#tragedy thy name is enamored smurf

[doverstar]

A handful of people have requested I expand on my epiphany that the Tenth Doctor is the Doctor lineup’s equivalent of Enamored Smurf, so here I go if you care to waste some time-

Lots of Doctor/Rose fans like to say Ten was born out of love, specifically for Rose. He is tailor-made for her; we saw that. Even in the novelized version of The Christmas Invasion, Rose suspects that the Doctor’s new face has picked up a few of her mannerisms. I want to say, firstly, that I’m not sure that it’s technically canon that Ten was made for Rose, or that if you asked the writers, they’d say that his tenth regeneration was born out of love for her. I actually can’t find anything in my limited research where that’s canon – it’s fan speculation, but it seems to be true and that’s the short version of why I think Ten is the Enamored Smurf of the Doctors. But of course I’m me so this will take longer than that.

I’ll start with this factoid – Ten has kissed every one of his official companions. That says something. Bupbupbup wait, I know, that was Cassandra on New Earth, it was just a genetic transfer on the moon, he needed a shock to eradicate the poison in 1926, etc. Okay, I know he has good reasons behind each kiss, but it says something that David Tennant’s Doctor is the Doctor that the show felt most comfortable - how do I say this kindly - auctioning off romantically. Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, Tom Baker’s, even Peter Davison’s before him – there was a much different sort of conduct with them, just in my opinion. I don’t know if the audience at the time or the writers at the time would have been quite so free with the Doctor’s romantic potential. With Tennant’s Doctor, it’s just. Everyone. All the time. Astrid, Christina, Madame de Pompadour, Joan Redfern, Queen Elizabeth. Look, Ten is not the first Doctor to be kissing companions or even almost-companions, but he’s the one that seems to do it most often, especially in the 2005 revival (and here we exclude Matt Smith’s Doctor because he came afterward and Moffat was at the helm and Moffat cannot write a male protagonist who doesn’t kiss or get kissed by every young woman breathing near him). What I’m communicating here is that there is something about the Tenth Doctor that is, by nature, very romantic. He is romance-inclined. And most fans take that to be a direct result of the way he was brought into existence. The Doctor’s ninth incarnation was killed by absorbing the Time Vortex, and the only way he could survive that process was to regenerate. How did he absorb it? He pulled it out of Rose Tyler to save her life, after she absorbed it to save his. How did he pull it out of her? He kissed her! Could he have done it in a different way? *noise in my throat for I-don’t-know* Probably. Maybe he could’ve hooked her up to something in the Tardis, or used the sickbay or even tried the Zero Room. But he didn’t; he kissed her, and it’s canon in both RTD’s words and the words of the cast and other writers that Nine kissed Rose because he wanted to kiss Rose, and because he wanted to save Rose, and he was happy to give his life for hers – and that these actions were done out of love. Romantic love explicitly, as well as the self-sacrificial type of real, true, lasting love. That was agape stuff right there. Be still my heart hooooo boy-

So Nine is dying because he sacrificed that incarnation of himself to save Rose, because he loved her. And when he changed, when he regenerated, he changed into this younger-looking, Londony puppy dog man with hair Rose obviously likes and with a clear inclination toward romance. From the first, he’s a dashing hero with ego and brains.

Suddenly the Doctor is not the war-torn, forty-something-looking Northerner that takes a tiny bit to warm up to people and doesn’t seem to think much of himself. Suddenly, the Doctor likes to wink and click his tongue, give crooked smiles and really-tight hugs, and boy does he love physical touch. The tenth is obnoxiously flirtatious, and, appearance-wise, he’s just as grin-heavy and charismatic as the men we’ve seen Rose prefer in past episodes. If we go with the long-running theory that regeneration, while definitely 80% uncontrollable, can be at least a little influenced by cause of death and the emotional inclination of the Gallifreyan who is regenerating, then the most logical explanation is what?

