You lovely people have answered some of the questions I was left with on Saturday night, so thanks, guys!
It's probably too late to do this on this thread, but...
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Like LabRat, I was really taken by surprise with the whole Martha thing. (Also like LabRat, I loved the Face of Bo stuff. I found myself grinning very stupidly at that and thinking, yes, that was perfect!
)
But <sigh>, I really didn't like Torchwood last season, so have very little enthusiasm for watching any of the next one. Which is a shame, because Captain Jack is great in his Dr Who episodes. Oh, how I liked him in these last few! And I would like to see Martha again.
My heartfelt admiration to the Dr Who writers, though, who made the last three episodes mesh with Torchwood while allowing them to stand very well on their own.
I confess, at the beginning, I wasn't too taken with this season of Dr Who, but I'm glad that I stuck with it, because I thought it got better as time went on, and became fantastic towards the end. As for Martha, I really came to love her character, and FA's portrayal.
(As an aside, when this latest series started, there was a complete lack of water-cooler conversation about Dr Who at work, which contrasted very sharply with the first two series. However, for the last half of the season, that 'buzz' has been back -- a noticeable change.)
As I said earlier, I was really taken by surprise by Martha's choice at the end of the series, but I thought the writers did it very, very well. Martha's family do need her. Moreover, with Rose, I got the impression that travelling with the Doctor was a way out of her mundane, Earth-bound life. With Martha, it was more of an... interlude... in the middle of her medical training. I get the feeling that Martha has more to go back to.
Plus the reasons Martha gives to the Doctor for going back to her old life... Yeah. I'm glad she told him / the viewers.
I was struck very strongly with the contrast between Martha's actions here and the backstory we were given for Sarah Jane Smith last(?) season. Martha's getting out. She'll survive. She -- hopefully -- won't be scarred by the experience for years to come.
Why did Martha phone the pediatrician? I suspected she was thinking that maybe they might have a future together, so she wanted to know where he was, maybe to get a placement at the hospital where he worked. (Mind you, I also thought that smacked of stalking, but, hey.)
LabRat, you said:
I liked the fact that at the end of this season she left the TARDIS feeling very much on an equal footing with the doctor - a heroine in her own right - rather than, as she said herself, feeling secondbest and inferior to him.
You know, I didn't think Martha had been feeling second best and inferior to the Doctor so much as to
Rose. All the way through the series, there have been mentions of Rose, and even in the last few episodes there have been digs. ('Good old Rose'; 'Oh, she was
blonde', and the like.) Plus, there had been the whole thing about the Doctor being pretty much blind to Martha's attraction to him.
(I guess I should say a big 'kudos' to the writers for continuing to mention Rose this last season. Maybe she wasn't there in person, but we haven't been able to forget her, just as the characters haven't. Rose hasn't been brushed under the proverbial carpet, never to be heard of again. That, for me, is good writing.)
Anyway...
Fingers crossed that this year's Christmas special turns out to be much, much better than the last one! (Please, no more Catherine Tate and no more trees flowering in December...)
Chris <who can't believe she's said so much...>
P.S. I rather enjoyed the main plot, too.
