Donna's end and Russell's message.

[tencrush]

I've wanted to say a few things about Donna's end in Journey's End, but I've found a few other people articulating my feelings slightly better, so I'll start off by quoting them.

angriest said in doctorwho here:
The entire season has been constantly re-visiting Donna's sense of worthlessness ("I'm just a temp from Chiswick!!"), and was demonstrating one episode after another that even an ordinary woman can be something quite extraordinary. She was bold, clever, intelligent and brave, and I was desperately awaiting her final realisation and acceptance that actually she's an important, beautiful person.

But instead "Journey's End" tells us that the only reason she was any of those things was because she was destined to merge with the Doctor, and without him there she's pathetic, vacuous and ignorant. That sort of attitude offends me. It's a horrible thing for Doctor Who to tell its audience, and it's part of a trend I've noticed in the series since it was revived.

...

What I am trying to say is that by travelling with the Doctor, Donna learned that she was an extraordinary person capable of extreme intelligence, bravery and compassion, but "Journey's End" then told the audience that she was only those things with the Doctor because she was about to become half-Time Lord, and the end gave me the strongest impression that now she will never be smarter, braver or more compassionate than she was at the very beginning of it all. She won't re-learn those virtues.

The last scene of her we see, she's gossiping with a friend on the telephone in a bitchy fashion and being fairly rude and dismissive to the Doctor. So the last image RTD gives us of this wonderful character is her being vaguely ignorant and unpleasant.

halfspokenwords said in the same place:
And you know, that isn't all. As much as I felt the emotional punch of Journey's End, I have to say that I am offended by the assertion (not by fans, but by the show) that somehow being ordinary is bad. Davies has consistently lauded the common (wo)man-- from Rose Tyler to Gwen Cooper. And yet here Donna's tragic ending is not that she's immortal and left behind, or that she's stuck in a parallel world, or even that she's walked the Earth while a maniac held her family, but that she is... herself.

I can't help but feel there's something very wrong with that.

And halfspokenwords here in this journal:
I see Rose as a prime example of what a companion shouldn't be. I see no evidence that she's changed for the better, especially not after this episode. She didn't use her time with the Doctor as a prelude to a brilliant life; she used it as a yardstick by which to measure everything else unsuitable. (This also happened to Sarah Jane and Jack, but at least they have their own shows. And also Jack had his immortality to get sorted.)

Donna, on the other hand. Donna is brilliant. Donna has changed so incredibly much this season. I think she's changed more than any other NuWHo companion (Mickey and Martha also have. Mickey remains AWESOME is my mind, but Martha was shortchanged by being written inconsistently.) RTD finally did something right with a companion... and then completely undid it ALL in a few seconds. So while it's painful and tragic and all that, it's also completely sadistic and unfair. Instead of "travelling with the Doctor makes you better," I'm getting the message that travelling with the Doctor ruins your life.

I'm a little torn, though, because on the other hand, I'm a bit annoyed at the way Donna's 'real' life has been characterized. When in Doctor Who mythology has being an ordinary human been bad? Quite the opposite, really; we're told that ordinary humans are spectacular. Rose, Martha, Donna. Gwen, too. So while I understand that Donna's trip on the TARDIS changed her for the better, and I know I'm supposed to understand that before it she was shallow and without confidence... I feel like it just shouldn't be 'tragic' for her to go back to being ordinary, even though I understand that it is.

Yeah, so, these people said it better than I could so I thought it should be repeated.

It started all the way back in series one, with Rose's snotty attitude towards her shopgirl roots, and the message we were given that it was perfectly okay for Rose to look down upon her family and their ordinary, working class lives, because she was with the Doctor now and she knew that there was so much more. Being with the Doctor changes you, yes, but the message was that it changes you to such an extent, that you can't and don't want to ever go back. There's no progression possible, it's not a case of him changing you for the better and you moving on with your life a better person and having a positive influence on the world. No, you change into someone who can't live without him and will tear open realities to get him back. Nice progression there, Rose.

