Who has he become?

The last few nights, i have had insomnia. As a result, i have read a book, played some WoW (got a new bow in Pit of Saron), read some fanfiction (most of it very ill, as the stories that are good aren't really being updated lately), watched the first two episodes of Doctor Who ever, and finished season four of Doctor Who and watched three of the specials with David Tennant, the latest being "Waters of Mars."

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Read at your own risk!

Last night, i think, was the scariest thing i have ever seen, and not because of the infected humans, but because the Doctor breaks. This special is one of the few episodes in which the Doctor has no companion whatsoever: there are only the people that he meets for the first time within the time he is visiting. And the sad part is that he realizes that he has read about these people before and they are all going to die that very day. But they've taken him prisoner, as it were, and he is forced to watch the first of them succumb, and when they finally let him go it's all falling apart, and he's walking away, back to the TARDIS, back to safety... and he just breaks. He does the thing that has kept him separate from the Master, from all the bad guys, and decides that consequences be damned, but he's the last Time Lord and he is going to be the one to decide who lives, who dies, and where time changes.

As i said, it was the scariest thing i've ever seen, because he was going mad with the pain. So was i, in a way: TV, movies, books, always affect me hugely, i'm always crying, etc. i was sobbing and heartbroken as he walked away. In that moment i wanted to run and hide nearly as much as i wanted to be able to reach through the screen and touch him, hold him. i discovered something about the show that bothered me, that has struck me about Doctor Who as a whole: of all the lessons that he has learned, pain that he has felt, all the people he has lost and saved, he's never learned two things. 1 ~ He keeps coming back for more pain... which is incredibly sad, but not necessarily a bad characteristic.

2 ~ Death is not always a negative. In "Blink", the cop is ready to die, he's had a long full life with a woman that he loved, and the same seems to be true of Sally's friend Kathy. Ironically, the life that the Weeping Angels condemn them to turns out to be happier than the ones they lost. What really bothers me is that, in "Forest of the Dead", the Doctor condemns the woman he will eventually love to a nightmare... and then they portray River as being happy. He then does the same thing to the Captain in "Waters of Mars": because he saves her, she's forced to commit suicide to regain the nobility of her death. It might have been all right if he had taken her somewhere safe, somewhere across the universe, but no, he drops her on her doorstep.

i do not understand why the Doctor cannot understand that death is sometimes longed for, preferable to the pain, to the horrors one's selfishness could cause. i guess that it is because he has never had to experience death himself, because he is always watching people slip away while he is forced to regenerate, live forever. But why would River be happy with three fake children and no Doctor? Why would Rose be happy with a broken half-Doctor that has committed mass murder without a second thought? (Of course he's a git and still won't even tell Rose that he loves her, so good riddance in a way, of course it has to be said, you idiot!) Why would Donna be happy with her brain wiped and the switch reset to mundane? The entire point is that these women were utterly unhappy without the Doctor and were willing to sacrifice everything to be with him, even die.

This is why i dislike Matron Joan... no matter how much the Doctor has hurt you, how can she just turn her back on him? All because he was man enough to return to who he really was instead of being selfish enough to remain who a part of him desperately longs to be??? She did not love him enough. She did not understand that the reason everyone loves him is because he runs towards trouble and puts it back in its place. The reason everyone loves him is because he freely sacrifices of himself for the entire universe, despite the fact that the job is utterly thankless most of the time. People blame him for the trouble he puts down.

But of course, now the Doctor is broken, and slipping away from me forever. i am, of course, hugely curious as to what #11 will be like, but i rather got it in my head that he was going to turn out to be a past incarnation, that it would be the Doctor during the time war... between 8 & 9. i wanted to hold on to the possibility that we could someday get #10 back, after the Last Great Time War is explained. Now that the Doctor has snapped and has decided that he is the Lord of all Time alone... it would be very easy for TPTB to therefore make him try to fix the Last Great Time War, despite the fact that it was timelocked. That, of course, could be considered to be a noble endeavor, but if he refuses to travel with a companion because they only get hurt, because it therefore hurts him too much... who is there to hold him back??? i know 11 has a companion, but there are two more "hours" for 10 (it really comes to about an hour and a half of viewing time with the commercials omitted), and i'm wondering how the heck he's going to be fixed in that amount of time. Wilf has his work cut out.

When did it happen that i became infatuated with a lanky boy ten years my senior? Chris was my first Doctor, i'm supposed to love him more, right? It feels like a betrayal to be so wrapped up in #10. The first Doctor is utterly foreign to me. On the other hand, i'm not sure i want to meet River's Doctor. i think i caught a glimpse of him last night, and it was utterly and completely wrong. i feel stupid to be so utterly bereft. Why do i keep getting sucked in? i'm tired of being so wrapped up in fictional characters' pain, i want to heal and i want to find my own companion... just one. i'm so tired of being single.