owl | Ok, I'm un-appropriating Last of the Time Lords right now

angua9 made an interesting post a couple of days ago about appreciation vs appropriation of canon. (Briefly, appreciators enjoy it as is and if it stops being enjoyable, they wander off, while appropriators become attached to one aspect of it, or to the fanon, to the point where the canon disappoints them and the post screeds of complaint, or in extreme cases, wed Snape on the astral plane.

I fear I may have slightly appropriated Doctor Who recently, or in other words become one of a new breed of rapid Martha fen. Or possibly Last of the Time Lords was a complete stinker of an episode, down there with Love and Monsters.

Things in LotTL that I'm throwing out of my personal canon:

Aged!Doctor. It is necessary that he be hors de combat in order for the Doctor-in-training to come into her own, but turning him into Gollum is just embarrassing. And the hundred-year-old prosthetic isn't as good as they think it is, either.

I can't buy that the only thing the Doctor and the Jones would think of in a whole year is a plan that was useless. Not to mention the underuse of Jack. Hey, if the problem is solved by shooting the paradox machine, why didn't Jack try it months ago? He doesn't exactly have anything to lose.

I like the idea of Martha fighting with words instead of weapons, but not floating glowing Doctor. I'd have Martha's stories breaking Archangel's psychic field, or turning it against the Master, but not the believing in the Doctor business, that's not going to be good for his God complex. And her elaborate ruse to get aboard the Valiant was unnecessary-the plan, such as it was, would have worked perfectly well with Martha sitting on a beach in Brighton.

The Doctor standing in silence when Martha said she wasn't second-best. After a series of unrequited rubbish, it wouldn't have killed him to say something more than "Yes" "OK" and "Is this going anywhere?" I have little hope that this will be fixed later, either.
And I hated that Martha's real reason for leaving was because the Doctor wouldn't wuv her, as if that's so much more important than her family or her career.

Normally I'm more of an appreciator than an appropriator, or, as the Harmoanians or Draco-in-leather brigade would call me, a sheep. I mostly ship with what I think is the canon, and my fanfics are mainly fill-in-the-gaps, might have happened off-screen shorts.

However, I've just noticed that I'm more of an appropriator when the canon is many-authored: Lord of the Rings (book) or Harry Potter I just read and discuss, I don't even fanfic much, whereas with a TV series like Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica it seems much easier to say "I'm going to quietly ignore episode X-after all, the writers dropped plotline Y and forgot about it two series ago." Also, the quality of TV series varies much more than a series of books by the same author. Films, like Potc, are somewhere in between, and Star Wars is a bit unusual: all the six films are canon (and I don't care that much when Han shot), but I throw out the books except for any interesting world-building I want to use in fic, and I've written a long original character fic that 's happening just off-screen. I suppose I appreciate the Skywalkers' story, but I've appropriated their world.

New Who is especially easy, because in a way it's fanon: Rusty and Co are fans who have got the opportunity to make a giant fanvid of the original series, complete with Mary Sues.

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Actually, I've just seen it and I thought it was awesome. YM definitely does vary, obviously (and I agree about the prosthetic, but well - this was the show that did green painted bubble-wrap as the villain once.

But Martha was awesome. I've experienced desperate hero-worshipping unrequited love - he wasn't a Time Lord, obviously (gay, as I discovered finally only the month before last; me being unrequited and yearning obviously suited him as a sort of camouflage, not that he intended any harm by keeping me hanging all those years, bless) but in my case it lasted seven years or so, not the eighteen months or so we have to assume Martha's did.

But is trying to do good things in the hope of impressing someone who isn't going to be interested in the right way so much to be despised? I thought it was a heart-breaking portrayal of someone who was brought to realise her true potential through - but past - unrequited love (and calling up the young doctor was such a cool move, yah!) because unrequited love happens, it hurts, it's no-one's fault (I love Jack for his calm, unjudgemental "You too, huh?" in the last episode-but-one).

