@inhonoredglory / inhonoredglory.tumblr.com
She's the Doctor's child. Dad a postman? Mom a dinner lady? That's TenRose coding 👀
She's the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler's kid crossing dimensions and scattering herself in time and space.
Just like her mother.
okay so the pantheon of discord we now have a list for (the ones we've seen before in italics):
actually let me elaborate on where we've seen all of these guys before:
just living it up in my neil gaiman–doctor who–good omens circle
"The camera was positioned in a storage yard 66 metres away."
Or, in other words, 73 yards.
THIS THIS THIS!!! Ruby dropped herself off!!
definitely a metaphor for grief or mental illness or something right? like its always there with you no matter how much you try and run away from it, and even if you do what you feel like you “should” do to move on from it. constantly affecting your life and your relationships etc. and you’re always waiting for it to serve a purpose in your life and have some big greater meaning but it just. doesn’t. and it’s still there and you have to learn to live with it
The best part about this take is the realization that RTD is putting the ocean of layers in trauma symbolism and metaphor into the companion this time, not the Doctor. This is Ruby's story and Ruby's trauma, and the whole series is going to unfold around her.
Also, it's a metaphor for grief and I just KNOW that the reason why RTD felt like this was one of the best things he's written is because that grief is his grief on display, when he lost his husband. 73 Yards is RTD's Heaven Sent, and knowing that makes it hit different.
is it just me, or does that sound like a reminder a director would give an actor right as they’re about to launch into a scene?
“and, from the top, Ruby, you’re standing in the street, on the phone to your own mother.”
or stage directions in a screenplay: RUBY, standing in the STREET, on the phone to MOTHER.
nothing to do with me.
we’ve been thinking susan twist is “The Director”, but what if she’s not? what if she’s a helpful member of the crew, trying to get through to Ruby and the Doctor in whatever ways she can; and The Director is actually Mrs Flood?
oh I do like this. Mrs Flood is the Director, and we are the Viewers, or even us the Audience is the One Who Waits, because we're always waiting for the next episode, the next season, the next Doctor, the next Show. The Toymaker is afraid of us because ultimately WE dictate his existence and survival.
like I understand the subtext that ruby is deeply terrified that there is something wrong with her that she doesn't understand but it's obvious enough to everyone else to make them abandon her just like her birth mother. I GET that. that's awesome. I also get that older ruby is like, literally a ghost and/or some changeling creature and that alone is scary enough to make people run. that's fine. HOWEVER. I feel like seeing a ghost isn't a strong enough reason to make carla abandon her and Say That. again I got the subtext reason for that but on screen, main text, what on earth was causing that? also what were the hand motions about? I spent the whole episode thinking maybe it was sign language but then ruby never bothered to learn sign so it definitely wasn't lol. LOVED this ep so much but that's what I'm hung up on
I think a lot of the mysteries of this episode can be answered by knowing the narrative rules of folklore. Horrific things happen in folk tales. Going mad because we entered too close to the spirit world is par for the course, as is terrible fates for children.
In the original Grimms fairy tales, it wasn't stepmothers who did awful things in these stories. It was mothers. Grimms adapted the tales to suit the audience he was publishing for, and erased this darker history in the tales we now know so well.
73 Yards felt like folklore through and through, for so many things. The horror, the fairy ring, the pub stories. But most importantly for its commitment to leaving the unexplainable (the supernatural) unexplained.
Why did everyone get so terrified upon meeting the Semperdistans?
Because she let them feel the horrifying knowledge of the truly Supernatural. It's the Terror of the Unknown, embodied in Ruby Sunday (as a paradox or otherworldly being herself)
I give thee Lovecraft:
Love the dual imagery of the old woman. How she represents both the previous generations that dealt with Mad Jack the first time, and the current generation worrying what their future will be. Will the older version of me look on me kindly? Is that even the older version of me, does that person even survive? Or is it only the past, silently watching us walk into destruction?
The old woman appeared after the the circle was broken, yes, but also after Ruby became aware of her own mortality due to the Doctor’s slip of the tongue.
