#osterhagen key

[sonohtigris]

love when I'm cooking food and it gets all brown and smell good

love the Osterhagen Key reaction

[variousqueerthings]

I feel like I need to make a little rundown of everything UNIT and Kate Stewart has done since being re-introduced in s7, but I also want to finish watching classic!who so I can make that comparison more effectively. certainly in pertwee-era of doctor who there was some critique and analysis of UNIT's methods as a military group and that the doctor kind of had to work with them to begin with because he didn't have a working tardis (+ already knew the brigadier and UNIT from troughton-era)

liz shaw and jo grant both start with UNIT and both leave UNIT, partially after narratives where they're at odds with what the institution represents and how easy it is for it to abuse power and/or simply make bad choices to begin with (liz taking the doctor's side several times and eventually quitting, although with that slightly lazy--pseudo-feminist "she didn't want to fetch the teas" explanation given post-leaving when there was definitely a lot more going on for her than that, but I think that was the way the actress was feeling so I can see the meta reasonings in it, and jo figuring out that she believes in different ways of protecting the earth joining a radical group and yeah ok straight up getting engaged to that welsh guy after two days, but she was considering leaving before then anyway), and sarah-jane just enters spaces and acts like she belongs there and nobody knows how to tell her to leave, but she's frequently not on UNIT's side so much as the side of Truth (I say, we now enter fourth doctor era so we'll see)

but yeah, the brigadier was there from the beginning, and there's yates and whatshisface, so there's the humanising faces depicting UNIT as essentially for good from the get-go, despite episodes where they're definitely antagonists. but then reintroduced in nu!who s4 as... not quite comfortable to the doctor/partly as that season's narrative of how the doctor affects their companions for worse and inspires them to become soldiers. so they're not the bad guys in the same way torchwood of s2 were, but they aren't comfortable allies either

so now I'm on s9 and... dunno. they're not quite what they were at the beginning, and they're not what they were in s4. more than anything they feel like a get-out-of-jail free card for whatever writer needs to do something that would be easier to solve with a big handy institution with guns, but don't want to analyse the idea of a big handy institution with guns, so we're told that UNIT is "good" but I keep waiting for someone -- osgood and/or bingham -- to become that next liz shaw, and for kate stewart to be confirmed an antagonist based on said rundown I haven't made of her actions, which at best are often ineffectual and at worst some near-villain shit

rtd in the new specials continues writing UNIT the way it has been since s7 -- the same issues and questions about it are at the forefront, with a couple of new ones thrown in (an institution that's very diverse does not make it any less a paramilitary institution and in fact makes one highly suspicious of its propaganda campaign), but I hope he remembers some of the ways they caused problems during three's era, or the way his own original run at least complicated the doctor's feelings about them and I hope he ends up reintroducing those complications with fifteen but x 1000

and. kate stewart needs to become an antagonist. in my opinion. she'd make a very good antagonist, considering how much history there is between her and the doctor. that's another post though, but I want to make a list of every time KS has tried to deal with a situation with extra-judicial violence, because it is practically every episode she's in (if not every episode she's in)

I can buy the doctor feeling some kinda way, because UNIT was the brigadier, was liz, was jo, was yates and whatshisface (sorry I have forgotten his name), was a time where they were stuck and in need of help and UNIT did help them, and then it was also martha and now mel... the doctor built real personal connections with UNIT, but as a structure it is hiiiighly dubious At Best and fully just no-good the majority of the time

[sadcoms]

AU where Rose stayed with the Time Lord Doctor after Journey’s End and they start to argue more like they did in S1 because the Doctor is doing his “I never would” thing and Rose is now saying “but sometimes you HAVE to” which causes him to start down another Davros-inspired spiral about how he’s “turned her into a weapon” and she’s like...actually travelling across dimensions trying to fight eternal darkness brought about by a ton of genocidal aliens will do that to you regardless!

Because Rose was never for pacifism-above-all-else. The episode before Dalek Harriet Jones straight up says she’s a very violent young woman because Rose (not unreasonably) wants the Slitheen to be blown up after they murdered countless people. Same with the Nestene Consciousness - but the Doctor says he has to give it a chance, and that is what she mirrors back at him in Dalek. This is usually why the pair works, because if one doesn’t have mercy on or compassion for someone the other one usually will (eg Cassandra). That’s why Ten is even willing to give Davros a chance, though it’s exacerbated by a lot of guilt around the Time War, especially when it kicked off in-part because of what he did, and failed to do, in Genesis of the Daleks.

