martha as a means to other character's ends
Characters are given real motivation, purpose, and most importantly the audience is given emotional insight into them outside of what may have initially brought them into the plot. In short, they're allowed to dream a little, share a little, exist a little beyond what the plot requires of them.
This never happened with Martha.
Martha's unrequited love for the Doctor was manufactured not from the character - whom to this day has no ostensible reason to have anything more than a grudging respect for the humanoid (that's right, I said grudging respect) alien.
Martha's characterisation, in fact, seems to be a study in limitations that the text can box her into: She is lumbered with a romantic interest in a character that is never explicitly explained in the text (I refuse to counter the blog as text, I refuse to counter the blog as much more than a cop out actually). She cannot be his romantic interest because we are told that this is the space Rose occupies, she meets with disappointment and discontent because - the text implies to us - the Doctor refuses to 'see' her properly - ostensibly because he cannot accept Rose as gone, but largely - given that we saw him easily accept Donna directly (mere seconds) after his farewell to Rose - inexplicably; and yet she can't legitimately repudiate the Doctor and his claims because that's the spot Donna is to hold in the season after her departure.
Martha thereby becomes plot device: a place holder, a spot filler. It is suggested that this is what the Doctor is using her for and we're never objectively disabused of this notion particularly when his response to her saving the world by the spectacularly longwinded method (when Jack's earlier suggestion of simply destroying the paradox machine to end the Master's reign proves exact, so that he only has to point an automatic weapon at it and shoot to resolve the year of terror) of walking the world during a time of practical apocalypse - with no translator, it seems - to spread 'the word' of his apparent wonderfulness to a starving, enslaved and decimated population, is merely to offer her a hug and say thanks. Exactly the same gratitude he offers directly after her three month stay in Edwardian Britain, employed in menial labour and experiencing racial abuse. Not once does he address her bravery or determination or general competence above and beyond the call of duty for her entire tenure with him - even if only to give audience the cathartic release of having it explicity acknowledged - yet something he has little problem giving to Donna some five episodes into her return.
One wonders if you're meant to acknowledge the obviousness of this difference or merely field for a lobotomy.
Martha, herself is not permitted to have any acknowledgement or feelings on this either because it all becomes beside the point when the writer(s) decides to make it - or strongly suggest it given the continuity of her little speech at the end - about her undying love for the Doctor, and how that is not acknowledged.
The point is, the 'undying love' really isn't necessary to move Martha into a state of departure at the end of the season. Ostensibly it serves no purpose than to frustrate the audience with a gigantic 'gotcha' at the end because the assumption would have been that there was more of a reason to torture Martha with this seemingly pointless burden that adds nothing to the actual sequence of events.
But, aha, it does actually serve a purpose and it goes back to my original conclusion that Martha was nothing more than a plot contrivance meant to take up space for a while before the writers could get to the plot - and companions - that they really wanted to have impact on the Doctor - and thereby the continuity of the story being told. It is of significant note that Martha's time with the Doctor has very little distinct effect. The Doctor is in the same state of loss when she leaves (having said goodbye to the Master) as when she arrives (having said goodbye to Rose). The most that can be said is that he's used to saying to goodbye - not so much that he's used to letting go. If his behaviour with Martha is anything to go by it could be concluded that he was trying to direct her towards leaving from the beginning with the conspicious - and much touted by DOCTOR WHO staff - notion that he never truly accepted her in the first place. A notion that his lack of demonstrable protectiveness seems to support.
But back to the unrequited love.
If an unrequited love exists and it is never requited then the audience is quite naturally led to the question of why - and this process of deduction is indeed the actual point of this otherwise redundant plot-feature (I won't call it characterisation because it had very little to do with or say about Martha Jones herself); it leads directly back to the character of Rose - quite perfectly allowing the script to access and reference a character in absentia and legitimately keep her in the story, never far from the audience's thoughts.
