the character treatment. The fact that John Smith was horrified at giving himself up to become the Doctor. The fact that he learned from Martha that the Doctor was lonely and emotionally distant/repressed, and responded in such desperation with, "and that's what you want me to become?"
And at the end, when he asked the nurse to travel with him, and she refused. When he pressed her, and she said she had but one question for him. If he hadn't chosen that village on a whim, would anyone there have died?
"No."
"You can leave now."
The show was some pretty damn good writing from the perspective of character treatment.
As far as the end goes, with the impossibilities, I did have a bit of a problem with it at first, but then I look at like this. The show in general, and this particular episode, treats the doctor as a hero of mythic proportions, a deity or demigod. In this particular episode, they wanted to show the stark contrast between the Doctor in that context, and his human persona. I think this was mood was particularly affected by the style of the narration.
Notice also how at the beginning of the first part, when he became human, he warned Martha of the cruelty of humans, and to not let him abandon her. Then they reveal that the reason he became human was out of kindness, so he would not exact the cruelty upon them to the extent that only a Time Lord could. And they reveal that as a human he had the capacity to love as only a Human could. And he had to give up the latter for the former. |
