Apr. 21st, 2010 02:01 pm
ramblings on Martha Jones meta
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chicafrom3Man, everything I want to write meta about is years late.
There's a (fairly commonly-held, I think?) opinion that Martha's second leaving speech in TLOTL (the "this is me, getting out" speech) weakens her ending. The argument for this, as I understand it, is that she first establishes that she's leaving because she went through a shitty experience and she needs to recover in ways she can't on the TARDIS, and then she comes back and says she's leaving because the Doctor doesn't love her, and that weakens her character arc.
I see where this argument is coming from and it's a valid interpretation, but here is an explanation for why I don't agree and why Martha's "this is me, getting out" speech is one of my favorite moments.
I think there's a character arc set up for Martha in S&J that the series unfortunately fails to follow through. The character arc I am speaking of is this: Martha, when we meet her, is a textbook media-version middle child.
(There are two major interpretations of the middle child in mainstream media; one is the Unfavorite who gets ignored and/or belittled; the other is the peacemaker who smooths things for everyone. Both versions have their bases in reality, I say as a middle child myself. But I'm talking about the second interpretation, here.)
Our very first introduction to Martha -- her first scene -- is of her trying to smooth things out for her brother's party. There is tension in the family, and everyone is calling Martha to fix it; they aren't calling each other. Francine isn't calling Clive to tell him not to bring Annalise; Leo isn't calling Francine to tell her not to make the party a big deal; Tish isn't calling Annalise to tell her not to come. Everyone is calling Martha. Martha's the one who's going to make the party not a trainwreck.
At the end of the episode, we see the birthday party end in a trainwreck. Why? Because Annalise called Martha a liar about going to the moon.
And Martha tells everyone not to make a big deal about it. "I don't mind," she says, as her father's girlfriend throws a fit about her being delusional. It's not a big deal. I don't need defending, even by myself.
Because Martha is a textbook peacemaker. It's the role the middle child gets shoved into a lot: the one who feels responsible for keeping things from getting out of hand. The one who sacrifices their own needs for the sake of keeping everything upright and working.
At the time, I totally thought this was the character arc they were going to go with. "Aha!" I thought. "Over the season we will see Martha learn to value her own needs and defend herself, even at the cost of keeping the peace."
Alas.
It is not, I have to point out, inherently a bad thing to be a peacemaker. But as someone who has struggled a lot with the line between being the peacemaker and safeguarding her own mental health, I also am very much aware that sometimes? You have to be selfish. You have to say "I can't fix your problems for you because I need to deal with my own." And S&J strongly suggests that Martha had not learned how to draw that line.
And the writing, over the course of S3, treated Martha's peacemaker tendencies as a plus. Look at her being all selfless! Isn't that awesome? She's so good at taking care of other people!
Which, you know, it is a good thing to be good at taking care of other people. And Martha is awesome.
But I was disappointed by Martha continually putting other people's needs over her own. By the continued message of "other people are more important than your own self". By the unconscious implication that it's bad to be selfish once in a while; why should you value your own well-being when other people have problems?
So then we come to TLOTL.
And Martha leaves. She says, "I've got people to look after. They saw half the planet slaughtered and they're devastated. I can't leave them."
Which, as far as I can read it, is Martha saying, "They need me, I have to take care of them, I have to fix this for them." It's exactly the same place she was at the beginning of S&J, albeit with a more major crisis than a ruined birthday party.
She says, "You gonna be all right?"
She is leaving after this horrible experience. Is he going to be okay?
And then she leaves.
If it had been left at this, I would have to argue that Martha hadn't changed at all over her TARDIS experience. I mean, yeah, she took a level in badass and saved the world. But at the core, she was still the peacemaker, the caretaker, the one who says, "I don't mind, don't make a big deal" when someone belittles her. The one who left not because she wants to but because other people need her to.
But then she comes back and says, "I told her, I always said to her, time and time again, I said: Get out. So this is me, getting out."
This is me. These are my needs. My needs are important, too. Being here is unhealthy for me. So I'm going to take care of myself and leave.
To me, that moment isn't "I'm leaving because you don't love me", it's "I'm leaving because I acknowledge that this is not a good place for me to be right now."
Go, Martha.