And that is what Davros never got - that Rose had already seen the Doctor’s soul and loved him anyway; that part of their souls are the same because they helped each other grow. And it’s the same for all of the companions this era, whether it’s Jack saying he never doubted the Doctor would kill him, or Donna seeing him murder the Racnoss and still regretting not travelling with him, or Martha (somehow) forgiving the Doctor for the year that never was and for everything he burdened her with.

Because I think what Davros and the Doctor came to see as him turning people into weapons was actually just people willingly taking on the burden he carried. Again, a lot of people sort of write Tentoo and Rose off as the dalek genocide couple, but what exactly was the alternative? Let them destroy the universe? The Doctor is a coward, any day, and that makes complete sense as a reaction to already bearing two genocides on his shoulders, but it’s also that cowardice that makes other people step up and be brave, which usually means sacrificing themselves, and the Doctor carries that too. That is why Martha gets the direct parallel to the Doctor with the Osterhagen key - both are willing to burn their planets to save the rest of the universe, and Martha already spent S3 being more like the Doctor than he was because he was so broken by grief. By Season 4, the Doctor is already so self-destructive and so self-loathing that only he, the "true" Time Lord, can be the arbiter of genocides and who can’t be. Even when it comes to Martha, or to another exact replica of himself.

(Never mind that he makes essentially the same decision the Metacrisis Doctor and Martha did again in End of Time when he sends Gallifrey back into hell, but hey, he got there in the end.)

And it’s one of the reasons why the Doctor’s so reliant on the Master. I’m not sure he would have gone to get his ‘reward’ had some of that weight of destroying Gallifrey again not been shared with another Time Lord. Ten does, ultimately, put humans on a pedestal and does his best to protect them even when they are willing to share his burden (note that Tentoo destroying the Daleks means Donna doesn't have to take on any of the burdens Rose or Martha did, so she stays the least militarised companion). He simultaneously wants that other Time Lord judgement while needing humans as another perspective.

All of this to say that, I think most people understand that Ten being with someone but especially with Rose would have stopped him going Time Lord Victorious, but they don't necessarily understand why. TLV comes from his desire to save everyone, because all the loss he's seen and has caused is too much. Not only does having Rose help soothe that, but she also specifically could have helped ground the Doctor back to where he was morally in the first two series, which is quite different from where he is by S4.

(Also The Next Doctor would have been an absolutely wild story for Rose and the Doctor to have gone on next. They arrive thinking they might have a fun Christmas and then they have to confront the fact that the Battle of Canary Wharf is still following them and how when they lost each other they lost everything. And how the villain in that is defeated by the Doctor showing her herself, which is what Davros tried to do the Doctor.)

[dandelionjack]

a lot of people talk about love don’t roam being about rose which, sure, obviously, the first time i heard it in the runaway bride and recognised the lyrics i cried, but what people don’t mention nearly often enough is that my angel put the devil in me is more than just a gag tune for tallulah’s showgirls to perform at the cabaret. it’s a song from the perspective of martha.

that’s essentially the plot of smith&jones. the little streetcar is the tardis

referring to the fact that ten kept promising martha ‘one last trip’ before he dropped her off. then another, and another. hey, it don’t have to be eternally, because he’s not the kind of guy to stick around…

davros’ admonishment in journey’s end: the doctor may be a pacifist who never carries a weapon, but he turns everybody around him into soldiers. martha’s no exception; she holds the osterhagen key. ten may be her guardian angel, but her traumatic experiences while travelling with him harden her spirit, and by s4 she’s working for UNIT. she was an ordinary medical student and he put the ‘devil’ of adventure in her, just like any other companion

now this one’s pretty self-evident. cold grey eyes and a simple smile. guile and charm and mystery. whisked her away like a witch on a broomstick. one and one and one: three hearts between the two of them. or maybe ‘three’ is martha, the doctor and the tardis. or — worse — martha, the doctor and rose.

the fact that the song is playing during this scene in the end of time also casts its meaning in a different light: jack has been radically transformed through meeting the doctor just like martha was. from a conman and a coward to an unlikely hero. jack shoulders the burden too. so many lives upended because of this bad bad angel. don’t make crowley jokes

[leikeliscomet]

