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As the title implies, great big spoilers for Doomsday and School Reunion. I don't think a 42 year old episode needs a spoiler warning.
Everything has it's time, and everything ends
One of the things I noticed upon reading the reactions to Doomsday was the amount of criticism about the final scenes with Rose, how they depicted her as lost and undeveloped and supremely messed up by her experiences with the Doctor. Even I picked up on this.
And as good as that scene was in it's own right, I can see how it does appear to counter some of the series messages - the main tie-in here would be School Reunion with it's "Everything has it's time and everything ends" message, which was all about Sarah Jane finally moving on.
And here we get Rose, broken and crying, and apparently unable to move on. Which is in character for her so far, but not the positive view.
And yet, as much as it felt like a rather horrible ending for Rose on first glance, on reflection it just seems to work.
Because as cruel as it is immediately, it needed to be done for the long term. Rose needed this.
You can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
Yeah, it hurts like a bastard, but a lot of things that need to be done do - as anyone who has ever had a tooth pulled could tell you.
Quite a few people have been arguing that it isn't a satisfying ending because Rose wanted to stay with the Doctor forever and ever. To which my response is quite simply "What the hell does that matter?" Firstly, Rose isn't immortal, she won't be around forever. She will leave the Doctor eventually, even if it is through death (and anyone who thinks the Doctor wouldn't take Rose's death worse than he did seeing her trapped in another universe is completely fucked in the head).
And secondly, and more importantly, what people want isn't necessarily what's best for them. Case in point: Heroin addicts.
Just because Rose wants to never leave the Doctor, doesn't mean she should. And the Doctor knows this. Hello, he put the bloody world-jumping device around her without her permission. He just hadn't counted on her stubbornness, and was hardly going to send away help when he needed it.
The Doctor is no stranger to making the hard choices that other people won't make.
Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.
This is, after all, the same man who abandoned his own grand-daughter on Earth. Because she would never leave him, because she felt an obligation to him, because she loved him, despite the fact that travelling with him meant a loss of individual identity, meant never having a home, never belonging anywhere...
Sound at all familiar?
Like Susan, Rose had the situation taken out of her hands in the end. Like Susan, she was left on a world that badly needed rebuilding, which needed people with knowledge to help out. Like Susan, she was left with people who loved her, who would take care of her, who wanted her to come with them, and found her choosing to go with the Doctor painful.
(And on a more interesting note, both were given a goodbye that excluded any physical contact)
But the most important thing is that both Susan and Rose needed someone else to make the decision for them. It was the final rite of passage, the final parental "I know best" decision before all their decisions are placed into their own hands.
See, for all she's seen and done, Rose is still really a child. She needs this rite of passage if she is to truly become an adult. No matter how much it hurts.
She's had her fabulous times, her games and fun and travels. But she isn't the Doctor, she can't be that Peter Pan, that eternal child. Which is something he knows. If the Doctor knows anything, it's that things end. And that some lessons hurt.
"Some things are worth getting your heart broken for" after all. But the thing about people, is that eventually? They heal.
Pain and suffering define us as much as happiness and love
If the Nine vs Ten dichotomy points out anything, it's that wounds can heal, scars can fade. Slowly, but they do. But it sometimes, that wound needs to be lanced, the bandaid needs to be ripped off, iodine put on the cut.
The things that make us better still hurt.
And if this isn't done, the wound can fester. It took meeting the Dalek Emporer again, making the same push-the-button-and-wipe-out-a-world decision for Nine to heal. And it took that sad, painful farewell for Sarah Jane to finally move on with her life.
Oh, I'm not saying she didn't have a life - she had a good job, she was using her experience and knowledge to do something good - rather like Rose is in Torchwood, methinks - But there was that little broken part of her, tucked away and hidden, that never quite got over her abandonent.
He never said goodbye to her, she never knew if he was coming back. But she got her goodbye, and even if it had been a long painful process, it meant she was finally free of that broken worry.
And it seems the Doctor learnt from this.
Because what else was the scene on the beach?
That was the Doctor coming to see Rose, lost, broken Rose who had been ripped from the life she knew, and to say goodbye. No promises, no rescues, just goodbye. To stop Rose living like Sarah, always in the back of her head wondering. She knows now, he isn't coming back. Which is frightening, and painful, but it's answer.
And the knowledge is always preferable to ignorance, no matter how painful.
Grief is itself a medicine.
