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rynneOkay. I'm done poking at the essay and am ready to post it. *breathes sigh of relief* Whoever reads this, I hope you enjoy. :)
Introduction
The Parting of the Ways is my favorite episode of Doctor Who. In fact, it's one of my favorite episodes out of all the TV I've watched, and now I want to talk about why. Because this episode has repercussions through the rest of the series, there are references through Fires of Pompeii, so there are S4 spoilers. As well, there are a lot of references to past S1 episodes, because Parting of the Ways is the culmination of this season and I can't properly talk about it without talking about what led to it.
Now, without further ado, have 10,000 words on why I adore this episode. :p
Plot and structure
First of all, the plot is truly epic. The Bad Wolf references begin in End of the World, spanning the rest of the season, and the events of this two-parter are a consequence of the events of The Long Game. Even the Heart of the TARDIS first appeared in a previous episode. The plot elements are very well set up, which pleases me--one thing that drives me crazy without fail in nearly any form of media is a lack of adequate set-up, so this is significant for me.
Everything fits together so well. There are two fights in this episode: everyone's struggle against the Daleks, and Rose's struggle to get back to the Doctor. Many of the scenes from Jack's goodbye to Rose and the Doctor on are mirrors or parallels. Jack recruiting more people from Floor 0 is mirrored with the Doctor sending Rose home, taking her out of the fight. The Doctor's conversation with Jack and the Emperor Dalek about the choice he has to make is paralleled with Rose's conversation with Jackie and Mickey about the fact that the Doctor taught her to make that kind of choice. The next scene ends with Jack declaring they're at war, signalling the beginning of the fight there, and the following scene with Rose ends with her realization that she can get back to the Doctor, beginning her own fight. Jack and his volunteers are getting ready for the Daleks, while Rose is realizing what she needs to do. The fight begins, but the defenders are ineffective and the Floor Manager dies; Mickey uses his car to try and pull the console open, but it's not strong enough and the chain breaks. There are the dark moments--Rose and Jackie's conversation ends with Rose in tears and Jackie running out of the TARDIS, and the Dalek fleet descends to Earth, bombing whole continents. Then Davitch Pavale (the Male Programmer) and the Female Programmer have a conversation that ends with hope of survival, while Jackie appears with the Big Yellow Truck. The events after that are mirrored--the defenders are losing the fight against the Daleks, while Rose is winning the fight to get back. Jack is shooting vainly at the Daleks as Rose succeeds in talking to the TARDIS. Then Jack dies, his fight lost, and the TARDIS appears, Rose's fight won.
The ending seems, on the surface, to be pure deus ex machina (at least, according to this trope's common use, where it's often a cheap contrivance that fixes everything without appropriate internal build-up). Rose becomes what is effectively a goddess (appearing, amusingly, from a machine), and in one fell swoop is reunited with the Doctor, resurrects Jack, and destroys the Dalek fleet. But it's not deus ex machina, not really--or rather, it is, but literally rather than structurally. Bad Wolf has been set up from the beginning of the season, making it inevitable and basically a predestination paradox, and the Heart of the TARDIS is set up in Boom Town. As well, Bad Wolf only fixes the immediate crisis, but ends up precipitating others--first, the Doctor's regeneration, and later, the events with the Master (which wouldn't have happened had Jack's "wrongness" not prodded the Doctor and the TARDIS to flee to the end of the universe, where they met Professor Yana). Bad Wolf is not a cure-all.
The episode begins with the Doctor saving Rose, and it ends with Rose saving the Doctor--which is exactly what happened in the beginning of the season, with the Doctor saving Rose in Henrik's and Rose saving the Doctor beneath the London Eye. The two fights in this episode are constantly mirrored or paralleled. Bad Wolf begins an eternal time loop. The episode is a circle, and it brings the entire season with it. It's astonishingly well thought-out and I love it.
Themes
One of the overarching themes of Doctor Who is, I think, one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, and one that is explicitly stated in The Lazarus Experiment--"There's no such thing as an ordinary human." And this episode encapsulates that theme perfectly.
First, there are the people on the Gamestation. Lynda, who chooses the unknown over the known, and who decides to stay when she could have evacuated. There's Davitch Pavale, the Floor Manager, and the Female Programmer (the latter two unfortunately aren't given names), who previously worked for the Daleks (if unknowingly) and who now decide to fight them, despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered. These four are sharply contrasted with everyone who stays on Floor 0, because they've decided to do everything they can to help, and aren't just sitting down and hoping the fight passes them by.
There's Jack, who goes from a disillusioned con man to the leader of a ragged band of defenders who manages to hold the Daleks off just long enough, and who faces his death with dignity and courage.
And then there's Rose. Rose, who is on the surface completely ordinary--she dyes her hair blonde, something the Anne-droid mocks her for in only the previous episode, and she likes chips, and she has no idea how to fly the TARDIS on her own--but who ends up making extraordinary choices. She could have done exactly what the Doctor asked of her, in Emergency Programme One, which was what Mickey and Jackie were urging her to do. She could have done that, but she made a different choice. This choice gives her powers that make her extraordinary, but then she lets go of them, is Rose again without the power of the Vortex, and continues to stand up for what's right and make hard choices even when all she has is her. On the surface she is ordinary, but there is no ordinary here, not really, and that's because she pushes herself to be more.
Other themes include:
Redemption: People who worked for the Daleks now decide to fight them. Jack turns from a "coward" into a leader and in a sense a martyr.
Then there's the Doctor, who has the biggest redemption in this episode. When presented with choices very similar to ones in his past, he makes a different one. First is one from the last few minutes of Bad Wolf, mirrored with Dalek: the Doctor with a big gun. But where, in Dalek, he would have used that gun if Rose hadn't stopped him, here he sets it down himself, never having intended to use it. Another similar decision is his one to send Rose home. He has several times lured her away from her home, into his dangerous life where she's nearly died on multiple occasions, and here he lets go of his own desire to keep her with him and tries to do what he thinks is best for her. (I don't say that is what was best for her, or that he truly "lured" her away, but from the Doctor's point of view, I do think he would see it as a redemption, being able to let her go for her sake.)
And then the biggest decision--whether or not to use the Delta Wave. Whether to let the Daleks spread across the universe, or sacrifice a whole planet to stop them. He's been faced with this decision before, in the Time War. He chose to sacrifice Gallifrey, and ended up broken and traumatized because of it. Here, he chooses the opposite. I make no judgments on the rightness of that choice in terms of the rest of the universe, but for the Doctor's sake, I'm glad he makes that choice, that he ends up in a place where he cannot sacrifice another planet to this war. I think it indicates some measure of healing, that he is not blinded by what he had to do to Gallifrey and can make a different decision.
Sacrifice: Jack and the defenders sacrifice their lives so the Doctor can have enough time to get rid of the Daleks. The Doctor sacrifices his desire to keep Rose with him to send her away, and Jackie and Mickey sacrifice their desire to keep her with them in order to help her get back. Rose sacrifices the normal life she could have had to go back to the Doctor. And the Doctor sacrifices one of his regenerations to save Rose's life.
Rebirth: The Daleks are reborn from human cells. Jack is brought back to life. Rose is reborn into Bad Wolf. And, of course, the Doctor is reborn from Nine into Ten.
I love these themes. They're beautiful, and I'm so happy to find them here.
Characters
Now that I've got the plot and themes out of the way... :p The characters are where this episode really shines. There is no character arc in this episode that I am unsatisfied with, and one of the biggest reasons I love Parting of the Ways is where the characters ended up.
Jackie
In Rose, we meet Jackie Tyler, Rose's mother. She does love Rose, but she expresses that by clinging to her, and in some cases holding her back--one of her most distinctive lines is when she tells Rose that working in a shop is giving her "airs and graces". In World War III, she wants to prioritize Rose's safety above the rest of the world, and in the end, she asks Rose not to go with the Doctor, even though it's the chance of a lifetime.
Father's Day reveals heretofore unseen aspects of Jackie's character, as well as emphasizes ones that may have been overlooked. She's bitter and shrill, but that clearly comes from disappointment and the slow death of her dreams as Pete fails again and again. But after the Reaper kills the Doctor and Pete knows what he has to do, Jackie does something extremely significant, for her character--she lets him go. We have seen her do something similar in World War III, when she refrains from stopping Mickey launching the missile, an indication that she's capable of this, but Father's Day gives us a lot more insight into Jackie's motivations. Father's Day is a set-up for Parting of the Ways in terms of Jackie's character, because we're shown that she does have the capacity to let her loved ones go.
She lets Pete go when she has to, but now that leaves her alone, twenty years old with an infant to bring up by herself. She's so busy trying to make ends meet that she doesn't have time for dreams anymore, and Rose is the only thing she has left, so of course she clings.
But she can still learn. In the earlier scenes with Jackie in Parting of the Ways, she does what we would expect of her: she clings to Rose, tells Rose to be happy with what she's got, asks her to be safe and reminds her that that's what the Doctor wanted for her. But then Rose brings up Pete, and Jackie is reminded not only of her husband and his dreams, but also, I think, of the person she was with him, who was willing to buy into those dreams, and to hope for a better life.
So Jackie lets go. She is reminded of a time when she followed her heart, and, knowing that ultimately she does not regret her life with Pete, she allows and enables Rose to follow her own heart. I am so proud of Jackie for where she ends up, and this is one of the main reasons I love her.
Mickey
We first meet Mickey when Rose is nearly blown up with Henrik's, and Mickey wants her to come down to the pub and have a drink with him--but it is soon made very clear that this isn't an altruistic act. Mickey only wants Rose to come to the pub with him because there's a football match on, and with very little effort she persuades him to go without her.
This sets the stage for an episode where Mickey is, in a word, pathetic. He protests that Clive might be an internet stalker and Rose shouldn't meet him, but doesn't offer to meet him with her. He gets eaten by a rubbish bin. He cowers away from the Nestene Consciousness. Then he calls the Doctor a "thing" and clings to Rose's leg.
He continues to have moments of being pathetic, like running after the dematerializing TARDIS and crashing into the wall, then running and hiding from UNIT, in Aliens of London, and crashing into the cleaning cart in Boom Town. But beginning in World War III, he really starts to grow up, into a person that Rose can call the bravest human she knows in Doomsday.
In World War III, he takes a picture of the Slitheen that's after Jackie, and later helps Jackie kill him, then he launches a missile at Downing Street to stop the Slitheen, even though he knows Rose could die. When the Doctor invites him along, he turns him down, because he's able to recognize he's not yet at a point where he could live that life. In Boom Town, he goes with Team TARDIS to confront Blon Fel Fotch, and he confronts Rose about taking him for granted.
Then there's Parting of the Ways. He comes running the moment he hears the TARDIS, and he tries to persuade Rose to give up on the Doctor and live her twenty-first century life, but when Rose says that there's nothing left for her there, Mickey accepts it. In Boom Town, he was angry that he would never come first with Rose, but now he accepts it, puts Rose ahead of himself, and does his best to help her.
But it's more than that. After Mickey's car fails to pry the console open, after Rose's conversation with Jackie, when Rose is about to give up, Mickey refuses to let her. He's always done his best to support her, and now he knows that the support she needs is to keep her hope alive. For himself, he wants her to be safe and happy in a nice, normal life with him, and when Rose contemplates giving up, it would have been so easy for him to agree. But he doesn't. Instead, he refuses to let her give up, and I am so proud of him for that. And when Jackie comes by with the Big Yellow Truck, he doesn't hesitate to use it to help Rose get back to the Doctor.
