybe I should do Theory Thursdays)) shows The Doctor alone or with individuals once – there aren’t any regularly appearing companions, so I’d say it’s pretty safe to bet that Rose was Nine’s only companion.

Rose, at that time (according to her) was nothing special.  She worked “in a shop”.  She appears to have lived in the same place most of her life.  She was still living in a flat with her Mum and dating a boy she appears to have kind of grown up with.  She doesn’t think she can do much (which is fed by comments from both her mom and Mickey) and, when they really get down into it, kind of finds this man with his mysteries and the aliens and the running kind of fascinating. 

And a bit scary, but she’s not afraid to admit that.

At first she says no, but she goes with him.

And for every moment after that (and, really, before, because I did adore her that first episode), I adore Rose Tyler.

I love River and Amy and Martha and Donna and Clara, all for different reasons.  I think Jack is awesome.  Mickey makes me laugh.  Rory may just be my favorite male television character every created (he and Daryl are pretty neck in neck in that race) but Rose?  Rose Tyler is my favorite companion, by far.

Part of why I love Rose Tyler, honestly, is because the Doctor loves Rose Tyler.  Nine doesn’t want to.  He fights it.  He likes her enough, thinks she’s helpful and bright and maybe a bit of sun that he needs, which is why he invites her to go with him, but then it changes.  He’s protective of her always, because the Doctor, because of who he is, doesn’t want to see anyone hurt, especially not because of him, but then Dalek happens and he legitimately thinks she’s gone and he can’t handle it.  I think that protectiveness starts changing there and then – when she goes Bad Wolf just to save him – he can’t deny it anymore.  She knows she’s probably going to die and she doesn’t care because she just wants to save him.

He loves her, whether he wants to or not, and I think it’s amazingly adorable.

But that’s just part of it.

Again, Rose thinks she’s “nothing special”.  Any maybe it’s true that she’s not some amazingly important person in the scheme of things but she’s got some great abilities.  She’s incredibly compassionate and cares about people – and things.  The Dalek (showing it mercy and compassion, which ends up saving her life); concern for the child – and Nancy – in The Empty Child; concern for the Doctor – over and over again, she’s worried about him when her own life is in danger (my favorite is assuring him it’s not his fault in Dalek and telling him to go ahead and do what he has to in World War Three (which he didn’t want to do because he couldn’t assure she would be okay) – she knows she’s not more important than all of London, or the world, even if he might think so at moments); reassuring Reinette; worrying about Adam; trying to protect the other people being held captive in Tooth and Claw; over and over and over again she’s the one comforting and focusing on the people and their emotions and trying to make them feel better. 

She’s insanely observant and recognizes stuff that the Doctor doesn’t always, but she can see the “big picture” (again, World War Three comes to mind).

She not perfect.  She makes mistakes – usually when there’s something personal involved (Fathers Day comes to mind) but she tries to fix them.  She admit she’s made a mess and asks what she can do to make it better, or at least help to do so.  She’s not ashamed of her emotions – she’s a bit hurt when she realizes Sarah Jane Smith meant so much to the Doctor (which is understandable, because she’s afraid she’ll be left behind) but she does make it right.  She’s hurt when the parallel universe Pete Tyler doesn’t accept her as his daughter, though he does by the end of it, but know what?  Her dad is dead, and then there he is – right there – alive and well.  I knew my father very well (she did not; he died when she was just a baby) and I would still be hurt should another world version show up and not know me.  All I would want to do would be get to hold him again.

I get it.

All of those things boil down to one thing: She’s human.  She’s wonderfully, unmistakably human, so very much like any of us watching, and it’s wonderful.  I think this human-ness is a big part of why the Doctor loves her as much as he does – she is so much the epitome of what he loves about these strange creatures he’s always trying to save.

She’s very brave whether she realizes it or not.  She stands up to and faces down the Daleks, she does everything possible to save alternate universe Jackie, even though that woman had already gone off on her, she does what she has to to save the world more than once.  She’s not going to abandon the Doctor – they have to physically force her to leave the planet in The Satan Pit and she’s still fighting them to try and save him; she tries over and over during Doomsday and refuses to leave him (even trying to get back once the rift is sealed off), she fights off they don’t know what in Fear Her to save him from the drawings.  She fights to save the human race when she thinks he’s dead in Turn Left and she’s not going to let something like a parallel universe stop her from saving all of them in The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End.  When she realizes there’s trouble, she does what she can to save her universe and his because she can’t bear for him to be lost.