My thoughts about how her S4 episodes fit into this are less developed, but here's an overview:
I don't mind the absentee fiancé. Why? Because, it is made clear, he's totally capable of taking care of himself, and she knows that. There's that superficial resemblance to the Doctor that she points out, yeah; "I've got a doctor who disappears off to distant places." But where Ten is broken on levels that would appeal to Martha-the-caretaker -- levels that appeal to the sense of "I have to take care of him; I have to help fix this for him" -- Tom is capable of taking care of himself. Tom goes off to Africa to save sick children while his fiancée saves the world working for UNIT and they don't worry about each other because they are capable adults who can take care of themselves.
(Related: I've heard the complaint and/or rationalization that Martha & Tom wouldn't/didn't work out long-term because she fell in love with the guy he was in the Year That Wasn't, and this Tom never went through that. I disagree; I think if he were the Year That Wasn't version the relationship wouldn't have lasted, because he would have been damaged by that, damaged in ways she would have felt compelled to fix/support/make easier for him, and it would have fallen into the same self-destructive patterns as her relationship with Ten. But that's another meta entirely.)
The point is, she's got this guy she doesn't have to take care of, who doesn't expect her to fix difficult situations for him. Who presumably lets her be selfish and take care of herself once in a while.
Oh, God, I am reading way more into this relationship than the writers intended, they just went "Hey, let's show Martha is over the Doctor by getting her engaged. What was the name of that cute doctor guy in TLOTL again?" ...I don't care, that's why this is meta.
ALSO, she stands up for herself to the Doctor again, when she thinks he's deliberately kidnapping her. She tells him, point-blank, you can't do this to me. No. I refuse to let you take control of my life again.
And then she leaves again, because she has her own life outside of the Doctor's wonderland.
I could try to make her EOT scene fit into this meta but it's a tiny little snippet that does disservice to both her and Mickey and I can't be bothered to try to rationalize it. Suffice to say that in my head, Martha, Mickey, and Tom are all freelance defenders of Earth, they are all married to each other, and Tom just wasn't in that scene because he was busy rescuing injured children slightly off-screen. Which has nothing to do with the subject of this post, so let's leave it at that.
TL;DR: Martha is awesome, "this is me, getting out" is a fabulous line, and the writers mostly squandered a fantastic character arc so I have to rationalize it out of bits and pieces.
There's a (fairly commonly-held, I think?) opinion that Martha's second leaving speech in TLOTL (the "this is me, getting out" speech) weakens her ending. The argument for this, as I understand it, is that she first establishes that she's leaving because she went through a shitty experience and she needs to recover in ways she can't on the TARDIS, and then she comes back and says she's leaving because the Doctor doesn't love her, and that weakens her character arc.
I see where this argument is coming from and it's a valid interpretation, but here is an explanation for why I don't agree and why Martha's "this is me, getting out" speech is one of my favorite moments.
I think there's a character arc set up for Martha in S&J that the series unfortunately fails to follow through. The character arc I am speaking of is this: Martha, when we meet her, is a textbook media-version middle child.
(There are two major interpretations of the middle child in mainstream media; one is the Unfavorite who gets ignored and/or belittled; the other is the peacemaker who smooths things for everyone. Both versions have their bases in reality, I say as a middle child myself. But I'm talking about the second interpretation, here.)
Our very first introduction to Martha -- her first scene -- is of her trying to smooth things out for her brother's party. There is tension in the family, and everyone is calling Martha to fix it; they aren't calling each other. Francine isn't calling Clive to tell him not to bring Annalise; Leo isn't calling Francine to tell her not to make the party a big deal; Tish isn't calling Annalise to tell her not to come. Everyone is calling Martha. Martha's the one who's going to make the party not a trainwreck.
At the end of the episode, we see the birthday party end in a trainwreck. Why? Because Annalise called Martha a liar about going to the moon.
And Martha tells everyone not to make a big deal about it. "I don't mind," she says, as her father's girlfriend throws a fit about her being delusional. It's not a big deal. I don't need defending, even by myself.
Because Martha is a textbook peacemaker. It's the role the middle child gets shoved into a lot: the one who feels responsible for keeping things from getting out of hand. The one who sacrifices their own needs for the sake of keeping everything upright and working.
At the time, I totally thought this was the character arc they were going to go with. "Aha!" I thought. "Over the season we will see Martha learn to value her own needs and defend herself, even at the cost of keeping the peace."
Alas.
It is not, I have to point out, inherently a bad thing to be a peacemaker. But as someone who has struggled a lot with the line between being the peacemaker and safeguarding her own mental health, I also am very much aware that sometimes? You have to be selfish. You have to say "I can't fix your problems for you because I need to deal with my own." And S&J strongly suggests that Martha had not learned how to draw that line.