Mickey has grown so, so much since the beginning of the season, and I love him for that.
Jack
One of my favorite Nine-Rose-Jack fics has a line that I think perfectly captures Jack's character arc in S1, and a lot of his relationships with the Doctor and Rose. In![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
honorh's Out of Joint, which is a Doctor Who/Firefly crossover, Jack tells Inara, "Rose saw something better in me than I'd become, and the Doctor--he challenged me to live up to it." That line has stuck with me from the first time I read it, because I think it's completely and utterly true.
When we first meet Jack, he's a con man, angry and lashing out at the Time Agency for stealing his memories, and using sex and romance to get what he wants. When he rescues Rose from the barrage balloon, it's something I think he would have done for anyone (because at heart he is a decent man), but he's also immediately aware, from her clothes and her cell phone, that she's "not a local girl". From that, and from her recognition of the psychic paper, he concludes that she's a Time Agent, and sets out to con her into buying the crashed "Chula warship". He makes his pitch by dancing with her on top of his invisible spaceship next to Big Ben, giving her champagne, and being very flirty and charming. The flirty/charming aspect of Jack is something that's truly him, but it's also very calculated. He sees the way she reacts to him when he rescues her, and figures that the romantic approach is one likely to work, so he uses it.
This is significant, because it's not the approach he uses with the Doctor. Instead, he goes with ingratiation. He shakes his hand and tells him he's heard a lot about him, he tells the truth about conning them, he's eager to show off his sonic blaster. He alters his approach based on the person, which emphasizes that to him, sex is a tool.
Rose has been sympathetic towards Jack from the beginning. She's charmed by him, but not completely--she pretends to be a Time Agent, tells Jack the Doctor is "Mr Spock", and is very matter-of-fact when she tells the Doctor about the Chula ship that Jack stole, parked, and which will blow up unless they make him an offer. Then he reveals that he's a con man. But still Rose trusts him, to get her and the Doctor out of the storeroom, to not run away. She trusts him, and he wants to live up to that. Especially with the Doctor as an example, challenging him to be more than what he's let himself become.
Jack loves Rose and the Doctor. They want him to be the best person he can, and they let him into their extremely close relationship, something that's very obvious in Boom Town. That episode shows what an outsider to Team TARDIS looks like, and it's Mickey, not Jack. I love the friendship the three of them have, but I am not into the OT3. Very occasionally I will read Doctor/Rose/Jack, and even enjoy it, but something usually feels off to me. I think I've finally pinned it down--the relationships are not equal. The Doctor and Rose love Jack, but their highest priority is always each other.
And one of the best things about Jack, in my opinion, is that he knows this. He knows it, he understands it, he accepts it, and even respects it. Rose's "disintegration" in Bad Wolf makes it abundantly clear. Jack goes after the Floor Manager with his big gun, furious and yelling about how they killed her, while the Doctor is in a state of numbed shock, on his knees by the pile of Rose's ashes. When the security guards come, Jack stops yelling about Rose being killed, and starts yelling at the guards to leave the Doctor alone. When they get to Floor 500, after Jack figures out that Rose is alive, he immediately tells the Doctor, knowing how happy the Doctor will be to hear it. In Parting of the Ways, when Jack finds out that the Doctor sent Rose home, instead of being angry that the Doctor chose Rose over everyone else, he's approving of the Doctor's decision, and happy that Rose is safe. He completely respects the Doctor's feelings for Rose.
This continues even into Utopia. He makes one bitter comment about how the Doctor won't leave you behind "if you're blonde", but in the radiation room, when the Doctor tells him that Rose is trapped in a parallel world, he's able to say "Sorry". He's bitter that he was left behind, but he still knows what Rose means to the Doctor, and so he can understand and sympathize with the Doctor's pain at being separated from Rose.
Jack loves the Doctor and Rose, and I'm pretty sure he's in love with them as well, but while they love him platonically (aside from some flirting, because frankly all three of them are really flirty people), his love for them is ultimately unrequited. And actually, I like it that way. As I mentioned earlier, before he met the Doctor and Rose, Jack would use sex as a tool to get what he wanted. I think it's good for him that two of the most significant relationships in his life are non-sexual. People can be intimate without having sex, and I think it's good for Jack's character growth to have that kind of intimate friendship. The Doctor and Rose are two people who love him, and whose love is not dependent on or even related to having sex with him, and I think that's wonderful for Jack. I don't think that, if he had had sexual relationships with them, it would have cheapened his love for them or theirs for him, but I don't think it would have contributed as much to his character growth.
Jack loves so, so deeply, and I love him for that. Watching his character grow from a calculating con man to someone who could love so deeply was truly enjoyable. And the look on his face as he watches the TARDIS leave without him will always break my heart.
The Doctor
When we first meet the Doctor in Rose, one of the first things that strikes me as I rewatch that episode is how cavalier he is with his own life. "I'm going to go up there and blow them up, and I might well die in the process. But don't worry about me, no. Go home, go on! Go and have your lovely beans on toast." This is very early on in the episode, so the only things we know about him now are: he knows what's going on with the shop dummies, and he's going to blow up the shop and thinks he might well die in the process. This initially might seem like a joke, but later in the episode, when he speaks with the Nestene Consciousness, he's guilty and despairing and generally in pain, and in hindsight it seems that he wasn't joking. This is a damaged Doctor.
In the next episode, we find out what happens, and in the episode after that, we find out he no longer wants to die (and in fact seems appalled at the idea, especially because it's in Cardiff :p). The difference between his attitude in Rose and in The Unquiet Dead is, of course, Rose herself. She very quickly worms her way into his heart, to the point where, just a few days after he meets her, he hesitates to save the world because it means he might lose her. Subsequent episodes only continue to show how important she is to him. He lets a Dalek free because it's holding her hostage in Dalek. He takes her back to the day her father died in Father's Day, and never mentions the obvious solution to the Reapers because he doesn't want to hurt her. He just shuts down when it looks like she's died in front of him in Bad Wolf. In Parting of the Ways, he sends her home, then he regenerates for her. He loves her, pure and simple.
In this episode, he's confronted again with one of his oldest enemies--but more than that, an enemy he sacrificed his planet to stop. Now he finds out that they were, in fact, not stopped; that, not only did they survive, they flourished. Half a million Daleks, including the bloody Emperor, versus one Doctor, and now it seems like the huge sacrifice he made, the sacrifice that damaged him so very badly, was in vain.
He puts a good face on things. He makes jokes--"let's go meet the neighbors"--and banters with Jack and taunts the Daleks. But he thought this fight was over, that it ended before he met Rose, only now it starts again, and this time Rose and the Earth are at stake as well. He puts a good face on things, but he's so tired of this fight.
He's not about to give up, but that doesn't mean things are easy for him. When they're back on the Gamestation and the Doctor starts going on about the Delta Wave, he's very manic and twitchy. It's as if he has to keep moving, has to just concentrate on building this thing, because if he slows down, he's going to have to think about how hopeless the situation is.
And that's what happens. The Doctor refuses to let Rose be part of the defense. She's done dangerous things before, and the Doctor has accepted it. But here, he clearly has no hope of the defenders surviving, because he won't let Rose be part of that. When Jack leaves, and Rose wants reassurance that he's going to be all right, the Doctor doesn't answer. And when the Delta Wave starts building, and the Doctor figures out how long it will take, and that there's no possibility of refining it, he takes her out of the fight altogether.
We get a clue about what he's doing from the music--as the Doctor, who had been slumped in despair, jumps up and tells Rose that she's a genius, Father's Day is playing. Father's Day, the music that accompanied Pete's sacrifice, accompanies too the Doctor's sacrifice, his decision to send Rose away to keep her safe. From the conversation about leaving, he knows that she has every intention of staying with him and seeing this through, so he tricks her and takes the decision out of her hands, because that's what's most important to him. And the look on his face as he sends her away breaks my heart.
In an episode full of heartbreaking things, Emergency Programme One might very well be the worst. It's planned. The Doctor recorded it, before any of this happened. He's very accepting of his own death, tells Rose to let the TARDIS die as well, and asks her to have a fantastic life, for him. I think that request to have a fantastic life is ultimately the point of Emergency Programme One. If he'd just sent her home, without a message, she could have figured out he did it because he wanted her to be safe, because she would have died had she stayed with him. Telling her to let the TARDIS die wasn't necessary, since it's not like Rose would have been able to do anything else (from his perspective). The bulk of Emergency Programme One is a courtesy, rather than a necessity (which I think is a significant indication of his feelings for her all on its own), and the rest of it is love. All he wants her to do for him is to have a fantastic life. He can die at peace as long as he knows that she's safe, and that she's going to live that fantastic life. And his words and actions from that point until Rose comes back just bear that out.
When Jack calls, asking for Rose, the Doctor is brusque, and when he confirms that he sent her home, to me he sounds a bit defensive as well. This conversation makes clear that he thinks he's going to die--the Delta Wave's lack of discrimination extends to him as well--but he keeps working. And when the Daleks reach Floor 500, when he decides he's not going to sacrifice the Earth to this war, he doesn't resist. "Maybe it's time," he says. He accepts his death with dignity, and at peace.
Backing up a bit, the end of the Doctor's conversation with Jack and the Emperor Dalek is filled with dramatic irony, and always amuses me. As a manifestation of the Doctor's characteristic arrogance and self-absorption, he assumes that Bad Wolf is all about him, the Daleks spreading those words across time and space to draw him in. He's completely baffled when the Emperor says that's not it. It's another call-back to the episode Rose, where the Doctor chides Rose for thinking the world revolves around her, and agrees that it revolves around him, except here it's reversed. He thinks it's all about him, and it's really all about her. That amuses me.
In the episode Dalek, the Doctor is constantly paralleled with the Dalek. It happens again here, when the Daleks reach Floor 500, and this time the Doctor is compared not only with the Daleks, but with the man he was in Dalek. In Dalek, he tells it, "I know what you deserve. Exterminate." Here, the Emperor says, "I want to see you become like me. Hail the Doctor, the Great Exterminator!" In Dalek, when discussing the Time War, the Dalek says, "And the coward survived." Here, the Emperor asks the Doctor, "What are you--coward or killer?" Where in Dalek, the Doctor accepted some of those comparisons (an indication of his mental state at the time), here he unilaterally rejects them. He would rather be a coward than be like the Emperor, and refuses to be the Great Exterminator. He's going to let them kill him, knowing that in the end, he'll die as himself.
And then the TARDIS appears.
The Doctor almost immediately falls to the ground, Rose standing before him, in an extremely visual representation of the power imbalance here--where Rose has nearly all the power and the Doctor very little. He is absolutely amazed--throughout this scene, his eyes are very wide, and his expression is incredulous in a way that the Doctor almost never is. Then he protests that all that power is going to cause her to burn, and her response floors him.
He tells her that this is going to kill her, and her response is an implicit statement that all she cares about is that he's safe and protected. He's absolutely astounded at the gesture.