As a representation of the previous generations, the woman is distant and offputting. Not even the oldest folks in the pub are worried about Mad Jack anymore, and when Ruby tries to bring other people in, tries to let those now-dead generations speak, Ruby becomes the problem.
She’s left to embark on this (in retrospect) decades-long mission virtually alone, getting involved in politics, taking calls, holding coats, pulling every strategic lever available to her even if it means working for this terrible man. She has to, because she’s one of the few people who fully recognize the danger he poses.
And both the past and herself-from-the-future are watching.
This right here. The thematic layers is what makes this episode so compelling and probs why RTD called it one of the best things he's ever written.
That explains why this plot works: the mixing of current politics and ancient evils, because fascism and nationalism and bigotry isn't new, it just comes in different guises in different eras, and it's the evil we all face.
ngl after finishing that episode I went from "What the fuck even was that" to "That was dumb and made no sense at all" to "Oh, Russell says it's supposed to be a Welsh folk tale, okay, huh" to "Wait no that's actually great."
This episode did something that none of the other Supernatural Things(TM) episodes did: it committed to making no sense. Church on Ruby Road made perfect sense, The Giggle and The Devil's Chord made just enough sense to not really make satisfactory levels of sense, but this episode was just... inexplicable. Where did the Doctor go? What was the woman saying to everyone? What was the woman signing with her hands? Why were all the Welsh people such jerks?How did Old Woman Ruby go back and become the semperdistans? My first thought was "there was a TON of crucial details lost somewhere in cut drafts" but no, it's a folk tale, it doesn't have to make sense and it shouldn't make perfect sense. It makes poetic sense, maybe (the fairy circle is made of hopes and dreams, Old Ruby finds hope at the end of her life that no one will abandon her, she becomes the very thing that never abandons herself) but it doesn't make scientific sense, it doesn't even try. And that's how you really commit to a fantastical turn in a sci-fi show.
(Also: doing an episode that is based on folk tales, that is, it's not just fantasy but a fantastical story, is excellent fodder for tv show theory. For some reason, Ruby's life consistently tends towards fiction...)
(Also also: the episode did a good job of feeling really long, which is impressive because it's very hard to create a false sense of time when experiencing fiction, so, good job. Cutting out the intro in particular was a clever move.)
ExACTLY THIS!!! I loved the episode, start to finish, precisely because it REALLY FELT like folktale horror.
And seeing people's confusion only proves to me that our media landscape might use the supernatural, but we are fundamentally a scientific, post-enlightenment culture, and we think the world works in logical steps and discoverable answers. And we shape our "supernatural" stories to fit that logical mold. We use the characters of folklore, but we never often capture the essence of the supernatural. (It's too scary, like Lovecraft said.)
But folklore doesn't work like that, because the truly supernatural things of the world just ARE and they don't have a reason or a purpose. They exist and we respect them, but we can never truly understand them, because they are not meant for this plane.
Things like The Sandman comics capture that feeling of true folktale. 73 Yards did the same.
Okay absolutely off the wall Doctor Who theory time.
They are trapped inside a television show. An outrageous claim I know buuuut I do have a fair bit of evidence. First something kinda unsubstantial, the sonic screwdriver literally looks like a TV remote, and in the episode the Doctor hit the Mute button.
Second: the key art for the penultimate episode "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" features a TV set
Third: The sheer amount of fourth wall breaks in the past four episodes trumps what we've seen in the whole of the revival.
Fourth: At the end of "The Devil's Cord" a music number saying there's "Always a twist", and an actress that has been popping up all over this new era is 'Susan Twist'. She keeps popping up, because 'There's Always a Twist'.
Fifth: The Doctor mentions that he thought the music was "Non-diegetic", meaning he could hear the music in the scene and assumed it was just part of the show, until Ruby mentioned she could hear it. Implying that whenever we hear the Non-diegetic music in the show so can the Doctor.
Thank you for listening to my absolute crackpot theory.
As much as I don't really want the Doctor to be sibling to the Toymaker and Maestro, this theory makes uncanny sense.
