#i mean this feels like a t//en meta but shhhhhhh

[yoakkemae]

davros: state your intent.  martha: i’ve got the osterhagen key. leave this planet and its people alone, or i’ll use it.  the doctor: osterhagen what? what’s an osterhagen key?  martha: there’s a chain of twenty-five nuclear warheads placed in strategic points beneath the earth’s crust. if i use the key, they detonate and the earth gets ripped apart.  the doctor: what?! who invented that?! [aside] well, someone named osterhagen, i suppose. [angry] martha, are you insane?!   martha: the osterhagen key is to be used if the suffering of the human race is so great, so without hope that this becomes the final option. the doctor: it’s never an option.  martha: don’t argue with me, doctor! ‘cause it’s more than that. now, i reckon the daleks need these twenty-seven planets for something, but what if it becomes twenty-six? what happens then, daleks?! would you risk it? 

martha's character arc throughout her time in the series has her mirroring the doctor , sometimes becoming him in ways , but this is the moment where she mirrors him at what he perceives to be his worst -- as the one who pressed the red button , as the one who ended the time lords. it's why he gets so angry , it's why he rages that it's never an option , because he knows how much pain that is to carry , how much pain that is to hold. of course , martha would not survive using the key , not in the same way that he did , but the weight of that many lives ... it's not something he wants his friends to know how that feels.

in a way , i also almost wonder if it's jealousy because she'll get to die along with the human race , and he didn't die along with the time lords.