Then she ends the Time War. She destroys all the Daleks, turns them all to dust, and ends this war that has so hurt her Doctor. And she saved him, not only from death, but from the terrible decision he had to make, and its consequences. He's had to make life-weighing decisions throughout the series. Sometimes he has help. In World War III, Harriet Jones made the decision and took responsibility for it, though the Doctor was the one who thought of the solution in the first place. In Fires of Pompeii, Donna places her hands on the lever and helps him push it down, sharing the burden and responsibility between them. But here the Doctor doesn't know what to do to save the Earth, and is about to let himself die and leave the Daleks free to menace the universe. Then Rose takes the problem completely out of his hands. It's an extremely significant moment, and I think one that affects his view of her from then on. He has faith in her, believes in her (as explicitly stated in The Satan Pit), because she gave him something to believe in. She's very much his knight in shining armor.
But then the Daleks are gone, the danger is over, and Rose won't let go of the power. It's going to kill her, and the Doctor thinks it's his fault, because he tends to take the blame for things. He's grieving and despairing, until Rose gives him a clue. "I can see everything. All that is...all that was...all that ever could be." Now, for the first time since Rose appeared, the Doctor stands up. Rose gives him something that he can understand, something that equalizes them in his eyes, so now he stands, eliminating the visual power imbalance, and knows what he has to do.
As for the kiss, John Barrowman says it perfectly, in the Parting of the Ways Confidential:
"When he kisses her, it's not only the thing that he's wanted to do throughout the entire series, but it gives him peace because he's letting go of the burden of the Time Lords being destroyed and he's saving the one that he--he loved the Time Lords, they were his people--but he loves this girl."
It's truly a beautiful kiss.
When he's drawn all the Vortex from Rose, he very tenderly lays her down, and then he gives the power back to the TARDIS, smiling a bit when it's gone. Then he takes off.
Rose wakes up in the console room, the Doctor standing at the controls. He sounds a bit surprised that she doesn't remember what happened, but he knows he's about to regenerate and doesn't have much time, so he gives her a very flippant answer. The rest of the conversation is just as flippant, a sharp contrast to the utter seriousness of what's about to happen. He tries to make this process easier for her by joking about it, trying to keep the atmosphere light. Every cell in his body is dying, and he's clearly in some pain, but he's also trying not to worry her. He's about to regenerate, and he's still just completely focused on her.
The Doctor's ninth incarnation began in pain and destruction, and it ends with an act of love--that's just perfect, and one of the reasons I love Nine so much. And his parting lines are some of the best I've ever heard.
Yes, Doctor, you were.
Rose
When we first meet Rose, she's extremely normal. She has spectacular bed-head, is on good terms with her mother, works in a shop, has lunch with her boyfriend, and is just someone you can easily empathize with. But something we learn about Rose is that she's not satisfied with her life. She wants more. Whether it's going to get her A-levels or traveling through time and space with an alien in a phone box, she tries to find something her life is missing--and I think that "something" she's looking for is purpose. She's sort of directionless and drifting in Rose, not unhappy, but not satisfied either. Then she goes with the Doctor, looking for adventure, and finding that and more.
One thing I do not think she was looking for was love. She has a boyfriend when she starts traveling with the Doctor, and while Mickey may not have been the love of her life, she does honestly care about him. Still, even as early as Aliens of London, she prioritizes the Doctor above Mickey, saying that he's something "more important" than her boyfriend--but she's not thinking about love. And she's certainly not thinking about loving the Doctor. First she has Mickey, then she flirts with Adam and Jack, then she agrees to go to a hotel with Mickey again, and all the while the Doctor's watching and pining.
She isn't looking for love, but she finds it anyway. I think the moment it pings for her that yes, she is in love with the Doctor, is at the end of Bad Wolf, when he says he's coming to get her. The look on her face is just full of belief and pride and love.
Something I've seen Rose complimented for is her bravery in Doomsday, telling the Cult of Skaro straight out that she killed the Emperor when she has no way of stopping them killing her. I see her as no less brave in the opening scene of Parting of the Ways. The Daleks' plan of holding her hostage backfired, and now her only value to them is in her knowledge of the Doctor and ability to predict his actions. And Rose, though clearly terrified, surrounded entirely by a ship full of thousands of Daleks, refuses to do what they say. She says she doesn't know what the Doctor would do, but she follows that up with, "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell ya..." Her voice even shakes a bit there, but she is adamant; she won't help the Daleks hurt her Doctor. And after the Doctor rescues her, she goes back out there, trusting to the Doctor's ability to protect her.
Something I find interesting is that Rose is the one who says that the Daleks coming from humanity makes them half-human, and the Daleks cry blasphemy on her. Minor foreshadowing for the Emperor later calling her "the Abomination"? Not even the Doctor gets the extreme reactions from the Daleks that Rose does.
Then they get back to the Gamestation, and for the first time, we see Rose jealous and possessive of the Doctor. Admittedly, the Doctor has fewer flirtations than Rose does, but Rose was untroubled by Jabe in End of the World, and by the Doctor hugging Suki in The Long Game. Now she is clearly displeased with Lynda. First she looks disturbed at Lynda's declaration that she "didn't wanna leave [the Doctor]", then she looks put out when Lynda says to make the Delta Wave before she can, and then, during the Doctor and Lynda's really awkward goodbye, Rose is glaring daggers at both of them. Lynda is the first person to encroach on Rose's territory with the Doctor since her realization that she loves him, so she reacts by being jealous, and a lot less sympathetic than she would otherwise be.
In Rose's conversation with the Doctor is yet another example of her bravery, though a different kind. Here is a quiet moment. They are in danger, but it's not immediate, not the way Rose's confrontation with the Daleks was. Still, they know it's coming, and that it's overwhelming, and very possible they won't survive. And despite all that, it doesn't even occur to Rose to run away. Even when the Doctor brings up the possibility, she dismisses it immediately, as if confused that he would bring it up when she knows that they'd never do that--it's a moot point. Her courage and her sense of responsibility, the one the Doctor has been nurturing for an entire season, forbid the mere notion of abandoning the fight.
Which is what makes it so bad when the Doctor takes the decision out of her hands. He has to trick her into the TARDIS, because she's made it clear she would never leave otherwise, and even as the TARDIS dematerializes, she's trying to get out and get back to him. Emergency Programme One horrifies her, and she does everything she can, including pleading, to try and get back. When Mickey appears, all she can do is cry into his shoulder.
The next Rose scene is one of my favorites out of the entire series.
It's not that Rose thinks the lives most people live--the linear, earthbound lives--are bad. It's not that she thinks she's too good to live a life like that herself. She says it explicitly--the traveling and seeing aliens and things doesn't matter. She enjoys it, of course--she loves it. But that's not the point. The real point is what she learned while living that life, and it's something that can be extended to any sort of life. I have no doubt that Rose is making hard choices and standing up for her beliefs in Pete's World, because the Doctor taught her to do nothing less.
The fact that she's stuck back in an ordinary life isn't what makes her so frustrated here. It's part of it, of course. As Sarah Jane says in School Reunion, it's hard to get "a taste of that splendour" and then have to go back. But the real frustration here is two-fold, I think. First is that she's trapped away from the Doctor, and second is that she's helpless. Her very first sentence in this scene encompasses both--"Two hundred thousand years in the future, he's dying, and there's nothing I can do." This shows perfectly her priorities. She doesn't care that she can't travel through time and space anymore; she cares that the Doctor is dying and she can't help him.
She has difficulty articulating this at first, because she's angry and frustrated. Mickey at least misunderstands her, and I've seen people in fandom who do the same. But in the end, I think she's pretty clear: it's not the actual details of the life he lives that's better, but the way he lives it. That's the way she learned to live her life as well, and the Doctor took from her the ability to do that. She learned not to give up, and now she's forced into a situation where there might be no other option. There are a lot of tragedies in this episode, but for all that this one is not as obvious, it's no less real.
The reveal of Bad Wolf on the playground is haunting, and amazing. After the frustration of the previous scene, it's a joy to watch the dawning realization on Rose's face as she puts everything together and figures out that Bad Wolf is a message, is a good thing, as she understands that yes, she can get back to him, she's not really helpless. And now that she's figured it out, and even knows how to get back, she's determined to do it. When she tells Mickey that "there's nothing left for [her] here", it's definitely hyperbole (even if the romantic relationship with Mickey is over, the friendship is still left, and there's always Jackie), but it gets her point across: there's nothing left for her there as important as getting back to the Doctor. She recognizes that she might very well die, but that's a risk she's willing to take.
These two sequences also emphasize how clever Rose really is. She may not have a lot of education, but she's really quite smart, with an amazing ability to remember things and put together the puzzle pieces. First she understands that Bad Wolf is a message, an indication she can get back to the Doctor, then she remembers the Heart of the TARDIS, and the Doctor's comments that the ship is alive, and realizes she can get the TARDIS to take her back. I'm pretty intelligent, but I'm not sure I would have been able to understand things so quickly (and I didn't get that Bad Wolf was Rose until she actually said it. :p).
Then Mickey's car fails to budge the console, and Jackie comes in to tell Rose to give up. But Rose knows her mother, knows what might get her to understand, and brings up her father. She brings up Pete, who was always trying for a better life, who was clever in the way that Rose is, who was adventurous and constantly dreaming and who sacrificed himself for the rest of the world. And she says that without the Doctor, she would never have known him, and Pete would have died alone, without someone there to hold his hand. She appeals to Jackie's memory of Pete, and encourages Jackie's new respect for the Doctor.
But Jackie runs out of the TARDIS, leaving Rose sobbing. This, combined with her previous failure to get the console open, leaves Rose with her hope flagging. She doesn't want to give up, but she's beginning to think that she has no other option. Then Mickey refuses to let her give up, and Jackie comes with the Big Yellow Truck, and Rose has hope again. Hope that is very soon rewarded, as the Big Yellow Truck opens the console and Rose speaks to the TARDIS.
One detail I am always impressed with is how Rose's physical appearance in this episode enhances what she does here. First, of course, is costuming--her hoodie today is a deep pink/light red, and when she declares herself the Bad Wolf, what is immediately called to mind is Little Red Riding Hood, in the belly of the wolf. Even her hairstyle makes a difference. It's loose and somewhat wispy, leading her a look of youth and innocence, even a hint of fragility. But her look is contrasted with her actions--she may look fragile, but she easily repels the Dalek laser. She may look innocent, but she destroys the Daleks with a wave of her hand, saying, "Everything must come to dust...all things. Everything dies." And she may look young, but she can see the whole of time and space. It's a beautiful contrast.
I always get a shiver when Rose says that. This is epic. She is epic. She permeates the show, a common thread running through all four seasons so far, and it's amazing.
And she did it for love of the Doctor. "I want you safe. My Doctor. Protected from the False God"--those lines always make my heart beat faster. As much as he wants to protect her, she wants to protect him, and she will. He will not stop her--no one will. No one can. The Doctor told her that this will make her burn, and her response just says, "As long as you're safe, it doesn't matter." That is love.
She destroys the Daleks, and ends the Time War. She even specifically says, "The Time War ends", rather than anything along the lines of Earth being saved from the Daleks. This makes me think that she did it for the Doctor, because she knows how deeply the Time War hurt him, and how difficult it was for him to face the Daleks' survival. Saving the Earth is an extremely good side-effect, but I think she does it for him.