She is the Defender of the Earth.

Basically, I love Rose Tyler because she makes me proud.  She reminds me of me (which she’s supposed to) when she starts out and then, all of a sudden, she taps into what’s already in there and becomes this amazingly strong person.

If my daughter ever starts telling me she’s “nothing special” I will sit her down with Rose Tyler and show her how wrong she is.

 

Rambling thoughts on the identity of John Hurt’s Doctor (because I want the “confirmation” to be wrong)

I know I’ve talked about this before (here and here), but the more I think about it, the less I want that “confirmation” to be true.  To be honest, I keep thinking of reasons why it could be incorrect (starting with, well, how secretive they were about that script, did the person actually know the whole thing?  Were they making assumptions?  Are they just saying something to throw us off?  Would Moffat REALLY allow it to be leaked that easily?) and keep grasping at these straws, hoping and hoping.

Because Time War Doctor, while it is the easiest jump and possibly the most logical, just does not make sense to me (though the more it seems to be, especially considering some of the images released in correlation to Comic Con this weekend).  Some if this is going to be old hat recap.  Some of this may be new stuff.  But it’s what’s going through my head and driving me crazy right now, so I have to get it out somehow and some way.

Like I’ve said before, John Hurt’s Doctor (Doctor X, that’s what I’ll call him) is a version or incarnation of the Doctor that has done something so incredibly terrible that Eleven (or, likely, an incarnation before, whichever one came directly after him) decided that he was not “worthy” of the name “Doctor”.  That is, obviously, not the Doctor’s real name, but the mantle he has decided to use, and it invokes thoughts of helping, nurturing, and healing (River Song at one point actually says that is the reason many races use the word “Doctor” as “healer” – because of the things he has done (though other races equate “Doctor” with “warrior” (like the races in the Gamma forest, where Lorna Bucket (A Good Man Goes to War) comes from – she says she became a soldier to be like the Doctor)).  However, Doctor X has done something so horrible, the Doctor cast him out and chose to, at least try to, let the universe forget him.

In the recap of the trailer shown at the Doctor Who Panel at Comic Con (which has not been (and apparently will not be) released online – one of the many reasons I wish I could have gone to Comic Con this weekend! – so I have to rely on the recap from i09 and Doctor Who TV), the current Doctor mentions that “there’s one life I’ve tried very hard to forget”.  This is apparently right before seeing a clip from The Name of the Doctor of Clara and Eleven talking about Doctor X.  Then there’s “what looks like the Time War” – Daleks blowing up, flames, etc.  BBC has released shots of the Daleks and they’re in a room with large circular pieces that look suspiciously like Gallifreyan writing.  Doctor X says “Great men are forged in fire” and then something about being the man who lit the flames.

Image from BBC — like at the background on the left and tell me that Dalek isn’t on Gallifrey

So yes.  It appears that it would, very likely, be the Time War Doctor.  It’s looking more and more like that is the correct assumption for Doctor X: The trailer clearly shows, apparently, that Doctor X is somehow involved with Daleks and Time Lords and talked about “Great men being forged in fire”.  We all assume this was the Time War.

But what if it wasn’t?

Let me suggest another possibility, if only because I want it to be something different.

Eleven says it, right there: “there’s one life I’ve tried very hard to forget”.  Let’s look at what the Doctor has done, that we know about, and that he has talked about on a pretty regular basis without too much difficulty (meaning, obviously, he’s not really trying all that hard to hide it or forget about it) – he has destroyed entire races, including his own, to protect the universe and other civilizations.  He has blown up planets.  He has no qualms with killing someone (or something) trying to cause harm to another, though he usually does at least give them a chance to surrender first.  They usually just don’t take it (like running away from The Family in Human Nature and Family of Blood.  He tried very very hard not to have to deal with them but they wouldn’t just leave it alone.  Silly people).  The Doctor, while being our savior, is, in a way, the bad guy in the eyes of many out there in the universe created in his reality.

I was not surprised by the whole Predator thing in Asylum of the Daleks.

So wiping out the Time Lords and the Daleks, like I said before, that’s not really anything new to him, sadly.