Just remembered a Martha essay I read that pointed how Martha using the Osterhagen Key has direct parallels to Nine using the Delta Wave and how they're both torn between a choice of letting Earth die as itself or live (then likely get exterminated) according to Dalek rule and what it means to carry that burden but its never brought up in show and Ten just tells her to chuck it away ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[doolallymagpie]

timeline the Ordo Chronos is aware of in WhoHammer: Malcador, Dorn, and Loken decide to Osterhagen Key the Emperor’s car because they think this “Dark King” shit is wack

[thevalleyisjolly]

Having all kinds of thoughts about Martha leaving the Doctor only to end up the Doctor. Holding the Osterhagen key, facing the Daleks who've taken over the Earth and are preparing to destroy all of creation, having the power to stop the Daleks but only through destroying her own planet and her whole species, making that choice to do so. How do you go forwards, knowing that when it came to you, when you were in that position where all of reality was at stake, you had the power to prevent it at the cost of your whole planet and you made the decision to do it. Because even if you were stopped before you could go through with it, even if it never happened...it happened for you. You stood on the precipice of oblivion and made your choice. And knowing that about yourself, knowing what you're capable of, what you did, now you go on living.

[casasupernovas]

remember when martha gagged davros so bad with the osterhagen key that davros had to teleport her to the dalek fleet because she was a problem?

[unitleada]

❝ No. nothing like that. ❞ Never again. UNIT will not be run by the military nor would she allow their influence to taint their technologies. Science leads. Because it must. Because it was time for change. A better way of doing things. ❝ We will never have anything like that-that key at UNIT again, not under my watch. You have my full assurance. ❞

She knew that words alone would make little difference, to someone so obviously traumatised. The Osterhagen key. Nasty business..... There was also the matter that Martha hardly knew her. How could Kate expect her to take at her at that word? Would she, in her place? ❝ You should pay us a visit sometime. See the difference for yourself before you've made up your mind. ❞ Don't write us off just yet.

@yoakkemae / accepting.

[at-sabohteurs]

things i’m thinking about right now :

tony stark never wanted to join the avengers, but they’re the closest he’s come to having a family since his mom died. happy is what he imagines having a brother would have been like.

regina mills was fifteen when she met snow white and just turned sixteen when she was forced to marry snow’s father. there’s a barely six year age difference between them while leopold was in his late - forties / early - fifties.

martha jones still has the osterhagen key and the perception filter. the key is hidden away where only she knows the location. the filter is all but useless now, there’s a very slight affect still in play. but she wears it every day even years later, out of habit.

au for tara carpenter based on the scream vi theories that she orchestrated the whole thing or was at least in on it from the beginning.

in a world where jackie taylor lived, she hasn’t spoken to any of the surviving yellowjackets in fifteen years come present day. she wrote a book about the wilderness ( omitting any mentions of cannibalism, obviously ) and has dabbled in acting, but she’s no oscar nominee. she has some nerve damage from frostbite.

tatum riley was in long term recovery from her injuries that night at stu macher’s house. she had to re-learn how to walk and she has trouble breathing due to a previously punctured lung. she died twice before eventually making a full recovery.

[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.

[shittywriterbrain]

i know the "osterhagen" key is supposed to sound all ominous but honestly i always used to think it had something to do with the easter bunny

[variousqueerthings]

thing about rose, for me, is that she wasn't there first -- this in a "she was first in nu!who in the sense that this was the first person to travel with nine, and the first person since the timewar, and the last person that nine was with, to the point that ten was born out of that experience/modelled on her."

and in that framing, I am a big fan of her haunting of the narrative, because it start outs with her placing herself inside the doctor's ribcage and rebooting their ability to want to feel things, but unfortunately rose is still a human, like every human the doctor travelled with before, it's just that the doctor forgot how to steel themself against that inevitability because of the circumstances around meeting rose

this is The thing that I find tragic about martha, because I think she could have been that person, if she'd been the first person post-timewar to travel with the doctor, but because she's coming in during bleeding-heart times, she's got to deal with triage instead. and yes, there are wonders, and yes, there are good times, but for a lot of it, it's shrapnel, and I think if it hadn't been, she would have had a very different attitude towards *waves hands* space and time travel and aliens and the universe (one where she wouldn't be the person trusted with something like the osterhagen key)

and donna had a sense of that Space the doctor was in post-rose (she canonically stopped the doctor from dying in runaway bride) and stepped away from it, and didn't get back to the doctor until some of that hole-in-chest had been bandaged up, which martha did a great job of, but didn't get to really benefit from, and I think that's the sad thing about martha jones, is that she absolutely got a taste of the beauty and the splendor, but never without all the violence and heave weight that was put onto her

