Did anyone like Martha?
- Thread starter TheLobes
- Start date
I don't see how.
My mom (Doesn't even know how to use a computer) commented during Rose's tenure that she was her favorite Companion (Haven't asked her since then about anyone after Rose) and she's been watching Dr. Who since the 1980s on PBS, so, she's seen most, if not all, of Pertwee through Matt Smith's 1st season (Haven't loaned her this season yet)
Still doesn't make much sense to me, but hey, you like what you like.
Well, I can offer this much insight:
I fell in love with nuWho in Series One, and I fell in love with it because of Rose and the Doctor. I didn't care about the fact that the character of the Doctor had been paired up with other leads on the original series; the show now was about the relationship between Rose and the Doctor, just like any other modern TV show, and it was that relationship that caught my eye. There was really nothing else like it on TV -- a romance that dressed itself up as an adventure show. Most sci-fi shows, if they do romance, they do it as a very boring sort of cliche where the characters are supposedly in love but it feels fake, and it's really a distraction from what the show's really about. Whereas, when nuWho started, Doctor/Rose was what the show was really about; everything else was just there to show how they related to one-another.
Obviously, nuWho has since evolved to more closely resemble DW TOS, insofar as it's not about the relationship between the Doctor and any one character anymore, but, rather, it's about the Doctor as he goes through his very long life establishing, building, and then losing relationships (be it romances or friendships) over and over and over again while he has adventures. Which is perfectly fair and just fine and dandy. But it lacks the sense of adventurous romance that it had during the Rose/Doctor era, and I do miss that.
What a frightening thought...there were moments in the second series where I considered stopping watching because the giggling schoolgirls routine she and Ten had was so grating. Shame as she'd been really good with Eccleston.
Sadly it wouldn't surprise me to see her and 10.5 return in 2013...with luck it'll only be briefly though.
What a frightening thought...there were moments in the second series where I considered stopping watching because the giggling schoolgirls routine she and Ten had was so grating. Shame as she'd been really good with Eccleston.
Sadly it wouldn't surprise me to see her and 10.5 return in 2013...with luck it'll only be briefly though.
That would be awesome. A nice little way to get Tennant back without him being the actual Doctor.
interesting..10.5
so if 10.5 was human created in the Tardis, could not his DNA also be like that of river songs? could he not regenerate if exposed to the vortex??
so if 10.5 was human created in the Tardis, could not his DNA also be like that of river songs? could he not regenerate if exposed to the vortex??
Ah well here I am, all caught up with NuWho FINALLY as of today and of course I must post.
I do not hate Martha, I was bored by the character and winced at the ridiculous writing. The jealousy of Rose right out of the starting gate did not work and should have been dropped rather than popping up again and again. It's interesting how the Martha season was SO GOOD with amazing, incredible sci fi eps and yet Martha was so blah.
Though I loved Rose at first I got a bit tired of her. I loved her mother forever though. I was weirded out by Rose's return and the way she talked as though she had a bunch of marbles in her cheeks. What the hell was up with that?
Contrary to all my fangirl tendencies I'm a huge Amy Pond fan.
I do not hate Martha, I was bored by the character and winced at the ridiculous writing. The jealousy of Rose right out of the starting gate did not work and should have been dropped rather than popping up again and again. It's interesting how the Martha season was SO GOOD with amazing, incredible sci fi eps and yet Martha was so blah.
Though I loved Rose at first I got a bit tired of her. I loved her mother forever though. I was weirded out by Rose's return and the way she talked as though she had a bunch of marbles in her cheeks. What the hell was up with that?
Contrary to all my fangirl tendencies I'm a huge Amy Pond fan.
I'm uncertain if this is true or not, but word on The Intertubes is that when Billie came back to do Rose again in Series Four, it had been so long for her since she had played Rose that she was not certain if she could get the accent right -- Billie's natural accent is more "upper-class," and she went and re-watched a bunch of her episodes to try to get the accent right again. So if you found her accent in Series Four different, that might be why.
That's part of the problem I have with nuWho: the over emphasis on assistants (and to a lesser extent, their families). It's a change I don't like, as IMO they were merely supposed to serve as an expositionary tool so that the Doctor didn't have to talk to himself all the time. I think with the nostalgia of the original series and those assistants, there is too much focus on who was the best/worst, etc. when in my view as long as the assistant isn't annoying or the unproclaimed spotlight of the stories, then I can enjoy (almost) any of them.
I liked Rose during the Eccleston season, but apparently he wasn't "cute" enough for her to fall in love with. It wasn't until the Roger Moore of Doctors--Tennant--came along that the deep friendship became an ill-conceived and soap opera-style annoyance. I'd much prefer The Doctor be grief stricken over losing her in that he feels responsible over the human race that fascinates him so, rather than the giggly and Middle-School crush garbage the romance was. Rose's successor should've been someone totally unlike her, which would've made any kind of deep friendship impossible and in its place a more adversarial but grudging respect kind of connection, which is (sort of) what we ended up getting with Donna--the savior of "No-Love" assistants.
