#Aroace Doctor

[variousqueerthings]

on aroace queerplatonic doctordonna

@foxfables just answering you here, since it's easier for me than on the replies, cos wooord count:

1. a fair amount of espeeecially aroace fans of the show have talked a lot about how we read the doctor as aroace and a lot of the pain that comes with Companions is their often moving on specifically for alloromantic and allosexual reasons (whether or not they were looking for that from the doctor, lots of examples in classic!who of companions having not-at-all that kind of dynamic with the doctor, and leaving for a romantic relationship) and how that especially comes to the fore with ten's doctor -- and we relate to that pain

2. the doctor's and donna's relationship was specifically deliberately created to be a platonic relationship, going so far as to spell it out in their first adventure together in s4 and then making fun of the idea that they could ever be read as alloromantic in any way

3. "despite" this explicit non-romantic and non-sexual framing, their story was one of deep abiding love and partnership, with the doctor occupying a similar -- if not even moreso -- position in the noble family as they had done with the tylers or the ponds, where they were deeply embedded not just in donna on her own when she was out travelling, but in her family affairs. that's the "queer" of the platonic part -- they're not just good friends who meet up sometimes but have other relationships that are higher up the hierarchy for being romantic, they build their life around each other (clarifying queerplatonic partnerships can and do also exist when one or more people within them have romantic relationships, but the point is the hierarchy -- which we see when shaun arrives too)

4. and it all culminated in a massive heartbreak for the both of them, where they couldn't be together anymore, despite both of them desperately wanting that -- donna didn't leave the doctor, the doctor didn't leave her to a life that was "better" suited to her (which the doctor sometimes has made decisions about against their companion's wishes). it was a tragic queerplatonic story, and one in which the doctor ended up dying/regenerating alone after making sure that everyone else was fine (notably, this "fine" included romantic relationships in almost every scene of that montage -- sarah-jane is an outlier)

5. this story then, was asking the question over and over: why this face? why does the universe/the tardis always bring me back to you? what is this mysterious force that's making us fated to meet this way? and for awhile neither the doctor nor donna can answer that -- the doctor constantly talks about bringing donna home to her family, her life, because the doctor is used to eventually having to go off alone, and by now donna is married and has a kid. how could there possibly be space for the doctor in that? and of course donna wouldn't be able to travel again. it's as incompatible as it always was

6. and then the story answers that question by going: donna is the doctor's family. this face came back to be with donna again. they're not romantic, but they are partners, donna's daughter, donna's husband, donna's mother, donna's grandfather, are all the doctor's family too

7. the doctor didn't need to promise a romantic/sexual relationship that they couldn't actually offer, didn't have to become someone else, didn't have to twist into a shape they couldn't, they just had to let themself stop running long enough to understand that this is the love they deserve to have

that's the power of the doctordonna in the end. this is what this doctor ends up living for, not grand battles and great destinies. just loving your best friend and being loved in return. that is the final thesis of this entire era of doctor who, and it's very aroace queerplatonic in theme

[fearsomeandwretchedandwrong]

Me clinging desperately to the fact that canonically Nine is aroace as the NineRose shippers attack.

[allthoseotherworlds]

I rewatched The Empty Child/the Doctor Dances and I connecting the dots - the Doctor trying and failing to dance with Rose by waltzing or slow dancing, but then being able to do it successfully when he remembers to try swing instead at the end of the episode,

And the parallels in the episode between "dancing" as literal dancing vs "dancing" as a euphemism for relationships,

And the Doctor trying and failing to seem cool compared to Jack when he sees Jack flirting with Rose, but being able to calm down about it at the end when they're all friends.

Something about being aroace and not quite getting how to relate to other people properly until you realize you've been dancing in the wrong genre.

[allthoseotherworlds]

Yes! And we see from hell bent that it's at least kind of normal for time Lords to have preferences about gender when regenerating, though I don't think that necessarily results in dysphoria in the same way that a human would experience it because I think time lords fundamentally think about bodies differently than humans do.

But I don't think the Doctor has a preference, I think the Doctor just goes along with gender because it's a thing everyone else is doing, and it's not something that's important enough to them to look into. Like something you always mean to get around to doing but then never actually do.

I feel the same way about time lords with romance and sexuality. I'm a believer in looms, so I think time lords think about these things differently anyway, but it seems clear to me that most of them do have some appreciation for or understanding of those things, whereas I think the Doctor is aroace both by human standards and by those at their own people.

Also neurodivergency. I don't think Gallifreyans have exact correlates for autism and adhd, but whatever they do have, the Doctor is it.

