Wizarding Times

Warning! This article is spoilerific up through the Series 4 and the specials of Doctor Who, as well as a minor Torchwood spoiler, too. If the show is something on your to-watch list and you just haven't gotten to it yet, don't read on if you want to avoid spoilers. Just remember that all the Doctor's companions are awesome.

Fandom is a funny thing. Rarely is an opinion universally held, and the larger the fandom, the more diverse the opinions are. Or, you find yourself in a group of fans for one thing, only to discover a number of you are fans of an entirely different thing.

That's what happened to me with Doctor Who. I started watching the show in part because several of my HOL friends were fans of it — and other awesome shows I already knew. Then, I discovered that the Doctor Who love was more widespread at HOL than I thought. I mean, if you hang around #hol on a Saturday (or, really, most any other day), you've got a better than even chance of there being some reference or other to Doctor Who.

And, strangely enough, many of the HOL Whovians have a... shall we say "strong dislike" for a certain Martha Jones. Which is unfortunate and completely undeserved because, in many ways, Martha is a stronger, more defined character than favorites Rose or (gulp) Donna.

We first meet Martha after the Doctor has already met both Rose and Donna. To better understand Martha, though, we have to see where the Doctor has been. We spent two full series watching him fall in love with Rose, only to be cruelly separated from her. Then, Donna shows up on the Tardis, the first person on the Tardis since Rose, and though she has a mad adventure with him, she turns down the Doctor's offer to travel space and time with him. Before leaving, Donna urges him to find a traveling companion, but the Doctor, of course, says (rather foolishly) he doesn't anyone.

So, it's with this immediate backstory that the Doctor meets Martha Jones, an actual doctor-in-training. She's bright and clever and a problem-solver. We meet her on the way to work; she's fielding phone calls from different members of her family, trying to sooth everyone's tempers and troubles, because that's who she is. When her hospital is transported to the moon, she's scared, of course, but also excited and in awe of being on the moon and focused enough to be able to actually help people. She's the Doctor's go-to gal during the whole thing, and, when all is said and done, the Doctor offers her a single trip in the Tardis as a thank you of sorts. Say, a trip in a machine that can go anywhere and anywhen? Awesome!

The only snag in the situation is that, as part of the hospital-on-the-moon adventure, the Doctor kisses Martha full on the lips (it meant nothing to him, though; it was simply a "biogenetic transfer"). This, unsurprisingly, leads Martha to think the Doctor might be more than a little into her, and that's just peachy keen with her. And, honestly, she makes no secret of it when she first goes into the Tardis; her flirting amp is turned up to eleven. (And, seriously, a cute-but-slightly-mad man with a blue box kisses you within an hour of meeting you and then invites you to travel with him in his time machine — that he uses to show off to you before you've properly met him — just the two of you.... I mean, come on; it's not a silly or ridiculous thought that there might be more to the invitation. I'm just sayin'.)

Here's the thing, though: the Doctor treats Martha rather badly. He's very short-tempered with her for nothing she's done; he's just nursing a broken heart (or two broken hearts, whatever), having lost Rose and then having been rejected in his first post-Rose companion invite. He's kind of bitter, and he takes it out on Martha. After their first trip (where they met Shakespeare, and we learn that both Martha and the Doctor are Harry Potter fans), the Doctor half-heartedly offers her another trip — to the future this time — but that's it! Then it's back home and out of my hair! Naturally, because the Doctor is seriously in rebound mode, he takes her to the first place this version of him went with Rose. Understandably, this doesn't sit too well with Martha. (Neither, it should be said, does the whole getting kidnapped whilst there thing.)

Eventually the Doctor gives her a key to the Tardis, making her his full-time, official traveling companion. Not that he's much nicer to her. For instance, when they get trapped in 1969 without the Tardis, Martha is apparently the one who's working so they can get by. You'd think with the Doctor's many skills, he'd be able to do something to help. On the other hand, he does entrust her with his essence, the Tardis, and, ultimately, the fate of the world; however, by doing this, he's also putting her in a place to have to carry those burdens utterly alone.

Keep in mind that she bears the weight of all of this without a hint of extra powers (which both Rose and Donna temporarily got, in different ways, during their time on the Tardis).

In the end (of that series, anyway), Martha decides to leave, and she does so for two reasons. One, she wants to spend some real time with her family — completely understandable, as she spent the year that wasn't traveling a desolate planet Earth with the full knowledge that her family was being held captive by the Master. The other reason is that she has feelings for the Doctor that she knows he'll never return, so instead of staying on and hoping in vain he'll notice her that way, she's got to move on with her life. None of this "rest of my life" business that both Donna and Rose went around with; just, well, darn good common sense. Martha leaves on good, albeit bittersweet terms, and she joins up with the Doctor, Donna, and others in the next series, but the way she ends her permanent residence on the Tardis is wonderful in its maturity.

You could argue, I suppose, that the Doctor didn't know Martha had any special feeling for him, but that's only true up to a point. And beyond that, you can't overlook the haphazard way he treated her; she was his rebound companion, and he treated her, a greater than zero number of times, as something of a nuisance and mostly expendable.

So, what makes Martha a better character (dare I say person?) than Rose or Donna? Well, Donna is awesome, there's no doubt of that, only she never realized her potential until it was too late. This doesn't make her a bad person or anything; it just makes her story all the more tragic. The Doctor takes away all memory of him, leaving her but a shadow of her fully-realized self.

And then there's Rose. Spunky, free-spirited Rose. Rose, too, is awesome, but the whole of her existence revolves around the Doctor. She goes so far as to find ways to come back to the Doctor's universe (from Pete's world), seemingly without much concern that doing so creates tears in the fabric of the universe. While there are legitimate reasons for people to travel between the two worlds — the stars are going out everywhere, and someone needs to warn the Doctor and get Donna to be in the right place — her reason for traveling to that world is to get to the Doctor. When laying down some exposition explaining what's been happening, she talks about how, in her world, they made a dimension cannon thing so she could come back, with the clear implication it's for the Doctor. Actually, she says as much when the Doctor's not-regenerating at the end of "The Stolen Earth": she says, "He can't [die]. I came all this way." Rose's whole life comes down to the Doctor; she reaches a point, pretty early on, where every decision is based on the Doctor.

But Martha, she gets wrapped up in the Doctor's world, and she's never that far from it, but she meets it on her own terms, just like she left the Tardis on her own terms. With her medical degree and experiences with the Doctor, she joins UNIT, a military task force the Doctor worked at in the 1970s, to protect Earth from aliens. She always, always tries to help people, whatever the consequences. She spends some time at Torchwood, where her medical training allows her to go undercover, risking her life to do so. And, the last time this version of the Doctor sees her, she's gone free-lance, chasing down aliens with her husband, Mickey Smith (who had his own story of going from plastic tin dog to utterly awesome hotshot).

So, is Martha my favorite of the Tenth Doctor's companions? To be honest, she's not. (Let's hear it for Donna! Whoop, whoop!) However, I like Martha a whole lot. She's an important part of the story, one that can't be filled with anyone else, and she's more than earned mountains of respect, from the Doctor and the audience. Plus, no matter how you slice it, she's basically more awesome than all of us.