This keeping Rose as the missing but very present third party only makes sense, of course, if it was always the intention to have Rose return - and given RTD's admission that (in very much the same way that Tate's return was quite premeditated) guest appearances have to booked at least a year in advance - it also explains (Kylie) the requirement that Martha's exit be before the Christmas episode and that she not be referenced there either. In fact, the main motivation of referencing Martha at all at the beginning of the season - where the Doctor melodramtically states to Donna that he ruined Martha's life (yet doesn't find it necessary to disclose these feelings to Martha herself when he meets her, or so much as venture an apology given the supposely massive guilt, the plot is suggesting with this admission, he's held himself under - rather he chooses to grill her on the necessity of her handling a gun while working for a military organisation - an employ that comes as a direct result of his involvement in her life thus far) is to motivate those who missed season three - and Martha - to go back and view it, if only to discover the specifities of this overblown confession.
Thereby it becomes largely apparent that Martha is mainly there to remind the audience that Rose is not - in so much keeping her memory alive so that her return is less a surprise, more primed for the viewers in question.
Martha's other purpose, of course, is to remind the audience of who is still present: namely the Doctor himself. Her falling in love with him is nothing more that a means of exonerating his shortcomings and justifying his excesses - or rather letting them slide until the character they want to counter them is present on screen. This is particularly true given that, Martha - muted by what the writers want to do with Donna later - can't seem to take the Doctor to task for any of his more questionable moments, in particular his treatment of her. For one, the fact of her explicity loving him gives lie to whether her motivation is utterly altruistic or entirely personal. In short, it compromises whatever ground the making her a medical student would have covered, as this occupation swiftly becomes moot given the number of times Martha's medical expertise is trumped in favour of her physical ability - be it running, or scrubbing. Case in point, Martha's being a medical student - soon to be, and later to become a doctor herself - adds nothing more to the plot than a self-reflexive narcissistic nod towards the Doctor himself while implying that the Doctor is teacher and Martha is student - something that the actual stories given fail to back up considering Martha doesn't actual need to be taught how to save the day, as she manages to save both the day and the Doctor's life twice within the first two episodes.
Wherefore then, this supposed much touted 'mentoring' relationship? It's an exercise that would more accurately be described as a 'torturing' relationship.
So, as she doesn't actually require anything of the Doctor, other than his love - that strangely for a character persona-non-grata still seems tacked on to her largely missing characterisation - and which we already know she's not going to get - again making it a rather redundant addition to the story unless as stated before it is only present to allow Rose to be repeatedly referenced by the text in a way that is marginally less intrusive than it could have been after it's had worn out it's initial welcome. This also explains the addition of another largely redundant character: Annalise. Her appearance in Smith & Jones is never repeated or really referenced later in the season but her incarnation is visibly demonstrated the once if only to superficially explain/validate Martha's supposed sense of insecurity upon the revelation that Rose was indeed a blonde herself.
Interestingly, more thought seems to have been put into why Martha could possibly feel second best next to Rose - someone she isn't ostensibly setting out to replace but whom the text repeatedly places her next to in direct comparison - than Martha's motivation for travelling with the Doctor at all. His getting her into the TARDIS is all about the things he'll ultimately withhold: intellectual pursuit, and emotional acknowledgement. All possible scientific interest is vanquished - again - with the introduction of her love for the Doctor, and more directly quoshed when her questions about the how the TARDIS moves through time are dismissed by the Doctor (again, supposedly to legitimise how and why this same Doctor not only ventures some dialogue in this direction with Donna less than a season later but also why he sees fit to show Donna how to pilot said mysterious apparatus).
In fact, between Martha's responses to the Doctor setting her up for unfavourable comparison with Rose when she's only doing what the text repeatedly tells us most companions - and near companions - of this new incarnation of WHO have done anyway, i.e. love the Doctor (Donna being established as the exception that proves the rule), and Martha's responses to the Doctor being used as set up for the responses Donna will later make - there's little to no room for her to manouvre within her own unique characterisation and response. Indeed there isn't any - she's a retread of Rose with a little investment placed in both her and her supporting character - who ultimately become a cast in cliff notes - who pointedly cease having any relevance beyond being the ostensible reason other reason Martha stays at home. No insight is given into what Martha thinks or feels beyond her oft repeated or implied love for the man she's more often than not fighting to help or save - fighting because he is more often than not making circumstances more difficult for her than need be.