People saying that Rose hasn't grown at all? Well, the thing about growing up is, it too hurts. We learn from our pains, from our mistakes, from the things we lose and how we lose them.
We lose them, and then we grieve, and then - then - we move on. Grief is a healthy reaction to loss. And however you interpret the Doctor-Rose relationship, Rose has lost something huge.
And that's what the scene on the beach is. It's the final farewell, it's the throwing the flowers into the grave, or helping your parents dig a grave for your puppy. It hurts like a bastard to do, but without that certainty, without that knowledge that this is goodbye, this is where it ends, for now and forever.
And you can't start a new life without finishing the one before.
Rose has lost her old life, and it it hurts her so badly, losing it and the Doctor who defined this life, whether this was right or wrong. But with that goodbye, that conclusion, she is free to grieve and to move on.
Rose has lost something, and she is mourning that. But...
You need an ending before you can have a new beginning. The Doctor gave Rose her ending. Now it's up to her to make the new beginning.
It's always darkest before dawn.
She's got a whole new universe of her own, she could do anything. It's all up to her. The choice is all hers, no financial troubles, no low status to hold her back. The world is in her hands.
Hope...
- Quotes from School Reunion, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Rolling Stones, William Cowper.
Everything has it's time, and everything ends
One of the things I noticed upon reading the reactions to Doomsday was the amount of criticism about the final scenes with Rose, how they depicted her as lost and undeveloped and supremely messed up by her experiences with the Doctor. Even I picked up on this.
And as good as that scene was in it's own right, I can see how it does appear to counter some of the series messages - the main tie-in here would be School Reunion with it's "Everything has it's time and everything ends" message, which was all about Sarah Jane finally moving on.
And here we get Rose, broken and crying, and apparently unable to move on. Which is in character for her so far, but not the positive view.
And yet, as much as it felt like a rather horrible ending for Rose on first glance, on reflection it just seems to work.
Because as cruel as it is immediately, it needed to be done for the long term. Rose needed this.
You can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
Yeah, it hurts like a bastard, but a lot of things that need to be done do - as anyone who has ever had a tooth pulled could tell you.
Quite a few people have been arguing that it isn't a satisfying ending because Rose wanted to stay with the Doctor forever and ever. To which my response is quite simply "What the hell does that matter?" Firstly, Rose isn't immortal, she won't be around forever. She will leave the Doctor eventually, even if it is through death (and anyone who thinks the Doctor wouldn't take Rose's death worse than he did seeing her trapped in another universe is completely fucked in the head).
And secondly, and more importantly, what people want isn't necessarily what's best for them. Case in point: Heroin addicts.
Just because Rose wants to never leave the Doctor, doesn't mean she should. And the Doctor knows this. Hello, he put the bloody world-jumping device around her without her permission. He just hadn't counted on her stubbornness, and was hardly going to send away help when he needed it.
The Doctor is no stranger to making the hard choices that other people won't make.
Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.
This is, after all, the same man who abandoned his own grand-daughter on Earth. Because she would never leave him, because she felt an obligation to him, because she loved him, despite the fact that travelling with him meant a loss of individual identity, meant never having a home, never belonging anywhere...
Sound at all familiar?
Like Susan, Rose had the situation taken out of her hands in the end. Like Susan, she was left on a world that badly needed rebuilding, which needed people with knowledge to help out. Like Susan, she was left with people who loved her, who would take care of her, who wanted her to come with them, and found her choosing to go with the Doctor painful.
(And on a more interesting note, both were given a goodbye that excluded any physical contact)
But the most important thing is that both Susan and Rose needed someone else to make the decision for them. It was the final rite of passage, the final parental "I know best" decision before all their decisions are placed into their own hands.
See, for all she's seen and done, Rose is still really a child. She needs this rite of passage if she is to truly become an adult. No matter how much it hurts.
She's had her fabulous times, her games and fun and travels. But she isn't the Doctor, she can't be that Peter Pan, that eternal child. Which is something he knows. If the Doctor knows anything, it's that things end. And that some lessons hurt.
"Some things are worth getting your heart broken for" after all. But the thing about people, is that eventually? They heal.
Pain and suffering define us as much as happiness and love
If the Nine vs Ten dichotomy points out anything, it's that wounds can heal, scars can fade. Slowly, but they do. But it sometimes, that wound needs to be lanced, the bandaid needs to be ripped off, iodine put on the cut.
The things that make us better still hurt.
