Just the start of it all

I got around to watching the last episode of S2 of Terminator over the weekend. (It was my reward I gave myself for slogging through the first half of my giant pile of tedious work.)

Short version: OMG, I cannot believe there is even the slightest risk of this show being cancelled. It's so awesome. I really haven't had this experience of being this invested in a US show at the same time as its fate is genuinely in the balance before. The feeling of powerlessness isn't much fun, actually.

The long version under the cut has spoilers for pretty much everything Terminator-ish ever, including SCC 2x22; it is mostly about time travel and a bit about Obvious Religious Imagery, because those are what I'm qualified to talk about as a Doctor Who fan.

( I'm putting my meta tag on this, but it's more of a ramble based on the last ep and much of it is far too obvious to qualify )

So in conclusion: I basically have no bloody clue what they're going to do next. And I want to know. So pls don't cancel this show, Fox? Kthxbai.

Here is some character meta about Martha, written for kepp0xy in the Fall Fandom Free for All. kepp0xy's request was for "Character Study - Doctor Who: Martha. I've tried & tried to understand her through s3 & s4, but have failed. I'd really like some good insights: preferably with equal thought given to her good and bad attributes." So that's what I'm aiming at here, though I'll admit that I've got more than half an eye on Martha fandom, given that these days even many of Martha's fans seem to swallow the twin memes that Martha's characterisation was inconsistent, and that all the stuff we liked about her was fanon.

I'm firmly convinced that the Martha we got on the telly does have a consistent character that evolves in a credible fashion as a result of her experiences with the Doctor, that a clear line can be drawn between the enthusiastic medical student we meet in Smith and Jones and the person who can play nuclear brinksmanship with Davros in Journey's End; the rest of this post constitutes an attempt to explain that. I'm not saying anyone has to agree with me, just detailing why I think what I think. (It's a tiny little bit picspammy: there are about eight smallish images beneath the cut, but nothing that should break people's connections too badly.)

( She'll be a doctor too when she passes her exams )

So, as any fule kno, Doctor Who is full to the brim with gayness, and the companions have been femslashing it up with their co-stars since forever. It runs through old school from Susan and Ping Cho in Marco Polo to Ace and Karra in had-to-have-subtext-taken-out-and-there's-still-loads-in-there Survival, and new school's full of it too; Rose's chemistry with the female guest stars is semi-legendary, and allegedly once upon an early planning stage Martha was supposed to be a lesbian. (I would love to be able to take a peek into the parallel universe where that happened, I really would.)

But given that they didn't go that way with Martha, the only place where it's been properly fully canonical is the DWM comic strip. So here is me burbling about it, partly because it's International Day of Femslash, partly because I really, really want Izzy/Destrii fic to exist and am too lazy to write it myself, and partly because someone on the anon meme asked where they can get hold of it. (Answer to which is: I don't know, if you're talking about what I think you're talking about, but there are Amazon links herein. It's worth it!)

( Pictures, spoilers, a lot of incoherent babbling and deprecated img-tag attributes below the cut )

( You can totally skip this; it's self-pitying meta about Martha fandom )

TL;DR: we'll always have The Drabbles of Awesome.

ETA: Courtesy of who_anon, that Buddy Holly Ten/Martha vid by nostalgia_lj that never fails to make me jump up and down with squee.

parrotfish made a very good point about one of the themes of new school Who and its spinoffs (minor Torchwood 2x11 spoilers). This started life as a comment, but it got overlong so I added in more explanation of why I feel the way I do and here it is as a post:

( cut for length and sorta spoilers for all transmitted DW and Torchwood to date depending how you look at it )

(Two rants on a day when I was contemplating not posting at all, huh.)

I have loads of half-formed meta I can't make gel into proper coherence, so I'm just going to dump it all here to make it stop clogging up my brain. No spoilers for anything that hasn't happened in America on cable yet, and only vague ones at that.

1. ( Humanity vs its capacity for self-delusion )
   
2. ( Martha fans vs pessimism )
   
3. ( Doctor Who vs futurefic )
   
4. ( Tosh vs horrendous characterisation )
   
5. ( Earth people vs aliens in the Sex Olympics )
   

So I've been thinking (instead of sleeping, mostly) and ...

( Cut for spoilers, tl;dr-ness, and an image )

Various posts recently have got me thinking about the evolution of the relationship between the Doctor and his companions, and how we're taking it as read that there will be some sort of romantic element between the Doctor and Martha (as nostalgia_lj put it, the companion becoming "coded as the Doctor's girlfriend").

The stereotypical view of the Doctor/companion relationship, one that RTD seems fully signed up to, is the Doctor travelling around with one attractive female. However, this situation only really existed for 12 out of the 26 seasons of the old show, and if you decide K9 counts as a full companion (I don't, personally) that goes down to eight. The reason this is the popular view is that it's the situation that obtained during the show's '70s heyday, and the "for the Dads" element. But if you ask me, it's all about family, and the different roles within the family that the Doctor and companions play at different times.

( cut for length; only S3 spoilers are my deductions from Made of Steel )

Doctor Who fandom seems to have a weird way of setting up everything as a fight between two camps, so that it becomes impossible to criticise one thing without being automatically seen as a supporter of some diametrically opposite position, rather than occupying a sensible middle ground, as most people do. The old-school/new-school thing seems to have broken out at this point into one of those situations where people are enjoying the fight a bit too much. The overlong ramble below the cut is about why I find "hate" a hard word to apply to the series.

( Tedious DW meta cut for length. Really, don't to be clicking here, you will die of boredom. Tiny spoilers for School Reunion and Satan Pit. )

... and that's why you could slap a Doctor Who logo on anything and I'd buy it.

Then again, it's just maybe possible that I feel a lot better about things now I know we're getting rid of a certain someone.

Feels mild displeasure about Gary Russell's trying-so-hard badness. <-- full extent of my h8rd right now.