Tom BakerTag Archives

Susan’s Shadow.

Doctor Who fans especially will grok this discussion.

FWIW, i fully agree with it, as it has long been my take. Mainly because attachment to a life likely to die rapidly in front of you would also cut so deep.

If the Doctor loved anyone too deeply, it hurt.The goodbye between Sarah Jane and Tom Baker’s Doctor 4 was one of the most painfully poignant scenes the series has held. He HAD to let her go. Another Susan painful parting, a paternal relationship fro him, one that i felt could have hinted more from her. Sarah Jane returned in the Five Doctors, the only way for her to cope would have been with her original Doctor, the Third, played be the sweet paternalistic and much loved action man Jon Pertwee. The Fourth was HER Doctor, as Rose was to have HERS, and that was to clash when they met in the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) season.

The angst between her and Rose was so palpably competitive sexually towards the Doctor, so possesive of him. They were only able to relate in shared grief at what they had to lose. Sarah Jane knew. Oh, how she knew. She knew warning Rose was futile, but she tried. She was a walking wound. I have not been able to watch that episode, then return to the earlier series, without that miasma of grief still resonating. I have to let that seep out to somehow revisit the past. The past which is mine, too. Mine as a child, now also viewed as a woman who has loved – and deeply lost.

(Interlude : Liz Sladen is such an under rated actress, she played it all so straight but with such nuance. I am so glad for her Sarah Jane Adventures spinoff –  it is well deserved.)

Besides obvious sexual chemistry between (i contend) both Romanas (with even the first on screen smouldering being somehow even more so in the flirtatious suggestive than the second, in real life connection made more blatant), I suspect that the Jack (Torchwood) interludes have also somewhat hinted at such connections. Time travellers, after all, have such limited companions, especially with most of them gone, and the last Time Lord alone, so alone…

(Interlude: the paradox of time travel being you cannot go back except to meet ghosts. To revisit those you have seen die would be a wound beyond imagining).