But would RTD really answer the question of the Doctor's past?
This TV theory really sounds like the Google Docs theory post-Season 2 of Good Omens. I'm living for it. (Although I don't have the OG tv theory post, and I'm hunting for all the receipts now lol)
Do you think Susan Foreman is dead or still alive somewhere?
Well, this is Doctor Who we're talking about. Susan is alive in lots of places on lots of timelines, and dead for more. And she is (we assume) a Time Lord and is (probably) the child of the Doctor's child, so that would add to the times and places she's alive in.
Or, she's alive when a Doctor Who Showrunner needs her to tell a story.
I thought she was Gallifreyan but not a Time Lord.
Given that she came and went from Doctor Who long before either Time Lords or Gallifrey were part of Doctor Who continuity, and that her only canonical post 1965 TV appearance, in The Five Doctors, doesn't address any of this, I'd say she's whatever a showrunner would need her to be.
I love it when Neil is canon agnostic.
Doctor Who in particular is a show that behooves this kind of thinking. Everything is true within its own context (within the world of the current showrunner), and so many different realities are true at the same time.
Or as the Doctor stated once,
"Sherlock Holmes solved the case before I could, as I recall." "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character," Trix pointed out. The Doctor grinned. "My dear, one of the things you'll learn is that it's all real. Every word of every novel is real, every frame of every movie, every panel of every comic strip." "But that's just not possible. I mean some books contradict other ones and–" The Doctor was ignoring her. –Lance Parkin, The Gallifrey Chronicles
And as Russell T Davies said not too long ago,
All Doctors exist. All stories are true.
i dont know if you partake in any of the doctor who comics at all - i certainly dont. i like keeping my sanity safe (its a mess of strange stories and paradoxes from what ive been able to tell. as are most comic series). but recently there was one that elaborated a bit on rose and the metacrisis’s life post journeys end, and its one of the few pieces of media we have for them. i didnt care enough to read the whole thing, the only interesting part to me was apparently they had a little girl named mia, and ive been thinking abt that dynamic nonstop since. cant decide how realistic it is for them, but on the otherside augh its so sweet. anyway, i just wanted to ask how you feel about rose and the metacrisis in general, and whatever that entails. curious abt ur thoughts on them!
- armin anon/lesbian anon/whatever you feel like calling me lol
OMGG my anon (of many names lol)! OK first off, I drafted some of this way back but forgot to add on and post, so in the words of our beloved Doctor,
I only recently started reading the comics, starting with the ones about Gabby Gonzalez by Nick Abadzis, and I have to admit:
They make me yearn pretty fucking hard to run away and travel with the Doctor. There's some killer art by Elena Casagrande that feels so much like the Doctor we know and love (that kindness, that earnest love.... god!! my heart and soul!!).
But I warn ye (any readers of this post), DO NOT TOUCH Volume 2 by Robbie Morrison. He takes Ten blatantly out of character, making him out to be an arrogant bastard who belittles his companion and is flippant in the face of suffering. (Morrison watched too much Eleven, methinks 🙈)
I haven't read the Rose/Meta-Crisis comic yet (part of the Empire of the Wolf series), but I did see the important panel from that series, showing Rose's daughter Mia:
I think the Meta-Crisis settling down to have a family with Rose is pretty in-character and very much what the Tenth Doctor would have wanted, as much as it hurt him.
Because Ten fundamentally felt unworthy of Rose.
Rose was strong and compassionate and amazing, and Ten had done so much, seen so much, experienced so much tragedy and guilt. He's a man wrecked by PTSD, depression, shame, and self-blame. He felt like it wasn't fair to her that she'd sacrifice her life to someone who would go on living and changing and becoming a different person, while she grew old and died in a world without a home and away from everyone she knew.
He didn't want her to become like him, homeless and without the love of friends and family, because to be him is to be alone. And he didn't want that for her. Because he wanted her to be happy, not just momentarily, but for the rest of her life.
Ten is a man who loathes taking life, and it weighs on him every time someone sacrifices who they are because they love him.
