#loup.tag

[loupettes]

Hi! I Just read your comment on the Doomsday scene where Ten explains Rose his plan for sending her to the alternate universe. Thank you very much, I enjoyed it!

How would you interpret Ten's reaction when Rose comes back? He is, once again, a little annoyed, to the point of being very rude. Yes, we know he is rude and not ginger, but he seems way too rude towards Rose (I mean, she has just come back and told you she chose you, you still might lose her... why be that rude?)

TIA!

Hey!! Thank you for sending me this ☺️ I’m glad you liked my ramblings... because there's far too much for me to say and I only beg a space to ramble 😂 to say!

So the thing with that moment, to me anyway, is you realise here how much he genuinely doesn’t believe her when she says forever. Like, for now? Yes, of course she wants to stay with him. He’s showing her the universe and she loves it, she says she’s going to travel with him forever and he’s more than happy for her to.

That doesn’t mean he believes her.

She’s 20, of course she loves it now... but what about in ten years? What about when she realises she wants a family of her own? What about when her own family starts to need her? He wants her to stay with him forever, but he doesn’t believe her when she says she will.

So when she comes back, he’s so confused. He’s not angry at all, he just... doesn’t get why she’s come back when she had everything over there. 

Her dad!! Her mum — Mickey! They’re all over there now, her whole life, her entire family, so why the heck has she come back?

That’s why he starts yelling at her, because she just doesn’t get the big picture. 

Yes, forever is lovely, and yes he would grab it with everything he had if she offered it, but it has to be her choice. She has to have thought about it fully, not just promised the rest of her life the moment she sees pretty skies and all the wonderful things he can show her while her life waits for her back home.

Ideally, he would have never made her choose. You can tell how much he hated domestics at first, but he had slowly started to adapt in order to give her all the stars and her life back on Earth. Nine was asking Rose to pick between Shepherd’s Pie or a plasma storm way back at the very beginning, but, by the end, Ten was trying to give her both. But if it came down to it, the Doctor assumes the only thing Rose would want in the whole world is the only thing he would want: a family. So to him, it’s a no brainer; Rose would, if it came down to it, choose her family.

But the thing is, she chose him! And she tells him calmly here, firmly, that that’s her choice. And I have a feeling this isn’t the first time she’s told him she’s never going to leave him, because it’s almost like she’s just trying to get him to listen. 

So he’s completely... speechless. She really, genuinely has thought this through — she knows very well that she will never be able to see her mum again (your own mother!), she won’t have a chance to get to know her dad or live her happy human life as a family because she wants him instead. 

All he wants is a family, and all she wants is him. She’s his family, she’s all he has and she’s choosing him, too! And it is him that she wants, not just the travelling — and I think this is the first time he really hears that, too. He hears her when she says forever, and now he’s hearing her say forever with him. 

The woman he loves — the woman he thought could never seriously love love him and chose him above everything else — has just told him otherwise. He’s finally seeing it, finally starting to believe it, and, in true Ten style... he avoids confronting what that means. 

I get his anger here, too — I don’t understand it, because he’s just got given everything he wants, but it’s completely in his character to react angrily to something he vehemently doesn’t want but can’t do anything about. Honestly, he’s probably not all that excited that she’s come back, because he knows how dangerous it’s going to be over here. And this isn’t one of those moments where  we can say ‘for god’s sake Ten it’s going to be alright!!’ because it isn’t going to be alright — she does fall. He was right, she wasn’t safe on this side, and it was only by sheer chance that Pete was able to grab her before she fell. So from the Doctor’s perspective, she’s put herself in an impossible amount of danger — which usually he wouldn't object to, except she’s doing it because of him. He doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like that yet another person is risking their lives and choosing him over their own safety, but she’s proven to him so many times how serious she is about staying and now he has to be the reason she lost her whole family. And he especially doesn't like the fact that this is, really, what he wanted, too. Of course he would never just... accept that she’s her own person with her own choices and this isn’t his fault, because Ten’s the ‘man who regrets’. But it explains a bit more why he’s so angry in this scene — at least, I think?! 

Anyway, that's my take! I’d love to hear your thoughts!! ♥️ (and thanks for the ask again, I’m honoured you enjoyed reading my last one!)

