It Needs Saying:

It Needs Saying:

How Regeneration informs character

Christmas Invasion is off for Rose because the man she loves, the only person she knows that thinks she’s fantastic explodes in front of her with a really vague explanation after she wakes up from passing out with her memories missing. She is scared at first because she reasonably assumes that this could be a threat. She’s encountered malevolent shapeshifters and dangerous teleportation rays fairly recently.

And now, there’s this younger, flirty, seemingly happier man promising that he remembers everything, that swears he’s same man. Except this too-good-to-be-true man whispers seductively as he grabs her hand, and smiles like Casanova, and gives her the impression that he definitely dances and wants to with her.

Nine wouldn’t do any of this even if she wished he would, but she knew he loved her, thought of her more highly than anyone she ever met. He loved her so much that a Dalek felt it.

She’s beginning to believe him but then he passes out.

“The proper Doctor would save us” is a weird thing to say about someone who woke up from a coma because you whispered help me. It’s not a weird thing to say about someone who less than twelve hours ago didn’t need to be asked to save people. (Obviously Rose still hasn’t been told what regeneration sickness is because Nine gives a really vague explanation as it’s happening and Ten does explain it but not how to help him because he has ADHD and can’t focus even to literally save his life)

This is also Rose learning the lesson that the Doctor is not a perfect hero in a practical way. She has by now learned about the Time War, about what he did, witnessed his dark rage in Dalek. But now she’s seeing him physically vulnerable, having to take him down off the pedestal in a different way.

He’s getting worse and aliens are invading and she doesn’t know how to help him. She tries running away and saving the people she cares most for (which still includes him) but that fails. She then tries to use what information she’s picked up even if it costs her life. There’s always been a hero in Rose. She risked life in Rose, Dalek, Parting of the Ways and World War III, she does the same now.

Then the Doctor returns and saves the world, with the same fierce protectiveness as Nine. And she doesn’t have a smidge of doubt.

It used to bother me that he yelled at her for giving up on him, but in all fairness “Can you change back?” Probably deeply hurt his feelings, even if it’s hilarious now in 2023.

But she’s leaving out an important part of the question.

She’s asking, “Can you turn back into the person who thinks I actually have worth? Who I know wants me?”

In the end of the Episode, she admits that her concern was that he wouldn’t want her anymore.

It isn’t until he gives explicit verbal confirmation that he still wants her to travel with him (something he hadn’t done before) that she relaxes. (Ironically this is how the love confessions go for them too).