I really admire RTD (flatulent aliens and ill-advised romances aside) but felt his love of manipulative emotionalism to be detrimental to what Dr Who was about.
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She'd also had some dental work done which explains, Turn Left I think it was, where she sounded really strange.
That's part of the problem I have with nuWho: the over emphasis on assistants (and to a lesser extent, their families). It's a change I don't like, as IMO they were merely supposed to serve as an expositionary tool so that the Doctor didn't have to talk to himself all the time. I think with the nostalgia of the original series and those assistants, there is too much focus on who was the best/worst, etc. when in my view as long as the assistant isn't annoying or the unproclaimed spotlight of the stories, then I can enjoy (almost) any of them.
I liked Rose during the Eccleston season, but apparently he wasn't "cute" enough for her to fall in love with. It wasn't until the Roger Moore of Doctors--Tennant--came along that the deep friendship became an ill-conceived and soap opera-style annoyance. I'd much prefer The Doctor be grief stricken over losing her in that he feels responsible over the human race that fascinates him so, rather than the giggly and Middle-School crush garbage the romance was. Rose's successor should've been someone totally unlike her, which would've made any kind of deep friendship impossible and in its place a more adversarial but grudging respect kind of connection, which is (sort of) what we ended up getting with Donna--the savior of "No-Love" assistants.
I really admire RTD (flatulent aliens and ill-advised romances aside) but felt his love of manipulative emotionalism to be detrimental to what Dr Who was about.
I actually think showing us the family of a companion who are left behind was a good thing to do, it was new and added a new dynamic to the show, although you could argue that Rose wasn't the first 3D companion in many respects, as really Ace is a proto Rose.
What I disliked was the fact that the relationship changed between Doctors. I think clearly Nine loved her and vice versa, but Eccleston seemed to play it spot on for me. "I love you, but I'm way too much older than you to do anything about it." whereas with Tennant it was almost like "Whoo-hoo I've got a hot young chick, check me out!"
Like I say, the notion of the companion's family was interesting once...but then RTD used the same trope again...and then again (although that did give us Wilf).
Well, to each his own, but I cannot even begin to understand why someone would prefer simplistic, more two-dimensional characterization to a more fully fleshed-out character. To me, that's literally akin to saying you'd prefer to watch, say, Superfriends rather than Bruce Timm's Justice League, or that you'd prefer the Adam West Batman to Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. There comes a point where too much simplicity of characterization means inferior quality of the show -- and it's hardly as though even the nuWho companions are the height of sophisticated characterization on modern television.
I don't agree with that at all. I think it's clear that they were already playing with a Doctor/Rose romance throughout Series One -- the Dalek calling the Doctor out on losing "the woman you love" in "Dalek," the obvious jealousy that the Doctor had over Adam in "Dalek" and "The Long Game" and which Rose had over Lynda-With-A-Y in "The Parting of the Ways," the "You're just upset because you're not the most important man in my life anymore" fight in "Father's Day," the entire Rose-trying-to-find-out-if-the-Doctor-"dances" scene in "The Doctor Dances." And, of course, it all leads into the "I think you need a doctor" kiss at the end of "Parting."
It looked to me like they were heading for a romance from the first, and while I think it's safe to say that the more overt flirtation between the Doctor and Rose in Series Two is in part a function of the Doctor being played by a new actor, I do think that RTD would have had Rose falling for the Ninth Doctor just as hard as she did for the Tenth if Christopher Eccleston hadn't left at the end of Series One.
I don't see this at all. The Doctor and Donna were wonderful friends, had the deepest of friendships. It wasn't just a "grudging respect" -- you don't choose to live with someone you only grudgingly respect, you live with someone if you genuinely love them (platonically, in this case). The Doctor even called her his "best friend" in "The End of Time, Part Two." Sure, she wasn't in love with him, and she wasn't quite as blind to his faults as Rose and Martha both were because she wasn't in love with him -- but she and the Doctor did have a deep friendship.
All television programs should be about emotions first and foremost. Human drama is the heart of good storytelling. Anything else is just an essay pretending to be a work of fiction.
You can have deep friendship without it being romantic or otherwise sentimental mush. A show doesn't have to be from the internet age to be considered "sophisticated." Since when are hamfisted and egregious displays of emotion sophisticated? You can have friendship which is a kind of love, but it's not the goopy theatrics that The Doctor and Rose had. It was positively sickening at times. Sarah Jane Smith and The (fourth) Doctor had a wonderfully affectionate friendship, but thankfully the "love" angle was never considered.
It shouldn't be about "Will they or won't they?", it should be about The Doctor and the (hopefully) brilliantly-realized sci-fi concepts, or the sociological and moral concepts that make science fiction so interesting. It's a show about the journey, the adventure, and the exploration of time. You know, "to boldly go..."
I find the needless emphasis on emotional manipulation, whether it be "sophisticated" or not, to be a hinderance to the show's concepts. RTD is a Coronation Street/Queer as Folk kind of writer and that style was imposed on Dr Who, to the delight of many, but I found it to be mawkish and embarrassing.
Are you the kid from The Princess Bride?
Are you the kid from The Princess Bride?
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