#this is so funny im babbling about s5 of doctor who during sarah jane. this isnt about him. its about HER

[quietwingsinthesky]

“Given the choice between saving the world and saving the children, the Doctor goes the wrong way.”

which is what i feel like the thesis statement of eleven should be considering the blatant parallels between him and the star whale in 5x02. whether or not it holds up throughout the rest of that season is. :/ but what they established there, with Eleven as someone who goes first to a crying child to help them and who is the star whale who came to help them because it heard children in pain and was hurt for so long that the doctor considered it the only merciful option to literally stop it from feeling, when it still wanted to help the children of the city that was hurting it. genuinely, that episode might have been my favorite of s5 because that was just such a fantastic and quick summation of what I thought this version of the doctor was going to be: someone born out of the pain of losing it all as opposed to ten being born in the light of new love, someone who would consider it a mercy if he could turn off feeling all of the pain and just carry on but who also resents the idea of that being taken away from him, the pain, the hard choices. and most of all: someone who keeps coming back because there are children crying, and someone has to save them. (with, of course, the irony of it being his companion — a child he promised to help and then abandoned for years with a malicious presence in her home, one who, when it takes her form, shows her as a child holding the hand of a false image of him.)

AND LIKE. again. again. im really not sure how much of that actually ends up being what eleven’s about by the end of s5. but goddamn. is that a strong opener to start on and the idea of it will haunt me forever even if it never gets followed through on.