Jack is essentially the same, sure, he joins Torchwood and changes things for the better in a What Would The Doctor Do kind of way, but ultimately, as we see at the end of TW S1, it's all about GOING BACK TO HIM. A 100-year quest to find The Doctor, The Doctor as the be-all and end-all of your existence. The thing about Jack's characterisation, in Who especially, is that he really is the Doctor's bitch. He lets the Doctor put him down and call him on expressing his flirtatious personality and he just takes it. He lets the Doctor neuter him by taking his teleportation capabilities away from him, not once but twice. And seriously, who is The Doctor to be making these kinds of decisions? There's evil time agents all over the place with magical wriststraps, but Jack's not allowed to have one, despite the fact that he's proven himself again and again? Fuck that. And Jack just takes it, because, just like with Rose, The Doctor>Everyone Else. The Doctor makes you leave your team behind in mortal danger without so much as a working gun between them, because BEING WITH THE DOCTOR is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than any of those mundane questions of people you care about, your adopted family, essentially your domestic life, being blown to bits.

Interestingly, Martha is the one companion who really is shown to have moved on with her life. Her existence is not defined by a need to be back with the Doctor. It doesn't really surprise me, then, that she is shown in the big companionfest that is TSE/JE to be the companion who has changed for the worst compared to the others. She's working for an organisation whose methods and tactics are questionable, to say the least, and she seems perfectly happy to be taking dubious orders from them. See, that's what happens when you don't let your life revolve around your love of The Doctor, you become an Agent for The Man. Bad Martha!

Sarah Jane, again, is shown in School Reunion to have not moved on with her life in any way, shape or form. Sure, she's an intrepid reporter and she's got a nice house and stuff, but essentially she's painted as a sad old spinster who never got over this great guy. I've not really watched SJAdventures to any great extent, so I don't know what's going on there, and really, it doesn't interest me, because from the standalone perspective of Who, that's how she comes across (the same goes for Jack, he's quite a different guy in Torchwood, and I won't even start on the continuity of his characterisation on the two shows, but I'm not talking about Torchwood, I'm talking about Who on its own.) The Doctor changed her into a better person, yes, but essentially, a better person who pines for him and doesn't get a (in this case love-)life.

And then there's Donna. The one companion who certainly has no romantic interest in the guy and doesn't worship the ground he walks on, and who changes for the better, each episode she's a better person than the last, by the end of the series her awesomeness is so great, it's blinding. She's fabulous. And she doesn't see it, she thinks she's ordinary. And then she comes to her journey's end. The thing about that end is, there are about a dozen ends I can think of off the top of my head that would have left her awesome. And Russell chose to give us the one end that shows us that WITHOUT THE DOCTOR, she is, essentially, a vapid bimbo. Because that's what happens when you forget the Doctor. It's only being with the Doctor (in Donna's case, quite literally) that makes you awesome. Without him, you're nothing. That's the message.

It's a message that grosses me out and it's the one thing that is making me so happy that Russell is leaving. His hero worship and seemingly romantic love for The Doctor has made every companion come off badly. Every single one of them, and that's a crying fucking shame.

Comments

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[tencrush]

*nods*

[vertrauen.livejournal.com]

Thank you for those last two paragraphs. I was in no mood to be articulate in my IMMENSE HATRED of Russell after I watched the ep. That's articulate. That's thinky good thoughts, that is. Bless you, child. :)

[tencrush]

*sighs*
I post about Torchwood a lot, because essentially Torchwood is just fun cracky goodness and it doesn't fill me with the hatred that Who fills me with nowadays. I'd like to have posted more about Who, but I find I just can't anymore. I will relax when Moffat takes over and until then, I think I'm pretty much done talking about it. Which sucks, but there you go.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Word.

[lucystag.livejournal.com]

I can't argue with any of this.

I was so disappointed with the finale realization that we were all waiting for -- that Donna is important because she merged with the Doctor. And fine, she had that added bit of humanity that supposedly made her even better, but still. In "The Stolen Earth" it wasn't about Donna at all. "Turn Left" was much more about Donna's importance, because we see her getting to be a better person without the Doctor. And then she gets herself killed for him, but it's really to set the world right. She changes without being by his side, and without traveling the galaxy.

Donna is the hero. Not because of some weird Time Lord voodoo reaction, but because of who she is.

