A COMPREHENSIVE DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING TENTOO (PART 1)
Because unfortunately there’s a lot of stuff out there to refute.
so i guess a lot of people are watching doctor who right now because of good omens. and that, for some reason, means the tags are being constantly subjected to Certain tentoo takes so...it's meta time.
in this meta, i'll be rehashing how, exactly, tentoo is the doctor, and answering some other commonly posed objections to the pairing that is tentoo x rose.
But he's not the Doctor! Rose ended up with a copy!
First things first. The entire show revolves around the philosophical concept of Cartesian Dualism--the idea that the soul/spirit/mind has an entirely separate existence from the physical body. This is the basic principle of regeneration; when the Doctor regenerates, every organ, every cell in his body changes, and yet he remains the same man. What makes the Ninth Doctor the same man as the Tenth Doctor? There's something underlying here---the memories, the mind, the spirit. The body, has absolutely no significance.
In S6E6, The Almost People, we are introduced to the Ganger!Doctor. This is a man made out of like, slime, but he has the Eleventh Doctor's memories. Thus, he IS the Doctor. The Doctor himself says this.
In S9E11, Heaven Sent, the Twelfth Doctor is reduced to ashes millions and millions of times, and yet each time his body is 'recreated' or 'cloned', he remains the same person. Why? Because the memories persist. The soul lives on.
Here, have it straight from the horse's mouth.
"A man is the sum of his memories. A Time Lord even more so." - The Fifth Doctor, The Five Doctors, 1983
More evidence? What's the first thing the Tenth Doctor tries to do in Born Again to convince Rose that he really is the Doctor she knows?
DOCTOR: Very first word I ever said to you. Trapped in that cellar...Surrounded by shop window dummies. Oh...such a long time ago. I took your hand...I said one word. Just one word...Run.
Right. He shows her that he has the same memories.
Now cast your minds back to S4E13. What does the Metacrisis Doctor say when he's trying to convince Rose he's the same man?
Therefore, according to the lore established by the show itself, his missing heart has no significance to who he is. He is the Doctor.
2. But he's a CLONE.
Okay, first of all, he's not. He's a biological metacrisis, the only one of his kind. He has only one heart, i.e, he is not biologically identical to the Time Lord Doctor.
Second, even if he was, he would STILL be the Doctor. As established above.
Third, we see a Martha clone in S4E4, The Sontaran Stratagem, and she is a far cry from what we see of Tentoo.
3. Alright so he's not a copy. He's still only A Doctor! He isn't Ten, he's Half-Donna!
So. We've established that what makes a man is his memories.
If the Doctor had Donna's memories, he wouldn't be the Doctor anymore--which makes him ending up with Rose redundant. Here's the silver lining though.
Tentoo has only ten's memories. His own memories.
'How do we know this?' you may ask. Let's examine the script of S4E13, Journey's End.
(The Daleks spin around on the spot.)
DALEK: Help me. Help me!
DONNA: And the other way.
NEW DOCTOR: What did you do?
DONNA: Trip switch circuit-breaker in the psychokinetic threshold manipulator.
NEW DOCTOR: But that's brilliant!
DOCTOR: Why did we never think of that?
DONNA: Because you two were just Time Lords, you dumbos, lacking that little bit of human. That gut instinct that comes hand in hand with planet Earth. I can think of ideas you two couldn't dream of in a million years.
Not very likely if Tentoo had her memories, right? This happens again, in the TARDIS Coral deleted scene:
DONNA: If you shatterfry the plasmic shell....you accelerate the growth power by fifty-nine.
DOCTOR & NEW DOCTOR: We never thought of that.
There we go. Canon evidence that Tentoo does not have Donna's mind/memory/thought process. Instead, we see his mind being constantly referred to as that of his Time Lord counterpart.
4. So what exactly happened during the 'metacrisis' then? Why was Donna unable to sustain the change whereas we're meant to assume Tentoo is doing fine?
What happened in JE was a two-way metacrisis.