[loupettes]

The more you want it, the stronger it gets.

[loupettes]

No, I'm going to wait for the Doctor. Just like he waited for me.

I'm sorry, but he's dead.

[loupettes]

Now here you are, fighting the fight.  Alone

This to me was the most telling moment of the Doctor’s feelings towards Rose, because I think it was the first time he realised how much he had lost himself in falling in love. So much so, that he had completely lost sight of everything else because, to him, she was all that mattered. 

[loupettes]

:(

[loupettes]

No but listen. L I S T E N. This hug. This HUg. I can’t believe I actually can write an essay on this. No but the best bit about this hug is how different their strides are.

She opens the door and she looks at him like she always does, but with considerably more relief than normal. She was shuttled away, never thinking she was going to see him again, she would have died on that planet if it meant she wouldn’t leave him. She was devastated in the rocket, maybe even running through the worst case scenario of shaking up somewhere with the 2 men that have just kidnapped her (but were very lovely nonetheless). She’s just murdered someone. It’s true, he was possessed and getting ready to kill them if it meant escaping, but she still killed another human. She closes her eyes as the rocket starts falling into the black hole and she finally resigns herself. She’s calm, devastated but calm, because what’s life without the Doctor anyway? At least this way she could truly spend forever with him. The irony that they should die in the same place but at different points of time. But then she hears his voice and it takes her a second of shock before she so excitedly calls out that she’s there on the rocket and he can come and get her. And she’s giddy, because he saved her like he always does, even if for a moment there she didn’t think he would. So when she opens the TARDIS doors after they’ve landed on some planet somewhere and dropped Ida off (he doesn’t even leave the TARDIS to greet her either because when they reunite he wants it to be a moment shared between them alone), she looks at him because somehow, against all odds, he’s there. He’s her home, she’s not thinking about getting the TARDIS back (and we all know how deeply connected Rose and the TARDIS are to each other), she’s just so happy and relieved to see him. So she runs to him, because she just cannot wait to have him in her arms, to feel him there and know he’s safe. Her strides are so quick, excited. She practically sprints.

But the Doctor walks with these long, firm strides of purpose and certainty. He’s spent however long on that planet realising he doesn’t know anything. It’s impossible that they’re underneath a black hole, in orbit, but there they are. It’s impossible that there’s writing so old on the wall that not even the TARDIS can translate it, but there it is. A creature claiming to be from before time and the Doctor can’t refute it, he has no proof that this beast’s version of the truth is any truer than his own. He falls into that pit not knowing whether he’ll make it out alive. He doesn’t know anything in this episode and it shows, he literally descends into the unknown. And he gets down into the pit and faces the beast and he loses it even more. He has this eccentric energy about him because he’s working through his beliefs, piecing it together with the limited truths that he does have.

“I accept that you exist. I don't have to accept what you are, but your physical existence, I'll give you that.”

And then the beast dares to make him chose between his escape and Rose’s. The darkness and terror of the devil’s flee or Rose’s survival. But he doesn’t even flinch (and we’ve seen the parallels between this episode and World War Three) because this time, the Doctor doesn’t need to decide between one or the other. He doesn’t always have to save everyone himself, because now he has someone who would gladly take that weight from his shoulders whenever she can. His huge 900 year existential crisis comes to a climax and to him its laughable, that this beast thinks its won, how much it has underestimated how fiercely he loves Rose.

“Except that implies in this big grand scheme of Gods and Devils that she's just a victim. But I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods, and out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her. ”

This fucking knobhead is laughing in the god damn face of the DEVIL because it had the audacity to assume Rose Tyler wouldn’t refuse to put her life in the hands of anyone other than herself. These two episodes have been so focused on him completely losing his sense of self, his belief system. This mf centuries-old lord of time is lost and he’s falling until this ordinary shop girl with no a-levels nor aspirations comes along and stabilises him, she takes his hand in the darkness and pulls him back up. If there’s one thing he knows to be true, one thing he knows he cannot possible refute, and it’s not even something physical or tangible that he can look at and confirm is true, it’s his belief in that woman. In her strength and her love, her compassion and her devotion. She is who the last of the time lords turns to when he can’t save everyone. And it gets me that he’s quite happy to go down with that being what he dies for. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again. He even mocks the beast as they go because he wants to rub it in just that little bit more that the beast was so far from having won. But by some sheer stroke of luck he finds the TARDIS and now he can go and get her. And the way he looks at her when he finally sees her. This man, this time lord, is looking at the one thing that’s just made sense of his chaos, the one thing that’s grounded him, his truth in a time of crumbling uncertainty. Imagine what that would feel like. She is literally his home, his comfort, his answer. So his strides are stable as he goes to get her. They’re strong, she’s given him that strength. I think if she hadn’t have been so giddy he would have kissed her there and then. But he doesn’t, he just lets out this giddy giggle with her, because that’s what they do. They laugh and they giggle, they hug and they smile. They’re both home. He’s finally home and she’s right there with him. 