Back in the beginning of this section, I said that one thing Rose was looking for was purpose. I think she finds that purpose in this episode, and it's two-fold. First is the better way of living her life that she described to Jackie and Mickey, something she can fall back on when separated from him in Doomsday, but second, I think a purpose she found is loving and looking after the Doctor, being with him and helping him take care of the universe. I don't think this in any way diminishes her independence, or her sense of self apart from the Doctor, but this episode is really where she devotes herself to him. And because I don't think she loses her independence or lets herself be subsumed by the Doctor (she continues to challenge him in S2, like when she demands to know what she is to him in School Reunion, and she explicitly defies his wishes for her in Rise of the Cybermen and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday), I have no quarrel with this purpose she's found. In fact, I think love is a wonderful purpose to have. Since she can be in love and remain a strong, independent woman, my respect for her is only increased.
In Utopia, the Doctor says, "She was human. Everything she did was so human." I have to disagree with him a bit there--everything she did was so Rose. There are a lot of humans, even within the show, who I'd never trust the power of the Vortex to, and even Rose slipped a bit. When she accomplishes her main goals of saving the Doctor and ending the Time War, she doesn't want to let go of the power. She brings Jack back to life, and ends up doing it permanently. I'm not sure if his immortality was an accident or not (if he really is the Face of Boe, that would suggest not), but when the Doctor asks her to let go, she can't, not yet. Still, the only other thing she ends up doing with the power is also quintessential Rose: bringing Jack back. She may not feel as deeply for him as she does for the Doctor, but she does love him and want him to live.
But then she does let go. More than that, she gives it away. When the Doctor figures out what he needs to do to save her, she cooperates, and gives him the power that's hurting her. The quote from John Barrowman illustrated what that kiss means to the Doctor, but to Rose, it's perfect trust, and love, and surrender.
When she wakes up again in the TARDIS, the two of them back in the Vortex, she doesn't remember what happened. All she remembers is singing. Then the Doctor has to start rambling on about Barcelona and changing, and is in general not making sense, and she's confused and starting to get scared. He very incompetently explains regeneration, and then does, and she's shocked and scared and wanting her Doctor back. Oh, Rose.
But in the end, he told her she was fantastic, and she was. She is. Rose is the heroine of this story, and I love her for it.
Relationships
I already discussed Mickey's and Jackie's relationships with Rose in their character sections, but now I want to go more in depth into the three main characters, Jack's friendship with the other two as well as the romance between the Doctor and Rose. There will be some overlap from the character sections, but mostly this is for discussing the relationship moments, not just the characters.
Jack and Rose
As I mentioned in Jack's character section, Rose saw something in him better than the con man she first met. She put her trust in him, and he responded to that, and lived up to it.
Though I do think he's more than a bit in love with her, a lot of the interaction I see between them from Boom Town on seems a lot more like she's a beloved younger sister. Ever since the Doctor's "Welcome to the TARDIS--hands off the blonde" look at the end of The Doctor Dances, he stops flirting with her. He acts a lot more like an older brother.
When he and the Doctor rescue Rose in the beginning of the episode, after she and the Doctor have their embrace, he says, "What, don't I get a hug?" and as Rose goes to hug him, he laughs and follows it up with, "I was talking to him". Very teasing. But when he does hug her, he says, "Welcome home" with this really warm, welcoming tone of voice. And the words themselves imply that he thinks Rose's home is there, in the TARDIS, with him and the Doctor. He's aware that she's from early twenty-first century Earth, that she still has roots there, and he's even met her boyfriend, but he still thinks the place she belongs is in the TARDIS with them. That implies a really close relationship.
Then there's the goodbye scene. She's very optimistic, is sure that the Doctor's going to get them out of this and they'll see each other again, doesn't want him to talk like he's going off to die. He, very sweetly, takes her face in his hands and tells her intently, very clearly meaning it, that she's worth fighting for. The unspoken statement, given the goodbye, is that she's also worth dying for. And for Jack, she is. She gives him trust and acceptance, things that he as a jaded con man would never have expected, and in return, he gives her devotion. Then he kisses her, like a little sister, which Rose's young and innocent expression really helps sell.
Even after the goodbye, we get indications from both of them on how deep their feelings go. First there's Jack's conversation with the Doctor and the Dalek Emperor. The Emperor reveals that there's no possibility of refining the Delta Wave, and Jack knows immediately that that means everyone on the station and on Earth will be in its range, and therefore won't survive. The Doctor asks him what he would do, and his response? "You sent her home. She's safe. Keep working." Much like the Doctor does a bit later, Jack, knowing that Rose is safe, is able to accept his death.
And Rose, of course, brings him back to life. She has all the power of a goddess, and she only does three things with it. First, she scatters the words "bad wolf" in time and space; second, she destroys the Daleks; and third, she brings Jack back to life. He was dead and she wanted him to live, so now he does. It may have gone a bit wrong, but she did it for love of him.
The relationship between Jack and Rose is not easily quantifiable, but it's filled with trust, acceptance, loyalty, and love, and it's wonderful.
Jack and the Doctor
From the very first moment Jack meets the Doctor, he's wanted to impress him. That soon transforms into wanting the Doctor's respect, and making himself into a person the Doctor can respect. And in return, the Doctor sees Jack as a friend, and accepts him into his home and his life.
I love the banter they sometimes fall into. I'm very amused by the one early on in this episode:
The expression on the Doctor's face there is particularly funny. Still, he doesn't seem angry that Jack accidentally shot down his bluff.
Then there's the goodbye scene, again. Once he's said his farewells to Rose, he turns to the Doctor. "Wish I'd never met you, Doctor! I was much better off as a coward." He's well aware that the Doctor challenged him to be the best person he can be, and that he's been living up to that challenge. But it's clear, from his ragged tone of voice, that he doesn't really mean it--those lines are an illustration of how much he's changed since meeting the Doctor, and why. He may have been "better off as a coward" in the sense that he'd likely still be alive (and mortal), but, like Rose, Jack learned a better way of living his life. If he didn't really believe this, he would never have gone off to fight the way he does. He appreciates what meeting the Doctor has done for him, and the expression on his face as he kisses him is very much that of a lover.
The conversation between Jack, the Doctor, and the Emperor is just as much a show of the relationship between Jack and the Doctor as it is an indication of Jack's feelings for Rose. First, the Doctor explains the decision he has to make, to kill everyone on Earth or to let the Daleks go free, and he looks to Jack for understanding and validation. The Emperor tries to turn Jack against the Doctor, appealing to his sense of survival, but Jack replies with, "Never doubted him; never will." And the Doctor is energized by Jack's trust. Much as the Doctor has offered things to Jack, Jack also offers things to the Doctor--specifically that trust, as well as acceptance of and implicit forgiveness for the terrible decision the Doctor is faced with. These are things the Doctor clearly needed, to be so energized by getting them.
When the Doctor leaves Jack behind at the end of the episode, it's a really shitty thing to do, and that Jack is able to forgive him for it is another strong indication of Jack's feelings. That the Doctor can get over his prejudice and offer Jack a place on the TARDIS again is an indication of his. It shows that they were able to build up a strong friendship founded on trust, loyalty, and love, and it's one of my favorite male friendships in all of TV.
The Doctor and Rose
I'm going to restrict my observations and musings regarding this relationship to this episode, or else the essay would likely double in length. :p
I love the embrace they share, when the Doctor rescues Rose in the beginning of the episode. As soon as she's safe, the Doctor just strides over there, and they don't even speak until they're holding each other. They sort of melt into each other, so comfortably, and even when they pull back a bit, they still hold onto each other for just a bit longer. It's a really, really lovely hug, and one of my favorites from these two who hug so often.
The conversation after they say goodbye to Jack, where they strip wire and talk about options, is full of subtleties.
Rose is right--the Doctor would never do that. He's not the type to run away from a fight, even one that would certainly kill him. But I don't think he's proposing it as a serious option; to me, it feels far more like he's fishing. He has no intention of leaving, but he wants Rose to agree that it would be nice if they did, if they went somewhere together where they could live and have fun. He wants Rose to want him enough to be willing to abandon her sense of responsibility and resume their life traveling together. And he's both proud and wistful that it "never even occurred to [her]".
It's another kind of declaration, as well. "No, but you could ask" acknowledges the power she has over him, power to make him do things he wouldn't ordinarily do. She asks him to take her to see her father, and he does, though the situation is ripe for disaster. She asks him to dance with her, and he does, though he's had centuries of very platonic relationships with his companions. There are so many things he would do for her, if only she would ask.
For Rose's part, it's an application of the lesson he taught her, the one she explains to Jackie and Mickey. Just as the Doctor challenges Jack to be the best person he can be, so Rose challenges the Doctor. When he falters, as he did in Dalek, she reminds him of who he is. Here, she does it again--he's the kind of person who stands up for what's right, who won't run away despite the odds against him, and she won't even entertain the notion of being anything less.
I mentioned Rose's and the Doctor's protective urges regarding the other in their respective sections, but I would like to iterate again that I love them. The Doctor's protectiveness of Rose emerges when he sends her home, even though it breaks his heart to do it, and Rose is angry and frustrated as a result. Rose's protectiveness emerges as Bad Wolf, even though the energy she absorbed could very well kill her, and the Doctor is terrified as a result. They constantly put the other above themselves, which can lead to some impressive clashes, all of which I love. They're so real.
I've already said I love their kiss, but I love too what happens right after it. Rose, the Vortex drawn out of her, falls into the Doctor's arms, and he lays her down so tenderly. And once he's exhaled the Vortex back into the TARDIS, he leans down and strokes her face and neck, again, so tenderly. It's a quiet moment that really speaks volumes.
I love this relationship, completely and utterly, and Parting of the Ways is so much of the reason why.
Conclusion
Parting of the Ways is so incredibly important in the scheme of things, being the culmination of one season and precipitating important events further down the line. No matter how many times I see it, it always gets me. Rose's line "I create myself" is both powerful and empowering--it has such a large impact on the season, the characters, and even the audience, as well as being a wonderful message to send. She creates herself in terms of scattering those words in time and space, but she also throughout the season has created herself into the kind of person who would become Bad Wolf. All of the characters and relationships have gone through their own journeys, their own self-creation, to decide what really matters to them. They choose life, and they choose love, and they choose to fight for both of those, and it's so wonderful to watch.
Season One of the new Doctor Who is one of the best full seasons I've seen of any show I've ever watched, and The Parting of the Ways is the perfect finale for it.
Acknowledgements
Dialogue from Doctor Who [2005+] Transcripts. Most screencaps from ninthdoctor.time-and-space.co.uk.
Many thanks totsukara and mls03j for the beta. You made this better than it otherwise would have been.
Introduction
The Parting of the Ways is my favorite episode of Doctor Who. In fact, it's one of my favorite episodes out of all the TV I've watched, and now I want to talk about why. Because this episode has repercussions through the rest of the series, there are references through Fires of Pompeii, so there are S4 spoilers. As well, there are a lot of references to past S1 episodes, because Parting of the Ways is the culmination of this season and I can't properly talk about it without talking about what led to it.
