#you know i think the beast below might be the best amy & eleven episode there is

[khruschevshoe]

You know what really gets me about Eleven’s run? Is that it starts off with an amazing thesis statement in the Beast Below which I think sums up the Doctor as a character more than any other line ever has. "What if you were really old, and really kind, and the last of your kind?...All of that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind."

Yes, sometimes the Doctor needs to be reminded of that fact, as when Amy has Liz 10 hit the abdication button, but the Doctor is kind. He is the man that cheered that "just this once, everyone lives" and was a "coward not killer anyday" and flung away a gun and even after the Time Lord Victorious arc, died to save a single man from dying from radiation. The Doctor and his companions bring out the worst in each other, yes, but they also bring out the best.

And then comes along The Girl Who Waited and the God Complex, which are just an extension of Let's Kill Hitler and eventually Angels Take Manhattan, which are all about how the Doctor takes people as companions because he needs someone to worship him, that he can't bear to see them age and would rather see them young and beautiful, that he is vain, that he is cruel, that he is a god, and I get that interpretation but at the end of the day, the Doctor has never been about vanity or worship or needing someone to keep him in check.

Because yes, companions have reminded him the importance of being kind as part of what is "necessary." The importance of having hope. But it's just that: a reminder. The Doctor is unlike the Master and unlike the rest of the Time Lords because he is compassionate. Because he hates to see children cry. Because he is a coward who is nonetheless brave enough to keep caring, over and over again, no matter how many people die in front of him, no matter how many times he loses those he loves, because the Doctor is a love story as much as it is a ghost story at the end of the day.

And it kills me that the main themes/character arcs of Eleven’s era boil down the Doctor to someone who is not that. Someone who, as the Power of Three ending/Angels Take Manhattan imply, had to have the Ponds to keep him in check. That he could not let them go, could not respect them and their choices like Ten did with Martha. That an entire religion formed itself, kidnapping a child and making her into an assassin, just to stop him from ruining the universe, because he is a god more than a man. That he is a god just like the minotaur, feeding off of people's faith in him, taking children and companions so that he can be nourished, so that he can feel important.

Because even at the Doctor's worst in the Time Lord Victorious Arc, it has never been about worship. It was about grief and loss and love and compassion, because the Doctor has two hearts because he has too much love to fill just one, because that is the kind of person that the Doctor is.

All of that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made him kind.