Fictional characters who shaped my life (not in any order): Martha Jones
There’s so much to admire about Martha, both before her TARDIS travels and after. She was brave, and she was compassionate (she sobbed, actually broke down, over that one little Hath who saved her), and she loved her family a lot.
And damn, but she had a near-superhuman endurance. She walked the Earth, all alone, in the cold and the danger. I can barely handle one week of camping in a field- she was out in the elements, uncomfortable and hungry, for a YEAR! I’ve never got over my admiration for that feat. It blows my mind.
Then there’s the other stuff. She (again, near-superhumanly) put up with several months of racist behaviour in an unfamiliar land, just to help the Doctor, and she didn’t hate either him or Joan by the end of it. (Then she had to do it again in the 1960s when the Angels took the TARDIS! Bloody hell.) She rose from her hiding place when the Master started shouting for her, unwilling to put her saviours in any more danger. She laughed in the face of the man who’d decimated the planet, the man about to murder her. And much later on, after being told she was going to hell for it, she bargained with the Daleks for the fate of humanity. Something that must surely have killed her inside…
So yes. She is very, very strong. But my favourite thing about her (as sad as I was when it actually happened) is that she left. Because as awesome as the Doctor’s world is, it can still change you, warp you, chew you up and spit you out, and Martha knew that. She’d seen so much good on her travels, but also so much bad- and not just the monsters either.
Anyway. Martha Jones was offered the entire universe, and she turned it down because she knew the cost. Because she wanted to stay and help her family, because she thought she could do good elsewhere. That’s some amazing, underrated heroism, the sort I think people should celebrate more. The sort I hope I have somewhere.