Desperately Seeking Susan

Life has been getting in the way of the kind of constant and ludicrously overblown analyses of each twist and turn in Doctor Who that I like writing so much (though I'm not too big of a man to admit that some of the amusement has faded now it's no longer being written by a man I strongly dislike). That's unlikely to change today - I have plans to actually be active, and hopefully burn away some of the excess corpulence Operation: Lake District Liver Death has resulted in - but I thought I'd point out this excellent article by John Seavey on the relationship between the Doctor and his companions, and why the contemporary interpretation is so questionable.

Like all the best articles, I wish I'd written it; especially since there's so much there that has been nebulously floating around my head for a while now. I would like to point out though that Rose was running from something when she joined the Doctor: her boring life and lukewarm relationship [1]. I acknowledge up front that that isn't a particularly strong reason, from the perspective of the metaphor, though I think you'd have to stretch it far further for more than one companion from the classic series if you wanted it to fit - what exactly was Liz Shaw running away from? - but it's still there.

Anyway, that's a minor detail. The whole post is most definitely worth a read.

[1] As a sidebar, how has it taken until now for me to start thinking about how the Cinderella story of the first two seasons requires Rose to leave her working class black boyfriend for a white middle-class man with time-travelling bling? Is that what's been bothering me so much about the first half of Season 2? That Mickey keeps getting used as shorthand for the mundane, pointless life she's trying to escape in the Doctor's space-jag? That her black ex (yeah, not officially ex, but that's just because she was too damn egomaniacal to cut off any potential source of pathetic fawning) represents the baggage she's desperate to leave behind now Mr Received Pronunciation Time Lord is on the scene? That he's the literal manifestation of her fear that she's going to be dragged back to the crushing mediocrity of her shop job?

Mickey's not the tin dog, he's the chime at midnight. I mean, I'm 100% sure that it's just coincidence , but... damn.