#who the fuck is martha then?

[twelvemartha]

the doctor's dynamic with his companions is like the beating hearts of the show, yet for some reason the doctor is so tightlipped about his feelings for martha in particular. it's maddening. sure, the narrative will give us tiny moments of the doctor showing his appreciation of her and acknowledging her presence. martha jones i like you. martha jones you're a star. but what does he think about her? how does he view her? what is her significance to him?

we learn a lot about what martha thinks the doctor thinks about her. he's not seeing me he's just remembering. sometimes i think he likes me but sometimes i just think he needs someone. he doesn't even look at me but i don't care. it's never outright confirmed, but so many signs point to this being the case. the doctor is constantly putting up walls between the two of them, which martha tries so hard to break through. and there are times where it seems like she manages to, where the two of them have genuine moments of connection! only for the next episode to come along and destroy that progress, as if it never happened, and the doctor goes back to being distant and overlooking her.

this wouldn't be as big a deal as it is if there was some sort of comeuppance or catharsis at the end of s3. but in the final speech martha gives to the doctor before she goes, the focus is put on her unrequited love. again. the issue, rtd wants us to believe, is that the doctor doesn't reciprocate martha's romantic feelings for him. but that's not it. the real issue is that the doctor doesn't even treat martha as a proper person, a companion in her own right, a friend who he cherishes and wants to travel with because she's martha jones. instead, he acts as if she's just someone to keep around because he gets lonely on his own.

and so instead of the doctor rightly being called out for his callous treatment of martha, we just have the show brush this under the rug and act like the matter is resolved come s4. because at the end of the day, neither martha nor her relationship to the doctor matter. they never did to the show or its writers. they were just a vehicle to tell the true story, which has nothing to do with martha at all. (this is absolutely rooted in misogynoir btw.)

[columboposting]

rewatched Last of the Time Lords

[alldni]

next episode cold open is the doctor at martha and mickey’s doorstep with flowers and an “im sorry” card

[nat-20s]

Congratulations the the Tardis Team of Donna Noble and Ninth Doctor for being the fucking winners and being democratically elected to be allowed to say fuck!

Also, three cheers for our Runner-Up Tardis Team, Martha Jones and Twelfth Doctor! We shall bestow upon each of them one use of "fuck" per season as the second place prize!

[burr-ell]

What I love about Spy x Family's recent chapters concerning Martha and Henry—two secondary characters with little direct connection to the plot as we've known it—is that Endo's taking the opportunity to once again hammer home what the story's actual stakes are. The idea of potential conflict between Ostania and Westalis isn't just window dressing for a wacky wholesome badass family gimmick—the previous wars are real events that various characters lived through, and all of them are in some way affected by it and have good reasons to want to avoid another one. This is primarily an action-adventure/slice-of-life manga with a lot of sendups to spy movies and pop culture of the 60s, but I think those things hold much more weight with the thematic underpinning of the horrors of war and the ruin it leaves behind.

[lurukifennecfox]

Danny slamming open the door(in Phantom form): Jay i think i've just been adopted by your grandparents!

Red Hood having no memories of the GZ and thus no point of reference as to wtf is happening and who is this glowing teenager: ...???

[themetaisawesome]

Clark: "Mom, the US government kidnapped me."

Martha:

[natequarter]

rtd writes normal people escaping the mundanity of their lives whereas moffat writes weird people escaping the normality of other people's lives really does sum it all up

[blitz-without-the-o]

Love- er, evil wins?

[superkitty21]

I'm trying to be normal about how RTD era Doctor Who treats is black central characters but I can't stop frothing at the mouth every time I think about the Family of Blood two parter

I'm just thinking about how this episode could have been set in any place and time but chose one where Martha would face racial violence. And you have to ask what seeing Martha experiencing racism, being functionally forced into servitude, and belittled by everyone around her adds to the episode.

What does it say about the way this show frames desirability that we see the Doctor as John Smith fall for a white woman over the course of this episode. And that white woman spend most of her runtime insuring Martha "knows her place" in regards to her relationship with the Doctor.

What does it say that the emotional fallout of this episode centralizes said racist white lady's "loss" of a life with John Smith. What does it say that the Doctor is never confronted with the fact that his ultimately arbitrary decision to run away from The Family of Blood instead of face them is the reason Martha was subject to all this violence. Sure, he thanks her for taking care of him but the show never truly problematizes Martha's experiences and the Doctor's culpability in them. John Smith is racist to Martha in this episode and the Doctor never has to apologize for that???

And you can argue that all of these beats tie into Martha's arc. That seeing her treated so shittly by the Doctor is set up for what happens in the finale. But my question is why did this show decide to frame Martha in this way. Why is the story of Doctor Who's first black companion a story about being seen as less than.

[aq2003]

like the important thing you must keep in mind about ten when you see him do literally anything is that he's soooooooooo so so so bad at actually isolating himself from other people. so TERMINALLY bad at it. he thinks to himself "i don't need human connection because everything i do causes pain and destruction to those around me :(" but then he experiences a crumb of human connection and his heart starts to spill out of his chest

[basalting]

my personal interpretation of pennywaynes is that alfred had to fuck thomas before he was allowed to fuck martha.

[crookedfivefingers]

3.13 | ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʟᴏʀᴅꜱ

link to the post I accidentally wound up prattling endlessly about in the tags 💀

[psalmsofpsychosis]

This is what a point blank shot to the head at 6.30AM feels like by the way

[nat-20s]

The Doctor and Martha talk and he tells her that Donna is okay and has her memories back and Martha is like "WHY HAVE I BEEN WASTING MY TIME TALKING TO YOU THEN??" and immediately starts up a video chat with her.

[variousqueerthings]

the appeal for nine and rose for me, is that nine gets to reconnect with the wonders of the universe by seeing it through this young woman's eyes and rose gets to have a fantasy of being taken out of everyday life and see the wonders of the universe, as a simple fairytale/(re)introduction to the world for the audience

the appeal for ten and rose for me, is that they double-down on this premise because it's inevitably going to end and is constantly ticking down to that end throughout this story, and the only way for them to move through life now is to pretend that nothing ever ends which makes them increasingly detached from reality, and is in and of itself a tragedy

the appeal for ten and martha for me, is that ten is spiralling and martha is a doctor to her core, and both of them want to fix everything for everyone else except themselves and so they're mirrors of a similar self-destructive sacrificial drive that makes them orient around each other in an unhealthy coping-mechanism kind of way that martha eventually has to detach herself from, even though there were the wonders...

the appeal for ten and donna for me, is that donna is actually very level-headed, and in many ways very capable, even though she doesn't believe in herself she can make decisions that are healthier than either rose or martha could, and the doctor initially through wanting her to believe in herself forces themself outside of their bubble of despair, which somewhat breaks the cycle of the previous companions (although, not properly until a very long time later)