does-it-need-saying

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warning you now if we get rose tyler back even for an episode i'm going to be so insufferable literally for the rest of my life like. i'm going to be so annoying about it. so annoying

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DOCTOR WHO ▹ Smith and Jones

I’ll be one of the first to agree that Ten can be a real dick but in the case of not catering to Martha’s feelings for him I don’t think he is at all. The above gifs are how he responds to Martha flirting with him. He tells her straight up about Rose, and how she isn’t a replacement. He makes it very clear that he doesn’t want her flirting with him. Especially in that last gif! He holds eye contact, leans right into her face, and gives a very firm ‘stop it!’. Most of the tags in this post are about how awful ppl think Ten is because they think he’s not valuing Martha. They go right from the above scene to Shakespeare and sharing a bed. It’s been what? Maybe a couple of hours since Ten basically said ‘it’s not gonna happen lady!’ but ppl are calling him a dick because he mentioned Rose with Martha right there? They haven’t even known each for 24 hours but he’s supposed to pack his pain away and make sure she feels important to him at all times? Yes, he can be an insensitive, jackass, flirty slut but I’m on his side with this one. If anything Martha is the dick for not recognizing her new friend is in pain and instead just focuses on her own feelings of wanting him to like her. Yes, Ten said Rose was safe and with her family but clearly he’s upset. Donna noticed it immediately but Martha just wants to bone. If roles were reversed, and it was a woman who gave that firm of a ‘stop it!’ to a man, we’d be calling the guy a stalking pervert if he kept at it. This isn’t a critique on Martha as a whole. She’s fine, but he never gave her a reason to think he wanted her as more than a companion ever. I just don’t think Ten was in the wrong for not tiptoeing around her crush on him.

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Rewatching doctor who and GOD I love Rose Tyler. How human and compassionate she is.

That moment in impossible planet where she finds out the Ood are a slave race and her first thought is to ask how the Ood feel about that, are they compensated and treated well

And the humans, specifically the “ethics” officer (aka Ood manager) laugh at her and joke that she’s “another friend of the Ood” in a condescending manner

And Rose replies, yeah so what if I am? And keeps on empathizing and asking the Ood how they are treated.

Just wow…how transformative for someone who was mocked by Republican family members for empathizing w others and wanting better treatment for others, then seeing someone beautiful and kind on TV do the exact same, get made fun of and look at them square in the eye and say “so fucking what? Your perception is cruel and wrong” without a blink. GOD I LOVE ROSE TYLER

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It’s a real shame Rose wasn’t around for Planet of the Ood cause I want to see the rampage she would go on. The doctor says “last time I met them I never thought to ask about their lives” and Rose would be like OH YEAH WELL I FUCKING DID LETS GO TEAR DOWN THIS WHOLE COMPLEX

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S W E E T   W R A P P E R S   A N D   A   F E S T I V E   T I E

SUMMARY: The Doctor and Rose are stuck overnight in a prison cell — only it’s not just any night, it’s Christmas night. Having already let her down so much recently, the Doctor is determined to make the experience even just a little bit more festive. PAIRING: Ten x Rose RATING: General TAGS: Christmas fluff, trapped in a prison cell overnight, hurt comfort, very small reference to GITF, sharing a bed

Read over on AO3: sweet wrappers and a festive tie

***

“Suppose I’ve had worse Chrstmas days,” she said with a soft sigh. “Last year, my best mate blew up in front of me and left me to defend the Earth from these monsters trying to control the human race using blood.”

“Blimey. You sure he was your best mate? Sounds a bit like a prat.”

“Well, it’s Christmas Day, he’s still here, and he’s still a prat. Some things never change.”

***

Read the rest on AO3

And Merry Christmas!! ♥️♥️♥️

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Hi! Here I am again, since I loved your insights on Doomsday. ;-)

So, let's continue talking about Ten's behaviour, this time in Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel.

In my opinion, Ten is rather distant and almost assholey towards Rose in this two-parter, especially when compared to Nine's incredible tenderness in Father's Day (and this despite the whole end-of-the-world + mutual-insults situation!). I totally understand what he says to her (that Parallel Pete is not her father, that her father died when she was 6 months old...) but... would it hurt you to also take her hand, hug her, say something about how you are sorry for what she must be feeling? So, I wonder[ed] why Ten behaves like this.

