Mickey Smith is in some ways the Harry Sullivan of the post-2005 series of Doctor Who. He’s a regular guy, a nice guy, who spends his entire run on the show being verbally abused by the Doctor when he’s not being ignored completely. And yet he gets through it without being horribly melted, and remains basically a nice guy in spite of all.
Mickey is introduced nominally as Rose’s boyfriend, but this seems to be true only in the loosest possible sense. Rose clearly has very little investment in him, and they’re never portrayed as being terribly close – he’s just kind of there, as he’s always been just kind of there. Mickey is eminently forgettable and inevitably forgotten – Rose forgets he’s been replaced by a plastic duplicate and might be dead in the space of about five minutes, after having totally failed to notice said replacement over the course of an entire dinner. This is not intended as an indictment against Rose – all it means is that she loves running more than she loves Mickey, which, well, she really really loves running. It’s just one more of the trials of being Mickey. Nobody pays him any mind, not even his supposed girlfriend.
Mickey is one of those characters where there’s a real disconnect between how the characters, the show, and to great extent the audience perceive him and how he is in fact portrayed. The Doctor calls him “Mickey the Idiot” almost exclusively (or “Rickey” when he’s feeling particularly snarky), and “Father’s Day” has Jackie characterize him as “clingy” – but these epithets don’t actually reflect reality at all. He’s certainly not clingy, for one thing – he makes no effort to stop Rose leaving and has no delusions that they are a couple after her return. And a frightened child with the wherewithal to actually run from the monsters rather than be devoured by them has every right to cling.
Mickey is also not an idiot, nor does he ever actually act like one or do anything idiotic. Quite the contrary – he’s stunningly good at figuring certain types of things out, and refreshingly practical. He does as good a job at discovering an alien incursion as a top notch investigative reporter with 30-odd years of his experience on him, for instance. He picks up on other people’s hints and coded messages, like the whole “you don’t have to be an idiot” bit in “Age of Steel.” He hacks into government websites and manages to get his hands on nuclear launch codes, which he is both willing and able to use if necessary. When confronted with problems, Mickey finds solutions, whether they’re in the form of doing extensive research on the Doctor (and actually finding significant substantive material, like his UNIT connection) or knowing when, where, and how to lay his hands on a Big Yellow Truck. And he figures out just how toxic the situation in the TARDIS is for him much faster than, say, Martha does – it takes him all of one episode to start looking for a way out. Mickey sees things like they are, and does what he needs to do.
Perhaps the most admirable thing about Mickey is that he never really holds anything against …anyone. Despite all the crap he goes through, he is always there for the others when they need him. He spends a year under suspicion of murder, and not only says nothing, but also bears absolutely no ill will to Rose over it. Or, for that matter, her mother, who was the one making the accusations in the first place. Jackie just sort of apologizes and they’re cool. He continues to support and be there for Rose whenever she happens to turn up, and in whatever way she needs at the time. Even when he decides to leave, it’s much more about finding his own path, rather than any vindictiveness against the others.
Mickey’s story is more internally focused than really anyone else’s. He goes through a series of epiphanies and moments of self discovery, possibly because he’s left alone so much. I really love the plotline with his grandmother, which he has never talked about because he has never been asked. There is stuff going on with him that doesn’t revolve around the Doctor and the main plotlines and such, and that is kind of rare and wonderful to see. He’s the hero of a different story, and now and again we get to see parts of that story. And he’s one character who really becomes better than he was. He finds his confidence and his purpose, and it’s not as a companion. He has the opportunity to make up for his past mistakes, and both the opportunity and the mistakes are his alone, and he does it. He finds what’s important to him and he goes for it, after having been the supporting character in other people’s stories for too long.
I tend to take issue with the whole “tin dog” thing, simply because Mickey’s role on the show is absolutely nothing like K-9’s. The Doctor loves that dog more than he loves most people, and treats him with respect and consideration. And also K-9 really hates being called tin. But it is an apt metaphor for Mickey discovering that he needs to become the hero of his own story, and Mickey is all about discovering new things about himself. His internal wheels are always turning, but he almost never voices these changes. Mickey is constantly thinking – he is one of the most thoughtful characters on the entire show, and what he arrives at is always a surprise. But he’s always good to the people around him, even when they’re not good to him.
And for the record, I don’t ship Martha and Mickey at all. The only thing the two of them have in common is that they’re both fine folks the Doctor treated like crap. Given that Mickey’s whole story arc is about finding value and worth outside the immediate sphere of the Doctor, pairing them in this way just seems to be really missing the point. And I’d rather ship Martha with her fiance anyway. But whether I ship it or not has nothing to do with how much I like each of the characters, since they are both utterly lovely people.
What I like about them So under-appreciated, in- and out-of-universe, but actually quite awesome.
What I dislike about them Frankly, he’s pretty sexist.
Favourite moment World War 3. Missiles at Downing Street. Jackie: “I could stop you.” And he says “Go on then.”
Least favourite moment “If I were you I’d go easy on the chips” from School Reunion. Talking to Rose. With regards to the Doctor caring about Sarah Jane.
A situation with this character that I want to see explored more Mickey in Space.
An interesting AU for this character What if he’d joined the TARDIS crew in, say, New Earth.
Other ships? He and Martha would make a decent couple if the writing actually cared about them at all.