And the writing, over the course of S3, treated Martha's peacemaker tendencies as a plus. Look at her being all selfless! Isn't that awesome? She's so good at taking care of other people!
Which, you know, it is a good thing to be good at taking care of other people. And Martha is awesome.
But I was disappointed by Martha continually putting other people's needs over her own. By the continued message of "other people are more important than your own self". By the unconscious implication that it's bad to be selfish once in a while; why should you value your own well-being when other people have problems?
So then we come to TLOTL.
And Martha leaves. She says, "I've got people to look after. They saw half the planet slaughtered and they're devastated. I can't leave them."
Which, as far as I can read it, is Martha saying, "They need me, I have to take care of them, I have to fix this for them." It's exactly the same place she was at the beginning of S&J, albeit with a more major crisis than a ruined birthday party.
She says, "You gonna be all right?"
She is leaving after this horrible experience. Is he going to be okay?
And then she leaves.
If it had been left at this, I would have to argue that Martha hadn't changed at all over her TARDIS experience. I mean, yeah, she took a level in badass and saved the world. But at the core, she was still the peacemaker, the caretaker, the one who says, "I don't mind, don't make a big deal" when someone belittles her. The one who left not because she wants to but because other people need her to.
But then she comes back and says, "I told her, I always said to her, time and time again, I said: Get out. So this is me, getting out."
This is me. These are my needs. My needs are important, too. Being here is unhealthy for me. So I'm going to take care of myself and leave.
To me, that moment isn't "I'm leaving because you don't love me", it's "I'm leaving because I acknowledge that this is not a good place for me to be right now."
Go, Martha.
My thoughts about how her S4 episodes fit into this are less developed, but here's an overview:
I don't mind the absentee fiancé. Why? Because, it is made clear, he's totally capable of taking care of himself, and she knows that. There's that superficial resemblance to the Doctor that she points out, yeah; "I've got a doctor who disappears off to distant places." But where Ten is broken on levels that would appeal to Martha-the-caretaker -- levels that appeal to the sense of "I have to take care of him; I have to help fix this for him" -- Tom is capable of taking care of himself. Tom goes off to Africa to save sick children while his fiancée saves the world working for UNIT and they don't worry about each other because they are capable adults who can take care of themselves.
(Related: I've heard the complaint and/or rationalization that Martha & Tom wouldn't/didn't work out long-term because she fell in love with the guy he was in the Year That Wasn't, and this Tom never went through that. I disagree; I think if he were the Year That Wasn't version the relationship wouldn't have lasted, because he would have been damaged by that, damaged in ways she would have felt compelled to fix/support/make easier for him, and it would have fallen into the same self-destructive patterns as her relationship with Ten. But that's another meta entirely.)
The point is, she's got this guy she doesn't have to take care of, who doesn't expect her to fix difficult situations for him. Who presumably lets her be selfish and take care of herself once in a while.
Oh, God, I am reading way more into this relationship than the writers intended, they just went "Hey, let's show Martha is over the Doctor by getting her engaged. What was the name of that cute doctor guy in TLOTL again?" ...I don't care, that's why this is meta.
ALSO, she stands up for herself to the Doctor again, when she thinks he's deliberately kidnapping her. She tells him, point-blank, you can't do this to me. No. I refuse to let you take control of my life again.
And then she leaves again, because she has her own life outside of the Doctor's wonderland.
I could try to make her EOT scene fit into this meta but it's a tiny little snippet that does disservice to both her and Mickey and I can't be bothered to try to rationalize it. Suffice to say that in my head, Martha, Mickey, and Tom are all freelance defenders of Earth, they are all married to each other, and Tom just wasn't in that scene because he was busy rescuing injured children slightly off-screen. Which has nothing to do with the subject of this post, so let's leave it at that.
TL;DR: Martha is awesome, "this is me, getting out" is a fabulous line, and the writers mostly squandered a fantastic character arc so I have to rationalize it out of bits and pieces.
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I salute you, fellow middle child.
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Most of the time, I find it hard to be selfish though.
Awesome icon, bbs. How sad am I that the younger generations will never know the wonders of Animanics?
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That's why DVDs were invented. I have every intention of indoctrinating my future nieces and nephews into the fabulousness of Animaniacs. How can you have a proper childhood without Yakko, Wakko, and Dot?
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