In this case, I had tried to answer myself by considering two hypotheses:

- "GitF is canon/it fits into S2" --> then I would sort of explain Ten's behaviour with keeping in line with his distancing from Rose and pushing her back towards Mickey after School Reunion and GitF;

- "GitF was originally planned as an episode at the beginning of S1, therefore is not to be considered canon" --> Yeah, Ten still is worried about his relationship with Rose, as of School Reunion, but then... is Mickey being aboard (and once again close to Rose) enough to justify Ten's distance?

What do you think?

TIA!

Hey! Firstly, I am so so sorry this has taken me nearly two weeks to reply to - life got in the way, deadlines and ridiculously unjust work demands, and then I lost all my DW files and have slowly had to re-download them 😂 but I'm here now! And I’m glad to see you in my inbox - hello lovely! Ah, yes. Rise of the Cyberman. Post-GITF Ten. I can’t believe I’m about to agree with your hypothesis that GITF is canon but... here we are! And you're right, ten is an absolute arsehole to Rose in this episode, just as he is in GITF, and just as he is in SR. Honesty, its a wonder why we ship them??

Stuck with you, that's not so bad. If I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her. How long are you going to stay with me? Forever. I made my choice a long time ago and I'm never going to leave you. Rose Tyler, defender of the Earth! Does it need saying? Rose, her name was, Rose, and we were together. Tonight's a night for lost things being found. Who's gonna hold his hand now?

ah right yes, that's why 😭 ANYWAY I digress. Ten's behaviour in ROTC is very... Ten. And his reaction, compared to Nine's, when Rose meets her dad is very different. But... understandable. Not condoning Ten's behaviour!! But, for a moment let's forget GITF exists (I mean, if you've not already): Nine almost lost her to her dad. She's the one man she was happy to be stuck with ('stuck with you that's not so bad' FEELINGS 😭), and Nine initially shrugs it off. 'Fine, see if I care' sort of attitude (which, we all know he does, he's just frustrated that he's let himself fall for a girl he shouldn't really have). Ten adopts the complete opposite: he panics. He's desperate to keep her with him now, regardless of what's gone on in the last few episodes. But see, the previous episodes did happen. This line is such a throw away line that we don't really notice it all that much, but he's addressing what happened between him and Reinette here:

He's saying this, because he's damn sure she's never trusted him less at that moment. He broke her trust by leaving, and it might look a lot like neither of them spoke about what happened, but he knows, and Ten's dumb enough that he doesn't just know when he messed up, he's told.

And so he's keeping hold of her at the beginning, too — body angled towards hers and his arm lazily reaching behind her to physically keep her close to him because he almost lost her.

Ten is incredibly selfish, and it's unbearable at the start of series 2. Nine regnerated into Ten literally for Rose, because he loved her and the last act of the Time War was a sacrifice for love. She came back for him, she absorbed the time vortex for him, so, as much as he finds it hard to believe, he knows somewhere that she loves him. He acts instinctively, he's so in love with her and she's about to die. Ten's born out of this unbearable love Nine held for her in this moment, to the point where Ten literally only exists to love Rose. He's so sure of his love for her, that he takes it for granted. Rose took the time vortex for him, and that's it then. She's in love with him, he's in love with her, so just go for it. But then comes actually... going for it, and he realises he can't. He's going to lose her, and he needs to bring them both back to reality because this is real. It's like when you fancy someone and you know, realistically, you can't have a future with them for whatever reason - different religion, one wants children while the other doesn't. You still go for it, because it gets to a certain point where you have to act on your feelings, but one day you will have to face those conflicts and you will always have to end things. Ten puts a stop to them, and the only way he can put a stop to them for her is by slapping her in the face with reality. Again, Ten's an arsehole. But then he slaps her in the face with reality so hard that he nearly loses her. He doesn't want that, but he can't exactly... declare his love for her after what he did.

"Rose, I know I've made you feel awful for being human and for leaving me behind by dying, and I know I did exactly that to you the very next day, but I love you and I don't want you to leave me behind."

Rose would rightfully bollock him. So he tries his best to rationalise, making this less about him telling her what to do and what he wants, and more about reminding her why she's living in a fairytale world where her dad never died and he's still alive. That is her dream come true, but, just as its impossible that they could have their happily ever after, it's impossible that her dad's still alive.

And you can see Mickey in the background getting pissed off, wincing at how bloody harsh he's being... but, he's right. He could have snapped at Ten for being an arse, telling him to go easy on her, but he doesn't, because somebody had to say it.