Now, without further ado, have 10,000 words on why I adore this episode. :p
Plot and structure
First of all, the plot is truly epic. The Bad Wolf references begin in End of the World, spanning the rest of the season, and the events of this two-parter are a consequence of the events of The Long Game. Even the Heart of the TARDIS first appeared in a previous episode. The plot elements are very well set up, which pleases me--one thing that drives me crazy without fail in nearly any form of media is a lack of adequate set-up, so this is significant for me.
Everything fits together so well. There are two fights in this episode: everyone's struggle against the Daleks, and Rose's struggle to get back to the Doctor. Many of the scenes from Jack's goodbye to Rose and the Doctor on are mirrors or parallels. Jack recruiting more people from Floor 0 is mirrored with the Doctor sending Rose home, taking her out of the fight. The Doctor's conversation with Jack and the Emperor Dalek about the choice he has to make is paralleled with Rose's conversation with Jackie and Mickey about the fact that the Doctor taught her to make that kind of choice. The next scene ends with Jack declaring they're at war, signalling the beginning of the fight there, and the following scene with Rose ends with her realization that she can get back to the Doctor, beginning her own fight. Jack and his volunteers are getting ready for the Daleks, while Rose is realizing what she needs to do. The fight begins, but the defenders are ineffective and the Floor Manager dies; Mickey uses his car to try and pull the console open, but it's not strong enough and the chain breaks. There are the dark moments--Rose and Jackie's conversation ends with Rose in tears and Jackie running out of the TARDIS, and the Dalek fleet descends to Earth, bombing whole continents. Then Davitch Pavale (the Male Programmer) and the Female Programmer have a conversation that ends with hope of survival, while Jackie appears with the Big Yellow Truck. The events after that are mirrored--the defenders are losing the fight against the Daleks, while Rose is winning the fight to get back. Jack is shooting vainly at the Daleks as Rose succeeds in talking to the TARDIS. Then Jack dies, his fight lost, and the TARDIS appears, Rose's fight won.
The ending seems, on the surface, to be pure deus ex machina (at least, according to this trope's common use, where it's often a cheap contrivance that fixes everything without appropriate internal build-up). Rose becomes what is effectively a goddess (appearing, amusingly, from a machine), and in one fell swoop is reunited with the Doctor, resurrects Jack, and destroys the Dalek fleet. But it's not deus ex machina, not really--or rather, it is, but literally rather than structurally. Bad Wolf has been set up from the beginning of the season, making it inevitable and basically a predestination paradox, and the Heart of the TARDIS is set up in Boom Town. As well, Bad Wolf only fixes the immediate crisis, but ends up precipitating others--first, the Doctor's regeneration, and later, the events with the Master (which wouldn't have happened had Jack's "wrongness" not prodded the Doctor and the TARDIS to flee to the end of the universe, where they met Professor Yana). Bad Wolf is not a cure-all.
The episode begins with the Doctor saving Rose, and it ends with Rose saving the Doctor--which is exactly what happened in the beginning of the season, with the Doctor saving Rose in Henrik's and Rose saving the Doctor beneath the London Eye. The two fights in this episode are constantly mirrored or paralleled. Bad Wolf begins an eternal time loop. The episode is a circle, and it brings the entire season with it. It's astonishingly well thought-out and I love it.
Themes
One of the overarching themes of Doctor Who is, I think, one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, and one that is explicitly stated in The Lazarus Experiment--"There's no such thing as an ordinary human." And this episode encapsulates that theme perfectly.
First, there are the people on the Gamestation. Lynda, who chooses the unknown over the known, and who decides to stay when she could have evacuated. There's Davitch Pavale, the Floor Manager, and the Female Programmer (the latter two unfortunately aren't given names), who previously worked for the Daleks (if unknowingly) and who now decide to fight them, despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered. These four are sharply contrasted with everyone who stays on Floor 0, because they've decided to do everything they can to help, and aren't just sitting down and hoping the fight passes them by.
There's Jack, who goes from a disillusioned con man to the leader of a ragged band of defenders who manages to hold the Daleks off just long enough, and who faces his death with dignity and courage.
And then there's Rose. Rose, who is on the surface completely ordinary--she dyes her hair blonde, something the Anne-droid mocks her for in only the previous episode, and she likes chips, and she has no idea how to fly the TARDIS on her own--but who ends up making extraordinary choices. She could have done exactly what the Doctor asked of her, in Emergency Programme One, which was what Mickey and Jackie were urging her to do. She could have done that, but she made a different choice. This choice gives her powers that make her extraordinary, but then she lets go of them, is Rose again without the power of the Vortex, and continues to stand up for what's right and make hard choices even when all she has is her. On the surface she is ordinary, but there is no ordinary here, not really, and that's because she pushes herself to be more.
Other themes include:
Redemption: People who worked for the Daleks now decide to fight them. Jack turns from a "coward" into a leader and in a sense a martyr.
Then there's the Doctor, who has the biggest redemption in this episode. When presented with choices very similar to ones in his past, he makes a different one. First is one from the last few minutes of Bad Wolf, mirrored with Dalek: the Doctor with a big gun. But where, in Dalek, he would have used that gun if Rose hadn't stopped him, here he sets it down himself, never having intended to use it. Another similar decision is his one to send Rose home. He has several times lured her away from her home, into his dangerous life where she's nearly died on multiple occasions, and here he lets go of his own desire to keep her with him and tries to do what he thinks is best for her. (I don't say that is what was best for her, or that he truly "lured" her away, but from the Doctor's point of view, I do think he would see it as a redemption, being able to let her go for her sake.)
And then the biggest decision--whether or not to use the Delta Wave. Whether to let the Daleks spread across the universe, or sacrifice a whole planet to stop them. He's been faced with this decision before, in the Time War. He chose to sacrifice Gallifrey, and ended up broken and traumatized because of it. Here, he chooses the opposite. I make no judgments on the rightness of that choice in terms of the rest of the universe, but for the Doctor's sake, I'm glad he makes that choice, that he ends up in a place where he cannot sacrifice another planet to this war. I think it indicates some measure of healing, that he is not blinded by what he had to do to Gallifrey and can make a different decision.
Sacrifice: Jack and the defenders sacrifice their lives so the Doctor can have enough time to get rid of the Daleks. The Doctor sacrifices his desire to keep Rose with him to send her away, and Jackie and Mickey sacrifice their desire to keep her with them in order to help her get back. Rose sacrifices the normal life she could have had to go back to the Doctor. And the Doctor sacrifices one of his regenerations to save Rose's life.
Rebirth: The Daleks are reborn from human cells. Jack is brought back to life. Rose is reborn into Bad Wolf. And, of course, the Doctor is reborn from Nine into Ten.
I love these themes. They're beautiful, and I'm so happy to find them here.
Characters
Now that I've got the plot and themes out of the way... :p The characters are where this episode really shines. There is no character arc in this episode that I am unsatisfied with, and one of the biggest reasons I love Parting of the Ways is where the characters ended up.
Jackie
In Rose, we meet Jackie Tyler, Rose's mother. She does love Rose, but she expresses that by clinging to her, and in some cases holding her back--one of her most distinctive lines is when she tells Rose that working in a shop is giving her "airs and graces". In World War III, she wants to prioritize Rose's safety above the rest of the world, and in the end, she asks Rose not to go with the Doctor, even though it's the chance of a lifetime.
Father's Day reveals heretofore unseen aspects of Jackie's character, as well as emphasizes ones that may have been overlooked. She's bitter and shrill, but that clearly comes from disappointment and the slow death of her dreams as Pete fails again and again. But after the Reaper kills the Doctor and Pete knows what he has to do, Jackie does something extremely significant, for her character--she lets him go. We have seen her do something similar in World War III, when she refrains from stopping Mickey launching the missile, an indication that she's capable of this, but Father's Day gives us a lot more insight into Jackie's motivations. Father's Day is a set-up for Parting of the Ways in terms of Jackie's character, because we're shown that she does have the capacity to let her loved ones go.
She lets Pete go when she has to, but now that leaves her alone, twenty years old with an infant to bring up by herself. She's so busy trying to make ends meet that she doesn't have time for dreams anymore, and Rose is the only thing she has left, so of course she clings.
But she can still learn. In the earlier scenes with Jackie in Parting of the Ways, she does what we would expect of her: she clings to Rose, tells Rose to be happy with what she's got, asks her to be safe and reminds her that that's what the Doctor wanted for her. But then Rose brings up Pete, and Jackie is reminded not only of her husband and his dreams, but also, I think, of the person she was with him, who was willing to buy into those dreams, and to hope for a better life.
So Jackie lets go. She is reminded of a time when she followed her heart, and, knowing that ultimately she does not regret her life with Pete, she allows and enables Rose to follow her own heart. I am so proud of Jackie for where she ends up, and this is one of the main reasons I love her.
Mickey
We first meet Mickey when Rose is nearly blown up with Henrik's, and Mickey wants her to come down to the pub and have a drink with him--but it is soon made very clear that this isn't an altruistic act. Mickey only wants Rose to come to the pub with him because there's a football match on, and with very little effort she persuades him to go without her.
This sets the stage for an episode where Mickey is, in a word, pathetic. He protests that Clive might be an internet stalker and Rose shouldn't meet him, but doesn't offer to meet him with her. He gets eaten by a rubbish bin. He cowers away from the Nestene Consciousness. Then he calls the Doctor a "thing" and clings to Rose's leg.
He continues to have moments of being pathetic, like running after the dematerializing TARDIS and crashing into the wall, then running and hiding from UNIT, in Aliens of London, and crashing into the cleaning cart in Boom Town. But beginning in World War III, he really starts to grow up, into a person that Rose can call the bravest human she knows in Doomsday.
In World War III, he takes a picture of the Slitheen that's after Jackie, and later helps Jackie kill him, then he launches a missile at Downing Street to stop the Slitheen, even though he knows Rose could die. When the Doctor invites him along, he turns him down, because he's able to recognize he's not yet at a point where he could live that life. In Boom Town, he goes with Team TARDIS to confront Blon Fel Fotch, and he confronts Rose about taking him for granted.
Then there's Parting of the Ways. He comes running the moment he hears the TARDIS, and he tries to persuade Rose to give up on the Doctor and live her twenty-first century life, but when Rose says that there's nothing left for her there, Mickey accepts it. In Boom Town, he was angry that he would never come first with Rose, but now he accepts it, puts Rose ahead of himself, and does his best to help her.
But it's more than that. After Mickey's car fails to pry the console open, after Rose's conversation with Jackie, when Rose is about to give up, Mickey refuses to let her. He's always done his best to support her, and now he knows that the support she needs is to keep her hope alive. For himself, he wants her to be safe and happy in a nice, normal life with him, and when Rose contemplates giving up, it would have been so easy for him to agree. But he doesn't. Instead, he refuses to let her give up, and I am so proud of him for that. And when Jackie comes by with the Big Yellow Truck, he doesn't hesitate to use it to help Rose get back to the Doctor.
Mickey has grown so, so much since the beginning of the season, and I love him for that.