It's no surprise Ten's entire decision about the Meta-Crisis took place after Davros massively guilt-tripped him into thinking it was his fault that all those people died. (It wasn't.) But Davros played on Ten's depression and trauma, manipulating Ten into thinking he had done unforgivable things to the people he loved. (when in fact those people died because they were inspired to be selfless like him, or were killed someplace beyond the Doctor's reach)
I've actually been doing a lot of research on Ten's trauma (including invaluable insight from Judith Lewis Herman's famous book Trauma and Recovery). This journal article about Major Depressive Disorder speaks so deeply to Ten's character, especially post-Time War and post-Davros:
This explains so much about Ten's choice to sacrifice his own happiness and ask Rose to take his Meta-Crisis as her life partner. He's pushing her away, isolating himself. He's rejecting the people he loves the most because he's in a very, very dark place.
There's so many reasons that Ten felt he couldn't give Rose the life she wanted (his trauma, his values). There's one angle I've been sifting around in my head in the past couple years, and it's more of a headcanon than anything: For me, because of the way the Doctor's character has been established since 1963, the Doctor's own asexuality is an almost meta-conceptual reason why the Doctor in general can't have a "normative," family life.
He couldn't say "I love you"—not because he didn't love her. (He loved her more than he ever loved himself.) But also because he knew what saying those words would mean: the expectations, the responsibility, the behaviors he felt she deserved to have from him because those words carry so much weight in human culture. All those things he could not give her.
But the Meta-Crisis could. I personally headcanon that the Meta-Crisis is not asexual like the Doctor. (Just like John Smith may not have been asexual either.) The point of both John Smith and the Meta-Crisis is showing how much they differ from the Doctor—and I think sexuality is one of those differences. It's why it was so easy for John Smith to imagine a traditional life, why it was so easy for the Meta-Crisis to promise his entire world and his entire self to Rose on that beach.
Which brings me back to the Tentoo himself. He was born in battle and he can die, but what does that exactly mean for his life with Rose? It's fascinating because to imagine the Doctor feeling mortality and knowing he cannot cheat death anymore—that's a horrific, terrifying thing.
There are actually two Big Finish Audios that explore this traumatic realization for the Doctor, and what that does to him. (They're both one-shots from Jackie's POV and narration, and you can listen to them here: Part 1, Part 2).
It makes Tentoo lean into his Ninth-era darkness, a ruthlessness to villains driven by the fear that he cannot protect Rose because he is not indestructible. But luckily for him, there are people he loves around him (Jackie and Rose) who keep him from that darkness.
Additionally, the Big Finish stories lean into the fact that Tentoo and Rose aren't sitting idly by. Both of them work for Torchwood and are growing their own TARDIS to continue to defend the Earth.
They don't settle down into a domestic life, at least not right away, and I think that suits them both. We know how much Rose didn't want the life of eating chips and watching telly. But listen to what RTD's Doctor Who has always tried to say: How deeply important the everyday things are, how much the Doctor, for how amazing they are, craves for a life of simplicity and the stupid little things that define humanity.
Because here's the key: It wasn't the everyday things that bothered Rose. Like she told Mickey in "Parting of the Ways":
ROSE: But what do I do every day, mum? What do I do? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed? Is that it? MICKEY: It's what the rest of us do. ROSE: But I can't! MICKEY: Why, because you're better than us? ROSE: No, I didn't mean that. But it was. It was a better life. And I don't mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and spaceships and things. That don't matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know he showed you too. That you don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away
She hated how people let things happen to them, without challenging anything or standing up for anything. She didn't want to travel as much as she wanted to live, to be something and do something with her life.
And that's the magic of Doctor Who, particularly RTD's era. Because you can be amazing and you can have meaning even without the Doctor, but the Doctor shows you how.
You stand up for what you believe is right and you choose to give meaning to what you do in life. You don't need to travel the stars to do that. You can make choices that give your life meaning right here and now. You can believe in something. You can find meaning in your place in the universe. You can give your enthusiasm and time to something that is important. Meaning and purpose comes from how we see the world, and that change in perspective is what Rose finds with the Doctor.