Tentoo is a biological metacrisis, i.e his mind remained the same, but the regeneration energy in his hand picked up on Donna's human biology and grew a human body. (His body is PART human, as in the ageing part. He'll grow old, and never regenerate.)
Whereas, Donna's body remained the same; she got the Doctor's mind, becoming the DoctorDonna. She is essentially the Doctor AND Donna, at this point in time.
At one point in JE, there are three Doctors ("There's three of you?") because as proved earlier, anybody that has the Doctor's memories, is the Doctor. There is: the Time Lord Doctor (Ten), the Human Doctor (Tentoo) and the Doctor Donna.
Since Donna was a human, she could not sustain the Doctor's mind alongside her own, which is what led to it burning up. It was simply too much for a human brain to take.
Tentoo, as proven earlier, does not have Donna's mind.
5. But he talks funny.
We are shown the Doctor picking up her mannerisms. The Doctor regularly picks up things from people he travels with. He "imprints" on Rose as a newly regenerated being and is shown to pick up on his companions' accents very often.
On a more analytical level, the "Donna mannerisms" bit is obviously comedic relief in an extremely action packed episode (evidenced by the fact that he literally never sounds like Donna again throughout the episode) and isn't meant to be taken that seriously. In every other scene, he is played by David Tennant, exactly as ten.
Tentoo is the Tenth Doctor, but human. In every way that matters, he is exactly Ten.
6. But he's Season 2 Ten! He doesn't have any of the character development Time-Lord Ten does!
Erm. Yeah. You've got to watch the show again.
7. Alright. Okay. If Tentoo is the exact same man, he would get bored of a life on earth with Rose. They'd never last.
Now we've got to address a key aspect of the Doctor's arc. (Keep in mind, when I refer to the Doctor herein, I only mean the Ninth and Tenth, the ones written by Russell T. Davies.)
The Doctor always wanted to be human.
The Doctor, and the Tenth Doctor in particular, wants to be human. It’s peppered here and there throughout the first four seasons, but if you watch closely, there’s this underlying current of wistfulness in him (“I’ve never had a life like that”; “The one adventure I can never have”), not to mention the entirety of the Human Nature two parter.
I think to some extent Rose made him feel human, and it’s his alienness that’s the big barrier in their relationship. He doesn't allow himself to love her the way he wants to because of the difference in their life spans. Because he's a Time-Lord, and he has a responsibility to the Universe, and he can't be more selfish than he's being already, keeping her with him.
She makes him want to be human, to be loved and to be free to love her as he wants to. She even helps him forget, sometimes, that he isn't human. Remember his expression in The Stolen Earth when he sees her again? He is so glad to see her. In that moment, it doesn't matter that they can never be together, because Rose loves him so much she came back.
I'm reminded of a quote from Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
I know that I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man.
And then bam. The almost-regeneration. The crushing reminder that he is intrinsically different from her species, from what he aches to be. Constant and selfish and free. Human.
Giving Rose up to his other self was the most selfless, loving thing he could’ve done. His other self, who is uninhibited, unburdened from the responsibilities of a Time Lord—can and will give Rose everything she deserves.
8. Just make Rose immortal then! Happy endings all around.
Now you might say, the earlier problem could be solved simply by making Rose immortal—she’d stay with the Doctor forever and she’d never have to leave him!
Here's the thing. Being immortal is Not Good.
A constant theme throughout seasons 1-4 is that immortality is not desirable. There is a constant motif of “living too long”, whether it be from Jack, the Face of Boe (cough), or the Doctor himself.
Things are only precious and meaningful because they end—the human way of doing things? Fast, and bright, and temporary? It’s the right way.
One of the many reasons the Doctor loves Rose is because she’s human—it’s a big part of why he’s attracted to her in the first place.
Besides, an immortal Rose would mean having to outlive her family, her friends, everyone she’s ever known—who else has experienced that? Oh, yeah. The Doctor. I can’t imagine him wanting her to go through the same thing under any circumstances.
9. Rose would never accept him. She wanted the adventure too, not just the Doctor.
This is the Rose who instantly felt connected to a parallel version of her parents. Remember, this Pete and Jackie had NO memory of her, and yet, she loved them. Tentoo IS Ten.