Something I occasionally try to get across is that the Doctor is genderqueer even by the standards of his own people. The often-reblogged quote from Interference (“You’ve never been a woman, have you?” “I’m not sure I’ve ever even been a man.”)—he’s talking to another Gallifreyan there. He’s not just saying “I may never have been exactly what a human would think of as a man” given the anatomical and cultural differences of their planet, but “I may never have been exactly what you, a fellow Gallifreyan, would think of as a man.” As casual as I.M. Foreman is about her new form, she’s still taken off guard by the extent the Doctor has never really felt secure in his ostensible gender identiy. He’s (I go back and forth on what pronoun to use for the Doctor, which I think is appropriate) an eternal outsider in his culture.

[g1ngerbeer]

its that time of year

[vroomvroomwee]

Something that often scared aspec people is being left out in the cold when all our friends eventually find partners and start families and it leaves us feeling so unimportant and like we always come second place.

But this...

It shows how capable of perseverance platonic love is. It only needs to be strong enough. People can love their best friends just as much as their families. And it can be beautiful. To see this as an aspec person gives me so much hope for the future, I hope rtd knows how much this finale means to so many ace and aro people

[cupcakeshakesnake]

Commission for @brisingr-sword!

Aroace Nine let's gooo

[allthoseotherworlds]

Honestly like, I'm sorry we're all in this position of feeling bad or weird or complicated about this, but it is helpful for me to know that other people do feel similarly.

Whenever this happens the worst part for me isn't just feeling frustrated at the show doing this (I am good at ignoring the show don't stuff I don't like. They can't read my mind, I get it)

But it's also the guilt and isolation of feeling alone or wrong in that, so it sucks but I'm glad to have company

my feelings on this episode are umm, complicated. I can understand and appreciate that the stuff between Rogue and the Doctor was well done and well made, I get it and I'm not going to begrudge anyone else for liking it, but I just can't.

Romances between the doctor and absolutely anyone is something I fundamentally do not like, I would go so far as to say I have hated every time it has been made explicit.

As an ace person, the Doctor as an aroace character is something incredibly important to me and fundamental to my understanding of the show. on the rare occasion where an episode insists against that interpretation of the character it breaks something in the show for me. I'm sorry

[eldritch-ace]

Happy love loses day to all my fellow arospec and acespec whovians!

[aq2003]

i guess ten being considered the universe's hottest dude with women falling over themselves to kiss him is kinda crazy to me bc in my mind he is fundamentally a little wretched twig of a guy. like a drowned kitten or perhaps rat to me . i'm realizing that the spirit of donna noble is possessing me as i write this post

[variousqueerthings]

fascinated that in toeing the line of "the doctor both is and is not asexual, and because the show is ostensibly sexier now there should be imagery of especially david tennant and various women (shockingly no men with ten) smooshing lips," it means that the doctor only ever instigates a kiss when it's got some scifi-type reason behind it, even starting with nine removing the time vortex from rose.

so only counting lip-to-lip contact for a second here*:

jack kisses the doctor (the parting of the ways)

nine removes the time vortex from rose (the parting of the ways)

cassandra kisses the doctor (new earth)

madame de pompadour kisses the doctor (the girl in the fireplace)

jackie kisses the doctor (army of ghosts)

the doctor leaves a DNA print on martha (smith and jones)

martha gives the doctor cpr (smith and jones)

john smith kisses joan (human nature)

astrid kisses the doctor (voyage of the damned)

the doctor kisses astrid goodbye as she dies (voyage of the damned -- only instigation on the doctor's part of any kiss)**

donna shocks the doctor out of being poisoned (unicorn and the wasp)

christina de souza kisses the doctor in planet of the dead and is overall very flirtatious at him in a way that almost feels like idk. an anti-romance plot. it's like everything that came before (and tbh... also amy and river song) in terms of "sexy" doctor-and-companion tension is lampshaded and made a bit silly. I don't know if this is just because the actress and dtennant have minus chemistry, but it's very funny that this is the final flirting + kiss and it's so very... "shrug, you're not going to be my companion, okay, goodbye"

*I think the only time the doctor even jokingly talks about kissing is in dalek's of manhatten, when martha and bby andrew garfield/frank have been captured and the doctor arrives. martha expresses her relief, and the doctor says something along the lines of: "well, you can kiss me later. you too frank, if you want." this is to diffuse a very scary/tense situation