AND THEN HE LOSES HER.

[loupettes]

So I like this exchange for a number of reasons, mostly because it’s one more interaction between Ten and Mickey that Doomsday hard delivered on, but also because it’s the first time Mickey sees something in the Doctor that he sees in himself. It’s probably the first time he’s heard the Doctor talk about the war, but it’s not that he’s surprised at the little insight into a part of the Doctor’s life he wouldn’t normally share. It’s a look of understanding. He looks at him like he finally has something in common with him, and that’s that they’re both warriors. They both fought on the front line against their enemies and he’s realising that he and the Doctor aren’t so different after all. He kind of looks up to him a little, but not in a high regard way but with a mutual respect he’d never had for him before. Honestly, we were robbed of a relationship between Mickey and Ten. Doomsday continues to only take and give nothing in return. (Although I think we can all safely assume that Mickey and Tentoo become solid pals in the parallel (pal-allel?) world and Mickey would play classic uni pranks on Tentoo that he never experienced as a time lord like autocorrecting words on his phone to say stuff like “grapefruit” instead of “ok” or putting all of his desk stationary in jelly but would be there for heart to hearts with him especially at the beginning when Tentoo’d be asking Mickey for advice on his relationship with Rose and Mickey almost certainly helped him with the proposal and is godfather to their kids change my mind)

Another reason why I love this is because it shifts my headcanon to canon (well let’s say it does anyway) that the Doctor has at some point opened up to Rose about the war. Because, if this were the first time she was hearing him talk about it too, there would have been a shot of Rose after Mickey’s. But I don’t think he would have sat her down for a bedtime story to tell her of the mass genocide he committed a few years back.

So, the Doctor’s a touch telepath right? Sometime after the events of Krop Tor, these two start sleeping in the same bed together every night (probably Rose’s because hers is more homely let’s face it). Sometimes she’ll announce that she’s off to bed and he comes with her, and sometimes he tells her he’ll join her as soon as he’s finished whatever he’s doing and then a few hours later quietly climbs in next to her. He probably doesn’t even sleep most of the time, he just enjoys the company. But one night he has a nightmare, flashbacks to the war. He’s holding on to her somehow, hand resting on her arm that’s draped over his chest or something, and Rose ends up sharing that nightmare with him, relives his memories through his perspective. He’s of course horrified when she gently tells him what happened the next morning but it helps him open up to her about it, because she’s seen a glimpse of it. He never wanted her to, but she now shares it with him somehow.

It kind of adds another explanation as to how he was able to contact her on that parallel world, because that psychic link had been established - but not consciously so it wasn’t really strong. Well, that, and her relationship with the TARDIS and the fact that she and the Doctor spent so much time together. I imagine they all knew each other’s quirks and habits and would help one another inexpressibly like the TARDIS would help Rose find those flats she’s looking for that would go with her outfit and Rose would have already made the tea the Doctor fancied before he even knew which one he wanted and the Doctor would... well the Doctor probably just made things worse with the TARDIS, Rose would be the one mediating.

I don’t know, take that as you will but in the meantime let me live my lies in this dark and terrible year.

[loupettes]

Heyy Loup, first things first, I'm in love with your metas🤗 what do you think about that scene in Doomsday right before she says 'am I supposed to go? That's not going to happen'

I personally felt like he was sooo distant. Well yeah he loooves changing subjects and avoiding questions, but damn. Because if you think about it, this is their last *proper* scene together.

!! What a question! Loup over here feeling like it’s 2020 all over again! Thank you for sending me this sweetheart, and feel free to send me anymore! (no seriously, this is my hobby, at this point??)