Jack
One of my favorite Nine-Rose-Jack fics has a line that I think perfectly captures Jack's character arc in S1, and a lot of his relationships with the Doctor and Rose. In
honorh's Out of Joint, which is a Doctor Who/Firefly crossover, Jack tells Inara, "Rose saw something better in me than I'd become, and the Doctor--he challenged me to live up to it." That line has stuck with me from the first time I read it, because I think it's completely and utterly true.When we first meet Jack, he's a con man, angry and lashing out at the Time Agency for stealing his memories, and using sex and romance to get what he wants. When he rescues Rose from the barrage balloon, it's something I think he would have done for anyone (because at heart he is a decent man), but he's also immediately aware, from her clothes and her cell phone, that she's "not a local girl". From that, and from her recognition of the psychic paper, he concludes that she's a Time Agent, and sets out to con her into buying the crashed "Chula warship". He makes his pitch by dancing with her on top of his invisible spaceship next to Big Ben, giving her champagne, and being very flirty and charming. The flirty/charming aspect of Jack is something that's truly him, but it's also very calculated. He sees the way she reacts to him when he rescues her, and figures that the romantic approach is one likely to work, so he uses it.
This is significant, because it's not the approach he uses with the Doctor. Instead, he goes with ingratiation. He shakes his hand and tells him he's heard a lot about him, he tells the truth about conning them, he's eager to show off his sonic blaster. He alters his approach based on the person, which emphasizes that to him, sex is a tool.
Rose has been sympathetic towards Jack from the beginning. She's charmed by him, but not completely--she pretends to be a Time Agent, tells Jack the Doctor is "Mr Spock", and is very matter-of-fact when she tells the Doctor about the Chula ship that Jack stole, parked, and which will blow up unless they make him an offer. Then he reveals that he's a con man. But still Rose trusts him, to get her and the Doctor out of the storeroom, to not run away. She trusts him, and he wants to live up to that. Especially with the Doctor as an example, challenging him to be more than what he's let himself become.
Jack loves Rose and the Doctor. They want him to be the best person he can, and they let him into their extremely close relationship, something that's very obvious in Boom Town. That episode shows what an outsider to Team TARDIS looks like, and it's Mickey, not Jack. I love the friendship the three of them have, but I am not into the OT3. Very occasionally I will read Doctor/Rose/Jack, and even enjoy it, but something usually feels off to me. I think I've finally pinned it down--the relationships are not equal. The Doctor and Rose love Jack, but their highest priority is always each other.
And one of the best things about Jack, in my opinion, is that he knows this. He knows it, he understands it, he accepts it, and even respects it. Rose's "disintegration" in Bad Wolf makes it abundantly clear. Jack goes after the Floor Manager with his big gun, furious and yelling about how they killed her, while the Doctor is in a state of numbed shock, on his knees by the pile of Rose's ashes. When the security guards come, Jack stops yelling about Rose being killed, and starts yelling at the guards to leave the Doctor alone. When they get to Floor 500, after Jack figures out that Rose is alive, he immediately tells the Doctor, knowing how happy the Doctor will be to hear it. In Parting of the Ways, when Jack finds out that the Doctor sent Rose home, instead of being angry that the Doctor chose Rose over everyone else, he's approving of the Doctor's decision, and happy that Rose is safe. He completely respects the Doctor's feelings for Rose.
This continues even into Utopia. He makes one bitter comment about how the Doctor won't leave you behind "if you're blonde", but in the radiation room, when the Doctor tells him that Rose is trapped in a parallel world, he's able to say "Sorry". He's bitter that he was left behind, but he still knows what Rose means to the Doctor, and so he can understand and sympathize with the Doctor's pain at being separated from Rose.
Jack loves the Doctor and Rose, and I'm pretty sure he's in love with them as well, but while they love him platonically (aside from some flirting, because frankly all three of them are really flirty people), his love for them is ultimately unrequited. And actually, I like it that way. As I mentioned earlier, before he met the Doctor and Rose, Jack would use sex as a tool to get what he wanted. I think it's good for him that two of the most significant relationships in his life are non-sexual. People can be intimate without having sex, and I think it's good for Jack's character growth to have that kind of intimate friendship. The Doctor and Rose are two people who love him, and whose love is not dependent on or even related to having sex with him, and I think that's wonderful for Jack. I don't think that, if he had had sexual relationships with them, it would have cheapened his love for them or theirs for him, but I don't think it would have contributed as much to his character growth.
Jack loves so, so deeply, and I love him for that. Watching his character grow from a calculating con man to someone who could love so deeply was truly enjoyable. And the look on his face as he watches the TARDIS leave without him will always break my heart.
The Doctor
When we first meet the Doctor in Rose, one of the first things that strikes me as I rewatch that episode is how cavalier he is with his own life. "I'm going to go up there and blow them up, and I might well die in the process. But don't worry about me, no. Go home, go on! Go and have your lovely beans on toast." This is very early on in the episode, so the only things we know about him now are: he knows what's going on with the shop dummies, and he's going to blow up the shop and thinks he might well die in the process. This initially might seem like a joke, but later in the episode, when he speaks with the Nestene Consciousness, he's guilty and despairing and generally in pain, and in hindsight it seems that he wasn't joking. This is a damaged Doctor.
In the next episode, we find out what happens, and in the episode after that, we find out he no longer wants to die (and in fact seems appalled at the idea, especially because it's in Cardiff :p). The difference between his attitude in Rose and in The Unquiet Dead is, of course, Rose herself. She very quickly worms her way into his heart, to the point where, just a few days after he meets her, he hesitates to save the world because it means he might lose her. Subsequent episodes only continue to show how important she is to him. He lets a Dalek free because it's holding her hostage in Dalek. He takes her back to the day her father died in Father's Day, and never mentions the obvious solution to the Reapers because he doesn't want to hurt her. He just shuts down when it looks like she's died in front of him in Bad Wolf. In Parting of the Ways, he sends her home, then he regenerates for her. He loves her, pure and simple.
In this episode, he's confronted again with one of his oldest enemies--but more than that, an enemy he sacrificed his planet to stop. Now he finds out that they were, in fact, not stopped; that, not only did they survive, they flourished. Half a million Daleks, including the bloody Emperor, versus one Doctor, and now it seems like the huge sacrifice he made, the sacrifice that damaged him so very badly, was in vain.
DOCTOR: My people were destroyed, but they took the Daleks with them. I almost thought it was worth it. Now it turns out they died for nothing.
He puts a good face on things. He makes jokes--"let's go meet the neighbors"--and banters with Jack and taunts the Daleks. But he thought this fight was over, that it ended before he met Rose, only now it starts again, and this time Rose and the Earth are at stake as well. He puts a good face on things, but he's so tired of this fight.
He's not about to give up, but that doesn't mean things are easy for him. When they're back on the Gamestation and the Doctor starts going on about the Delta Wave, he's very manic and twitchy. It's as if he has to keep moving, has to just concentrate on building this thing, because if he slows down, he's going to have to think about how hopeless the situation is.
And that's what happens. The Doctor refuses to let Rose be part of the defense. She's done dangerous things before, and the Doctor has accepted it. But here, he clearly has no hope of the defenders surviving, because he won't let Rose be part of that. When Jack leaves, and Rose wants reassurance that he's going to be all right, the Doctor doesn't answer. And when the Delta Wave starts building, and the Doctor figures out how long it will take, and that there's no possibility of refining it, he takes her out of the fight altogether.
We get a clue about what he's doing from the music--as the Doctor, who had been slumped in despair, jumps up and tells Rose that she's a genius, Father's Day is playing. Father's Day, the music that accompanied Pete's sacrifice, accompanies too the Doctor's sacrifice, his decision to send Rose away to keep her safe. From the conversation about leaving, he knows that she has every intention of staying with him and seeing this through, so he tricks her and takes the decision out of her hands, because that's what's most important to him. And the look on his face as he sends her away breaks my heart.
In an episode full of heartbreaking things, Emergency Programme One might very well be the worst. It's planned. The Doctor recorded it, before any of this happened. He's very accepting of his own death, tells Rose to let the TARDIS die as well, and asks her to have a fantastic life, for him. I think that request to have a fantastic life is ultimately the point of Emergency Programme One. If he'd just sent her home, without a message, she could have figured out he did it because he wanted her to be safe, because she would have died had she stayed with him. Telling her to let the TARDIS die wasn't necessary, since it's not like Rose would have been able to do anything else (from his perspective). The bulk of Emergency Programme One is a courtesy, rather than a necessity (which I think is a significant indication of his feelings for her all on its own), and the rest of it is love. All he wants her to do for him is to have a fantastic life. He can die at peace as long as he knows that she's safe, and that she's going to live that fantastic life. And his words and actions from that point until Rose comes back just bear that out.
When Jack calls, asking for Rose, the Doctor is brusque, and when he confirms that he sent her home, to me he sounds a bit defensive as well. This conversation makes clear that he thinks he's going to die--the Delta Wave's lack of discrimination extends to him as well--but he keeps working. And when the Daleks reach Floor 500, when he decides he's not going to sacrifice the Earth to this war, he doesn't resist. "Maybe it's time," he says. He accepts his death with dignity, and at peace.
Backing up a bit, the end of the Doctor's conversation with Jack and the Emperor Dalek is filled with dramatic irony, and always amuses me. As a manifestation of the Doctor's characteristic arrogance and self-absorption, he assumes that Bad Wolf is all about him, the Daleks spreading those words across time and space to draw him in. He's completely baffled when the Emperor says that's not it. It's another call-back to the episode Rose, where the Doctor chides Rose for thinking the world revolves around her, and agrees that it revolves around him, except here it's reversed. He thinks it's all about him, and it's really all about her. That amuses me.
In the episode Dalek, the Doctor is constantly paralleled with the Dalek. It happens again here, when the Daleks reach Floor 500, and this time the Doctor is compared not only with the Daleks, but with the man he was in Dalek. In Dalek, he tells it, "I know what you deserve. Exterminate." Here, the Emperor says, "I want to see you become like me. Hail the Doctor, the Great Exterminator!" In Dalek, when discussing the Time War, the Dalek says, "And the coward survived." Here, the Emperor asks the Doctor, "What are you--coward or killer?" Where in Dalek, the Doctor accepted some of those comparisons (an indication of his mental state at the time), here he unilaterally rejects them. He would rather be a coward than be like the Emperor, and refuses to be the Great Exterminator. He's going to let them kill him, knowing that in the end, he'll die as himself.
And then the TARDIS appears.
The Doctor almost immediately falls to the ground, Rose standing before him, in an extremely visual representation of the power imbalance here--where Rose has nearly all the power and the Doctor very little. He is absolutely amazed--throughout this scene, his eyes are very wide, and his expression is incredulous in a way that the Doctor almost never is. Then he protests that all that power is going to cause her to burn, and her response floors him.
ROSE: I want you safe. My Doctor. Protected from the False God.
He tells her that this is going to kill her, and her response is an implicit statement that all she cares about is that he's safe and protected. He's absolutely astounded at the gesture.
Then she ends the Time War. She destroys all the Daleks, turns them all to dust, and ends this war that has so hurt her Doctor. And she saved him, not only from death, but from the terrible decision he had to make, and its consequences. He's had to make life-weighing decisions throughout the series. Sometimes he has help. In World War III, Harriet Jones made the decision and took responsibility for it, though the Doctor was the one who thought of the solution in the first place. In Fires of Pompeii, Donna places her hands on the lever and helps him push it down, sharing the burden and responsibility between them. But here the Doctor doesn't know what to do to save the Earth, and is about to let himself die and leave the Daleks free to menace the universe. Then Rose takes the problem completely out of his hands. It's an extremely significant moment, and I think one that affects his view of her from then on. He has faith in her, believes in her (as explicitly stated in The Satan Pit), because she gave him something to believe in. She's very much his knight in shining armor.
