Doctor Who - the emotional arcs

Note: photos are from time-and-space.co.uk, and from the gallery at chaotic-creative.com

The third season is the one I want to focus on, as it is so fresh in my mind and it really has the most compelling arc, the most immediate and raw. The loss of Rose at the end of the second season is the kickoff point, and of course the moment that he never really gets over. Throughout the third season we see his emotional pain made real and physical; certainly there is nothing to compare to it in the first and second seasons. He gets kicked around in this season.

His emotional state is very raw; even once past the barely suppressed pain of "The Runaway Bride" he struggles between a reluctance to open himself up again to such pain and the desperate need to not lose a companion again. This is beautifully illustrated by this moment from "Gridlock" when Martha is abducted. He has this desperate intensity when an acquaintance is in danger, taken away from him - even in "Daleks in Manhattan" when the acquaintance is a very casual one. The loss is too real, too great for him.


In "42", an episode I found uniquely compelling, not only are the Doctor and Martha on a spaceship 42 minutes away from crashing into a sun, but in short order they are blocked from the TARDIS and then from each other. As Martha tumbles toward the sun's surface in an escape pod the Doctor becomes possessed by the sun-entity.

It's an abrupt turnaround for their relationship; as he struggles to fight the unknown entity he's helpless and dependent on her to do what she can to save him. The moment in which he confesses, "I'm scared, Martha, I'm so scared," is a pivotal one. The Doctor is often scared but rarely so honest about it.

In "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" he is walloped both physically and emotionally; firstly by the action of the Chameleon Arch as it rewrites his DNA - he admits casually that it is incredibly painful, a fact that doesn't seem to give him pause. We, the audience, and Martha, our surrogate, are left to cringe in horror.


The emotional wallop comes later for him, when his assumed personality fights for selfhood, cries out at the thought of losing the woman he loves, the life he might have had.

OK, this pic is more for squee than anything else, but it is a moment that kicks off the climactic sequence of the last two episodes; the Master, regenerated, haring away in the TARDIS as the Doctor uses his ever-useful sonic screwdriver to lock the TARDIS guidance system.


And the scene that wraps up the emotional arc of the third season: the Master dies in the Doctor's arms, refusing to regenerate. The Doctor cries as if he's losing his second self. I've heard some speculation that they could be brothers? In some ways this wraps up the arc of the first season as well - the angst of the Doctor who believed even then that he was the last of the time lords.


But there is an afterword; it still remains for both Jack and Martha to say their goodbyes. At an earlier time both of them would have jumped at the chance to keep travelling with him, but they've grown... they've become more honest with themselves, and both of them realize that they want things they won't get in the TARDIS - human things.