Thirteen Faces

An excellent essay by Adam Knave on modern Doctor Who companions being special:

Before they brought Doctor Who back from the icy depths of an eighteen year slumber, the companions were often simply that – companions. They were people who went along with the Doctor out of a sense of adventure, or the time was right, or any number of perfectly understandable reasons.

But most of them were simply companions. There were exceptions, starting with the very first – Susan, to be sure. But the majority of them were simply people. Good people, yes. True people, yes. People worthy of travelling with the Doctor, mostly yes. But people.

Since the revival, since the new series started, that’s been the opposite of what’s been going on. […]

Rose (special Bad Wolf Time-Vortex sucking Rose), Captain Jack (Immortal, ex-Time Agent Jack), Mickey (Ayyyy! Mickey! You’re just Mickey!), Martha (Yup, still just Martha), Donna (DoctorDonna, if you’re nasty), Amy (The Girl Who Everything-ed), Rory (The Last Centurion), River Song (Hello, oh so special sweetie) and now Clara (Or is that Oswin, or is that something else, my you’re special looking).

So in the entirety of the new run of Doctor Who we have had two companions who weren’t super-special snowflakes to begin with and didn’t become them later on. Two. Out of nine. Them’s not good odds.

And it gets a bit old, doesn’t it? […]

It starts to lack something for me. Just a bit, but there is a noticeable twinge of lacking going on. I miss Sarah Jane, who was only special in that she was a great companion and had her eyes opened by her travels, allowing her to do the sort of work the Doctor does in a smaller scale. And that’s grand. That’s perfect. Or Ace, or Peri – what was wrong with not having to up the companion stakes every time? Why must we now make them more special, more critical each season as if the Doctor alone can not carry his own show?

And maybe that’s it. We enhance the companions to diminish the Doctor a bit, to hide his light just a wee bit, because there’s a sense of worry that if the Doctor were allowed to shine next to a “normal” person he would make them look small, and that would make viewers feel small.

Steven Moffat, in his interview at Vulture with Denise Martin:

What were you looking for in the Doctor’s next companion?

This time we are very well acquainted with the Eleventh Doctor. He’s our pal and the companion will be the new person. So I wanted somebody with a bit more mystery to them, someone you have to get to know in a way that you didn’t have to get to know Amy because we met Amy and the Eleventh Doctor at that same time. Someone more challenging and difficult, someone who will lead him in a merry dance. I always felt that Amy and the Eleventh Doctor grew up together. They’re like childhood friends. It’s a very different feeling now.

Steven Moffat interviewed in the BBC’s press pack for “The Snowmen”:

The Doctor is almost defined by his friendships. When they end, and the TARDIS is silent again, he’s a very different man. He’s lost a lot of people in the time we’ve known him, and this Christmas he’s decided he’s finally had enough…

All portrayals of the Doctor (actually, all characters) are defined by their relationships. Jamie made the second Doctor. Jo made the third Doctor. Sarah Jane made the fourth Doctor. Ace made the seventh Doctor. Rose made both the ninth and tenth Doctor. Who will make the true character of the eleventh Doctor: Amy or Clara?

Fraser McAlpine, at BBC America’s Anglophenia site, on the departing Amy Pond and Rory Williams:

The unusual thing about Rory and Amy Pond in particular is they’re the only companions whose time with the Doctor appears to have been so lengthy they are able to normalise the lack of normality. And they don’t even realise they’re doing it; it takes the appearance of Rory’s dad Brian to remind all concerned that this is all remarkable. And that’s telling, because the key to the Ponds’ relationship to the Doctor is that he is a constant as they develop, something we’ve not seen him be before.

In Amy’s case in particular, we get to see one person interacting with the Doctor from a very young age to a very old age. Never mind that Old Amy, the Amy that got left behind in The Girl Who Waited, was embittered by the specifics of her dilemma – left behind to fend for herself – in a sense those feelings are an inevitable side-effect of all that excitement. The Doctor is an old, old man. He needs to be thrilled by the universe in order to keep ennui and despair at bay, he needs fresh eyes to view it all with. Old companions just want the chance to acclimatise, to let their memories settle in their heads, and the reality of their puckish friend’s lonely life, his constant need never to grow up, let alone old, must become frustrating over time.

The Doctor’s frustration was illustrated in series 2, especially when he met Sarah Jane again in “School Reunion”. The Doctor is Peter Pan to his companions’ Wendy.

In fact, the Doctor is there for all the rites of passage in Amy’s life – her wedding, her first child, her marital trouble and her settling down into comfortable domesticity. And as Amy and Rory are childhood best friends (and their other childhood best friend is their future daugher), that means he’s caught up in it all too.

The Doctor and Rory’s relationship has been equally fascinating. Sometimes he’s there for comic relief (Rory, that is, the Doctor is always there for comic relief), sometimes he’s there as a moral compass (a role all three of them have a go at), and sometimes he’s there just to die. In his transformation from bumbling nurse to man of war and back to nurse (albeit a nurse who can punch out Hitler) is the proof that the Ponds have been with the Doctor a long time. Amy will always be a little gobby and wilful, but Rory has truly grown up in the time we’ve known him. But there’s one final rite of passage left, the big one.