On Mickey, he's not convinced in any way that somethings going to happen to Rose to change her mind. He knows she's going to be alright, but the Doctor doesn't. He's panicking massively, and the fact that he's still being aggressive even here, without Rose, just goes to show how furious he is with himself for giving her a reason to leave him.

Imagine him, in the TARDIS and before Mickey arrives, cursing himself for what he did. Rightly so, because he was a dick, and this is almost satisfying to watch. But we don't get to see it explicitly, we only get the idea that, behind closed doors, he knows he fucked up big. He even admits that he's worrying about what's going to happen.

So bloody satisfying.

But then there's the other thing: she never existed in this world. Look at how he drops his facade for just a moment,

He doesn't say "well, of course not — why would you?", or point out that it's even more proof that this world isn't right for her, his hearts break for her. It's as bad as it gets for Rose - knowing that her mum and dad are happy in this world without her. She's not needed, literally anywhere. And that's when he shifts his tone.

He protects Pete, brings him with them because he knows how much he means to Rose,

but most of all, he reminds her that she's something, she's worth so much more than the lies she's telling herself, the lies he made her believe when he left her behind, that she's important and this world's got it wrong by not having her in it.

All these different worlds, not one of them gets it right.

Ten would go above and beyond to not admit his feelings for Rose — well, that's not true, he wouldn't admit his feelings for Rose to Rose — but ROTC/AOS marks a turning point for him. He got cocky, he took her feelings for granted, he took them for granted, and he nearly paid the price. He's not getting that close again, and, contrary to ROTC, he does declare his love for her from then on. He's unafraid to show it from the Idiot's Lantern onwards — he's terrified, because he knows he's going to lose her — but he lets his guard down because she deserves to know. She deserves to feel wanted, to feel important. He doesn't do that by telling her, he does it by showing her. By believing in her to defeat the devil, by fighting tooth and claw to get her back after her face — she — was stolen, by constantly putting his faith in her to save the day and save him, by telling her she's his hand to hold, she's his home, that, by the time he's giving her the option to live with her dad and be safe with her dad, she's empowered enough for make her own decision about what she really does want. And that's him. His anger in this episode is completely directed towards himself. He's harsh with her, but it's in character, because Ten loathes himself so much that he's just filled with fury and rage. Tentoo's exactly the same, filled with blood and anger. He's not afraid to show it, but he also doesn't really know how to show anything else. He's either giddy and flirtatious, or tearing down his enemies — which is often himself. He doesn't deal with emotions at all, so when he feels things that terrifies him, he gets snappy. He gets impatient, things are rapidly falling out of his control and she he does anything to get them back. Ten/Rose coming from GITF to ROTC is similar to Ten/Rose going from AOS to TIL. By the time 2.07 rolls round, they're madly in love. And it's why I think they spent a little bit of time at the Powell Estate mid-series 2, where he finally calms down and realises she's safe with him, and he takes the time to console her. She's lost Pete, she's lost Mickey, and now that he's not going to lose her, he loves her instead. WOW this one got away from me — not sure I even answered your question?? 😂😂 But I hope you enjoyed either way!

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the doctor 🤝 rose tyler

watching each other disintegrate into thin air right before their eyes

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It wasn’t your fault. Remember that, okay? It wasn’t your fault. And do you know what? I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

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today i was thinking about Dalek and how it's an absolutely iconic episode, one of the best episodes of tv in existence, and the first image i thought of was rose in her tank top and watch and wavy hair. how or why is rose so iconic in that episode? can you analyze why the costuming is so fitting and perfect?

dalek is an apocalypse episode. it’s stripped down, bleak, and unlike other RTD era episodes—where there are lots of little fun side characters, and warmth, and humor—dalek focuses itself down to three primary enemies: the dalek, the doctor, and van statten. they’re very dark, heavy characters, talking a lot about death and greed, and their looks reflect that—the deep copper of the dalek, the dark suit of van statten, the doctor in a deep green that reads almost as black. Even the more minor characters are dark—goddard in her black suit, adam with only the faintest white pinstripe.

rose stands out as a blaze. she is radiant in white, and she is the only one in this episode with a clear moral compass. van statten only cares about owning the stars; goddard just wants to survive; adam can’t see past the greatness of his own gig to the torture happening beneath his nose. the doctor, rife with survivors’ guilt and old hatred, ditches all his usual principles to descend into fear and panic.