I was bitterly disappointed with the finale.

[nevermindtheend.livejournal.com]

It's the fact that adversity (without the Doctor) made her a better person in "Turn Left" that makes me hopeful. In my mind, if she actually faced adversity now, she would become a better person.

Though my favorite version of the ending is that Donna just pretended to have forgotten the Doctor so that he could let go of her. I mean, she was DoctorDonna! Surely that little bit of human could have found a way around his erasing all of her memories of him. And her attitude did seem a bit exaggerated - even compared to what she was like in the Runaway Bride.

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Very well said. And it's a pity this is the message that comes from his entire run - but given how he's basically ended his journey with such sadistic treatment of Donna, it's like he's underlined it without any thought.

And you're right, it does look now like all three Companions who worshipped him got "better" lives - Martha got UNIT (then a fiance and now Torchwood, presumable), Jack got Torchwood and Rose got fake!Doctor. Donna, who didn't worship him, but did change him and Saved the Whole of Creation, got nothing.

And it's not being left as a normal person that irritates me, it's that she was robbed of those memories - and the choice for those memories to be taken away. The power she had, well, the Doctor decided to take that away. I'm not saying Donna would have prefered to die than lose those memories - but that would have been a far better ending to her narrative. As you say, her story was that she couldn't see her brilliance - and unfortunately she only got that when she became half-Time Lord (which means she never really saw how awesome she was before that magical transference)... but even that was stolen from her.

(Note: I don't actually think the conclusion to Rose's story was very well conceived or executed either, but at least she got to remember the Doctor - after almost Destroying All of Creation just to find him again.)

I've read analysis of New Who compared to Russell's Queer as Folk - which was about Stuart, who was hero-worshipped by Vince (Doctor Who fan and Russell stand-in). Vince's life was basically nothing without Vince, who was his best friend but wanted to be his lover.

Oh, Russell you do have your issues. And I've always defended the man, too. But this episode - though not robbing us of his great standalones - puts a tarnish on his entire era.

2010 cannot come quickly enough.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

I'd argue that Martha and Jack got their better lives in spite of the Doctor, not because of him. They both went through living hells, several times on Jack's part, but still wound up on their feet. Jack had his immortality to sort that out, but I get the feeling Martha would have done just fine no matter where she ended up, thank you very much.

I *want* to like the Doctor, but he has this history of destroying his companions. In Torchwood, Jack at least tries to do the right thing (see the Tosh bit of Fragments). Ten is so wrapped up in himself that he doesn't have a clue.

Still doesn't excuse Donna.

[mari-mac1109.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh. This.

I will say that Sarah Jane in the SJA is not who she was in School Reunion. That person is sort of a springboard into her moving on. Having friends and a son. Since it's primarily a children's show, I don't know how much of a love life she can have in that medium though.

As for Donna, I think it's some of the best character writing in New Who and I was really disappointed that RTD had to destroy that. He totally missed the boat with Rose and wasn't consistent with Martha (though I think she was great at times) and don't get me started on Jack. Always glad to have him back, but you're totally right.

[tencrush]

I did watch some SJA, and I know she was a different person in that show, which is essentially one of my main problems. Jack is a completely different person in Torchwood as well, but once he appears in Who he reverts back to the omnisexual slut who worships the ground the Doctor walks on, to the extent that he'll follow him around like a lapdog and take all the shit the Doctor dishes out. Not once in Who has the Doctor even acknowledged that Jack is a different guy now, and really that's because in Who, HE ISN'T. Jack in Torchwood wouldn't leave his recently halved team to their fate and bugger off, because the whole of Torchwood S2 was about how he regards them as his family and refuses to let them come to harm (hello, undeading Owen). But once you go on Who, your DoctorLove suddenly overshadows any other characterisation you may have and makes you act like an arsehole.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, and yes.

And I haven't even seen most of DWS4...the problems were always there.