He is ‘born out of love’. The Tenth Doctor is almost literally fizzing with passion. Look at him. Go look at him. Is he not hand-stitched to be roguish and attractive and fun and amiable and watch out, ladies-

(Mr. Tennant you are a fabulous actor and you do the show credit and you are this generation’s Tom Baker and you are more than your eyebrows, sir, please forgive me, we love you-) Even when he is being weird, he is being charming. Even when Martha does not know why he’s throwing away his shoes, even when she has concrete proof that he is another species and not human, she still swoons when he kisses her or smiles at her or looks in her direction. (Mad Martha, charity Martha, you deserve much better!) When River calls him ‘pretty boy’, even Donna’s affirmation comes out a bit quick, and there is no chance of that relationship ever being romantic. Astrid only has to meet his eyes one time and she’s a goner. Do not get me started on Madame de Pompadour-

The Tenth Doctor is a total Casanova. He exists in a state of romantic potential, because when the Doctor changed his face into that face, it was after saving – and finally embracing – this human girl that he is objectively, canonically in love with. He is Enamored Smurf. Now, that’s actually a huge problem. Because an alien man engineered to love one person is a lovely thing -  as long as he can love that person. But the issue is that he’s a Time Lord. He can’t love the Earth girl practically the way he would like to, the way that’s best. He can’t settle down with her, he can’t even marry her. He knows that. He will outlive her. So he can’t ever say I-love-you because that’s commitment, and he can’t commit to Rose because it would be dangerous and unfair, especially to her. It wouldn’t (in his opinion) lead to a happy ending for both of them, but I already beat this horse to the deadest death, he’s buried over there, shhh-

Okay. So what does he do with all that love? While he’s with Rose, it’s mostly fine. He can show her all the time that he’s absolutely gone for her without ever saying it. “Oh, she knows.” “Does it need saying?” I mean. If the constant hand-holding and hugging and disarming smiles (ah, The Stone Rose, how are you today my beloved-) didn’t say it, the REALLY INTENSE BROWN EYES BURNING HOLES IN HER FACE will say it just fine.

Only this incarnation of the Doctor isn’t just romantically-inclined. He’s also got the biggest freaking ego I have ever seen on that man, don’t look at me Six, avoid eye contact Three- He’s full of passion, as aforementioned. Everything is – wait for it – at a ten. Where are you going, come back here-

So if he’s full of passion, that means everything he feels is at its peak. When he’s angry, he’s furious. When he’s sad, he’s miserable. When he’s confused, it’s a thousand whats before we get to a proper line of dialogue. When he’s happy it’s the best smile in the universe. And when he’s in love? Do not get in the line of fire (and by that I mean the big-brown-eye-contact) or you will be struck down in your prime. The issue with being the Doctor and being born out of love, full of passion, but unable to settle down with the object of that love? The issue is that it all goes other places, too. It’s not just for Rose. The Doctor as a character has forever been, in a sense, in love with the universe. In love with the human race in particular (not romantically, yikes, but you get it). If ever there were a species he’d be most inclined to fall for romantically, it’s going to be a human being. We saw it before Rose, we’ll probably see it after Rose, though not at the same level because – well, different relationships are different relationships.

And this Doctor has a huge ego. He loves attention. He loves praise. He even loves being adored. He knows darn well Martha fancied him the whole time and he still kept her close to him, and then bragged about it to Donna later. He finds the fact that he enchanted and snogged Madame de Pompadour delightful, and funny, even though he met her first as a child and hi, he has two very-mortal human beings already traveling with him on that clockwork spaceship who he should probably not leave to be disassembled for five and a half hours. One of which is supposedly the person he is in love with and who loves him back. But I digress; that episode in particular is another horse to beat at another time. Not Arthur. A different horse. He seems to pass out attraction and affection easily, and really take pride in that, which, if I were Rose, would be incredibly unnerving when he’s so affectionate toward you but he is also flirty and loose with basically every other woman he meets as well. Hear me, Rose is not entitled to reciprocation – neither is the Doctor, actually – but it does demonstrate surprising carelessness on his part after Nine’s clear, unwavering preference and devotion toward Rose. It’s obvious they care so much about each other, it’s obviously love, but of course she wanted him to say it out loud. He gives her reason to doubt that she’s in any way special to him. But because she’s Rose, of course she decided to stay with him because he needs someone, because she loves him, regardless of how thoughtless he can sometimes be about how he may be affecting her.

