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.