I hated Mickey in most of S1, to the point where I'd tune him out...and then in S2, especially in Girl in the Fireplace, I turned around. Here was a genuinely interesting character who was reduced by and large to comic relief. He was the flunky, the one who released the Daleks from the prison ship, the one who screwed up and let Margaret the Slitheen out the window. Ouch. Take him away from the Doctor and he turns into a badass. That fit, in a backwards way. He wasn't a Doctor fan, didn't want much to do with him, and because of it, every time he was around dear old doc he turned into the buffoon. Sucks to be him.

Don't get me started on Jack/Doctor. Kind of makes me wish Ianto was on the TARDIS to bitch-slap Ten silly.

[tencrush]

Yeah, I have a particular dislike for the way the heterosexual male companions or potential companions are treated. They can't be in love with the Doctor, and therefore they're immediately dimissed as the comic relief, because in Russell's world, you HAVE to be in (hero-)love with the Doctor, or you're nothing. It disturbed me all the way back in S1 when he left Adam to his fate with a freaking machine in his head, without a second thought. And it hasn't improved since then.

[seangaffney.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes, and YES. So much yes.

[queencheesecake.livejournal.com]

In from who_daily and I agree wholeheartedly. Mind if I friend? :)

[tencrush]

Go right ahead. :)

Oh yeah

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

Still too depressed and dispirited by this horrible, horrible ending to post my own reaction but you said it all.

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

For a moment, in Journey's End, I thought Russell was going to redeem himself slightly. That little moment between Davros and the Doctor, when Davros was merely listing all the attrocities the Doctor had done - I was like, yes! Yes! This is how the Doctor is! Russell, you have finally Got A Clue!

But no. The rest of the episode just served to reinforce those terrible things, but it did it without any real regret. The Doctor felt guilt, sure, but Russell? His writing always seems so gleeful and he always says in interviews that he honestly believes he is writing the best possible story that he can. So Russell had no regret here, flagging up the Doctor's failings and then completely forgetting what he'd just said.

That happens a lot, I think. He must be a very forgetful man.

SIGH.

[tencrush]

Yeah, list his atrocities without any comeback. Waytogo. And THEN the Doctor has the gall to call his clone guy an evil mass-murderer.

Thankfully, I can't even bring myself to post about Rose's story. It's too disgusting and disturbing for words and I'm still too squicked by it.

[rabow.livejournal.com]

The thing about that end is, there are about a dozen ends I can think of off the top of my head that would have left her awesome. And Russell chose to give us the one end that shows us that WITHOUT THE DOCTOR, she is, essentially, a vapid bimbo.

I think you're giving the Doctor a little too much credit. It's only "all over" for Donna if you think she really can't do amazing things on her own, from scratch. What really gets to the heart of the matter is this line from halfspokenwords:I am offended by the assertion (not by fans, but by the show) that somehow being ordinary is bad.

I think that assertion's halfway correct: yes, the series starts with the idea that being ordinary is bad. But the rest of the entire Who series is all about going from being ordinary to doing amazing things. Being ordinary by itself is not bad: staying ordinary without doing anything is. The whole "Of course she's amazing, she's my daughter" / "You should tell her that more often" exchange at the end of Journey's End fully addresses that. People go from being ordinary to extraordinary through love and friendship. The Doctor being there, being a "Companion" -- those are really only one way (out of many) that people develop personally.

Now how much have the other companions developed? I think there are some genuinely mixed results here: yes, the whole Rose stamping her feet like a spoiled child was bothersome. And yes, it shows that Rose has to develop a little more by herself as well. I think Martha and Sarah Jane have done rather well for themselves, SJ's particular performance in this episode notwithstanding. And as for Jack - well, who knows. I don't think the Doctor's particularly fond of what he's (indirectly) given Jack and tries to avoid him as much as possible for it.

Why did they all run to the Doctor as soon as possible? I think that does make a certain amount of sense "in the heat of battle" - the Doctor's an individual who, without the aid of guns and with purely his own intellect (and in New Who, a screwdriver and psychic paper) has managed to outmaneuver the Daleks time and time again. The companions don't have a clue as to what to do, so it makes a certain amount of sense for them to run to the Doctor and try to create a game plan.