And if this isn't done, the wound can fester. It took meeting the Dalek Emporer again, making the same push-the-button-and-wipe-out-a-world decision for Nine to heal. And it took that sad, painful farewell for Sarah Jane to finally move on with her life.
Oh, I'm not saying she didn't have a life - she had a good job, she was using her experience and knowledge to do something good - rather like Rose is in Torchwood, methinks - But there was that little broken part of her, tucked away and hidden, that never quite got over her abandonent.
He never said goodbye to her, she never knew if he was coming back. But she got her goodbye, and even if it had been a long painful process, it meant she was finally free of that broken worry.
And it seems the Doctor learnt from this.
Because what else was the scene on the beach?
That was the Doctor coming to see Rose, lost, broken Rose who had been ripped from the life she knew, and to say goodbye. No promises, no rescues, just goodbye. To stop Rose living like Sarah, always in the back of her head wondering. She knows now, he isn't coming back. Which is frightening, and painful, but it's answer.
And the knowledge is always preferable to ignorance, no matter how painful.
Grief is itself a medicine.
People saying that Rose hasn't grown at all? Well, the thing about growing up is, it too hurts. We learn from our pains, from our mistakes, from the things we lose and how we lose them.
We lose them, and then we grieve, and then - then - we move on. Grief is a healthy reaction to loss. And however you interpret the Doctor-Rose relationship, Rose has lost something huge.
And that's what the scene on the beach is. It's the final farewell, it's the throwing the flowers into the grave, or helping your parents dig a grave for your puppy. It hurts like a bastard to do, but without that certainty, without that knowledge that this is goodbye, this is where it ends, for now and forever.
And you can't start a new life without finishing the one before.
Rose has lost her old life, and it it hurts her so badly, losing it and the Doctor who defined this life, whether this was right or wrong. But with that goodbye, that conclusion, she is free to grieve and to move on.
Rose has lost something, and she is mourning that. But...
You need an ending before you can have a new beginning. The Doctor gave Rose her ending. Now it's up to her to make the new beginning.
It's always darkest before dawn.
She's got a whole new universe of her own, she could do anything. It's all up to her. The choice is all hers, no financial troubles, no low status to hold her back. The world is in her hands.
Hope...
- Quotes from School Reunion, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Rolling Stones, William Cowper.
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She's got a whole new universe of her own, she could do anything. It's all up to her. The choice is all hers, no financial troubles, no low status to hold her back. The world is in her hands.
Hopefully, she'll do a bit more than clinging on to her Mum and sobbing when the worst pain is over. I really prefer the cheeky, giggly, even silly Rose to such a heart-broken mess.
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And my complete flash of inspiration with absolutely no grounds in reality: This years Children in Need special. Last year was immediately post-Regen. This year? Rose moving on in her new universe.
Absolutely zero chance of being true. But if it is, I called it first. ;)
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For Rose, traveling with the Doctor was fun and games, something they hit on over and over this year with their reactions to things, and she got a HUGE wake-up call there. It's the push she needs to really grow up. So while people were going, "It shows how Rose hasn't changed," I think that's sort of exactly the point. This is what she needed to happen because traveling with the Doctor while it changed her point-of-view about the universe and what's out there, I don't think it changed her in the sense of growing up. It was too much "fun" for her.
It was a Peter Pan sort of situation, as you said, and she needed to be brought back to the reality. Rose "died" on that beach in the tarot sense - she had a huge change and can never go back. And honestly, given her character, I think Rusty was right. It had to happen to her. She couldn't chose it.
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It had to happen to her. She couldn't chose it.
Like I said, sometimes we need someone else to make the choice for us. Coming to terms with the fact that we can't always control our lives is something everyone needs to come to terms with.
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This way I kind of lose any respect for her, but it fits if I just see her a a bit deluded.
Makes the ship that bit squicker for me though. *cries*
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But maybe that's just me
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Added to my memories.
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But thanks for the, um, memorising.
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I rewatched it this morning to try and work out what bothered me about that scene the first time, and in truth, it didn't really bother me at all on second and third viewing. It was right. It needed to be done, and it wasn't about Rose not having learned her lesson, it was about the fact that she needed him to teach it to her, she needed him to give her that closure so she could move on. And it was about the fact that he has learned this season that he needs to do this sort of thing, because he has an awesome power to fuck people up royally and for the rest of their lives. And he has a responsibility to try and recitify the damage he does by (selfishly?) taking people along for the ride in the first place. It was just the goodbye he should have given Sarah Jane and anyone else who deserved a proper goodbye. And I like to think his emo tears were for all of them, not just Rose. But that's just because that makes me feel better in my head.