which, again, she seems to have been very aware of, considering she joined UNIT and Torchwood. her eyes were barely ever rose tinted (no pun here) during her whole journey in the story. martha really is in my opinion the most tragic companion (that I've met so far, I know Adric straight up dies, but maybe he had some fun times before that?), because yes, donna loses her memories and rose is in a parallel universe, but that's more tragic for the doctor -- they've both built lives

in donna's case there's probably a lot of imperfection in that life, but clearly a lot of joy as well, with her and her husband and her kid and her mum, and I'm sure she'd have preferred to be the donna who saw the universe and was splendid, but martha never gets to forget, and has to continue her life one step out of sync of everything she could have been

which, maybe her life is pretty flipping fantastic, but we really don't know, which is the biggest thing I side-eye about the first nu!who era. that whole weird ending with the sontaran and mickey is like... anti-character work, it answers nothing and it makes very little sense

all I know about her at the end is that she more than anyone saw the doctor's life and became a soldier (still a doctor as well, but...) because that was the work she saw needed doing, and she's the kind of person who does what needs doing. but is she... okay? youknow?

but going back to the original point, is that framing martha through the lens of rose is all well and good in the sense that rose is the reason the doctor is at that emotional point when he meets martha -- although donna absolutely had a very big hand in that as well -- but once we've established that, martha's arc is martha's arc, and it's dull to me to frame it as the "rebound" arc or even particularly about alloromanticism (including -- and this is why i get why people do it in fandom -- some shit said by rtd, which is just less interesting than what I get out of it, so shhhh)

she's got so much going on, and her relationship with the doctor changes the trajectory of her life, and it's in many ways a more interesting and far less straightforward trajectory of bad-to-better that many companions get -- it's a wonderfully complicated narrative that (and again, I get that some of this comes from within deliberate framings of the text, even though I think it's more than open enough to do more with, death of the author and all that -- but certainly not all of this is text either, some of it is ignoring what is actually there) is done a disservice by not going through the real messed up fascinating extraordinary shit that's going on during her era + arc in s4

but also... is she ok? I want to know. it's one of my top three burning questions, since we're getting a bit of best-ofs of the noughties DW era, some of your crimes can be righted by a simple bit of martha mr davies

[goldenkid]

on a happier note...lovee the journey's end moment with rose saying 'who's she?' all impressed as martha is talking about the osterhagen key and then 'oh, she's good' AND THEN martha's 'oh my god, he found you' and the doctor and rose sharing a look because rose was always scared/sad that he would move on and never mention her again and martha has become the doctor (...for better or for worse in this particular moment) and so rose is like 'oh ??? hiii???' aughhhh love love love it. such a lovely little moment. doesn't erase all the previous writing and framing of everything comparing martha and rose BUT. i like it. so

[sundayinthcpark]

WHAT does an osterhagen key do alsoHELP THE DALEKS R SPEAKING GERMAN 😭😭😭

[atnytingale]

martha wears her perception filter tardis key around her neck at all times, she never takes it off, for anything. having worn it for a year straight during the year that never was, whenever she doesn’t wear it, she’s prone to anxiety riddled panic attacks. the perception filter itself is low-active and running on fumes, but it does still work, to a degree.

her medical specialty is emergency medicine and trauma surgery with specialty training in biochemical genetics and molecular biology.

martha is ambidextrous. she defaults to using her right hand predominantly because she got sick of people asking if she were left-handed, but she is adept at using both.

she will always say hello to the tardis. it doesn’t matter when she sees the doctor or how long it’s been since they last saw each other, be it days or be it years. she will without a doubt always say hello to the tardis. most of the time she’s subtle about it, and quiet. just a brief pat to the wood or the console and a murmured hello or hi. it’s a habit she picked up during those three months with ‘john smith’ when she would visit the tardis regularly. she likes to think she can feel the tardis saying hello back.

martha has the united states’ osterhagen key in her possession despite the doctor telling her to get rid of it. she never did. she still has it, no one knows she still has it, but it’s securely hidden and martha is the only person who knows where.

she collects trinkets from people. they’re usually nothing particularly significant or all that impressive, small things that otherwise wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but are significant to her. she keeps them in her place or on her person, depending what it is. the habit started when she was a kid but it became especially prominent during the year that never was and carried on afterwards. it’s a way for her to keep something physical that she can touch to remind her of people important to her or who had an impact on her life. she doesn’t trust her memory, even though she’s eidetic.

martha is a vegetarian.