If Rose is with someone who can fill her life with meaning, who inspires her to see life as a beautiful adventure, then it really doesn't matter what she's doing with them. In The Impossible Planet, Rose was completely willing to settle down with Ten to "find a planet, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe." Why? Because she'd be with him.
ROSE: This lot said they'd give us a lift. DOCTOR: And then what? ROSE: I don't know. Find a planet, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe.
If I imagine Tentoo as a dad, I can't help but imagine him like Tennant himself. Kind, giving, selfless, and loving. I think Tentoo would be so afraid of letting someone hurt his child, because he hasn't had a family in so long, and he isn't the same man he was in those ancient days when, as a completely different man, he had a family.
He's a man still afraid of himself, still keenly aware of the inhuman things he's capable of. I think this fear would drive Rose and him closer together, like it did when he was Nine. But Tentoo is more self-aware now, more willing to grow and change and be different. Because he's the Doctor who was given a second chance, to live the life he thought he'd never have with the person he loves. He wants to be different to make this work.
I also think Tentoo would be the Doctor who passes on his title after he's gone. Not that I like to think about Tentoo dying one day, but let's be real: Where would his TARDIS go? As a half-human, I think Tentoo could imagine Mia taking on the role of Defender of the Earth when he and Rose have passed on. She would have been there to see it grow, and she would have been there when Tentoo and Rose first stepped out into the stars with this brand-new TARDIS. Because of his mortality, I think it would make Tentoo more open to sharing the secret, sacred things of his Gallifreyan people with the family he chose to start. He's not alone anymore, he has someone to share it with, someone who will pass it on after him and keep the world safe in his stead.
Which is all to say, I think it's a gift that Rose has the Meta-Crisis. Because when Ten regenerated and became, as he said, a completely different man, she was able to stay with the person she fell in love with and explore what that life was like, to have him with her for all of her life, and all of his.
something about the fairies taunting jack with rose petals no less. something about the toymaker covering the unit hq in rose petals while he gets shot at. you’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you blessed you with the curse of eternal life
jack loses everybody he loves over and over again and as a reminder of that, rose petals.
the doctor loses everybody he loves over and over again and as a reminder of that, rose petals.
tell me that doesn’t sound remarkably similar to the way fifteen describes the goblins to ruby. the goblins are part of the toymaker’s “legions” — ancient and mysterious entities from the dawn of time, slipping in through the cracks in reality, stimulated by human belief and superstition. goblins abduct little children for their own ends and so do the “fairies”. you don’t know where the chicken or the egg is, where history ends and mythology begins: did the folklore emerge from sightings of the real creatures, or did the creatures coalesce like an egregore because of the proliferation of the folklore about them, a manifestation of humanity’s deepest fears come alive ever since the toymaker changed the rules of the game?
but was it the toymaker? could this all be a chain reaction, kickstarted billions of years ago (or only nineteen, depending on how you look at it) when one headstrong young woman looked into the time vortex and turned herself into a literal deus ex machina, defying all laws of reality, raising the dead and disintegrating the death-bringers? could that have been the moment (lol.) when it all began to unravel?
i haven’t seen classic who. what do i know. but maybe it wasn’t the line of salt at the edge of the universe. maybe it was one girl, seeing everything that ever was, everything that will ever happen, anything that ever could be. the fairies haven’t stopped pursuing jack ever since: he’s the living evidence of her miracle. they slaughter his entire train carriage but they don’t touch a hair on his head. other children are the fairies’ chosen ones, yes, but jack is the chosen one of their goddess. the bad wolf
i wonder who that jonathan groff character in the upcoming series is.
the gut-wrenching part is that fourteen, for all his emotional intimacy and growth, is so similar to ten: both of them can't tell even the people they love the most what is hurting them.
but if some sci-fi reason allows that other person to see him at his heart, with all the pain and anguish inside him, he immediately falls apart and reaches out with everything he has.
it happened when Madame de Pompadour saw inside his mind and understood his true loneliness. it happened here when fake!Donna described to him all his sorrows and provided what seemed like a safe space.
he wants to be comforted so hard, but he won't allow himself the pain of the work it takes to TALK about it.
and the awful part is fourteen is taking steps towards it, but even in the end, he can't quite bring himself to tell Donna what he talked about with fake!Donna. It hurt too much.