Okay, so this part of the episode kills me for a few reasons, so this is gonna be long! Buckle up buttercup ♥️

Throughout this whole initial scene, the Doctor’s just trying to make her laugh. He’s being extra daft and silly with her, because, by this point, he knows that he’s going to send her away, and so he’s doing everything he can first to make her smile. 

DOCTOR: Well? Isn't anyone going to ask what is it with the glasses? ROSE: What is it with the glasses? DOCTOR: I can see, that's what!

Moving around in front of her like a lemon, getting her to solve the puzzle because he knows how much she likes working through it all and figuring it out.

And she does! She’s enjoying it so much because this is what they do! They always find a way and this time’s no different, so she giggles along, skipping about with him and trying to keep up with him.

But all this mad energy, all this messing about? He’s doing it all for her. Because he knows he’s about to break her heart, and he knows this is going to the last time’s going to see her. His last chance to see her smile and hear her laugh and watch her get all excited over him and them and everything they do every single day.

But then you can see her figuring it all out, now that she’s not got him distracting her, and she’s piecing it together 

:(

And when she finally does, and he knows she’s getting it, he still tries to deflect. Literally, anything he can do to keep her smiling! 

“Hey! We should call it that. Pete’s world.”

But of course, by that point, it’s real. He’s told her his plan, that that’s the final plan, and now he just has to keep it together and stick to it. 

See, the thing with Ten is his emotions are so nuanced. He’s great at diverting attention, like you said, but he bottles it all up and never expresses how he feels.

But that’s not to say we can’t see it still.

Like in this bit:

The Doctor’s not listening to Mickey, because this is it, now. This is that one moment where they’re both acknowledging what’s about to happen. And they just give each other one look, where, for just a second, they focus on each other. On them. Them as a couple, as the Doctor and Rose, inseparable and about to become separated.

It’s just these small moments, like this one now, where he’s ignoring everybody else around him for just a second because he’s faltering now that she’s asking him to tell her that this isn’t happening, that really brings the emotions into the room. 

And then he starts to get irritated. Not ‘irritated’ in the sense that he’s frustrated at Rose for refusing to want to go, but at the situation. 

How aggressively he chucks that Magnaclamp on the floor, because he’s annoyed. He’s annoyed at himself, and he’s annoyed at her for not just leaving and making it easier for the both of them, and he’s annoyed at everything that lead them to this point of no return. And that just goes to show how much he is holding on by a thread. Because he’s heartbroken, there is no way that he can keep her safe on this side (and, he didn’t in the end!) and open the breach on this side, too. He has to lose her, just like he has to lose everybody else he loves, and he’s heartbroken.

It’s one of those scenes I just love to dissect! Both David Tennant and Billie Piper are incredible actors, and they have very subtle ways of acting. RTD was an excellent writer, because the big flashy excitement and energy is all for the kids, but the very subtle subtext is what we pick up on, as adults. I’ve found that, when watching Doctor Who back for a billionth second time round, that’s when you see it all. The writing was never meant to smash us in the face with feelings, and that’s why they hurt. Doomsday would have been a let down if the Doctor had told her he loved her, because the reason why Doomsday is so beautiful is because it’s so tragic in every way. We still cry at Doomsday 16 years later because it’s just so unfinished — the tragedy of them being separated is what makes it the most memorable episode, because they didn’t get their happily ever after. Ten could have been written in this scene to be devastated, on the verge of tears as he tells Rose what’s about to happen, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact. And it’s not in Ten’s character to show us how he’s feeling, it’s up to us to see it. He bottles everything up and hides it from everybody else, so when we do see him falling apart at the seems, it hits that much deeper.

[loupettes]

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!

[loupettes]

You say you find Rose easier to write, but you prefer writing from the Doctor's POV. I find that interesting! Why so? (Also, I love when you write from the Doctor's POV the most!)

Aww, thank you!

I can usually just... write from Rose's perspective, and it takes minimal editing. She's a fun head to be inside! But I like to write from the Doctor's perspective more because I think it gives me a chance to really... go to town on his love for her 😂 the days of loup.tagging are not too far behind us, if you remember!

[loupettes]

L O U P   R O U N D U P

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