[tencrush]

I think you're giving the Doctor a little too much credit. It's only "all over" for Donna if you think she really can't do amazing things on her own, from scratch.
I'm not giving the Doctor too much credit here, this isn't MY opinion, it's the impression I think Russell is putting across. Yeah, I think Donna probably could do amazing things on her own and I think to think that she can't is giving the Doctor way too much credit. Unfortunately, the way it's written, Russell seems to be telling us that Donna CAN'T do amazing things on her own, it's solely by virtue of the Doctor that she was as awesome as she was, that's the ending that he's written and that's the taste he's left in a lot of people's mouths.

[ladysarahii.livejournal.com]

Here from who_daily. You did a good job of pinpointing why I find Donna's story so disturbing. I really believe if there had been a spark, a way for us to see that Donna has retained something from her travels with the Doctor, I would have been very sad, but satisfied. During the last few minutes, like you said, she acted incredibly vapid, which made me wince quite a lot.

I do believe Donna's growth came from within herself, but even she was saying "I'm just a temp" until she got part of the Time Lord inside of her, and then she began to believe this was a Good Thing. And now she's got none of that, so it's hard for me to believe she'll ever be the same again. Sigh. I mean, a character is supposed to progress, not regress!

from who_daily

[neohippie.livejournal.com]

I agree with pretty much everything here!

I grew to love Donna so much and this is just AWFUL! If only they could have given us some little indication that she kept a little something from her journey. After the Doctor left, there could be some little clue with her that she was different. But no, she seemed even MORE annoying than she was when she first appeared!

Donna was the best New Who companion and then she was just raped like this! ARGH!

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

yes
and yes

[meleth.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Rose's summation of her life was, "before I met him, I never did anything. And after I left him, I never did anything that wasn't done without the express purpose of tearing apart reality to get back to him." Sarah Jane started off by saying, "there's nothing only about being a girl!" That was one of the first beliefs her character expressed. Y'know, after posing as a scientist to infiltrate UNIT and figure out what was up with them. And when she left the Doctor for the first time, when she realized he'd left her in the wrong city, and the wrong country even, she laughed, picked up her suitcase, and marched off down the street, ready to find her own way home. Ace started off thinking her life was pointless and a bit crap (although she at least had the gumption to run off and try and fix it, through the exciting medium of explosions), but in the end she became a more powerful and independent person, able to fix problems on her own.

That, back in the '70s and '80s, was how the Doctor helped his companions. They learned things, they saw things, and even if they weren't broken before, they became better and even more able to stand on their own; when you've worked with the Doctor anywhere in the universe, the distance between Croyden and Aberdeen seems fairly insignificant. But now (as Davros pointed out), the Doctor breaks people. He turns them into weapons, and they become nothing after he leaves them. And oh god, Donna, poor Donna. All she gets is the Doctor telling her mum to be a bit nicer to her. Because hey, he's not responsible for the aftermath; he'll leave that to the little people who have to stay behind and deal with the mess he's made and the people he's broken.

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

Because hey, he's not responsible for the aftermath; he'll leave that to the little people who have to stay behind and deal with the mess he's made and the people he's broken.

Coming in late to the party but I think that is THE single best description of the Doctor, ever.

It makes his disdain for Jack/Torchwood and Martha/UNIT all the more stunning, since they're the ones who have to stay behind and clean up the mess--and they're the ones who back him up without fail every time things go off. (Still flabbergasted by TLOTL, can you tell?)

[lorem_ipsum]

Too depressed by the overall rightness of your post to bother expressing the minor points I disagree with. Off to Mordor.

[love-jackianto.livejournal.com]

*nods* 'literally) that makes you awesome. Without him, you're nothing. That's the message.

It's a message that grosses me out and it's the one thing that is making me so happy that Russell is leaving. His hero worship and seemingly romantic love for The Doctor has made every companion come off badly.' I feel the same way. At least on old Who (most of) the Doctor's companions didn't end up broken and they certainly didn't become nothing without the Doctor- look at Jo Jones.

[baby-werewolf.livejournal.com]

Word. Complete fucking word.

I loved Donna, I really loved her, and I was crying my eyes out at the end of Journey's End, because NO MORE AWESOME DONNA. Not just no more Donna with the Doctor, NO MORE AWESOME DONNA AT ALL. Donna is awesome because she's Donna, not because she's half of DoctorDonna, and that should have been what we saw at the end of it.
No, Russell. Just...no.

