Their Lives before the Doctor
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Life without Doctor completely meaningless and empty of importance. This what Blog learn from Doctor Bloody Who. Luckily Blog knows Doctor will come for Blog someday, otherwise Blog would just kill Blogself!
Reason #fucking1 why I like Classic Who better: the female companions all had lives before and without the Doctor. Look at what the old companions were: scientist (Liz), scientific assistant (Jo — who went on to marry a scientist), journalist (Sarah Jane), warrior (Leela — who went on to marry a Gallifreyan Citadel guard), whatshername in the movie (I haven’t seen the movie) who was, I believe, a surgeon, Romana, who was a Time Lady (and who went on to another universe to help the people there)… okay, there were some fails, like Peri, who was just sort of there, and Nyssa, who was just sort of orphaned (though she had been an important person on Traken) … but most of the Classic Who women weren’t depicted as having mundane, worthless existences before the Doctor barged in.
Compare my list to the companions depicted in this gallery: Rose — “just a shopgirl,” Donna — depicted as wasting her life working temp jobs and still living single in her mother’s house, Amy — who just sort of exists; she doesn’t ever seem to do anything for long and just hasn’t developed as a personality (she had more agency when she was a child except for that time in the mashed-together universe where she was some sort of secret agent with her own office on a train; naturally that was wiped out when the universe’s balance was “restored”). The only person who is like an old companion is Martha, who is a medical student who goes on to join UNIT and marry Mickey. But the script makes her pay for being her own woman — it makes her fall in love with the Doctor and sets her up to be treated as second best and rebound hanger-on. You know, I don’t even think racism was the main impetus behind Martha’s treatment either. Institutional racism was there, of course — you can’t have the one black companion being treated as lesser than the white ones and not escape charges of racism, even if you “didn’t mean it that way.” The author is dead, etc. But I think the real problem here is Martha clearly did not need the Doctor like the other women did — she was not in a position of having an empty existence until he came along. The men who now run the cultural institutions of Western society, including the BBC, are having none of that cheek. Women are to be firmly put back in their place, as Needing A Man To Be Whole, and if they won’t fit into that, then they’re supposed to suffer for their sins.
(via doctorbloodywhoetc)
