“Nine would have treated Martha better than Ten did”
I need to talk about this argument that never seems to stop circulating.
Note: Not a venomous/anti post. There’s more than enough of that across fandom spaces as is, and this is supposed to be a place for ✨sweet, blissful escapism✨
When making this argument, people seem to envision a scenario in which Nine never met Rose.
While I can appreciate a good hypothetical, recognizing Rose's significance to the Doctor (Nine and Ten) is essential to understanding why things with Martha played out the way they did in the first place.
In the third series, the Doctor is grieving. This grief is deliberately threaded into nearly every script, whether spoken aloud or not (and these are just a few examples):
He's burning in Rose’s wake the entire time Martha travels with him, which is why it’s so frequently called upon: It’s 100% deliberate in framing his grief. He grieved as Nine too, of course— having been fresh on the heels of the Time War — but then he met Rose, which changed everything.
Back then, he was still a rude, traumatized pain in the ass, but we watch Rose soften more of those jagged edges with every episode as they grow closer; as he lets his guard down and forms a deep connection with her.
He falls in love (against his better judgment) and it's game over.
And yes: provided S1E1 had been titled 'Martha', one can realistically assume things might have unfolded similarly to how they did with Rose. However, it wouldn’t have been that way just because the Doctor was Nine and “Nine was different” — it would be because he wasn’t already in love with someone else. The same can't be said for the start of S3.
Think of it like this: if Rose AND Martha had been in that cellar — if Nine had taken both of them along with him in S1 — we’d eventually be looking at the most melodramatic love triangle ever, what with him living in close quarters with two brilliant, gorgeous, compassionate young women... But Doctor Who is plenty “soap opera” as is with just one woman in the TARDIS.
(I certainly wouldn’t object to reading that fic, though)
Now, regarding the unrequited elephant in the room…
His inability to be romantic with Martha isn’t because he thinks her lesser, nor is it for lack of compatibility. It isn't because Rose is any better than her. It certainly isn’t just because he’s Ten.
It’s really only for one reason, which can't be denied — and now I’m a broken record:
He is still in love with Rose.
(cut from a tenrosedaily gif)
Nine is Ten, and Ten is only such a mess in S3 because he’s just lost the love of his life. Martha merely got caught in the crosshairs of a volatile Time Lord in mourning, and yes — it sucks. Absolutely.
But it also feels dismissive to chalk Ten and Martha’s relationship up to little more than some sort of mindless dance of pining, jealousy, and toxicity.
Ten trusted Martha with his life over and over again — and hers, with him. He constantly praised her brilliance, happily carting her around time and space with no intention of letting her go. In the BBC’s extended universe of novels/comics/cartoons/etc, there’s so much depth to their relationship: love and trust and trauma and sacrifice. They had their own special bond as mates, their own complexities — so it’s a bummer that it's forever overshadowed by the other things.
I’m not denying that there was a lot of stuff that sucked/was for sure toxic about Ten's S3 behavior, but so many of the things I've seen him catching flak for can be directly attributed to being A Clueless Fucking Alien Idiot (not a trait that’s unique to Ten) — as well as his flat-out obliviousness to Martha’s feelings.
So yes, I agree: if Rose never existed, he would have treated Martha differently as Nine. He also would have treated her differently as Ten. Certainly.
But Rose did exist, and when discussing canon, it matters.
“He tells me that he absolutely, 100% loves Rose... He tells me how my daughter; my wonderful, beautiful, clever little girl saved him from himself before… And he says that’s all because of me! I made her into the Rose Tyler that saved him.”
-Jackie Tyler, Flight Into Hull!
Martha got the short end of the stick in S3. She came round at the wrong place and time, but that doesn't mean it was all bad. It doesn't mean the Doctor didn’t adore her. It certainly doesn't mean the time they spent together was wasted or worthless. They were brilliant!
Sure, he could be a twat, but let it be known that he was a twat with Rose as well, both as Nine and Ten. I’m sure Tentoo can be plenty infuriating, too. So while I'll defend Ten (and Tentoo) into the ground forever and ever and ever, I'll concede that he's fucked up.
The Doctor is a certified Pain In The Ass. It’s one of the things I love so much about this character — dynamics.
But never forget that Martha was goddamn tough as nails and overcame every bit of it. She moved on with her life, and the Doctor moved on with his. One can only pray that, when they inevitably drag her back onto the show (which feels inevitable if I'm honest), we see at once that she's been living her best life for all these years.
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I got an idea when looking at this post by @tangledinink. I couldn’t rest until I’d jotted it down. The art possessed me like an evil spirit.
warnings for body horror, vomiting, general fuckery. 💚
what probably happened directly before Leo found himself in this situation:
Leo: Fairies? No way those sparkly little assholes are real.
The fae who happened to be within earshot: and i took that personally.
Anyway, here we gooooo:
Leo opens his mouth to scream, but the sound won’t come out. He gags on the feeling of it catching inside his throat, and then again when the trapped scream begins to grow thorns. It scrapes its way up, and he claws desperately at his throat, trying to tear the feeling out, falling to his knees as he gags around the forced silence.
The threat of suffocation is enough to tear his attention, however briefly, away from the horror of what is happening to his shell. His body is changing itself on the urging of some other thing’s whims, and even though his nerves didn’t seem to get the memo that a dissolving shell (you know, the thing that most of his internal organs and, like, half of his bones need to stay inside his body?) should probably hurt a lot, he can still feel it.