**I tend to read the astrid final kiss as a kindness/comfort rather than romantic interest or sexual interest. because she is dying. and she kissed the doctor earlier, and is very scared

but wait! tentoo and rose were really going at it, you say! tentoo is part human/specifically human in a donna sense. tentoo is also super up for settling down and having a monogamous relationship, which isn't exactly the doctor's style in any regeneration. so yeah.. tentoo is another part of the tightrope, just like john smith. change the doctor into someone who is almost-but-not-quite the same, enough plausible deniability and voila, it's almost like the doctor is kissing someone, but crucially, the doctor still Is Not. in tentoo's case, the doctor is in fact watching it happen with a somewhat despondent look, before turning and leaving without waiting for rose to say goodbye. because, youknow. canonically the doctor cannot give rose what she wants (because he's not alloromantic/allosexual because he's an immortal alien) so it's better just to leave

lastly flirting: the doctor does flirt, but not often. the most flirtatious the doctor gets outside of above kissing line is when jack briefly joins nine and rose, and I'd call that the jack-contagion (affectionately, it's a good thing). ten, actually, flirts... less. comparably. (and hilariously is annoyed that jack flirts so much around him) a bit with rose in christmas invasion and new earth, but apart from the "sexy" wink, not very overtly. I mean, maybe I'm very ace, but I think they do banter rather than flirting. the one time the doctor interprets something as flirting that funnily enough isn't is when rose is talking to a cat. the doctor similarly gets flirted at (madame de pompadour, shakespeare code, martha several times, health and safety, silence of the library) but doesn't tend to enjoy it or often even notice it

[octarineblues]

i love that rogue's idea of the fake relationship drama escalation was a fucking marriage proposal. at the same time, he got called a cad and his first instinct was to get on his knees, so like,,

[allthoseotherworlds]

If anyone is wondering, my Official Aroace Interpretation™ of the "he was hot" scene is as follows:

Isaac Newton was good looking/aesthetically attractive. This is true, and I as an aroace can confirm this is true and does not depend on sexual or romantic attraction.

"hot" is a way that people describe certain types of good-looking, which can be assessed and appreciated without sexual or romantic attraction. I can confirm that the actor could be accurately described as "hot" and also that I have no sexual or romantic attraction to him, or to anyone else.

Donna thinks Isaac Newton was hot, probably in a way that includes sexual attraction.

The Doctor thinks Isaac Newton was hot, in a way that is based on aesthetic attraction.

The Doctor is surprised that they are willing to admit to this because it's the kind of thing that normally they wouldn't comment on. Like the "love" example in The Star Beast, it's an example of the Fourteenth Doctor being more open with their emotions and affection.

In this case, it's also the Doctor participating in a kind of bonding-gossip-interaction thing that neither Ten nor Thirteen (the two regenerations Fourteen has the most reason to compare themself to) would have been able to join, because both of them had an alarming tendency to hold themselves at arms length from everyone, albeit with differing methods (weird aloof ego stuff vs social awkwardness and blatant distraction). So even though calling Isaac Newton "hot" isn't actually the Doctor admitting anything meaningful about themself, it's still a kind of emotional openness that's new.

Donna definitely didn't think about any of this though, and Fourteen is more emotionally open, but not enough to actually want to have any conversations that involve explaining things like this (see: that scene at the end where they're like. I would open up to you but only if you already knew everything. Is this approach useful? No. Is it something I would also do? Yes.)

So for anyone else who is willing to fight and regenerate with me on the hill of "the Doctor is aroace", here is an explanation to adopt at will.

[leostimstuff]

An aromantic + asexual and aroace Eleven stimboard for pride month!! AND also aro visibility day bc I didn’t even realize that was today!!!

🌿 🌅 🪻 | 🌿 🌅 🪻 | 🌿 🌅 🪻

[aroaceqoutes]

Yes they're my favorite character, no I don't think about their genitals. (They're all barbies and kens in my mind, just plain ol nothing down there)

[irate-iguana]

Okay I've calmed down enough to maybe put this into words.

Fourteen's ending was so validating to me as an aroace person, specifically because they chose platonic love. Often, QPRs are treated as a last resort, a poor consolation prize for people who can't have romantic partnerships. But Donna has a husband, and while I firmly believe the Doctor is on the ace spectrum, the Newton conversation implies that Fourteen isn't aroace. Despite the fact that he could be in a romantic relationship, the Doctor chooses a platonic partnership. And Donna gets to have both! What's more, her husband and her best friend get along, they aren't jealous or competing for her attention. It's so rare for media to treat platonic relationships as equally valuable and desirable as romantic/sexual ones, and it gave me so much hope for my future.