There's a clear magical loophole where Martha's concerned given that the Doctor outright tells her she has to fight the Daleks when they visit 1930s New York - a choice quite at odds to his decisions regarding Rose and Donna, both of whom he bundles into the TARDIS to be sent home or more than one occasion when mortal danger presents itself. Here, however, the Doctor barely bats an eyelid and indulges is some disturbingly, self-destructive acts that, had they proven successful, would have stranded his companion in both time and location.
This observation of callousness or perhaps willfull omission becomes explicit text when during an ambush, in The Doctor's Daughter, he swipes Donna out of harms way directly allowing Martha to be captured.
It's also not explained why later the writers feel the need to have Martha, who's obviously experienced death in the broader sense (if not the broadest if you consider her moments in TORCHWOOD) given both her occupation and experience with the Doctor particularly that last year - reduced to tears when her companion dies saving her from certain death.
If they're venturing that the stresses of her previous adventures have reduced her to this state then her judicious exit from the TARDIS at the end of year three now seem optimistic at best and at worst a deliberate front. But which one is it? Surely the can't have it both ways.
Russell T. Davies went a long way to proclaiming Martha more 'hardened' than her previous appearances after her exit from TARDIS. Whyfor the blatant regression? And what logical sense does it actually make? Given the 'characterisation' pattern she has been repeatedly boxed into this means it will serve as a contrast against a response of either Rose or Donna in the future - which never work out to Martha's personal advantage.
Which would again bring me back to my point that she is not so much a character but a continuity device for other characters characterisation.
Ultimately this all gives lie to the protestation that removing Martha from WHO to TORCHWOOD was all about 'big plans for Martha'. Ultimately it seems to be big plans for everyone else.
This never happened with Martha.
Martha's unrequited love for the Doctor was manufactured not from the character - whom to this day has no ostensible reason to have anything more than a grudging respect for the humanoid (that's right, I said grudging respect) alien.
Martha's characterisation, in fact, seems to be a study in limitations that the text can box her into: She is lumbered with a romantic interest in a character that is never explicitly explained in the text (I refuse to counter the blog as text, I refuse to counter the blog as much more than a cop out actually). She cannot be his romantic interest because we are told that this is the space Rose occupies, she meets with disappointment and discontent because - the text implies to us - the Doctor refuses to 'see' her properly - ostensibly because he cannot accept Rose as gone, but largely - given that we saw him easily accept Donna directly (mere seconds) after his farewell to Rose - inexplicably; and yet she can't legitimately repudiate the Doctor and his claims because that's the spot Donna is to hold in the season after her departure.
Martha thereby becomes plot device: a place holder, a spot filler. It is suggested that this is what the Doctor is using her for and we're never objectively disabused of this notion particularly when his response to her saving the world by the spectacularly longwinded method (when Jack's earlier suggestion of simply destroying the paradox machine to end the Master's reign proves exact, so that he only has to point an automatic weapon at it and shoot to resolve the year of terror) of walking the world during a time of practical apocalypse - with no translator, it seems - to spread 'the word' of his apparent wonderfulness to a starving, enslaved and decimated population, is merely to offer her a hug and say thanks. Exactly the same gratitude he offers directly after her three month stay in Edwardian Britain, employed in menial labour and experiencing racial abuse. Not once does he address her bravery or determination or general competence above and beyond the call of duty for her entire tenure with him - even if only to give audience the cathartic release of having it explicity acknowledged - yet something he has little problem giving to Donna some five episodes into her return.
One wonders if you're meant to acknowledge the obviousness of this difference or merely field for a lobotomy.