But then the Daleks are gone, the danger is over, and Rose won't let go of the power. It's going to kill her, and the Doctor thinks it's his fault, because he tends to take the blame for things. He's grieving and despairing, until Rose gives him a clue. "I can see everything. All that is...all that was...all that ever could be." Now, for the first time since Rose appeared, the Doctor stands up. Rose gives him something that he can understand, something that equalizes them in his eyes, so now he stands, eliminating the visual power imbalance, and knows what he has to do.
As for the kiss, John Barrowman says it perfectly, in the Parting of the Ways Confidential:
"When he kisses her, it's not only the thing that he's wanted to do throughout the entire series, but it gives him peace because he's letting go of the burden of the Time Lords being destroyed and he's saving the one that he--he loved the Time Lords, they were his people--but he loves this girl."
It's truly a beautiful kiss.
When he's drawn all the Vortex from Rose, he very tenderly lays her down, and then he gives the power back to the TARDIS, smiling a bit when it's gone. Then he takes off.
Rose wakes up in the console room, the Doctor standing at the controls. He sounds a bit surprised that she doesn't remember what happened, but he knows he's about to regenerate and doesn't have much time, so he gives her a very flippant answer. The rest of the conversation is just as flippant, a sharp contrast to the utter seriousness of what's about to happen. He tries to make this process easier for her by joking about it, trying to keep the atmosphere light. Every cell in his body is dying, and he's clearly in some pain, but he's also trying not to worry her. He's about to regenerate, and he's still just completely focused on her.
The Doctor's ninth incarnation began in pain and destruction, and it ends with an act of love--that's just perfect, and one of the reasons I love Nine so much. And his parting lines are some of the best I've ever heard.
DOCTOR: Before I go, I just wanna tell you, you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And d'you know what? So was I!
Yes, Doctor, you were.
Rose
When we first meet Rose, she's extremely normal. She has spectacular bed-head, is on good terms with her mother, works in a shop, has lunch with her boyfriend, and is just someone you can easily empathize with. But something we learn about Rose is that she's not satisfied with her life. She wants more. Whether it's going to get her A-levels or traveling through time and space with an alien in a phone box, she tries to find something her life is missing--and I think that "something" she's looking for is purpose. She's sort of directionless and drifting in Rose, not unhappy, but not satisfied either. Then she goes with the Doctor, looking for adventure, and finding that and more.
One thing I do not think she was looking for was love. She has a boyfriend when she starts traveling with the Doctor, and while Mickey may not have been the love of her life, she does honestly care about him. Still, even as early as Aliens of London, she prioritizes the Doctor above Mickey, saying that he's something "more important" than her boyfriend--but she's not thinking about love. And she's certainly not thinking about loving the Doctor. First she has Mickey, then she flirts with Adam and Jack, then she agrees to go to a hotel with Mickey again, and all the while the Doctor's watching and pining.
She isn't looking for love, but she finds it anyway. I think the moment it pings for her that yes, she is in love with the Doctor, is at the end of Bad Wolf, when he says he's coming to get her. The look on her face is just full of belief and pride and love.
Something I've seen Rose complimented for is her bravery in Doomsday, telling the Cult of Skaro straight out that she killed the Emperor when she has no way of stopping them killing her. I see her as no less brave in the opening scene of Parting of the Ways. The Daleks' plan of holding her hostage backfired, and now her only value to them is in her knowledge of the Doctor and ability to predict his actions. And Rose, though clearly terrified, surrounded entirely by a ship full of thousands of Daleks, refuses to do what they say. She says she doesn't know what the Doctor would do, but she follows that up with, "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell ya..." Her voice even shakes a bit there, but she is adamant; she won't help the Daleks hurt her Doctor. And after the Doctor rescues her, she goes back out there, trusting to the Doctor's ability to protect her.
Something I find interesting is that Rose is the one who says that the Daleks coming from humanity makes them half-human, and the Daleks cry blasphemy on her. Minor foreshadowing for the Emperor later calling her "the Abomination"? Not even the Doctor gets the extreme reactions from the Daleks that Rose does.
Then they get back to the Gamestation, and for the first time, we see Rose jealous and possessive of the Doctor. Admittedly, the Doctor has fewer flirtations than Rose does, but Rose was untroubled by Jabe in End of the World, and by the Doctor hugging Suki in The Long Game. Now she is clearly displeased with Lynda. First she looks disturbed at Lynda's declaration that she "didn't wanna leave [the Doctor]", then she looks put out when Lynda says to make the Delta Wave before she can, and then, during the Doctor and Lynda's really awkward goodbye, Rose is glaring daggers at both of them. Lynda is the first person to encroach on Rose's territory with the Doctor since her realization that she loves him, so she reacts by being jealous, and a lot less sympathetic than she would otherwise be.
In Rose's conversation with the Doctor is yet another example of her bravery, though a different kind. Here is a quiet moment. They are in danger, but it's not immediate, not the way Rose's confrontation with the Daleks was. Still, they know it's coming, and that it's overwhelming, and very possible they won't survive. And despite all that, it doesn't even occur to Rose to run away. Even when the Doctor brings up the possibility, she dismisses it immediately, as if confused that he would bring it up when she knows that they'd never do that--it's a moot point. Her courage and her sense of responsibility, the one the Doctor has been nurturing for an entire season, forbid the mere notion of abandoning the fight.
Which is what makes it so bad when the Doctor takes the decision out of her hands. He has to trick her into the TARDIS, because she's made it clear she would never leave otherwise, and even as the TARDIS dematerializes, she's trying to get out and get back to him. Emergency Programme One horrifies her, and she does everything she can, including pleading, to try and get back. When Mickey appears, all she can do is cry into his shoulder.
The next Rose scene is one of my favorites out of the entire series.
ROSE [desperate]
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 [coldly]
It's what the rest of us do.
ROSE
But I can't!
MICKEY
Why, 'cause you're better than us?
ROSE [frustrated]
No, I didn't mean that!
[She pauses, trying to calm herself down. Jackie watches her]
ROSE [quietly]
But it was... it was a better life. And I - 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.
[She meets their eyes, speaking earnestly]
ROSE [to Mickey]
You know, he showed you too.
[Mickey does not reply]
ROSE [passionately]
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, and I just can't--
It's not that Rose thinks the lives most people live--the linear, earthbound lives--are bad. It's not that she thinks she's too good to live a life like that herself. She says it explicitly--the traveling and seeing aliens and things doesn't matter. She enjoys it, of course--she loves it. But that's not the point. The real point is what she learned while living that life, and it's something that can be extended to any sort of life. I have no doubt that Rose is making hard choices and standing up for her beliefs in Pete's World, because the Doctor taught her to do nothing less.
The fact that she's stuck back in an ordinary life isn't what makes her so frustrated here. It's part of it, of course. As Sarah Jane says in School Reunion, it's hard to get "a taste of that splendour" and then have to go back. But the real frustration here is two-fold, I think. First is that she's trapped away from the Doctor, and second is that she's helpless. Her very first sentence in this scene encompasses both--"Two hundred thousand years in the future, he's dying, and there's nothing I can do." This shows perfectly her priorities. She doesn't care that she can't travel through time and space anymore; she cares that the Doctor is dying and she can't help him.
She has difficulty articulating this at first, because she's angry and frustrated. Mickey at least misunderstands her, and I've seen people in fandom who do the same. But in the end, I think she's pretty clear: it's not the actual details of the life he lives that's better, but the way he lives it. That's the way she learned to live her life as well, and the Doctor took from her the ability to do that. She learned not to give up, and now she's forced into a situation where there might be no other option. There are a lot of tragedies in this episode, but for all that this one is not as obvious, it's no less real.
The reveal of Bad Wolf on the playground is haunting, and amazing. After the frustration of the previous scene, it's a joy to watch the dawning realization on Rose's face as she puts everything together and figures out that Bad Wolf is a message, is a good thing, as she understands that yes, she can get back to him, she's not really helpless. And now that she's figured it out, and even knows how to get back, she's determined to do it. When she tells Mickey that "there's nothing left for [her] here", it's definitely hyperbole (even if the romantic relationship with Mickey is over, the friendship is still left, and there's always Jackie), but it gets her point across: there's nothing left for her there as important as getting back to the Doctor. She recognizes that she might very well die, but that's a risk she's willing to take.
These two sequences also emphasize how clever Rose really is. She may not have a lot of education, but she's really quite smart, with an amazing ability to remember things and put together the puzzle pieces. First she understands that Bad Wolf is a message, an indication she can get back to the Doctor, then she remembers the Heart of the TARDIS, and the Doctor's comments that the ship is alive, and realizes she can get the TARDIS to take her back. I'm pretty intelligent, but I'm not sure I would have been able to understand things so quickly (and I didn't get that Bad Wolf was Rose until she actually said it. :p).
Then Mickey's car fails to budge the console, and Jackie comes in to tell Rose to give up. But Rose knows her mother, knows what might get her to understand, and brings up her father. She brings up Pete, who was always trying for a better life, who was clever in the way that Rose is, who was adventurous and constantly dreaming and who sacrificed himself for the rest of the world. And she says that without the Doctor, she would never have known him, and Pete would have died alone, without someone there to hold his hand. She appeals to Jackie's memory of Pete, and encourages Jackie's new respect for the Doctor.
But Jackie runs out of the TARDIS, leaving Rose sobbing. This, combined with her previous failure to get the console open, leaves Rose with her hope flagging. She doesn't want to give up, but she's beginning to think that she has no other option. Then Mickey refuses to let her give up, and Jackie comes with the Big Yellow Truck, and Rose has hope again. Hope that is very soon rewarded, as the Big Yellow Truck opens the console and Rose speaks to the TARDIS.
One detail I am always impressed with is how Rose's physical appearance in this episode enhances what she does here. First, of course, is costuming--her hoodie today is a deep pink/light red, and when she declares herself the Bad Wolf, what is immediately called to mind is Little Red Riding Hood, in the belly of the wolf. Even her hairstyle makes a difference. It's loose and somewhat wispy, leading her a look of youth and innocence, even a hint of fragility. But her look is contrasted with her actions--she may look fragile, but she easily repels the Dalek laser. She may look innocent, but she destroys the Daleks with a wave of her hand, saying, "Everything must come to dust...all things. Everything dies." And she may look young, but she can see the whole of time and space. It's a beautiful contrast.
ROSE: I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words... I scatter them in time and space. A message to lead myself here.
I always get a shiver when Rose says that. This is epic. She is epic. She permeates the show, a common thread running through all four seasons so far, and it's amazing.
And she did it for love of the Doctor. "I want you safe. My Doctor. Protected from the False God"--those lines always make my heart beat faster. As much as he wants to protect her, she wants to protect him, and she will. He will not stop her--no one will. No one can. The Doctor told her that this will make her burn, and her response just says, "As long as you're safe, it doesn't matter." That is love.
She destroys the Daleks, and ends the Time War. She even specifically says, "The Time War ends", rather than anything along the lines of Earth being saved from the Daleks. This makes me think that she did it for the Doctor, because she knows how deeply the Time War hurt him, and how difficult it was for him to face the Daleks' survival. Saving the Earth is an extremely good side-effect, but I think she does it for him.