He retches as the first flower falls from his lips. It hits the ground with a disgustingly wet sound, coated with bile and saliva. It shines wetly, rich orange hues standing out brightly against the black soil. The rest follow shortly after, a painful deluge of familiar colors, and he’s helpless to do anything but dig his fingers deep into the rich soil and try not to let the horrific impossibility of the situation drive him crazy. Tears flow freely, staining his cheeks before they fall to the ground below, greedily absorbed by the cursed earth of this place.
“Oh, dear,” a voice says, too close for him not to have noticed their presence. He tries to jerk back, but he can’t pull his fingers from the dirt. It hurts when he tries. A high pitched whine escapes his throat, but he’s too terrified to be embarrassed by that. The voice shushes him, soothes him, and warm fingers wrap tight around the back of his neck. They come to rest just above where the lip of his shell should be. He sobs at the way his back squirms as heat shoots down his spine and something begins to grow. The furred fingers drag like velvet against his scales as they squeeze, the sharp prick of claws threatening to break skin, and then release him just as suddenly.
“So much sorrow and pain. And, oh, so many regrets,” the thing says as she circles him, humming a tune that makes his head pound in rhythm with his racing heart. His hands have sunk beneath the black soil, and it has begun licking greedily at his wrists as well. He can feel tendrils of something wet and cold winding themselves around his fingers, and he wants to scream again, but the bursts of bile-soaked colors decorating the ground keep him from opening his mouth. He can feel a petal still clinging to his bottom lip, and when the thing kneels before him, she reaches out to pluck it off, unbothered by the way he shrinks as far away from her touch as he can manage.
She slips it between her lips, and he catches a flash of a blackened tongue as it darts out to meet that single purple petal. Her teeth are sharp when she smiles at him. They hadn’t been sharp, when she’d first approached him in the Hidden City. Nothing about her had been.
In the dim lights of the underground world he and his brothers had only recently begun to explore, she had looked soft. He’d seen her approaching, and the first thought to flit through his head was, aw, bunny. A fluffy, rounded face. Big eyes, dark and deep as a still pond as they reflected the flickering neon of a sign in the shop window behind him. A pink nose had twitched when she’d smiled at him, sweet and kind, and asked him for his name.
(What had he told her?)
Now, she would be unrecognizable, if not for the same strawberry patterned dress that drapes over her stretched out frame. He’d think to compare her to a hare now, but the hares he’d seen when watching Animal Planet with mikey had never looked like they would take delight in tearing his nails off one by one or plucking out his eyeballs. They had never made his vision swim or his body shake when he’d looked at them. Maybe she’s become more of a wolf.
The soil has reached his elbows. Those cool, slimy tendrils have circled his wrists like shackles. They’re squeezing tighter and tighter, and he feels his fingers throb and tingle as circulation is cut off.
His mind flashes briefly to raph and how he used to tell them not to wear rubber bands on their wrists, convinced that their hands would fall right off if they got squeezed too tight. He wonders if the things that live beneath the dirt will steal what they’ve claimed, just like she’s stollen his shell. Another sound wants to bubble up his throat at the thought, and he lets it, because what use is a swordsman without his hands?
The hysterical giggles escape as big, iridescent bubbles. They glitter pink and blue and leave a bitter taste on his tongue. They only float a few feet into the air before they fall back to the ground, their attempt to flee the horror of this situation not getting too far at all. Soft green grass rises up from the dirt to catch them, but they do not pop. They rest, suspended on those tiny blades, for far longer than any bubble he’s ever blown before. He watches, transfixed, as his laughter is eventually swallowed by green. It begins to spread.
A hand cradles his chin, and his gaze jerks back to the thing that brought him here. She is watching him intently, eyes darting to take in every tiny change in his expression. She looks curious, in the same way that donnie does when he’s thinking about all the ways he can take something apart, and what he can do with those pieces to create something better.
Her hand is soft where it touches him. She is gentle as she wipes a cloth across his mouth. It feels like water, soothing and cool, and he finds himself leaning into this tiny offer of comfort among the stomach churning violation of what is being done to him. His eyes flutter, and he distantly registers that the face she wears seems to swim before his eyes with each rapid blink, shifting back and forth between bunny and wolf and something other. She looks like she wants to devour him whole, no matter which face she wears.
From this close, he can see the way her eyes sparkle and dance when she smiles. He can’t help but think that maybe being swallowed whole wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, after all.
The writhing shackles around his wrists tighten.
She laughs, breathy and soft, and the sound is layered and beautiful like wind chimes. It conjures a hurricane inside his mind. Her cool breath gusts over his face. It smells like churned dirt and funeral flowers and pustulous rot. He doesn’t know if he wants to gag or breathe deeper.
“Little blossom,” she croons, cupping both his cheeks, dragging their faces close. He doesn’t resist. She giggles, and she drags those soft hands and those sharp claws down his neck and over his shoulders, fingertips bumping against the disgustinghorriblewrongparasitetumor gathering of delicate buds that have sprouted up all across his back. She pinches one between the pads of her fingers, and he wants to screamcrybeghertostoppushherawaycutherdownandtearthemalloutbytheroots be good for her.
“Little blossom,” she says again, and those dark eyes catch his gaze and hold it as a heavy feeling settles against his skin, across his shoulders, around his neck, and he can’t look away no matter how desperately he tries. But he doesn’t want to try. Her smile stretches wider, wider, and for one brief flicker of a second he can see blood on her teeth as she asks, “Do you believe now?”
.
(Side note just for fun. The flowers that appear in this but aren’t actually described or named are:
Orange marigold, for grief and despair
Purple hyacinth, for sorrow and asking for forgiveness
Red cyclamen, for goodbye and resignation
Yellow zinnia, for missing a friend and remembrance
Bluebells, for gratitude and everlasting love
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