but the costume design recognizes rose is outside the toxic triangle of the main three and has nothing to do with the pettiness of the other characters. she reacts to the dalek in in a way thats worlds distant from the bunker’s typical modes of force and manipulation and power. she reacts to it by being young and scrappy and compassionate. The others are gathering complicated battle plans while she reaches out with touch and sunshine. she brings simplicity and normalcy to an episode where no one else has bothered to nurture it. and the costume understands this, and leans into it. her scrappy little tank top has no place among the soldiers and the suits. everyone else is bulked up, armored in leather jackets or dark blazers, but rose is vulnerable—deeply, intensely vulnerable. we see her skin. this is the most open of her looks, a white wide open book that’s human and alive and has no other element added. a scarf or jacket would kill this costume, because it works by being so simple. it’s iconic because it has nothing left to hide—and neither does rose tyler, looking a killer dead in the eyes.

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M E A N S   N O T H I N G

SUMMARY: The Doctor, subject to yet another Christmas party with Rose, somehow ends up in a situation he most certainly never thought he would be fortunate enough to find himself in — snogging Rose Tyler.

It’s just what humans do at Christmas, right? 

TAGS: Christmas fluff, parties, domestics, idiots in love 

Read on AO3: means nothing [Rated T]

***

“Where’s this— where’s this come from?” he whispered unevenly, and she giggled to feel the quiver in his voice beneath her lips. Something about her laugh made him tilt his head to press a kiss to her forehead.

“It’s just…” she started, but then sighed in resolution, her head falling to his shoulder. “I dunno. S’Christmas.”

“And Christmas is a time for snogging your best mate?”

“Well, you’re not exactly making it easy for me not to,” she groaned, but then started to shake her head and fidget uncomfortably. “Doesn’t matter—”

“No, no— Rose—“

This is exactly what he was trying to avoid. Awkwardness.

***

Read the rest on AO3!

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the funniest thing about people bringing up how the ninth doctor didn’t do domestics is that he literally turned into a doctor who wanted nothing more than a family and when a part of him was given the option to live that life, he went for it with so much hope because he finally got to do domestics with the one human he wanted a forever with

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still so charmed by the way rose tyler is so unapologetically lower class without the narrative like. consistently telling you that. it’s all stuff you see between her flat and her bottle blonde hair with roots poking through and and her clumpy mascara and her clothes that don’t fit quite right and her passion for looking out for the underdog. it’s just so refreshing to have the protagonist of a show not be so squeaky clean and polished or a complete antihero but just some completely normal girl shaped by the way she grew up

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for @deardiary17‘s Christmas prompts! 🎄♥️

C H R I S T M A S   C A R D S

SUMMARY: After promising no gifts for Christmas, Rose manages to persuade the Doctor into exchanging Christmas cards instead. The difficulty comes with deciding what to write in it.

TAGS: Fluff, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Idiots in Love, dorks being dorks, Romance

Read on AO3: christmas cards

Rose found herself one evening propped up against a fort of pillows in the lounge, tapping her pen on the card wondering what on Earth she was going to write inside. A simple ‘Merry Christmas!’ seemed a bit… anticlimactic, given how much effort all of this had been, but she couldn’t exactly write ‘I’m in love with you’ like she was… a little reluctant to admit she really wanted to. So instead, she pulled out a piece of paper from an empty notebook, and scribbled a few ideas down to see which one she liked best.

‘Doctor, Merry Christmas! Love Rose—‘

Can’t write ‘love.’ He’ll wonder if this was her declaring her love for him right there in a Christmas card. Awkward.

‘Doctor, Merry Christmas! Rose xx.’

Two’s a bit weird.

‘Doctor, Merry Christmas! Rose x.’

Bit impersonal.

‘Doctor, Merry Christmas! Rose xxx.’

Way too much.

She shuddered as she thought about trying to explain the intricate implications of the British ‘kissing’ system on Christmas Eve morning.

Read the rest on AO3 ♥️

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so i spent almost an hour last night screaming incoherently about this with @tentoorose​ but i am still not over tentoo and rose’s family because just. listen. LISTEN!!!!!

all those little moments? where we see cracks in the Doctor’s facade?? How upset he is that he thinks Rose will eventually leave him for something he can’t give her??? HHJFHGJFHJGDGH CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW HE FELT WHEN HE MARRIED ROSE, HAD THEIR DAUGHTER, AND LIVED THEIR LIFE, DAY AFTER DAY, AN ADVENTURE HE COULD FINALLY HAVE?

the joy on his face in these excerpts is so unreal i just. i lose my mind. 

this is the face of a man who’s got everything he’s ever wanted. all those heartbroken lines, like “imagine watching that happen to someone you-” and “i was a dad once” and just every time we can see him physically hold back from expressing his love and desire because it hurts too much. he will NEVER have to live that way again and i am so so happy for him. they’ve got their forever.

