After dwelling a bit, I am surprised by the consistency of the Doctor’s character under Russel T. Davies (and within his scripts in particular). Once again the Doctor is left ambivalent about getting close to anyone — alternately clinging and avoiding — yet now has been advised as to his objective need for someone to watch over him, setting up a rather different framework for his upcoming meeting with Martha Jones.

When we first saw the Ninth Doctor, he was shellshocked from the Time War; from losing everyone and everything he perhaps never appreciated — so of course he was both emotionally needy and reluctant to get involved, especially with anyone who wouldn’t stick around and try to understand his world, his life. He became unhealthily attached to Rose, then was reborn healed — at least outwardly — from most of the demons. As he became more dashing and confident, Rose became unhealthily attached to him, placing her desire for him above his objective needs, thereby putting his ego in a strange place. By the end he didn’t subjectively need her so much as he was used to having her, and didn’t objectively need her in that she did little to keep him in line (as she generally had the Ninth Doctor). When he lost her, he was sad and dispossessed — yet more than anything struck again with a sense of failure, of emptiness. It was a different emptiness from the Ninth Doctor’s; in place of desperation was an arrogance. Subjectively he’d shifted from need to want, and he couldn’t step outside himself. Nobody could give him what he wants, everyone leaves in the end, so to hell with everybody. What’s the point.

What Donna does is kick him in the head. “Look, Bozo”, she says, “who gives a damn what you want; it’s obvious from here that you need someone who isn’t going to fawn over you, who’s going to challenge you, and keep you from slipping into your weird place. To keep you human, as far as that goes.” That’s not going to be her, because she’s got better things to do than flit around the universe, playing nanny to a thousand-year-old god; still, she says, go find someone. And right there is an interesting point; there’s a tangible argument for the Doctor not to get too involved with his assistants. It’s an unequal relationship, where the Doctor is in effect in the inferior position. It’s been this way ever since Ian and Barbara, teaching humanity to the Doctor’s veritably antisocial first incarnation (at least, in the first several stories). When Rose lowered herself to his level, that caused problems. She was supposed to be watching over him, and she failed him. In losing her, the Doctor felt failure for his own sake — which is bad enough. For the state she left him in, however, he felt betrayal from the universe in general. And that’s not a good position for a Time Lord to be in.

It sort of makes me wonder if the only real difference between the Doctor and the Master is that the Doctor met Ian and Barbara, and has since generally had the benefit of an emotional compass in some form or another, honed and calibrated by an endless stream of confidants-slash-secretaries-slash-nursemaids, each one adding another nuance, giving the Doctor another bit of self. (Heck, occasionally even giving him their accents.)

Martha seems calculated to both gently kick the Doctor’s ass and to take an active interest in his affairs, without the danger of girly crush to get in the way of business — in a way, a more traditional companion for a more traditional Doctor. The Watson role, as played by a posh ninja lesbian.