She also constantly refers to Tentoo as The Doctor, so I have faith in her figuring it out just fine.
As for the adventure, being human doesn't mean they're suddenly going to become accountants or work in childcare or something. (Looking at you, Jenny Colgan.)
Canon (Big Finish) tells us that they both work with UNIT/Torchwood, so we know that they're out there, defending Pete's World together.
'What about the TARDIS?' you may ask. Well, the writer considers it canon that the previously linked TARDIS coral scene did take place, so we can imagine that they're out there, exploring a new Universe.
But even if they didn’t have a TARDIS, we only need to look to S1E13, The Parting of the Ways, to understand that Rose cares about the Doctor above all else.
ROSE: But what do I do every day, mum? What do I do? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed? Is that it?
MICKEY: It's what the rest of us do.
ROSE: But I can't!
MICKEY: Why, because you're better than us?
ROSE: No, I didn't mean that. But it was. It was a better life. And I don't mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and spaceships and things. That don't matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know he showed you too. That you don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away.
Of course Rose loves the TARDIS. She just loves the Doctor more.
More evidence? S2E8, The Impossible Planet:
DOCTOR: ....They were grown, not built. And with my own planet gone, we're kind of stuck.
ROSE: Well, it could be worse. This lot said they'd give us a lift.
DOCTOR: And then what?
ROSE: I don't know. Find a planet, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe.
Clearly, she doesn't mind settling down---not if it means staying with the Doctor.
DOCTOR: I promised Jackie I'd always take you back home.
ROSE: Everyone leaves home in the end.
DOCTOR: Not to end up stuck here.
ROSE: Yeah, but stuck with you, that's not so bad.
DOCTOR: Yeah?
ROSE: Yes.
Here's another conversation she has with Jackie in S2E12, Army of Ghosts:
JACKIE: No, but really. When I'm dead and buried, you won't have any reason to come back home. What happens then?
ROSE: I don't know.
JACKIE: Do you think you'll ever settle down?
ROSE: The Doctor never will, so I can't. I'll just keep on travelling.
"I can't." Not I don't want to, or I'm not interested---I can't. Rose is in love with the Doctor, and she knows at some level that the feeling is mutual. She also knows, he will never fully act on it.
But that's alright, because she loves him so much she's made her peace with it and with his limitations.
And instead of the typical female protagonist sacrificing things for her love interest trope, we get RTD flipping it on its head and letting Ten deliver the ultimate sacrifice, perform the ultimate act of love---letting Rose go.
By doing this, he's giving her everything he never could. It's beautiful. It's heartbreaking. It's the best love story ever put to television.
Let me conclude with this quote:
“Firstly, Rose is neither shallow nor stupid. She doesn’t settle for second best. She gets the person she fell in love with. And, as a bonus, he’s now able to spend the rest of his life with her, as she with him. Secondly, the very same person who experienced the heartbreak of losing Rose for the first time now experiences joy at the prospect of a lifetime in her company. In this full sense, the Doctor who lost, finally wins.” - Paul Dawson, Doctor Who and Philosophy.
10. But the Doctor and Rose ending up together is disgusting! They were platonic!
i love writing heavily established tentoorose. i love writing them happily married for many years with normal human jobs and a daughter and a TARDIS they take out for adventures on the weekends. i love writing them settled and content in their lives and in love with one another and happy at the prospect of their remaining years. i love writing them with grey hairs and smile lines and well into their fourties and fifties and wholly satisfied with aging.
guh. something something themes and satisfying narrative conclusions and quiet epilogues. i just really really like them
Baelor of House Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, Hand of the King, Protector of the Realm, and heir apparent to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, went to the fire in the yard of Ashford Castle on the north bank of River Cockleswent. Other great houses might choose to bury their dead in the dark earth or sink them in the cold green sea, but the Targaryens were the blood of the dragon, and their ends were writ in flame.
A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS — 1.05: In the Name of the Mother
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