I'm so angry at this episode. I don't GET this angry at TV fail. I get annoyed, and I get sad, but I don't ever actually want to choke a bitch the way I want to right now.

[meegat.livejournal.com]

Very, very well said.

LOL I'm going to pimp this out a bit, if you don't mind. YOu say it all so much better than I could (I tend to lapse into swearing a lot...)

[tencrush]

Nah, feel free to pimp, I don't mind.

[sushigal007.livejournal.com]

This saddens my by how right you are.

[descrime.livejournal.com]

My first thought on seeing the ending was:

So we spend the entire season pointing out how awesome Donna is just as herself but to save the day she has to become part-Doctor after which she gets punished for rising above her station by having all the wonderful memories of the trip /she chose to take/ erased. Right, just so we're clear.

And don't even get me started on Jack's wrist-strap. He's not a con man anymore. He's saved the Earth multiple times, and there are times when having a teleporter would save lives. So, the Doctor is killing people for what reason exactly? This is the Harriet Jones debacle all over again. Last time, ousting Harriet Jones allowed the Master to take over, and gee it was good we had a reset button so the entire Earth wasn't destroyed forever. When the Doctor is acting high-handed like this, he really pisses me off. ESPECIALLY because he's never called on it--neither by the characters or the text.

And RTD's portrayal of UNIT is just beyond the pale. So, basically what he's saying is that the human race shouldn't try to create any kind of defense for themselves against alien threats, they should just sit back on their hands and wait for a time-traveling alien to come rescue them because of course any human not touched by the Doctor's wonderfulness is incapable of making good decisions and is greedy and self-serving or just stupid.

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

So, basically what he's saying is that the human race shouldn't try to create any kind of defense for themselves against alien threats

No, what he's saying is, that should be left to his own creation - Torchwood. And I will never understand this because they seem to serve different purposes, but RTD takes every opportunity to bash UNIT - and pretend Torchwood is a healthy functioning secret organisation.

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

And then there's Donna. The one companion who certainly has no romantic interest in the guy and doesn't worship the ground he walks on, and who changes for the better, each episode she's a better person than the last, by the end of the series her awesomeness is so great, it's blinding. She's fabulous. And she doesn't see it, she thinks she's ordinary. And then she comes to her journey's end. The thing about that end is, there are about a dozen ends I can think of off the top of my head that would have left her awesome. And Russell chose to give us the one end that shows us that WITHOUT THE DOCTOR, she is, essentially, a vapid bimbo. Because that's what happens when you forget the Doctor. It's only being with the Doctor (in Donna's case, quite literally) that makes you awesome. Without him, you're nothing. That's the message.

It's a message that grosses me out and it's the one thing that is making me so happy that Russell is leaving. His hero worship and seemingly romantic love for The Doctor has made every companion come off badly. Every single one of them, and that's a crying fucking shame.

This for the win. Thank God RTD is leaving.

[holdingoff.livejournal.com]

hmm. okay, deep breath because the sky will not strike me dead when i say i *understand* why RTD did what he did to Donna.

All of the other new Who companions have been written as flawed individuals that look to the Doctor as some sort of a Messiah-- he's going to save *them*. The problem they don't see is that he himself is so broken and damaged to begin with that he can't do anything to fix their flaws, if anything he makes them grow or worse.

Rose-- the whole "one true love" complex. Come on, she's supposed to be what 19 or 20 when they meet? She's still young enough to be caught up by a big personality and it warps her.

Mickey & Jackie-- ancillary characters not directly "touched". Jackie is always the rather low brow mother and Mickey is the knuckle dragging sort-of boyfriend. He changes from Mickey-the-Idiot to Mickey-the-thug.

Jack-- probably the *least* believable evolution of a character we see in DW. Time Agent/Con Man that all of a sudden grows a heart of gold? Geez RTD, watch a lot of 50's-60's Eve Arden/Joan Crawford/Bette Davis movies? "Capt" Jack acts more like "Private" Jack looking for orders.