We have seen other Doctor Who companion develop. Amy and Rory are the first we have seen to age within the show.

Steven Moffat at the Q&A following the preview screening of “Asylum of the Daleks” at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse:

Do you think your Doctor Who would have been different if David Tennant or Catherine Tate had stayed with the show, instead of starting fresh with a new Doctor and companion?

Certainly, it would have been different if we’d carried on with the incumbent Doctor, as it were. Y’know, it wasn’t something we embraced with great enthusiasm: it was quite frightening when we realised that the entire cast and the entire behind-the-scenes team were changing over at the same time. It was quite worrying.

Generally speaking, when the Doctor regenerates, there’s someone there for him to prove he’s the Doctor to. It was quite difficult with the Doctor and Amy, because he’s new and she’s new, which is why I had her as a little girl, so there was someone for him to prove his ‘Doctorness’ to. Yes, it would have been different, but Doctor Who is always different and yet always the same. Who knows what would have happened. I tried very hard to get David to stay on, but he said ‘No’. I told him all my ideas, and he left!

Teresa Jusino on Amy and Rory’s argument about their love in “Asylum of the Daleks”:

Here’s the thing: 1) The number of years means less when you’re made of plastic. Granted, Rory probably would have waited the “rest of his life” to guard Amy…but I think we can all agree that waiting around is a lot easier when you don’t have to do silly things like eat or go to the bathroom. 2) Love isn’t something for which there is a standard unit of measure. Different people show love in different ways, and the thing that’s a sacrifice for one person is an easy thing for someone else to do. What matters is someone caring about someone else more than they care about themselves. That’s love.

Rory deserved getting slapped for holding up his 2,000 year stint as a security guard as a sign that he loved Amy “more,” because it cheapened what he did. You don’t do something out of love for someone only to hold it over their head later as proof that you’re an awesome person. That stops being love and starts being about ego. Rory has been blinded by his own insecurity for so long, and since viewers love him, so have many of them, and this often manifests itself as an irrational dislike of Amy. “Look at how she treats him! She’s so mean, and he’s so good!”

So many times, Rory’s insecurity told him that she wanted the Doctor, when really, whenever she talked about the hero that would save her, she was talking about him. She trusted and believed in Rory utterly. Amy has saved him as often as he’s saved her, and she has consistently chosen Rory over and over again even when, as in “Amy’s Choice” or “The Girl Who Waited,” choosing Rory meant sacrificing a version of her own existence. How do you measure which is more meaningful: waiting for someone for 2,000 years, or choosing the reality with Rory in it even if it means you’d be killing yourself in the process? You can’t. Amy and Rory’s relationship was never as black and white as “Rory Good, Amy Harpy,” and “Asylum of the Daleks” took a mature step forward in the handling of their relationship by examining these complexities.

In an interview with BBC America (here quoted by The Radio Times), Steven Moffat states what many people have known about Doctor Who for a long time:

“The story of Doctor Who is always the story of the companion, it’s always their story,” said Moffat. “It was Rose Tyler’s story, it’s Amy Pond’s story - the story of the time they knew the Doctor and how that began; how it developed and how it ended.”

At the beginning of Doctor Who, Ian Chesterton was the hero and main character of the show. When Ian left, Steven Taylor took on that role. It was only after Steven did the Doctor start becoming the hero. Yet the story focused on characters like Sarah Jane Smith, Leela and Ace. Doctor Who was telling the companion’s story. This has become even more apparent with the new series.

“The story begins again, not so much with the new Doctor, but with the new companion,” Moffat told BBC America. “It is their story. The Doctor’s the hero, but they’re the main character.”

The hero may be the person who saves the day, but it is the main character who changes. It is difficult for a character like the ageless and alien Doctor to change. The Doctor’s life is like the mountains, it changes over geological periods. The companions change through their adventures with the Doctor. This is why they are the main character of Doctor Who.

The Two-minute Time Lord recently discussed whether Amy will be considered as being among the great Doctor Who companions. Amy Pond has appeared in Doctor Who longer than most other companions. However, the Two-minute Time Lord comments on this:

But being an influential character is about more than longevity. It’s also about narrative impact.

Amy Pond has been integral in the series 5 and 6 narrative, but more as a plot device than anything else. How has Amy changed the Doctor and the series? Look at how the fourth Doctor grew with Sarah Jane Smith. Look at how the ninth and tenth Doctors changed with Rose Tyler. Will we see the same for the eleventh Doctor and Amy?

Time is running out to see whether this will happen.

Dan Martin:

If this series does have an overarching theme then it’s parental love, or parental acceptance. There was the pirate Captain Avery mending his ways. There was Ganger Jimmy accepting his own humanity by being a proper Dad. There was Alex saving the day by accepting his alien son George. And now here’s Craig, blowing the Cybermen up with love. This can’t be a coincidence, since there’s another parent-child relationship out there in dire need of some resolution…