Doctor Who 172: "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel"

[starlady]

I increasingly feel like my starting with Ten did Rose a great disservice (as well as, obviously, Nine. Sorry, Christopher Eccleston! It's your lot in life).

She is…not very sympathetic at times in these episodes! She does not treat Mickey very well! The Doctor doesn't treat him well either, to be fair, but the Doctor is a) an idiot b) clearly not very smart, emotionally speaking. It's clear that on some level the show is about the Doctor grappling with his relationships with other people, and he's clearly very bad at it, which given his whole everything means I am inclined to grade him on a curve. I grade Rose on a curve too, given that she is young, but even as a young 20-something idiot, her behavior to Mickey is shitty and her behavior towards the Doctor, which clearly arises out of deep-seated insecurities about her feelings for him and his feelings for her (which both is and isn't justifiable), is also kind of shitty at times, particularly the random petty jealousies. You are the one in the TARDIS with him, girl! That has to count for something! You should know that it does count for something!

All that said, I deeply enjoyed that they went into the party as waiters, and Ten's extremely "oh shit" face in the background of the shots with the President and the Cybermen. And just in general the brilliance of the parallel worlds conceit cuts so many ways--Mickey seeing an alternative way of being himself, the audience seeing that he has more to him than we've seen so far, Rickey being the leader of the Prophets as the parallel to Mickey being the only one with genre savvy--it's a really great way to set up everything. Rose, by contrast, doesn't come off so well: her parallel mother is a jerk to her (perhaps understandably, but still a jerk) and she tries to treat Peter Tyler as her dad when, well, he isn't, which to his credit he recognizes, even if it's unintentionally cruel.

The thing about Ten is that as much as he is an idiot about feelings and emotions, he also…isn't? He's very good at managing people in certain ways, and he's good in a crisis, even if he is just making it up as he goes along, as Mickey (Mickey!) correctly points out in this episode. He's got a groove, and he knows how to work it. And that mixture of competency and extreme idiocy is what makes him interesting, even as his speech in 171 about how everybody dies and leaves him alone does sort of lead to the question of how he hasn't become a sociopath or a megalomaniac. Let's put a pin in that one for now.

All that being said, if all the Time Lords were like the Doctor, the idea of them flitting between parallel universes to wreak havoc as they pleased is rather horrifying. Ten says at the end of this episode that they won't ever be able to come back to this universe, but consider: perhaps that's actually a good thing. It might be for the best that there are limits on his sphere of influence. And perhaps this universe already has its Doctor.

Comments

[ursula]

This show just never appreciates Mickey enough. Mickey is the best!

[swan_tower]

When you get right down to it, probably the main reason I love Ten's run (specifically it's ending) is because his story, more than any of the other Doctors I've seen, goes straight at the weirdnesses and problems of the whole regeneration process, rather than just treating it as a get-out-of-jail-free card and a reason to change actors. You get it from Rose's side at the beginning -- is this or is this not the man she had feelings for? discuss -- though what Davies ultimately did with that didn't work for me. And then at the end of Ten, you get the Doctor's side. (Plus scattered other bits throughout.) That sociopath-or-megalomaniac question, along with other aspects, makes me really wish that I believed it were possible to write about something like the regeneration process with a different character and not have it immediately feel like a ripoff of Doctor Who.

And yes, Rose is not necessarily a great person, especially toward Mickey. I feel like Davies was too much of a Rose fanboy to quite see that at times, just as I think Moffatt was too much of an Eleven fanboy.

[starlady]

I think they have managed to write Rose as a very convincing early 20s idiot, periodically shitty behavior and all. As you say, I am not sure they realize that she is an early 20s idiot. (Also…I don't think she looks that young. Wikipedia tells me Piper was 23 at the time of season two, but her makeup is styled in a very particular fashion that makes her look older--appropriate for the character though it is. By contrast Tennant was 34 and is styled pretty neutrally in terms of age; he could be plausibly anywhere from 25-40, which is probably exactly what they wanted.)

I don't know if I could take the character if they were constantly whingeing about regeneration in every series, but I do appreciate that they spent the time on it in these seasons. It makes sense, even for someone relatively well-adjusted, that it would bother them occasionally, particularly in the case of a strong disturbance like, well, Rose.

You should totally write that take on regeneration anyway! Arguing with media by writing a book is a very valid strategy.