Martha, herself is not permitted to have any acknowledgement or feelings on this either because it all becomes beside the point when the writer(s) decides to make it - or strongly suggest it given the continuity of her little speech at the end - about her undying love for the Doctor, and how that is not acknowledged.
The point is, the 'undying love' really isn't necessary to move Martha into a state of departure at the end of the season. Ostensibly it serves no purpose than to frustrate the audience with a gigantic 'gotcha' at the end because the assumption would have been that there was more of a reason to torture Martha with this seemingly pointless burden that adds nothing to the actual sequence of events.
But, aha, it does actually serve a purpose and it goes back to my original conclusion that Martha was nothing more than a plot contrivance meant to take up space for a while before the writers could get to the plot - and companions - that they really wanted to have impact on the Doctor - and thereby the continuity of the story being told. It is of significant note that Martha's time with the Doctor has very little distinct effect. The Doctor is in the same state of loss when she leaves (having said goodbye to the Master) as when she arrives (having said goodbye to Rose). The most that can be said is that he's used to saying to goodbye - not so much that he's used to letting go. If his behaviour with Martha is anything to go by it could be concluded that he was trying to direct her towards leaving from the beginning with the conspicious - and much touted by DOCTOR WHO staff - notion that he never truly accepted her in the first place. A notion that his lack of demonstrable protectiveness seems to support.
But back to the unrequited love.
If an unrequited love exists and it is never requited then the audience is quite naturally led to the question of why - and this process of deduction is indeed the actual point of this otherwise redundant plot-feature (I won't call it characterisation because it had very little to do with or say about Martha Jones herself); it leads directly back to the character of Rose - quite perfectly allowing the script to access and reference a character in absentia and legitimately keep her in the story, never far from the audience's thoughts.
This keeping Rose as the missing but very present third party only makes sense, of course, if it was always the intention to have Rose return - and given RTD's admission that (in very much the same way that Tate's return was quite premeditated) guest appearances have to booked at least a year in advance - it also explains (Kylie) the requirement that Martha's exit be before the Christmas episode and that she not be referenced there either. In fact, the main motivation of referencing Martha at all at the beginning of the season - where the Doctor melodramtically states to Donna that he ruined Martha's life (yet doesn't find it necessary to disclose these feelings to Martha herself when he meets her, or so much as venture an apology given the supposely massive guilt, the plot is suggesting with this admission, he's held himself under - rather he chooses to grill her on the necessity of her handling a gun while working for a military organisation - an employ that comes as a direct result of his involvement in her life thus far) is to motivate those who missed season three - and Martha - to go back and view it, if only to discover the specifities of this overblown confession.
Thereby it becomes largely apparent that Martha is mainly there to remind the audience that Rose is not - in so much keeping her memory alive so that her return is less a surprise, more primed for the viewers in question.
Martha's other purpose, of course, is to remind the audience of who is still present: namely the Doctor himself. Her falling in love with him is nothing more that a means of exonerating his shortcomings and justifying his excesses - or rather letting them slide until the character they want to counter them is present on screen. This is particularly true given that, Martha - muted by what the writers want to do with Donna later - can't seem to take the Doctor to task for any of his more questionable moments, in particular his treatment of her. For one, the fact of her explicity loving him gives lie to whether her motivation is utterly altruistic or entirely personal. In short, it compromises whatever ground the making her a medical student would have covered, as this occupation swiftly becomes moot given the number of times Martha's medical expertise is trumped in favour of her physical ability - be it running, or scrubbing. Case in point, Martha's being a medical student - soon to be, and later to become a doctor herself - adds nothing more to the plot than a self-reflexive narcissistic nod towards the Doctor himself while implying that the Doctor is teacher and Martha is student - something that the actual stories given fail to back up considering Martha doesn't actual need to be taught how to save the day, as she manages to save both the day and the Doctor's life twice within the first two episodes.