BROTP with Jackie
NOTP —
An assortment of headcanons! He and Martha have a helicopter with glitter cannons for particularly spectacular not-rescues-because-they’ve-already-saved-the-day.
Moffat has been trying to make Clara into his Rose. That’s something a lot of people agree on(not only in tumblr, I have actually found actual newspaper articles about this).
I was talking to a friend about the lack of POC’s in the show and we got into the subject of Danny Pink. And that’s when another thing clicked:
Danny is Clara’s Mickey.
A handsomer/more accomplished (in society’s eyes)/whiter version of Mickey.
And sure Mickey’s writing (and Noel’s acting, something he changed a little bit during the second season) was at points problematic, but he was more developed as a secondary character than Rory Williams. We saw going from an overgrown teenager whose main concern was football (but still smart and at that point more accomplished in life than Rose) and by the end of season four he had become a hero on his own right.
As stated by Noel
Mickey went from being “a clown” into “someone with a bit more edge and a bit more stubble.”
Take Rose out of his story and he could have accomplished some of those things over time. He was curious (as shown by the fact he was into conspiracy theories) and as I stated before: Mickey Smith was fucking smart. He wasn’t mature when we met him, but that could have changed (without the Doctor’s involvement)
But if you take Clara out of Danny’s story you leave him with nothing. He had no purpose on the narrative.
Parallels between Mickey and Danny
Dead parents
Soldiers
Black
In love with the Doctor’s companion
Not understanding at first of what’s happening
Jealousy
Being treated like crap by the Doctor
The 9th Doctor always called Mickey Rickey
the 12th always says Danny as a PE teacher, not a maths teacher.
And the thing that gets me pissed is that he could have been a very interesting character due to his war story. Hadn’t the writers treated him so terribly.
Moffat stans are always pissy about the fact Rose (and by extension RTD) treated Mickey like crap. I think Clara and Moffat treated him even worse.
She lied to him. she joked about something he clearly had problems with (the army). Also the fact she creepily imprinted on him a a child (a recurring theme in moffat’s storyline) and made him into the man she met.
Okay. That was a lot of rambling. I hope it made sense. And if a moffat stan finds this and tries to take it apart and complains about my writing (because it has happened before) english is not my first language. So don’t be a dick.
There’s many things I could take this apart for. Reducing Clara, Rose, Mickey, and Danny, for one thing. They have distinct arcs and attributes, and you’re totally ignoring them. Danny, who you claim was ignored, had one of the most prominent, beautiful character arcs in series 8, dealing respectfully with war and guilt. He and Danny are in no way a mere list of circumstantial traits. Mickey was about an ordinary guy becoming a hero. Danny was about a hurt man making up for his mistake.
And if you seriously think Rose would
betray the Doctor and threaten to get rid of all his TARDIS keys
call the Doctor her “hobby”
tell the Doctor to work to her schedule and drop her off at home between trips
constantly tell herself not to fall in love with the Doctor
actually follow the Doctor’s “don’t wander off” rule the first time she’s told it
tell off an alien species while forgetting about the viking girl who just lost half her village and thus hurting her and inadvertently causing a war
consider her travelling with the Doctor an addiction
I’m afraid you don’t have a very good grasp of Rose’s character.
Was Clara not very good with Danny? Yeah. She even admits it in Death in Heaven. Clara is a very flawed character. She can be selfish, callous, and flat-out wrong at times, but is not condemned as a person for it. For many of her fans, that’s one of her most important traits. And you know what? Rose treated Mickey poorly, too. He called her out on it in Boom Town. Both criticisms of Rose and Clara there are spot-on, but that’s okay, characters shouldn’t be perfect people.
So I’ll leave your English alone (I didn’t notice any errors, if that helps), but your critical perspectives? No. Those are horrible.
I hate that Twelve treated Danny just as crappily as Nine treated Mickey. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It might be my single biggest problem with Series 8, actually, much as I love it otherwise. HOW DID THEY MANAGE TO BE SO CLUELESS ABOUT THAT? Sigh.
But as a massive Mickey fan (he’s not only one of my favourite characters in Doctor Who but one of my favourite characters ever) and a pretty big Danny fan as well, I too have some nitpicks with this –
Mickey and Danny are nothing alike. Honestly, beyond skin colour and the fact that at some point in their lives both were soldiers (a professional one in Danny’s case, a ‘freelancer’ in Mickey’s) that’s…it. Mickey’s parents aren’t dead; we hear in Rise of the Cybermen what happened to them. Danny isn’t jealous of the Doctor, he’s just concerned for Clara’s safety while she’s with him and unimpressed with his arrogant personality. ‘Not understanding at first what’s happening’ applies tovirtually all the companions. Honestly, you could get a better set of parallels out of Mickey and Rory (hey, both got turned into an Auton at some point.) But no-one ever did that – from the minute Danny was announced it was “Hey look, it’s the new Mickey!” The poor bloke never stood a chance.
As for the bit about Danny having no purpose on the narrative without Clara – well, no, he didn’t have much impact on the narrative, but that was because he had his own narrative – man faces up to his greatest mistake; man dies putting it right. (I’ve noticed before that Danny has a lot in common with fandom’s fave tragic heroes – Boromir, Thorin, Tony Stark – but gets less than a quarter of the love they do: I Cannot Think As To Why). Danny’s story is quite beautiful I think – and very relevant to events in the world today and to the entire point of Doctor Who. I wish it got more attention.
