even though it’s sad to have to leave some parts of your life behind you, it’s crucial.
there’s more to do.
you’re needed in the future, where a newer, stronger version of you is waiting.
martha jones
I have a question. I’ve always assumed that Martha was the eldest sibling, based on her interactions with Tish in “The Lazarus Experiment.” Her dismissal of Tish’s work accomplishments has a strong vibe of an older sister thinking her younger sibling is still too young to do something important. When she’s trying to get Tish away from Lazarus on the roof, Tish asks why she always has to try to ruin things for her. All of their interactions feel like an older sister used to taking care of the younger, and the younger resenting that her older sister doesn’t treat her like an adult.
However, in at least two of the novels, Martha refers to Tish as her older sister. I looked up her Wikia page, and they don’t have an episode reference for that fact, which means it’s only ever stated in the books.
My question is this: Is it possible the books got it wrong? The only way in which Martha acts like a middle child is the role she takes as family mediator. Every other thing I see in her speaks strongly of a firstborn child. Is there something I’m missing?
I always thought she was the middle sister, the peacemaker. Caught between Tish siding with her mom and Leo siding with her dad.(Smith & Jones) I admit I don’t read the novels and usually don’t take canon from them from the TARDIS wiki page, but it’s always been my assumption it’s Tish, Martha, and Leo. Also, just b/c Martha is younger doesn’t mean she can’t harp on Tish if Tish hasn’t found her purpose in life but flits from job to interest to whatever. Martha is dedicated & knows what she wants, older or younger, that doesn’t mean Tish has yet.
Birth order doesn’t matter, personality does.
For sure; I’m the oldest and my life is soooo much less together than my younger sister’s.
And I’ve always gone with Martha as a middle child too.
I think it’s the rooftop scene that really makes me lean toward Martha being older. Every line of Tish’s up until she sees Lazarus change is resentful of Martha telling her what to do and always trying to control her life. Which as you say @hellostarlight20, could be because Martha’s life is more put together that her sister’s, except Tish seems to have a decent handle on her life.
Martha as the family peacekeeper could stem from the same nurturing personality that made her want to be a doctor. She wants people to be happy and healthy, and constant family strife is bad for everyone.
My general approach is to accept book/audio information as canon as long as nothing from an episode contradicts it. That’s why I like the books–they fill in some of those blanks. This one contradicts my head canon though, and I’m having a hard time reconciling the two.
While I used to think Martha was the oldest for some of her personality traits (high achievement, etc.), from a chronological perspective, it makes much more sense that she’s the middle child. Tish is already out of college and working on her career. Martha is still in uni (and remember, med school in Britain is a five year undergrad program, so Martha’s not likely older than 23), and we know for certain that Leo, the youngest, is 21.
Martha’s middle child tendencies do show up a few times. We see a lot of instances where she tends to have that middle child self-centeredness and desire to get attention. This could also be part of why she’s dismissive of Tish’s career. She’s spent much of her life fighting for attention, and as a med student (which is super competitive to get into), she feels she deserves it, but never really knows how to ask for it, so she uses some passive-aggressive tactics.
Also Martha definitely performs that classic peace-keeping/harmonizing role in her family. She is quite literally caught in the middle there.
I also second @jaydelahaye’s statement. I’m the oldest, but my brother, who has always been the quintessential middle child in our family, is the one who is getting a PhD and who is neurotically organized with his life. And I can’t tell you how many times I told him he was ruining things for me and I hated him when we were kids. (We get along great now). Martha and Tish seem to still have a good deal of that sibling tension between them.
“Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up. Never give in.”
In the 61st century, the Shadow Proclamation recruits a group of women from different periods to form an elite squad: the Department of Objective and Covert Temporal Oversight through Respondent and Warranted Humanitary Operations, also known as D.O.C.T.O.R.W.H.O.
After a year of horror on the Valiant, all Francine and Clive Jones wanted was for their daughter to live a normal life. They adored gentle Tom Milligan, who worked in a hospital, who took Martha on dates to the symphony and weekends to the Lake District. Tom, who tethered her to an average human existence.
He was everything Martha couldn’t settle for. The day Martha returned his engagement ring, Francine had a panic attack.
After the disappearing stars and the Daleks, Mickey materialized from nowhere. Francine and Clive weren’t keen on him. It wasn’t his accent, or what part of London he was from, or anything like that; his quiet confidence and determination frightened them.
Martha and Mickey fit together seamlessly – aliens, otherworldly technology, a passion for finding something to fix – even when they weren’t working together, they functioned as a team. Every night before bed, Mickey loaded and double-checked her ammo clips. Martha always made sure his Torchwood and UNIT paperwork was properly filed. They both lit up like Piccadilly Circus when the other walked into the room. Martha’s parents saw clear as day that she would run hand-in-hand with Mickey down that extraterrestrial rabbit-hole, and they’d lose her for good.
In the end, Jack Harkness brought Clive and Francine around. They’d forged a familial bond with Jack during their year on the Valiant, nursing him as he recovered from each new death inflicted on him by the Master. They’d bolstered each others’ spirits, kept each other from giving in to despair, until Martha returned to them. After everything was over, Jack spent every Christmas with the Joneses.
When Martha broke the engagement news to her parents over Christmas supper, Jack was the one who soothed Francine’s nerves and Clive’s anger. After all, who else could love their brave, dedicated daughter as much as she deserved, except Mickey? They’d both traveled with the Doctor and been irrevocably changed by the experience. They’d both lived in alternate universes and understood each other like no one else could.
More than anything else, Jack told them what he’d witnessed firsthand: how deeply Mickey’s loyalty ran, especially once he gave his heart to someone. And everyone could see Mickey’s heart, cradled right there in the palm of Martha’s hand.
By the time Christmas pudding was gone, Francine smiled through her tears, and Clive embraced Mickey and called him “son.” And as soon as they were out of earshot, Jack suggested that Martha and Mickey honeymoon in the back-end of Bulgaria, not only because it was a beautiful and rugged spot, but also because there might just be a few Sontarans there who needed sorting.
Since the very start of his run, I’ve been of the opinion that Moffat was revisiting aspects of the RTD era that created a problematic Doctor with troubling companion relationships– things like the lopsided love story; a companion abandoning her boyfriend; an antagonistic Doctor-boyfriend relationship; the Doctor as angry god; a companion memory wipe; a damaged, untrustworthy Doctor; a genocide that turned out to be pointless; etc. – and creating his own, in my opinion restorative, versions. I wonder if, in his last season, he’s going to tackle the biggest, most troubling one of all: RTD’s disturbing treatment of the companion of color, whose single most defining attribute was, “the companion the Doctor rejected.” At the time, I wrote, “For Martha to be the one not seen, not validated, not empowered with independent agency, is disturbing.” Not surprisingly, I’m really hoping Moffat does this one last thing before he goes.