Of course it was the most important thing to her - at the time. I shaped my entire career because of bloke concerned in my case. It was, actually, a good direction; I loved him because - as it turned out - we had a basic congruity of outlook on the world. I learned to look at things more fully because I was in love at a particular time. I became - I believe - a better person as a result. And that sort of development was what I - personally - took from that episode.

And I loved Martha's gesture with the flowers to the Professor.

I was absolutely wibbling throughout, and even when the special effects got silly - and they did, hell they did - I was still wibbling.

That made me cry, anyway, and I'd normally trade a thousand RTDs for one Stephen Moffat.

The awesomeness of Martha was one of the good things about this episode (the other being the Master's death scene).

The love...it would have been fine with me if it hadn't been coming on the heels of Rose, who seemed at some points in s2 to have subsumed her identity entirely into the Doctor, and said this is how I died when what actually happened was that she lost Her Man. She started off fancying him and being snarky about his trousers, and then suddenly in Human Nature it was how she loved the Doctor.

Have you seen all the hooha about the race thing?

Yes, I've seen the hoohah.

It seemed very silly to me.

Apparently some people thought it Wasn't Responsible for RTD to depict the Master (a Barking Mad Meglomaniac (TM)) to be shown as Also A Racist.

Which part of "Martha was brilliant and saved the world" wasn't responsible about it I lost interest in deciphering. Which part of "prepared and sensible" Martha's family were seemed to have been lost in the flood.

Look, fandom, deal:

Martha carried the Word. In her special sense, but RTD like me was, I expect, brought up proper. I can see why that might be uncomfortable as a quasi religious proposition, but for me Martha was more realistic and infinitely more heroic than Rose (Rose did it with Tardis power, Martha did it with her feet and voice).

Martha is wonderful and the race-wank seems to be so missing the point. For - after al - Jack the Uber-WASP doesn't get him either.

Oh, I think the Master putting the Jones in the maid outfits was meant to be 'Look, villain going for maximum humiliation by evoking oppressive history.'
It was, however, unfortunate that the two characters who are pointedly Not Rose were played by black actors. I'm still annoyed by Mickey having to save the world three time before he got any appreciation at all.

I think if you look at the whole season there's some things that can be read as racial - Human Nature / Family of Blood, for example. Though that was the attitude in the early 20th century, to be sure.

Yes; I don't think we can really say RTD superimposed his own personal racism, sexism and class-conflict on the egalitarian paradise that was the pre-WWI British Empire...

I was so pleased that they didn't give Joan and John 21st century liberal attitudes because they were the good guys, like they didn't in the Dalek two-parter. I would have expected Martha's grumble to the TARDIS to have been 'Would have been that hard to find somewhere we both were inconspicuous?' or 'I can't stop him from doing the things he said not to listen because his era-appropriate attitudes mean he doesn't listen to a word I say' instead of 'He's fallen in love with someone else', because I am so tired of all the companions being in love with the Doctor. Before that it seemed like Martha and the Doctor liked and trusted each other, and she appreciated his trousers ;), which would have been a nice change from Rose if they'd kept it up. And she has a degree to get and a family to look after, which is reason enough for her to leave. Can we have a female companion who isn't motivated by romantic love now, please?

I actually find that whole race wank more insulting to Martha and her family than RTD ever was. It's like they seem to ignore everything that makes these characters great, just for the sake of some 'perceived' insult to race.

What about Mickey? Both of them are awesome, both of them end up leaving because the Doctor doesn't love them as much as Rose. While Jack just says 'Sorry, I have to go and ~~be on BBC2~~ look after my gang of incompetents'.

It's probably just the effect of Rose the Mary Sue, but it can look a bit bad. You're right about some of the wank, I've seen some people saying, in effect, Martha/the Jones aren't showing the right stereotypes.

Personally, I think we had two many Joneses and not enough time to spend on them—Rose had have the family members and twice the time. I liked Francine's arc, and I wish Tish had had something to do that wasn't 'See how evil and sexist/racist Saxon is. See the blinking BAD GUY SIGN over his head.'
I'm still annoyed that she was shown as shallow—back off, sleazy octogenarian, but now you're young I'll snog you.

Ok, I'm un-appropriating Last of the Time Lords right now

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