This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.
Just this once. Everybody lives!
The Doctor Dances
Much like the last one of these, this is part two. The Doctor Dances culminates the story of the Doctor and Rose visiting the London Blitz. We’ve already covered parts one through four, so here are five, six, seven, and eight. Dr. Constantine has just turned into a zombie, Rose and Jack have found the Doctor at the hospital, and the children have surrounded them. Then the Doctor does something very interesting, taking advantage of how the child will probably think. He sends him to his room. It’s a saving grace in a kind of a great way to get out of being cornered by all the children but backfires on them later.
5) Get what they desired
Essentially, Rose gets what she desires, in that she gets the Doctor alone. They’re trapped, or at least eventually they become trapped, and it’s pretty early in the episode. The children are bearing down on them. Jack has escaped with the teleporting device back to his ship. The Doctor and Rose believe him to have left for good, but then the radio plays. Jack is taking control of it. He’s playing his old radio tunes, and Rose takes this moment to put the screws to the Doctor and corner him. The Doctor makes up a bullshit reason about resonating concrete to affect their escape, but Rose isn’t buying it. She already knows that Jack’s on his way because of the radio, so she takes over the conversation and pushes him. Does the Doctor dance? Obviously to us what they’re talking about is sex, or at the very least, romantic relationships.
Yes, he does. We all know he started off this journey with his granddaughter in the first show, so he has family. And since you know, granddaughter, he’s done plenty of dancing in his time. You get the idea, that the Doctor has not done this for some time. There’s a long-standing belief, that the Doctor should not have any kind of relationship with the people that travel with him. Some believe this to be the best. This is supposed to be a family show, and it’s supposed to be partly about looking into the past and looking ahead at the future. But I think that shorts our lead character to a certain extent. I think there needs to be room for these kinds of relationships, especially for a lead. One thing about Doctor Who is that to a certain extent, he has never been the lead, at least he wasn’t the lead directly until much later in the original series. It was almost as if the companions were the leads because we were seeing everything through their eyes. I think it gives the show a chance to grow up. If the Doctor can have these kinds of relationships, then this is no longer just a children’s show. Now this becomes an adult science fiction drama. Still family-friendly, just now with “dating and dancing.”
I believe that he’s had relationships with multiple companions over the years. For instance, I believe that Jo Grant and Sarah Jane were sexual partners of the Doctor, and I think Teagan Jovanka was also a sexual partner of the Doctor. Romana? Debatable, especially since Tom Baker and Lalla Ward had a “Hollywood” wedding. These are people he had trouble leaving when the time came. In Teagan’s case, she’s the only one in the original series that the Doctor chased after and asked not to leave.
At this moment, however, the Doctor gives in. He’s been harboring feelings for Rose the entire time but hasn’t been able to bring himself to broach the subject. Rose now does the work for him, which is a relief. By the end of the episode, you can tell that they are accepting the possibility that they are a couple rather than spending all their time telling people they’re not.
6) Pay a heavy price for winning
The person who ends up bearing the heavy load in this episode and pays the heavy price for winning is Nancy. The way to beat the aliens and bring everyone back is for Nancy to own up to the fact that the boy, Jamie, is hers. She’s been hiding the fact of her teen pregnancy for so long that it’s been wearing on her, body and soul. She’s poured all of her nervous energy into helping all the children that she can because she couldn’t face the fact that she had one that she needed to be taking care of herself. She’d been acting as his sister, but that didn’t change the fact that she was his mom. It’s that big mom’s love coming through that saves the day. The Doctor was there and Jack got rid of the bomb, but what did the work was Nancy taking over officially as Jamie’s mom.
7) Return to their familiar situation
The Doctor and Rose, get back to the TARDIS and Rose pushes the Doctor to save Jack. The Doctor was already going to do it; I think. I think he wanted a couple of extra tender moments to himself with Rose before he did it.
8) They have overall changed
This episode marks not only a change in the Doctor and Rose and their relationship, but it’s a fundamental shift in the entire show. In the space of these two episodes, Russell T Davies has shown that the Doctor can have and maintain an adult relationship while inside the framework of a show that remains friendly to families. There is room for innuendo and room boogie while keeping the show heading in a direction that works for its intended audience.
Doctor Who on DvD
- Doctor Who: The Christopher Eccleston & David Tennant Collection [DVD]
- Doctor Who: The Matt Smith Collection [DVD]
- Doctor Who: The Peter Capaldi Collection [DVD]
- Doctor Who: The Jodie Whitaker Collection
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