Martha-- poor Martha, the rebound companion. She's a typical Mary Sue through the entire series until the last episode she appears in and suddenly she's this hardened survivor- sorry folks, people don't change that much that fast. And I'm sorry, but anyone that's ever seen a Dept of Defense-type unit operating knows that a freakin' medical Doctor isn't going to be ordering around any grunts and they sure as hell aren't going to have high level access.

Which leaves Donna. No love interest, and consistently questioning and pushing. No wonder people always asked if they were married. The only change we saw in Donna was CONFIDENCE. It grew, she pushed back, she questioned, she gained confidence in herself. That had nothing to do with the Doctor himself, but with the situations she was able to experience. Her crappy self-esteem? Point a big honkin' arrow at the MOTHER. Every incident we saw of her mother was her berating and laboring every point and talking down to both her own father and her daughter. In the end, Donna had to make a "Noble" sacrifice. She had to forget or she'd die. She didn't want to go back to being "just a temp", she would rather burn and remember than live and forget. And the Doctor, flawed and damaged individual that he is, took the choice away from her.

The *only* thing the Doctor did right by Donna was to confront her mother about how she talks down to her.

RTD has always loved to put giant spotlights on human failings and flaws, and he did the same thing in his tenure at DW. nuWho is a far cry from the children's show I grew up on, or the spluttering dying shipwreck that I was an intern at nearly the end. But, RTD and his *star* power brought it back and now we can gladly say "don't let the door hit your backside on the way out" as the truly warped mind of Steve Moffat takes over.

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

In the end, Donna had to make a "Noble" sacrifice.

But she didn't make that sacrifice. It was taken from her. That is terrible for the character; terrible from a writing point of view.

Unless, of course, RTD wanted to make the Doctor completely unlikable.

[virginhuntress.livejournal.com]

Call me weird, but I actually like that the Doctor doesn't really make people better.

I think, that in the end, most of us want the Doctor to be this... almost perfect being. We want him to scoop up ordinary people, show them all the wonders of the multi-verse and then send them home as something bigger and better that they started off with.

In a way, he does. Rose wouldn't have ever realized her potential for bravery or intelligence if it hadn't been for him. Jack would've went on being a con-man, at least for a while longer if not for the rest of his life (not b/c he was a bad person, but because he was guilt-ridden... in the end, it was Rose's belief in him that makes him a better man, and not so much the Doctor). Martha probably could have just as good a life either way (she looked pretty content with life before the Doctor shows up). Donna, well, we all feel the same way about Donna.

But.

He also makes them heroes, which is something that is far too romanticized throughout history. Heroes aren't perfect by a long shot. Heroes have to make the god-awful choices that will not only cost lives, but their very souls. Heroes know that doing the right thing STILL sometimes comes with a high cost, but that it's still worth doing.

I don't believe Martha was wrong with the Ostrahagen (Sp?) key. She didn't' implement it, but left it open as an option. What if the Doctor had died? The universe would be better if humans didn't become Daleks, even if it is the impossible choice.

A lot of people have given Rose grief about carrying her big fucking gun (having criticized Nine for the same in Season One), but once again, I can't blame her. She knows what they're capable of. These are the not the same Daleks that she met in Utah, this is a different situation. Kill or be killed.

I guess, I'm just trying to say in all this mess, is that I love the Doctor because he is flawed. Yes, he is a hero. Yes, he has a tragic past but goes on anyway. Yes, he does it all w/o asking for thanks, and even gives the bad guys a second chance to stop... but he's lonely. And he's sad. And he carries the weight of EVERYTHING on his shoulders, and no one else really knows what it's like in his head. It's a fucked up existence, and not one he asked for. He had to kill his own people to save the multi-verse and found out it was all for nothing. So, who can blame him when he sees a shining star full of potential and whisks them away to give them the only thing he can?

I sure as hell can't.


ETA: All of this, however, doesn't make me sad that Rusty is leaving. Good riddance, and hopefully soon we can have another fab companion like Donna (or hell, bring Donna back somehow) and things, for once, can go well for all parties with danger, and running and FOR ONCE, a little bit more happiness in the end.