altariel | Thoughts on 'Last of the Time Lords', having read t'internet

I have been pondering about Martha leaving, and I'm starting to think it was the right decision, both for the character, and in terms of the narrative.

One of the 'big themes' of the season is that we should think very carefully about how and why we create our Gods. Throughout 'Gridlock', while Martha is trapped in the car with the Macra biting, she constantly says, "The Doctor will save us! The Doctor will save us!" In fact, it's only her co-passenger, Milo, turning the engine on and driving like a lunatic that saves them in that situation. (The Doctor's intervention comes later, after Boe-Jack has died to save the world.)

By 'Last of the Time Lords', Martha just gets on with the salvation business, without the Doctor. If, after a year as public enemy number one in a post-apocalyptic world, she had needed to go back into the TARDIS, she would, like Rose (and Peter Pan), have proven herself unable to grow up: i.e. unable to transition into an adult world in which our childhood authorities are only one source of psychological nourishment available to us. By the end, I think Martha intuits the difficulties Sarah-Jane had in saying goodbye. She has spent more time without the Doctor than with, and throughout has been an active agent of her own - and Earth's - destiny. I do hope we see more of her, whether in Who or Torchwood, or elsewhere.

On the Doctor as glowy-Christ, again, I think we need to see this in the context of what the season as a whole seems to have been saying about where you should put your faith, and in whom. What seems important in this episode is that this power is not innately the Doctor's (although Jack-Boe clearly thinks it is, as later he describes him as the 'Lonely God'). The Doctor's power is conferred by people: by Martha's Riddley Walker style mobilization of the innate power of communicative action - helped by the Master's technology, of course! (The 'power of words', technologically augmented, was foreshadowed in 'The Shakespeare Code'.) The shots of all those people saying the Doctor's name didn't call Peter Pan to my mind, they made me think of V for Vendetta.

I think there's something more complex going on in this narrative than a simple faith-vs-science conflict. The world seems, at the moment, insistent on dividing itself on these manifestly destructive lines. I'm not religious at all, but it does me no harm to be reminded that many people who believe in a god are not crazed fanatics, and share some common ground with me in terms of valuing redemption, or the faint hope of a possible better future. 'Gridlock' shows us that this better future can happen now, not after. The faith of the Undercity promises them something, and gives the society the ability to keep going, even if it doesn't provide the mechanism to get there. For that, someone needs to take action and break the cycle. Like Martha can, by 'Last of the Time Lords'.

So, faith in the future and our ability to achieve it. Even when, you know, we're only going to turn into self-devouring shrivel-headed spheres from Terrahawks.