purplecat

parrot_knight's recent post has got me thinking.

For five weeks I've been reading comments in reviews which boil down to "Martha had promise in the first episode but has turned into little more than a love-sick puppy" - Francine's reaction to the Doctor in the Lazarus Experiment seemed to echo this sentiment - Martha has ceased to be an independent woman and become someone who follows the Doctor. It suggests the writing team are aware that Martha's potential is being wasted and that, in fact, it is deliberate. I just hope they are going somewhere interesting with this as I feel New Who frequently sets up potentially interesting themes or poses itself interesting questions in this way and then fails to resolve them in a satisfactory fashion.

The most glaring example, for me, was Torchwood last year. I spent the entire series complaining that the plots frequently revolved around members of the Torchwood team behaving in a totally irresponsible/incompetent fashion often motivated by apparently little faith in Jack's judgment. I blamed this on lazy writing/script editing. But then the finale so spectacularly hinged on the team behaving in a totally irresponsible and incompetent fashion that you had to conclude that the motif/theme was a planned facet of the season's (if not the show's) conception. But then what were you supposed to do with this? Presented with such a theme the obvious conclusion for the viewer (or at least this viewer) is that the Torchwood team are a bunch of irresponsible incompetents who dislike and distrust each other, have no confidence in their boss and more frequently put the world in danger than get it out of danger. A risky but potentially interesting set up but one that positively demands a resolution, either the team change or they are disposed of. But nothing in the actual scripts, acting or direction suggests to me that this is the conclusion the audience is expected to reach or that any resolution (beyond a group hug) is ever going to be provided.

So I where is Martha going? An independent woman who becomes and remains a love-sick side-kick seems a distinctly retrograde step for the series, albeit one that is difficult to avoid given the basic format. And a resolution that simply involves her family coming to terms with this would extremely unsatisfactory. Of course there is plenty of potential to take this in other directions - e.g., there is a lot of potential for Martha to re-invent herself and her relationship to the Doctor during the course of Human Nature - but I'm not convinced this will happen.