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And the emo tears can be for whoever you want them to be, baby.
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It was the final rite of passage, the final parental "I know best" decision before all their decisions are placed into their own hands.
See, for all she's seen and done, Rose is still really a child. She needs this rite of passage if she is to truly become an adult. No matter how much it hurts.
That... squicks me a bit cos the shippiness makes it seem icky. *flail*
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But I suppose that's what I am doing now, seeing the positive in it and all.
From a certain POV, the ship is always a bit icky. What else can you expect from 900+ vs 19?
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I'm still not sure it was quite in character for the Doctor to even try to say 'I love you', or to cry, but I'll put that down to a development that started with SR and GITF too.
One little peeve, however:
from the things we loose and how we loose them.
We loose them, and then we grieve
AAAAAARGH..... How can you do that to an unsuspecting mind! Such a well written entry, and then this!
XWA
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Forgive me, it was written at about 2am. And the spell-check doesn't pick up on lose vs loose.
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It was the final rite of passage, the final parental "I know best" decision before all their decisions are placed into their own hands.
See, for all she's seen and done, Rose is still really a child. She needs this rite of passage if she is to truly become an adult. No matter how much it hurts.
I just can't agree with you on that front. Because I don't really think that she's still 'a child who needed a rite of passage to become an adult'. It seems like everyone is saying that in order to grow up, she needed to fall in love with someone whom she could share the mortgage with - i.e. anyone except the Doctor, get the mortgage, have kids, get a good job, etc. And I really kind of almost resent the implications that 'being married with kids and having the domestic life' is the prime indicator in being an adult. I'm 38, and I'm not married, never have been, and my single status is more by choice than for lack of opportunity - I've had three proposals and I was briefly engaged when I was 22. And it's not for want of pursuing a great career either, sadly. Heh.
Really, it was the realization that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with them. Or in the case of the first, I was too young to know what I wanted (it was on my 18th birthday and I'd just stared university 2 weeks earlier). And this is the bit that makes me think of Rose. Because after traveling with him - and they did travel for a while together as time passing on earth means nothing really to a time traveler - she made the choice that she DID want to spend her life traveling with him. And it wasn't simply an idle choice like choosing what you want for supper. She knew the risks and the dangers, she knew the downsides, knew that she wouldn't have a 'normal' life (i.e. the mortgage) and yet she still made it.
How is that different from someone deciding they want to go to medical school or deciding they want to get married and have children? And how is that an immature decision? It wasn't as if she wasn't doing anything worthwhile - traveling with the Doctor is much more educational than sightseeing, and probably more educational than a Uni degree. Maybe after some years she'd have decided she wanted the mortgage after all, but she knew damn well that he did not. And she still made the choice. Was it made solely because she loved him?
My parents have tried to make decisions for me - telling me they didn't like a particular boyfriend, which of course puts a strain on a relationship, or telling me that the career I wanted to pursue wasn't good enough and I should do what they wanted instead. Which, I should add, didn't work out and I ended up doing neither. I wish I'd had Rose's determination to be honest. Parents want what's best for us, but they're not always right either, and in the end we have to do what we think is best for us. We all leave home eventually, and even though she loves Jackie, Rose needed to leave home as well.
Wow. I didn't realize it was such a personal thing for me. :)
Anyway. The thing with Susan. Susan is his granddaughter and his family. So in a sense, he had an obligation to 'push her out of the nest' if you will. The situation with Rose is completely different. The two times he sent her away it was not merely for her own good for her to move on, it was to save her life - save her from dying. Metaphor time, but if the lifeboat can only hold one person, of course he would sacrifice himself. In PotW, she would have either been killed by the Daleks or the Delta Wave. In Doomsday, she'd have been sucked into the Void. And both times he didn't ask her because he knew damn well that she wouldn't have gone of her own volition. And it wasn't about blind love either. It was "what can I do to help?!" And to me, that's pretty damn grown up right there.
:)
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The point is, that for all Rose makes her choice to travel with the Doctor, it's been shown repeatedly, she doesn't want things to change. She wants to stay the same, travel with the Doctor forever, and yet still always have Jackie there to go back to, she kept Mickey on a string for that reason (which is why she was all "What about me?" when he left).