Back in the beginning of this section, I said that one thing Rose was looking for was purpose. I think she finds that purpose in this episode, and it's two-fold. First is the better way of living her life that she described to Jackie and Mickey, something she can fall back on when separated from him in Doomsday, but second, I think a purpose she found is loving and looking after the Doctor, being with him and helping him take care of the universe. I don't think this in any way diminishes her independence, or her sense of self apart from the Doctor, but this episode is really where she devotes herself to him. And because I don't think she loses her independence or lets herself be subsumed by the Doctor (she continues to challenge him in S2, like when she demands to know what she is to him in School Reunion, and she explicitly defies his wishes for her in Rise of the Cybermen and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday), I have no quarrel with this purpose she's found. In fact, I think love is a wonderful purpose to have. Since she can be in love and remain a strong, independent woman, my respect for her is only increased.
In Utopia, the Doctor says, "She was human. Everything she did was so human." I have to disagree with him a bit there--everything she did was so Rose. There are a lot of humans, even within the show, who I'd never trust the power of the Vortex to, and even Rose slipped a bit. When she accomplishes her main goals of saving the Doctor and ending the Time War, she doesn't want to let go of the power. She brings Jack back to life, and ends up doing it permanently. I'm not sure if his immortality was an accident or not (if he really is the Face of Boe, that would suggest not), but when the Doctor asks her to let go, she can't, not yet. Still, the only other thing she ends up doing with the power is also quintessential Rose: bringing Jack back. She may not feel as deeply for him as she does for the Doctor, but she does love him and want him to live.
But then she does let go. More than that, she gives it away. When the Doctor figures out what he needs to do to save her, she cooperates, and gives him the power that's hurting her. The quote from John Barrowman illustrated what that kiss means to the Doctor, but to Rose, it's perfect trust, and love, and surrender.
When she wakes up again in the TARDIS, the two of them back in the Vortex, she doesn't remember what happened. All she remembers is singing. Then the Doctor has to start rambling on about Barcelona and changing, and is in general not making sense, and she's confused and starting to get scared. He very incompetently explains regeneration, and then does, and she's shocked and scared and wanting her Doctor back. Oh, Rose.
But in the end, he told her she was fantastic, and she was. She is. Rose is the heroine of this story, and I love her for it.
Relationships
I already discussed Mickey's and Jackie's relationships with Rose in their character sections, but now I want to go more in depth into the three main characters, Jack's friendship with the other two as well as the romance between the Doctor and Rose. There will be some overlap from the character sections, but mostly this is for discussing the relationship moments, not just the characters.
Jack and Rose
As I mentioned in Jack's character section, Rose saw something in him better than the con man she first met. She put her trust in him, and he responded to that, and lived up to it.
Though I do think he's more than a bit in love with her, a lot of the interaction I see between them from Boom Town on seems a lot more like she's a beloved younger sister. Ever since the Doctor's "Welcome to the TARDIS--hands off the blonde" look at the end of The Doctor Dances, he stops flirting with her. He acts a lot more like an older brother.
When he and the Doctor rescue Rose in the beginning of the episode, after she and the Doctor have their embrace, he says, "What, don't I get a hug?" and as Rose goes to hug him, he laughs and follows it up with, "I was talking to him". Very teasing. But when he does hug her, he says, "Welcome home" with this really warm, welcoming tone of voice. And the words themselves imply that he thinks Rose's home is there, in the TARDIS, with him and the Doctor. He's aware that she's from early twenty-first century Earth, that she still has roots there, and he's even met her boyfriend, but he still thinks the place she belongs is in the TARDIS with them. That implies a really close relationship.
Then there's the goodbye scene. She's very optimistic, is sure that the Doctor's going to get them out of this and they'll see each other again, doesn't want him to talk like he's going off to die. He, very sweetly, takes her face in his hands and tells her intently, very clearly meaning it, that she's worth fighting for. The unspoken statement, given the goodbye, is that she's also worth dying for. And for Jack, she is. She gives him trust and acceptance, things that he as a jaded con man would never have expected, and in return, he gives her devotion. Then he kisses her, like a little sister, which Rose's young and innocent expression really helps sell.
Even after the goodbye, we get indications from both of them on how deep their feelings go. First there's Jack's conversation with the Doctor and the Dalek Emperor. The Emperor reveals that there's no possibility of refining the Delta Wave, and Jack knows immediately that that means everyone on the station and on Earth will be in its range, and therefore won't survive. The Doctor asks him what he would do, and his response? "You sent her home. She's safe. Keep working." Much like the Doctor does a bit later, Jack, knowing that Rose is safe, is able to accept his death.
And Rose, of course, brings him back to life. She has all the power of a goddess, and she only does three things with it. First, she scatters the words "bad wolf" in time and space; second, she destroys the Daleks; and third, she brings Jack back to life. He was dead and she wanted him to live, so now he does. It may have gone a bit wrong, but she did it for love of him.
The relationship between Jack and Rose is not easily quantifiable, but it's filled with trust, acceptance, loyalty, and love, and it's wonderful.
Jack and the Doctor
From the very first moment Jack meets the Doctor, he's wanted to impress him. That soon transforms into wanting the Doctor's respect, and making himself into a person the Doctor can respect. And in return, the Doctor sees Jack as a friend, and accepts him into his home and his life.
I love the banter they sometimes fall into. I'm very amused by the one early on in this episode:
DOCTOR: It's all right, come on out. That forcefield can hold back anything.
JACK: Almost anything.
DOCTOR: ...Yes, but I wasn't going to tell them that. Thanks.
JACK: Sorry.
The expression on the Doctor's face there is particularly funny. Still, he doesn't seem angry that Jack accidentally shot down his bluff.
Then there's the goodbye scene, again. Once he's said his farewells to Rose, he turns to the Doctor. "Wish I'd never met you, Doctor! I was much better off as a coward." He's well aware that the Doctor challenged him to be the best person he can be, and that he's been living up to that challenge. But it's clear, from his ragged tone of voice, that he doesn't really mean it--those lines are an illustration of how much he's changed since meeting the Doctor, and why. He may have been "better off as a coward" in the sense that he'd likely still be alive (and mortal), but, like Rose, Jack learned a better way of living his life. If he didn't really believe this, he would never have gone off to fight the way he does. He appreciates what meeting the Doctor has done for him, and the expression on his face as he kisses him is very much that of a lover.
The conversation between Jack, the Doctor, and the Emperor is just as much a show of the relationship between Jack and the Doctor as it is an indication of Jack's feelings for Rose. First, the Doctor explains the decision he has to make, to kill everyone on Earth or to let the Daleks go free, and he looks to Jack for understanding and validation. The Emperor tries to turn Jack against the Doctor, appealing to his sense of survival, but Jack replies with, "Never doubted him; never will." And the Doctor is energized by Jack's trust. Much as the Doctor has offered things to Jack, Jack also offers things to the Doctor--specifically that trust, as well as acceptance of and implicit forgiveness for the terrible decision the Doctor is faced with. These are things the Doctor clearly needed, to be so energized by getting them.
When the Doctor leaves Jack behind at the end of the episode, it's a really shitty thing to do, and that Jack is able to forgive him for it is another strong indication of Jack's feelings. That the Doctor can get over his prejudice and offer Jack a place on the TARDIS again is an indication of his. It shows that they were able to build up a strong friendship founded on trust, loyalty, and love, and it's one of my favorite male friendships in all of TV.
The Doctor and Rose
I'm going to restrict my observations and musings regarding this relationship to this episode, or else the essay would likely double in length. :p
I love the embrace they share, when the Doctor rescues Rose in the beginning of the episode. As soon as she's safe, the Doctor just strides over there, and they don't even speak until they're holding each other. They sort of melt into each other, so comfortably, and even when they pull back a bit, they still hold onto each other for just a bit longer. It's a really, really lovely hug, and one of my favorites from these two who hug so often.
The conversation after they say goodbye to Jack, where they strip wire and talk about options, is full of subtleties.
DOCTOR: There's another thing the TARDIS could do... it could take us away... We could leave. Let history take its course. We could go to Marbella in 1989.
ROSE: Yeah, but you'd never do that.
DOCTOR: No, but you could ask. [pause] Never even occurred to you, did it?
ROSE: Well, I'm just too good!
Rose is right--the Doctor would never do that. He's not the type to run away from a fight, even one that would certainly kill him. But I don't think he's proposing it as a serious option; to me, it feels far more like he's fishing. He has no intention of leaving, but he wants Rose to agree that it would be nice if they did, if they went somewhere together where they could live and have fun. He wants Rose to want him enough to be willing to abandon her sense of responsibility and resume their life traveling together. And he's both proud and wistful that it "never even occurred to [her]".
It's another kind of declaration, as well. "No, but you could ask" acknowledges the power she has over him, power to make him do things he wouldn't ordinarily do. She asks him to take her to see her father, and he does, though the situation is ripe for disaster. She asks him to dance with her, and he does, though he's had centuries of very platonic relationships with his companions. There are so many things he would do for her, if only she would ask.
For Rose's part, it's an application of the lesson he taught her, the one she explains to Jackie and Mickey. Just as the Doctor challenges Jack to be the best person he can be, so Rose challenges the Doctor. When he falters, as he did in Dalek, she reminds him of who he is. Here, she does it again--he's the kind of person who stands up for what's right, who won't run away despite the odds against him, and she won't even entertain the notion of being anything less.
I mentioned Rose's and the Doctor's protective urges regarding the other in their respective sections, but I would like to iterate again that I love them. The Doctor's protectiveness of Rose emerges when he sends her home, even though it breaks his heart to do it, and Rose is angry and frustrated as a result. Rose's protectiveness emerges as Bad Wolf, even though the energy she absorbed could very well kill her, and the Doctor is terrified as a result. They constantly put the other above themselves, which can lead to some impressive clashes, all of which I love. They're so real.
I've already said I love their kiss, but I love too what happens right after it. Rose, the Vortex drawn out of her, falls into the Doctor's arms, and he lays her down so tenderly. And once he's exhaled the Vortex back into the TARDIS, he leans down and strokes her face and neck, again, so tenderly. It's a quiet moment that really speaks volumes.
I love this relationship, completely and utterly, and Parting of the Ways is so much of the reason why.
Conclusion
Parting of the Ways is so incredibly important in the scheme of things, being the culmination of one season and precipitating important events further down the line. No matter how many times I see it, it always gets me. Rose's line "I create myself" is both powerful and empowering--it has such a large impact on the season, the characters, and even the audience, as well as being a wonderful message to send. She creates herself in terms of scattering those words in time and space, but she also throughout the season has created herself into the kind of person who would become Bad Wolf. All of the characters and relationships have gone through their own journeys, their own self-creation, to decide what really matters to them. They choose life, and they choose love, and they choose to fight for both of those, and it's so wonderful to watch.
Season One of the new Doctor Who is one of the best full seasons I've seen of any show I've ever watched, and The Parting of the Ways is the perfect finale for it.
Acknowledgements
Dialogue from Doctor Who [2005+] Transcripts. Most screencaps from ninthdoctor.time-and-space.co.uk.
Many thanks to
tsukara and mls03j for the beta. You made this better than it otherwise would have been.
