Honestly, whatever you think of the episode… WHAT A SCENE. Over five decades of Doctor Who history (Whostory?) packed into a few seconds. With the theme tune! I loved it to pieces.
So being me I’ve gone through it frame by frame to pick out everything that appeared. (This gets pretty long, as you may have expected, sorry)
But it was in a comic! The Thirteen/Ten Weeping Angels story, I’m guessing. Which I have never seen in a shop and don’t know how to get! But look, semi-canonical interaction!
Edited to say: WAIT I found another page and this one’s even better:
Twitter is ablaze in speculation about what the Big Thing in this episode is gonna be. Man I haven’t been this excited about a DW episode in ages! So here’s my guesses for returning character:
AMY! Based on that picture I reblogged a few ago. Who knows if it’s even legit? But that’s the one I want the most.
MARTHA! The Judoon are back for this episode and they debuted alongside Martha, so I figure it’s a reasonable guess.
JACK! A lot of people seem to think it might be Jack. I dunno why, but hey! Maybe it’s him.
RIVER! Well, she’s connected to Amy and there’s still that photo to take into consideration… and I really want Thirteen to meet her, and I think lots of other people do too.
Man! This is even more intense than The Masked Singer.
Okay, a few of the more recent ones do. Yaz has Sonya:
(I find Sonya and her current status as the not-favourite granddaughter interesting, I really hope she’ll be back in some capacity.)
And Martha had Tish and Leo, although even then Leo just kinda disappeared halfway through the series:
I’m not really all that good with Classic Who but Turlough had a brother called Malkon, although I gather he only ever appeared in one story:
And although we never see them in the flesh we learn at one point that Rose gained a brother called Tony, and River a brother called Anthony (the similarity in those names, I always wondered if it was coincidence or tribute or what). Also the Brig, uh, seems to have a brother who may be canonical or may not be. (Welcome to Doctor Who.)
Is it that weird that the Doctor only seems to travel with only-children? I suppose it makes sense that she would gravitate towards them. Lots of the Doctor’s companions (take Amy or Bill for example) don’t just have no silbings, but no-one at all. Plus I suppose back in the older Who days there was never any need for much companion backstory at all.
However! Me personally, I’m dying for more sibling stories. Doctor Who does so few of them and I want more! There’s so many dynamics there that writers could explore. I’d quite like to see Sonya travelling with the Doctor and Yaz for a bit, for example, and get a proper exploration of the relationship between the Khan sisters. My fingers are crossed, anyway.
Occasionally people rag on Martha for “leaving all of time and space because a boy didn’t like her”. And I’m like hang on a minute, time and space? Think about it. Where exactly do we see Martha Jones go on the TARDIS?
Elizabethean London, meets Shakespeare. Nice.
The slums of New New York
The slums of old New York
Home.
SS Pentalion, a cargo ship currently crashing.
Stuck in 1913
Stuck in 1963
The end of the universe, as everything dies
Messaline, unterraformed planet of soldiers
They go to one nice place. There is one other mention of having been somewhere nice. (The moon landing, four times) They never spend the start of an episode just larking about, or end the episode intending to hang around and have fun. (Think Long Game, Idiot’s Lantern, Fear Her, stuff like that.) (Smile, Thin Ice, Vincent and the Doctor, The Rebel Flesh, Unicorn and the Wasp, Midnight, Fires of Pompeii…)
Then consider that a lot of the time it wasn’t just ‘not fun’. She has to spend two months in a British village in 1913 working as a maid, with no protection from the racism surrounding her; working in a shop for some period in 1969. Walking the conquered Earth, alone, for a year.
There isn’t a problem with “bad things happen to characters in action-adventure shows”. But the uniformity of Martha’s experiences is unique.
There’s also the fact that she’s allowed to make that choice. She’s choosing to stay with her family because she knows how it is to be far away and powerless to keep them safe. She chooses to stay and be a doctor. Most companions don’t get to make that choice. She took that opportunity and nobody should hate her for that.
I bought a purple tank top today, mainly because it was hella on sale and it fit me nicely but also because when I put it on my brain said “This is a Martha Jones top” and I was very pleased with myself. Now, I can’t remember if Martha ever wore a purple tank top but it’s definitely in the line of things my brain apparently thinks she’d wear.
remember how during the year that never was that woman sold martha out, but when things were back to normal martha brought her flowers because she understood why she did it and still respected her
even as so much of the fandom was hating on martha like mad, martha jones herself refused to villainize other women for the choices they made in difficult circumstances. and the more brilliant and badass and wonderful martha is, the sadder it makes people look for hating on her.
Doctor Who: my kind of ending. Yes, I’ve been rewatching it again.
Donna keeps her memories and her human/time lord hybrid nature because [insert sci-fi explanation], finds the sonic pen from the episode Partners In Crime and travels with Doctor and Rose, and Martha and Mickey join them sometimes when they want a break from working from constantly defending Earth AND ALL OF THEM ARE IN ONE UNIVERSE THANK YOU VERY MUCH. And Jack too, he just didn’t fit in the composition, sorry Jack.
,p>