But the Doctor is the ultimate creature of change. He's unreliable and unexpected and always moving forward, moving onwards. That's what the Mortgage conversation is all about even if stripped of shippiness, Rose wants things to stay the same, the Doctor can't cope with that.
And the thing about growing up? It involves change.
What the Doctor, what the universe does to Rose here is to force her to accept that change happens. No matter how much you fight it, the world moves on. She's had this lesson put in front of her so many times and she hasn't wanted to face up to it. And that's what this was, in the end - "This is what happens, this is how the world works."
Clinging to the past, to her life with the Doctor when she's in the altverse is the childish reaction. Moving on and accepting that things change, all things inevitably end is the adult reaction.
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With knobs on.
To all of it.
Fabulous, spot on, exactly how I felt myself but hadn't taken the time to think through properly or put into anything like the same well-chosen words, thank you very much indeed.
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You're starting to convince me that maybe the end of Doomsday wasn't total crap. The whole comparison of Susan and Rose is starting to make the Doctor/Rose ship a bit squicky, though.
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Which is why a lot of shippers depress me. It's such an interestingly messed up ship, and yet that fact seems to get completely white-washed most of the time.
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You don’t know me from Adam, so please feel free to ignore this. It’s just—I’ve seen the Doctor-as-Peter Pan comparison before, and every time I see it, I wonder, so I’m finally going to just go ahead and ask. Am I the only one who sees it as a bad thing? Who thinks it makes the Doctor less interesting? I saw Peter’s return to Neverland as cowardly, and the ending of that book as a tragedy, but it wouldn’t be the first time that my interpretation of a book didn’t match most other people’s. So I thought I’d ask.
Shaela Scanlon
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And if tragedy wasn't popular, Romeo and Juliet wouldn't be so popular.
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You need an ending before you can have a new beginning. The Doctor gave Rose her ending. Now it's up to her to make the new beginning."
I totally agree. But I also feel that the Doctor also learned something about himself this season from Sarah Jane and Reinette. He's learned that he needs goodbyes too. I think the 'burning up a sun to say goodbye to you' was as much for him as for her.
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Thanks for stating it so much more eloquently and even-handedly than I could have. :-)
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But thanks for commenting. And the intervention comment is... interesting, considering certain discussions I have had or read in other places about the Doctor/Rose relationship and certain more negative readings of it.
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I don't think this is the first time I've thought 'amen' while reading your meta. Mind if I friend you?
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Sure, friend away. I may take a bit longer to decide if I friend you back, mind (I had a troll a little while back, so don't take it personally, it's just me seeing what the people on my flist are like and all first)
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I think in the scene on the beach it is established that Rose is moving on, she's got the job at Torchwood and she's coping fine, but I think it's the thought of the Doctor all on his onesie that really gets her. I think that's the major difference as well between him leaving Susan and Rose. When he left Susan he wasn't the last Time Lord, he had other companions and she wasn't taken from him like Rose was. Also, children (or grandchildren) are meant to leave at some point, it's unhealthy for them not to. The Doctor and Rose were more of a partnership, neither was under any obligation to the other, so I think the two differ at least on that point.
And you know, I was fully intending to disagree with you about it being the best thing for Rose, but I think I do agree with you. It would be awful to grow old and die while the Doctor stays young and pretty forever, and to know that when you're gone he will just keep going on and there's nothing you can do about it.
I think the thing that bothers me about the end of Doomsday is that I am not convinced it is the best thing for the Doctor for Rose to leave. And I am surely not convinced it is the best thing for the series. I mean, I did love the ending, I am a sucker for tragedy and all that, but I think I am just a little bit worried about what will happen next. I really did love Rose as a character, and I loved the Rose/Doctor relationship - not even from a shippy POV, just because they worked so well together. And I just don't want him to be sad!!!
This comment is far too long, so I am going to leave on that note!!!
*loves*
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I think the thing that bothers me about the end of Doomsday is that I am not convinced it is the best thing for the Doctor for Rose to leave.
...Which is why we get a new companion next series. The thing you are forgetting is that the Doctor has done this many, many times before. The thing about companions is they always leave. Whether it's death, falling in love with someone, choosing to do good somewhere, being unale to take the life any more, or as with Sarah being forced to leave because of other circumstances, the Doctor has experienced loss. He can cope with it. He's sad, but he will get over it. Which was the point of the bride, really - he can't grieve forever, the universe keeps on moving on. And the Doctor with it.
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and since i've been in radical post-doomsday emo mode after rewatching the whole series, this was very therapeutic.