Life after
Oct. 24th, 2008 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sensiblecatThere is a big hole in my life where my love of Doctor Who used to be, and I continue to go through the motions of my obsession like a twitching corpse. But it's more about habit than anything else. So we're going to get a two-minute preview of the Christmas Special for Children in Need? That should just about take us up to the first "Whaat?" moment - where RTD originally intended to be by the end of S4. And I'm not even going to be in England on Christmas Day, a fact that leaves me curiously unmoved.
I've fallen out of love with Ten, I think. I haven't yet forgiven him for being such a self-flagellating idiot in Journey's End, and once you feel the hero's brought his angst on himself, your sympathy is strained. I think the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy future eps, including S5, is by resetting to zero and regarding it as a different show from the one I've watched since 2005. And apparently that's the plan - he's going to be on his own through the Specials. They've even reissued the S1/S2 soundtrack CD, which was absolutely soaked through with Rose's presence, with just the Doctor on the cover. For some reason this fills me with an anger out of all proportion to the its importance. Why don't they take Martha off the S3 one while they're at it? Or Donna off the new one, since he's as good as killed her?
Rose happened. She existed. I don't care how much they airbrush her out of the Doctor's memories and the ongoing narrative of the show - I cannot and will not relate to the Doctor as a person who wasn't changed by her. I can't just pack up my stall and move to Pete's world - it doesn't work like that. Like Rose herself, I feel the whole thing has made me harder and older.
Or it might just be that fandoms tend to have a natural life-span of around two years. I notice I've heard relatively little from the writers I admired when I first joined up. Are they as blocked as I am? I''m still writing, but I feel caught between two worlds and somehow I can't just slot into fixit mode and say it doesn't matter what's canon. My loyalty is being pulled two ways and that is that.
What I feel most like right now is that I'm winding down after a long and dramatic love affair, returning to the monochrome but admittedly restful state of real life. There are some wonderful stories out there about the new Ten and Rose, and maybe it's time for a new "generation" to receive the torch. Somehow, and I know people won't agree with me, if I try to write that story, if I give it my loyalty, it negates all the emotion invested in the original stories of Rose and the Doctor.
Fortunately, they're still out there. This week I re-read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kalleah 's wonderful "Calm before the Storm" and was bowled over by it all over again. It is, quite simply, the most real and beautiful account of the flowering of their relationship I've ever read, soaked through with wonder, joy, risk and feeling. I wept freely at the last chapter, even though I knew the outcome - in fact I helped beta the sequel. For me, that's the authentic account of the Doctor and Rose relationship and I, at least, have little more to say. So it might be an idea not to write. In time, I'll adjust to it. I keep saying I need more time, after all....
I've fallen out of love with Ten, I think. I haven't yet forgiven him for being such a self-flagellating idiot in Journey's End, and once you feel the hero's brought his angst on himself, your sympathy is strained. I think the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy future eps, including S5, is by resetting to zero and regarding it as a different show from the one I've watched since 2005. And apparently that's the plan - he's going to be on his own through the Specials. They've even reissued the S1/S2 soundtrack CD, which was absolutely soaked through with Rose's presence, with just the Doctor on the cover. For some reason this fills me with an anger out of all proportion to the its importance. Why don't they take Martha off the S3 one while they're at it? Or Donna off the new one, since he's as good as killed her?
Rose happened. She existed. I don't care how much they airbrush her out of the Doctor's memories and the ongoing narrative of the show - I cannot and will not relate to the Doctor as a person who wasn't changed by her. I can't just pack up my stall and move to Pete's world - it doesn't work like that. Like Rose herself, I feel the whole thing has made me harder and older.
Or it might just be that fandoms tend to have a natural life-span of around two years. I notice I've heard relatively little from the writers I admired when I first joined up. Are they as blocked as I am? I''m still writing, but I feel caught between two worlds and somehow I can't just slot into fixit mode and say it doesn't matter what's canon. My loyalty is being pulled two ways and that is that.
What I feel most like right now is that I'm winding down after a long and dramatic love affair, returning to the monochrome but admittedly restful state of real life. There are some wonderful stories out there about the new Ten and Rose, and maybe it's time for a new "generation" to receive the torch. Somehow, and I know people won't agree with me, if I try to write that story, if I give it my loyalty, it negates all the emotion invested in the original stories of Rose and the Doctor.
Fortunately, they're still out there. This week I re-read
kalleah 's wonderful "Calm before the Storm" and was bowled over by it all over again. It is, quite simply, the most real and beautiful account of the flowering of their relationship I've ever read, soaked through with wonder, joy, risk and feeling. I wept freely at the last chapter, even though I knew the outcome - in fact I helped beta the sequel. For me, that's the authentic account of the Doctor and Rose relationship and I, at least, have little more to say. So it might be an idea not to write. In time, I'll adjust to it. I keep saying I need more time, after all....
