I
normally use this blog as a reflection of my own life, but today I’d like to
shift the focus away from me. Nothing
much interesting has happened to me lately, anyway—I’ve spent a lot of time
working, writing, and…well, and watching Doctor Who. But even when I’m watching TV—or to make it
appropriate to the subject matter, ‘telly’—I’m sitting here musing away, so I
might as well share my thoughts here.
I’ve
been a devoted Whovian for a few years now, ever since I started watching the
new incarnation with Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith in the title spot. (I’m also trying to get caught up with
classic Who, so don’t scold me for hopping onto the show late.) The Doctor is always a fascinating and
absorbing character—funny, brilliant, loving, and cold as ice when
crossed. But just as interesting to me
are the companions, those lucky souls who are invited into the TARDIS for a few
wonderful journeys through time and space.
They are the objects of my deep envy, but more than that, they are the
people who support the Doctor in his lonely life, the ones who guide him away
from despair and inspire him to be the very best he can be.
Of
all the companions I’ve seen—Amy and Rory, River Song, Donna and her disorderly
grandfather Wilf, Captain Jack Harkness, and of course the unforgettable Rose—there
is only one whom I do not love without reservation, and that is Martha
Jones. Played by Freema Agyeman, she was
on the show beginning in 2007, after the departure of longtime companion Billie
Piper. From the beginning, there was
something about her that I didn’t like, and for the longest time I couldn’t put
my finger on it. I wanted to like her—she
was clever, independent, sassy, and like all the other companions, brave. She was devoted to her family, as well as to
the Doctor, and her strength appealed to me.
And yet, I hesitate to watch her episodes again, to look back over her
era, because there is something about her that makes me uncomfortable. In the past few days, however, I’ve figured
out that it’s not Martha herself who bothers me, but the way she is treated.
When
Martha crosses paths with the Doctor, our erstwhile hero is in very bad
shape. He’s recently lost his Rose, the
love of two lifetimes, his companion who stayed with him through multiple
disasters and put her life on the line for his sake. Separated from her by impossible circumstances,
the Doctor is grieving for her as if she were dead. He has also just been rejected by another
possible companion, Donna (though she does later return and joins him after all). He needs someone to support him, but there is
no one he can turn to. So when Martha
helps him with a difficult situation (something about an entire hospital
abducted to the moon by rhino-headed aliens; see series 3, episode 1, “Smith
and Jones”), the Doctor automatically lays some of his burden on her. She bears up beautifully, and so he invites
her to continue on with him.
The
problem is, there’s too much exchanged between the two of them, too soon. While he has no interest in a romantic
relationship with her, he does send her some very mixed messages—a kiss, close
physical proximity, and a certain flirtatious behavior that’s integral to his
character (or at least as played by David Tennant). All of this would be natural to him in his
interactions with Rose, and he doesn’t seem to realize that Martha is reading
these signs differently. He places heavy
trust in her almost right away, expecting her to do difficult and dangerous
things, to support him in his reckless charge through his dangerous life, and
she never receives anything in return.
To put it quite baldly, he uses her.
There was never any malice intended.
By the end of her time with him, he realizes what he has done to her, and indeed she goes through the most change of all his companions, beginning as a medical student and ending as a quasi-warrior, a protector of the planet. The Doctor understands that this is his doing, that the burdens he set on her have taken their toll. But the fact remains that he was in pieces
when he met her, and he expected her to put him back together for the simple and heartbreaking reason that there was no one else to do it.
Here’s
the wonderful thing, though: she did. Slowly but surely, Martha built him back up
again, supported him through times of fear and doubt and pain. Martha taught the Doctor how to stand on his own two feet again. And what’s more impressive
is that when it was done, when she gets to a place where she can see their
relationship clearly, she ends it before it can decay. On the heels of a triumph, she looks him the
eye and she understands that he will never see her the way she wants him
to. She accepts that, and forgives him
for it. But she has suffered in helping him, and her family has suffered, too, and she knows when to say enough. She leaves him behind, knowing that he will
be all right, now, and more, that she will
be all right.
It
took me a long time to unravel that relationship, to realize why I didn’t
admire Martha as I did the others. It
was never Martha herself, but the place she occupied, that relationship we have
all been in where you give so much more than you will ever get in return. The reason it made me so uncomfortable is
because I’ve been there, and I don’t like to remember it. No one would.
But that isn’t fair to the character.
That isn’t fair to this beautiful portrayal of a person who, finding an
absolute wreck of a person, does whatever is necessary to make that person the
hero he was always meant to be. And it
certainly isn’t fair to the writer who gave us an honest look into the cruel
necessity of bitter, dead-end relationships.
So here’s to Martha, one of the strongest women I’ve ever seen in
fiction or in real life. Though hers isn’t
a happy story, she made something out of it, and if that isn’t worth admiring,
what is?