Wherefore then, this supposed much touted 'mentoring' relationship? It's an exercise that would more accurately be described as a 'torturing' relationship.
So, as she doesn't actually require anything of the Doctor, other than his love - that strangely for a character persona-non-grata still seems tacked on to her largely missing characterisation - and which we already know she's not going to get - again making it a rather redundant addition to the story unless as stated before it is only present to allow Rose to be repeatedly referenced by the text in a way that is marginally less intrusive than it could have been after it's had worn out it's initial welcome. This also explains the addition of another largely redundant character: Annalise. Her appearance in Smith & Jones is never repeated or really referenced later in the season but her incarnation is visibly demonstrated the once if only to superficially explain/validate Martha's supposed sense of insecurity upon the revelation that Rose was indeed a blonde herself.
Interestingly, more thought seems to have been put into why Martha could possibly feel second best next to Rose - someone she isn't ostensibly setting out to replace but whom the text repeatedly places her next to in direct comparison - than Martha's motivation for travelling with the Doctor at all. His getting her into the TARDIS is all about the things he'll ultimately withhold: intellectual pursuit, and emotional acknowledgement. All possible scientific interest is vanquished - again - with the introduction of her love for the Doctor, and more directly quoshed when her questions about the how the TARDIS moves through time are dismissed by the Doctor (again, supposedly to legitimise how and why this same Doctor not only ventures some dialogue in this direction with Donna less than a season later but also why he sees fit to show Donna how to pilot said mysterious apparatus).
In fact, between Martha's responses to the Doctor setting her up for unfavourable comparison with Rose when she's only doing what the text repeatedly tells us most companions - and near companions - of this new incarnation of WHO have done anyway, i.e. love the Doctor (Donna being established as the exception that proves the rule), and Martha's responses to the Doctor being used as set up for the responses Donna will later make - there's little to no room for her to manouvre within her own unique characterisation and response. Indeed there isn't any - she's a retread of Rose with a little investment placed in both her and her supporting character - who ultimately become a cast in cliff notes - who pointedly cease having any relevance beyond being the ostensible reason other reason Martha stays at home. No insight is given into what Martha thinks or feels beyond her oft repeated or implied love for the man she's more often than not fighting to help or save - fighting because he is more often than not making circumstances more difficult for her than need be.
There's a clear magical loophole where Martha's concerned given that the Doctor outright tells her she has to fight the Daleks when they visit 1930s New York - a choice quite at odds to his decisions regarding Rose and Donna, both of whom he bundles into the TARDIS to be sent home or more than one occasion when mortal danger presents itself. Here, however, the Doctor barely bats an eyelid and indulges is some disturbingly, self-destructive acts that, had they proven successful, would have stranded his companion in both time and location.
This observation of callousness or perhaps willfull omission becomes explicit text when during an ambush, in The Doctor's Daughter, he swipes Donna out of harms way directly allowing Martha to be captured.
It's also not explained why later the writers feel the need to have Martha, who's obviously experienced death in the broader sense (if not the broadest if you consider her moments in TORCHWOOD) given both her occupation and experience with the Doctor particularly that last year - reduced to tears when her companion dies saving her from certain death.
If they're venturing that the stresses of her previous adventures have reduced her to this state then her judicious exit from the TARDIS at the end of year three now seem optimistic at best and at worst a deliberate front. But which one is it? Surely the can't have it both ways.
Russell T. Davies went a long way to proclaiming Martha more 'hardened' than her previous appearances after her exit from TARDIS. Whyfor the blatant regression? And what logical sense does it actually make? Given the 'characterisation' pattern she has been repeatedly boxed into this means it will serve as a contrast against a response of either Rose or Donna in the future - which never work out to Martha's personal advantage.
Which would again bring me back to my point that she is not so much a character but a continuity device for other characters characterisation.
Ultimately this all gives lie to the protestation that removing Martha from WHO to TORCHWOOD was all about 'big plans for Martha'. Ultimately it seems to be big plans for everyone else.