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Rose making eyes at Tentoo and staying on the TARDIS to flirt with him instead of saying goodbye to her friends is absolutely fantastic. She didn’t come all that way to not be flirting with a Doctor on the TARDIS. Those babes in blue are going to be just fine.

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Do you remember that moment in 'Partners in Crime' where Donna tells the Doctor he looked older? Brilliantly written, because not only does it explain obvious things (DT does look older in s3 and 4, but can I just say - HOT AF?😁), but also.... grief tends to age people? And he's grieving Rose.

It's honestly beyond me how writers just sit there all night long and think all of this stuff through: those little bits and bobs that just come together so beautifully

Sorry I'm only just getting round to this! It's been a busy week 😂

Thank you for sending me this ask!! Okay so, right. Ten is FLAWED, do not get me wrong, and he's not written consistently (thanks Moffat) but his character arc is so good. And it's because, by the end, he's just so tired.

Everyone thinks of Ten as either this adorable little loved up puppy, or this stern 'does it need saying' git, but actually, watching his story is so draining and that's what makes it so good?

We watched him just... fall. The Doctor everybody looks back on fondly, thinks of as this adorable eccentric tight suit (space noodle by @alwaysdramatizing sums him up perfectly!), but he was only that way at the beginning.

He's so full of joy and love at the start. He's fresh out of regeneration, a man who went from grief and loss to complete unadulterated love, he regenerates into somebody with hope for the first time. And bit by bit it gets taken away from him.

Losing Rose was only just the start. It set him back, all the way back to how Rose first found him, only worse. She was his last hope, his saviour, and she left him.

But Rose taught him to trust, she taught him to give people a chance. He was reluctant with Martha, and you can see he really didn't want to, but he did. He told her about Gallifrey!! Only a few hours after meeting Martha, he's sitting down with her and opening up to her. You can see how tired he is, but he tries.

I think we're quick to say Ten's grieving Rose in series three, which is true, but I think he's mostly grieving who he was and the hope he had. It's hard to pick yourself back up again — that one loss we all experience where life becomes separated into a 'before' and an 'after'. He's a completely different man in series three because he's the version of himself that's 'after' he loses Rose.

But it's more than that. He's exhausted, emotionally drained, and it's there all throughout series three how reckless he is with his own life because he really doesn't care about himself anymore.

You only really notice it when you're a bit older, I think, because I certainly don't remember thinking Ten was suicidal when I watched this at 13 years old. But series three is dark for Ten. Martha saves him, multiple times, and I think he knows it by how much he tries. It's like he's got somebody to look after again, somebody who he knows loves him and he owes it to her to love again.

And then he loses Martha. Whether or not you think he pushed her away/it was his fault, you can see that he's still devastated.

The only other person, in the whole universe, he's ever told about his home planet. Actually no, Rose isn't in that universe anymore — Martha's the only person in his world who knows what happened to him. I do think Ten loved Martha — obviously not in the way she wanted him to — but he showed it in all the times he kept getting back up for her. By the end, he was just starting to care again, and she left him at the point where he was just about able to stand on his own two feet.

By the time he meets Donna again, he's just shattered. And I love that it's mentioned, that Donna catches it. I don't think it was a way to explain the fact that David Tennant had aged as much as it was just Ten's character. RTD wrote him to be the tired hero, and by the time he dies in End of Time he's so exhausted that he just... lets go. Even his goodbye, the fact that he clung to that regeneration in the end to say goodbye to everyone who saved him, the fact that he's staggering by the time he makes it back to Rose is exactly Ten's ark. It's so striking that he is at his worst when he's with Rose in his last few minutes because she was the one who brought life to him. It's the perfect way to show the audience what life did to him, by having him so completely broken when he's with Rose in the end.

I could go onto a rant about how RTD wrote his Doctors with full character arcs when Moffat and Chibnall didn't quite have the same ideas, but I won't! I'm just glad you've given me the space to talk about Ten's!