(I don’t like that about Ten, personally. I don’t like the ego, or the rampant flirting, but I really dislike that carelessness. And I understand the difficulties and the complications and the layers to that romantic relationship, to Doctor/Rose, and I get that it makes for good television drama, but also – sometimes you just wanna shake him. Either say you love her, or say very clearly that it will never work out and you are refusing to commit. You can have all the best intentions in the world because you love her, but if you’re not clear with her, it’s just making things harder for her on days when you are winking at and holding hands with someone else. I can make a separate post about how I have a very bittersweet opinion on Ten and would not like to travel with him, but…eh.)

Anyway. This post is longer than I wanted. The point I am trying to make is that he is the Doctor who is, yes, the most inclined toward romance, Enamored Smurf, but also that that is not always a good thing. Being born out of love and being full of passion can be a very dangerous thing. He is not just the most inclined toward romance – he is also the Doctor who is the most inclined toward villainy. Get behind me, Moffat, no Eleven is not-

As the Doctor with the most passion, born out of love, when I say that when he’s angry he’s furious, I am talking Time Lord Victorious furious. He is at times the most imposing version of the Doctor. In fact, there’s an entire alternate multimedia canon dedicated to the idea that the Tenth Doctor specifically could one day be a villain, after making a thousand small decisions that surface-wise don’t seem so bad, but that eventually snowball into one big, bad decision. And suddenly he thinks he’s a god and we have to root against him. And that’s just one drawback. The other drawback is plainly seen after Doomsday and Journey’s End – the Tenth Doctor cannot handle losing Rose. He’s completely ruined without her. He changed every single cell in his body with an eye toward loving her, and when she is gone, it probably feels like an enormous chunk of himself is missing. It probably feels like everything is tilting sideways, just a little bit, all the time. And the fact that he lost her and never explicitly told her how he felt? He has no idea what to do with himself. He goes from bad to worse. First of all, it’s made very clear that he is okay with dying when Rose is gone. We saw that in Turn Left. He was never trying to survive anything he ever did. He was saving other people, but he would have died several times over and had zero desire for self-preservation. The man practically begged the Daleks to kill him in Manhattan, and he would have drowned (in misery and river water) if Donna hadn’t been there to tell him “You can stop now!”

He has Martha and that helps, but she leaves. He has Donna and that helps, but she has to go too. He had Rose again, just for a second, but he can’t keep her this time, and that’s the last straw. He just snaps. Then it’s all bitterness, it’s all anger, it’s all ego. And it’s all at a ten, because what is he when he’s born out of love and the woman he loves is gone? What does he do with all that passion and pain? I’ll tell you what he does. He becomes the worst, most dejected maniac in the universe. He goes from wishing he could die to stubbornly refusing to die. And when it is time to die, he tries to be sure the last human face he sees is Rose’s face.

Actually the more I’m talking about it, the more I’m thinking Ten is the saddest Doctor. At least his other incarnations tried to die as heroes. At least they didn’t get to the point where they could look at Wilfred Mott, a global treasure, and say “not remotely important”. He’s Enamored Smurf, but he can’t do what he was sort of made to do. He can’t be with Rose. He can love her by giving her the chance for a happy ending, and he can love her by showing her the universe, and he can love her by giving his life for her, but he can’t keep her. He has to be without her. He can’t settle down (why do you think John Smith was so quick to fall in love and want a future with Nurse Redfern while being unable to stop dreaming of Rose, unable to stop dreaming she kept walking away?). If there was any version of the Doctor that wanted to be human in order to be with someone he loved, it would be Ten. Because he’s born out of love. And he just can’t escape that. Like this really beautiful, wonderful plant that gets moved out of the sun and is unable to reach water, so all its fruit goes sour. He’s miserable. Oh look I made myself sad-