And then there’s the whole whatever the secret is being, well, a secret.  Hidden.  Forgotten.  You don’t talk about secrets or things you want to forget.  Eleven wouldn’t tell Clara what it is this guy had done but I’m pretty sure he’d told her about the time war.  One way or another, she’d seen the Time War anyway in that time stream, but she hadn’t seen Doctor X.  And even if he hadn’t told Clara, he told Rose.  And Martha.  And Donna.  And Jenny.  And Amy and Rory and every Dalek he’s encountered and so many of the enemies and the list goes on and on and on and the Doctor has not been keeping that a secret.  It’s common knowledge, or at least was for a while there (I need to rewatch Series 7 and see if what Oswin did in Asylum of the Daleks actually did what we think it did (not only erase the Doctor from the Daleks Pathweb, but also from much of the universe’s collectively remembered history – long story.  I’ll get into it at some point)).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Doctor’s involvement in the Time War and his role in the destruction of the Time Lords and the Daleks is not a secret.

The above is what bothers me the most and why I don’t want the “confirmation” to be correct.  I got the impression from Elevens reaction to Doctor X that this wasn’t an incarnation he’d talked about.  This wasn’t a man he would discuss for fear of something being remembered or unleashed (like part of the whole “naming something gives it power” or “memory of something keeps it alive” thing).  This Doctor X might, possibly, be the reason he is so reluctant to allow anyone access to his real name.

So what if the secret isn’t the Time War?  I’ve gone over possibilities for Doctor X before (Time War Doctor, Valeyard, original incarnation, etc.) but had abandoned most of them with the “confirmation”.  And then there’s the images that seem to show the Time War and reiterate it.

But what if that isn’t the Time War?

Let me say that again, and really think about it: What if what they are showing in the trailer isn’t the Time War (though, obviously, they would be letting us assume as much)?

We know that the Daleks and the Time Lords have been fighting and at each other’s throats for years by the time Eight (or Doctor X or Nine or whoever it was) ends the Time War.  Daleks are from the original series, long before the Time War (for those of you unfamiliar, or who didn’t watch the originals, the Doctor wasn’t always the only Time Lord left.  Gallifrey still existed in the original series and the Time War happened somewhere between the 1996 movie and the premiere of Series 1 in 2005).  However, we also know that the Time Lords aren’t the only people the Daleks ever fought – they were created by Davros as cyborgs of the Kaleds during the massive war with the Thals (1: apparently the Daleks really like massive, long, drawn out wars.  Fitting, that, since, you know, they are bent on universal domination and 2: I know the Daleks have been retconed like crazy, so I’m going with what, as far as I remember, the currently accepted history for them is).  Also, in Remembrance of the Daleks, we see civil war between Dalek factions and, with assistance from Seven, we see the Daleks and Skaro blown up before the end of the story, though Davros, as we found out, escaped.  So there wasn’t a big Dalek / Time Lord war going on at that point.  And Doctor X says something about “being the man who lit the flames”.

So what if what we’re actually seeing is something that Doctor X did that started the war between the Daleks and the Time Lords that ended up being the Time War?  What if what he did that is so horrible wasn’t to end the Time War but to start it in the first place?  With time travel and parallel universes, it is possible that an early – or even future – incarnation could start the war without meaning to, which ended in the “death” of both races (in quotations because, really, the Daleks weren’t as dead as those on Gallifrey).

Now, throwing a kink in this possible theory is Doctor X’s line from The Name of the Doctor where he says he did what he did “without choice” and “in the name of peace and sanity”.  However, we don’t know what the circumstances were.  Maybe he let them into Gallifrey to keep them from destroying it for some grievance and that started the Time War.  Or maybe he blew up a Dalek ship to save a civilization and that was the final straw that started the Time War.  Who knows?

But it give us a possibility of things not being as easy and cut and dry as they seem right now with the Time War Doctor being the big secret that the Doctor is horrible at keeping, apparently.

Now, again (as I’ve also said before and will probably say again before November), John Hurt’s Doctor probably is the Time War Doctor.  What we are seeing probably is the Time War.  I just don’t want it to be.  I feel that’s too easy, too simply, too, well, let’s be honest – we figured it out in less than two minutes flat.  That’s very not like Moffat – and I so want to believe this is going to be as amazing as anything he’s ever done and better – and if it turns out to be just another so easily predicable twist?

*Sigh*  That would make me awfully sad.