Why Did the Doctor Not Tell Rose He Loved Her

[barefoottourguide]

Been going through hard times with my mental health and marriage. A friend who's a Whovian suggested I look into my wife's eyes through her mind and eyes at myself... didn't like what I saw. A fellow gamer who's a clinical therapist made himself available to talk via skype... a miracle of Doctor Who magnitude. And he responded to that "look at self" by asking me why the Doctor never told Rose he loved her. I always took it as the not wanting to have the talk with a friend who's crushing on you. It chances dynamics and creates discomfort.
Maybe it's part of me shutting out emotion for the last decade or so, but I always thought it was a great friendship he didn't want to lose despite her wants for it to advance. What do the rest of you think?
Garrett

[Stormcrow]

Frankly, I think the only real answer to this is outside the story. Before Moffat the Destroyer, the Doctor simply didn't DO romance on screen. It's not a part of the character we're supposed to see. He needs to remain a bit alien and detached from human emotion. Davies managed to toe the line without actually crossing it, and we never actually hear the Doctor (or even his duplicate) say he loves Rose. Moffat, of course, has the subtlety of a jackhammer, and gave us his pet break-all-the-rules character, River Song.

[olegrand]

This thing was left untold simply because it made good drama.

But drama and real life are two different things and I really don't think that trying to understand real-life relationships by looking at them from the perspective of a fictional, quasi-immortal time-traveller will do any good - honestly.

DW is a great show - probably one of the greatest TV shows ever made but I don't think one should model one's real-life behaviour and outlook on others by trying to mimic or "enact" the tropes of a TV show, novel or other fictional work.

We are not Time Lords or fictional heroes - we are real human beings. And real life is always more complicated and more "chaotic" than fiction. In fiction, everything happens for a dramatic reason. In real life, reasons and consequences are NOT dramatic: they are personal, which is not the same thing at all. Don't get me wrong. Even escapist fiction may provide invaluable insight and food for thought, inspiration or self-analysis but certainly not in such a direct, imitative fashion. At the risk of sounding slightly platitudinous, the answers to one's personal difficulties always lie in oneself. If there are things you do not understand or that confuse you in your life, then you should try to analyze your life - and not the whys & wherefores of a writer's decisions. The people who write the DW scripts are not all-knowing, enlightened sages trying to convey secret messages on How We Should Live Our Lives - they're simply fiction writers (some of them remarkably talented). If you start blurring the lines between reality and fiction (and yes, such lines do exist, as all role-players should know) then you'll lose the ability to analyze real life situations as well as the ability to enjoy fiction or even get inspiration from it.

We only have one life. We do not regenerate, nor can we travel back in time to correct our mistakes or get "retconned" or whatever. But we can ask ourselves questions and seek the answers, which is sometimes a painful process. And we can change - sometimes we can even change for the better. Not by wondering what the Doctor would have done or why he did what he did - but by wondering why we did what we did or why we think or feel what we think or feel. This often takes us to our past - not in a TARDIS but in a more difficult, more introspective journey. And then we can think about changing the present or even building the future. .

Just my two cents...

[barefoottourguide]

Beautifully spoken, Olegrand.
Garrett

[Catsmate]

Oct 12, 2015 16:35:27 GMT Stormcrow said:

Frankly, I think the only real answer to this is outside the story. Before Moffat the Destroyer, the Doctor simply didn't DO romance on screen. It's not a part of the character we're supposed to see. He needs to remain a bit alien and detached from human emotion. Davies managed to toe the line without actually crossing it, and we never actually hear the Doctor (or even his duplicate) say he loves Rose. Moffat, of course, has the subtlety of a jackhammer, and gave us his pet break-all-the-rules character, River Song.

Agreed, and I don't think he (or she) should.

[da professor]

He said nothing because saying it would have made it real and he didn't think he could cope with the pain of losing her, which was always inevitable in one way or another, once that happened.

[bwfcfan]

He loved her in the same way he loved his other companions just like humans love their pets.

[Catsmate]

Oct 13, 2015 17:23:03 GMT bwfcfan said:

He loved her in the same way he loved his other companions just like humans love their pets.

There's a scene in one of the EU novels when Benny says (IIRR) "Woof, woof" to Doctor⁷. It always struck me that the Time Lord/human relationship was more akin to human/pet.

[Catsmate]

Actually this is the dialogue, from the end of Transit.

'Can't we be partners?' she'd asked him on Heaven, just before she stepped into the TARDIS. She saw now that the question was irrelevant.

Partnership would imply a measure of understanding and that was impossible.

He walked alone through the universe, playing some huge game of solitaire with shadowy cards. When the cards he dealt came out wrong he just dealt new ones.

What was her role in the game, what was Ace's, or any of the others' that had accompanied him? Company perhaps? Someone to talk to when he got lonely, fetch his slippers, beg, roll over, play dead.

She could get off the train at the next station, vanish into this century.

There was a lot to see, a lot that was going to happen in the next fifty years. Leave the Doctor to play his games on his own.

She knew she wasn't going to do it. She had crossed a line when she stepped over the TARDIS threshold. Bound herself to his service tighter than any vow she could have made. A faithful companion for as long as she could stand it.

'Woof,' she said and the Doctor looked at her sharply. 'Growl, bark, pant pant.'

The Doctor shook his head sadly.

'You're wrong,' he said. 'It's not like that at all.'

But Bernice knew it was.

Which, to me, sums up the situation; humans and Gallifreyans are different.