This is a very, very common trauma response. This is from "The Body Keeps Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk who is widely considered one of the biggest experts on the effects of trauma.
thank you for this amazing addition!! I've been meaning to read that book for ages. it's incredible how accurate and nuanced the portrayal of trauma is in the doctor's arc. that's a huge reason why 10 is my favorite doctor, because what he goes thru is so deep and so painful that only a really compassionate trauma reading of him does justice to an interpretation of his choices.
So many times people can tack up his choices as smt easy to grasp, like Time Lord Victorious. it's not just that he's got an ego and decided to go godmode. TLV is a tragedy of such poignant and layered trauma. he LITERALLY disassociates when the sound of Adelaide's team is dying fills his ears, then he continues that deep depersonalization until a strong, physical sensory sensation brings him back to his own self (Adelaide's gunshot). re-centering yourself through your senses is textbook how to get out of a dissociative episode. but it's tragic that ten's intervention was traumatic to him in and of itself.
anyway. ten & his trauma is everything to me. 💔
okay i love the john simm master but the way he's defeated by the doctor literally textually being empowered by prayer and then A-posing around the room while glowing is.... it's a lot...
ngl I was all about that Jesus Christ imagery following the Doctor throughout this season (Gridlock being a not-even-subtle religious allegory and him crucifixion-posing after his sacrifice in Daleks in Manhattan) so this ending sorta metaphorically didn’t come out of the blue?
hang on in what way was gridlock a religious allegory? i watched it just the other day and didn't catch that
thx for asking @demilypyro ! There's a lot of religious metaphors in this particular ep, probably the most religious-themed ep in Ten's era alongside The Satan Pit. First off, there's the Christian hymn "The Old Rugged Cross," which comforts the travelers in their long endless Drive. We see people from many walks of life on the Highway (old, young, queer, etc), because it's supposed to represent Life.
But the travelers' hope is somewhat misguided, because there isn't any City alive out there beyond the Highway, and the population relies a lot on drugs to stay happy. (Religion was called the "opiate of the masses" by Karl Marx). In the end, the sky opens up (a very religiously-coded image) to free the travelers. Even if the city leaders are dead, there was something out there who saved them: a dying god (the Face of Boe) and a lonely god (the Doctor).
(Above transcript from New Earth)
What I love about Gridlock is how religion is both treated as dangerous (preventing the people from acting and trying to challenge the injustices of the system) and comforting (providing hope and community to people).
What's really fun is that Russell T Davies, an atheist, wrote this story to "to show how good faith can be, regardless of the existence of God." And it was David Tennant, from a Christian family, who argued more strongly that the Doctor should remain unconvinced by the travelers' faith. Ten's reaction to the hymn is not happy like Martha, who is very moved by the singing. Ten's agnostic/atheist doubt here is David Tennant's direct contribution. (All quotes & info from here.)
So in the end, it's a layered episode because it's a story about an atheist's compassionate view of religion (RTD) and a person of faith's honest appraisal of religion's shortcomings (DT). The travelers are misguided, but they are also rewarded for their faith.
The Christian hymn closes out the episode, the soundtrack to the Doctor confessing to Martha his sins (lying to her, being dishonest about his past). And yet that confession relieves him, for a time, of that guilt and pain, and he can smile remembering his people.
Ultimately, the episode is about the good things in faith, despite rightly-placed unbelief and skepticism.
okay i love the john simm master but the way he's defeated by the doctor literally textually being empowered by prayer and then A-posing around the room while glowing is.... it's a lot...
ngl I was all about that Jesus Christ imagery following the Doctor throughout this season (Gridlock being a not-even-subtle religious allegory and him crucifixion-posing after his sacrifice in Daleks in Manhattan) so this ending sorta metaphorically didn’t come out of the blue?
