Dear Donna:
The world is wrong.
If you could see yourself the way I see you, it would be like nothing so much as a collection of stories. An infinite collection of stories, like a book. Like an infinite library: End one and go to the , and on like that forever. That's what you deserve. But if you could see yourself the way I see you, we'd all be in trouble. Instead, you see your life as all one story. Commonplace, nothing special. That's how it works: we see our stories, for themselves; we live them. We don't see all the stories around them, moving through time, twining around each other. It's beautiful, but we can't ever see it. That's one of the differences between them and us. It's one of the things wrong with the world: we see the little things, not the big picture. Sometimes we miss the small things, too.
You'll get up tomorrow and you'll go to work at whatever unhappy place you've settled for, and you'll paste on a smile and try to avoid the wrath and the wandering hands of the workplace; you'll dress up tomorrow night and you'll go drink at whatever unhappy place you've settled for, and you'll paste on a smile and wait for someone to tell you you're not alone. And the day, and the . And you'll be so tired, and you'll ask yourself why there's nobody there to catch you, or take you out of this place. Your mother will call, and make you feel terrible; your grandfather is getting old. There's a sadness in his eyes, just to his faith in you. He knows, too. He knows the world is wrong.
There are things that words can't do. That they're not designed to do. Our brains can't operate them properly. It would sound like gibberish, like the nattering of the sibylline oracles, or worse. There are truths: emotional, even cosmological, that can't survive being squished down into our petty words. And the people that can hear them, they're crazy: like survivors of a war, like people who got conned out of sanity, people for whom time and space stopped making sense. In the place where words don't go, time and space don't matter. So instead of driving each other mad, we use images, and metaphors.
I want to tell you a story, about how the world went wrong. I will tell you stories, so you don't go mad, and so I can tell you a thing that is where the words don't go.
After the double-glazier place let you go, you got a job at a place called HC Clements. You were a temp. You liked it that way. You were only ever a temp because you were drifting; you're still drifting. You were worth better than what you were getting, so you refused to commit to them. But you never reached higher than that. "Clemency" means a lessening of the penalty, without forgiveness of the crime. That's what you were doing to yourself.
Your crime was loneliness. If you'd seen it for what it was, the penalty would be heartbreak, and you couldn't let that happen, could you? So you settled for the exquisite dull ache, and knowing that your mother's voice was right. And if you'd forgiven yourself, seen the crime and yourself for what it was, and who you are... Too scary. Too much like jumping. So you punished yourself just enough, by staying where you were.
There's a moment in your history, that morning in fact: you were sitting at a crossroads, with your mother in the passenger seat. You had a very simple choice -- you like those best; they demand the least -- and you knew you had the choice. Turn left, and drive to HC Clements, find a man, become a bride. Turn right, and settle for a full-time position. But you're a temp. That's all you are: never settling, always hoping. Never trying, always existing. You're wizard at it, look at you: 100 words a minute, all-knowing, all-seeing. You strive to be the best, even in the half-light. The temporary solution, until the wind blows you away again. They used to say, "You're not gonna make the world any better by shouting at it," but you knew you could try. Imagine if you'd put that amount of effort into being something more.
You didn't know -- nobody does -- that death lay at the end of both those roads. You had another choice that morning; you had an infinite number of choices. To serve your punishment, or forgive the crime. You chose to wait; to continue to hope for someone else to save you. You knew -- didn't you? -- that you were nothing special. You really believed that. All that attitude, all that lip. Because you honestly believed. Shouting at the world because no one was listening. You found yourself a man at HC Clements, badgered him into telling you he loved you. And somewhere inside, you knew it was a lie. You didn't really mind. How could it be the truth? But you could look into the mirror and say it: I am not alone.
You got engaged. Oh, not to that man. He was eaten by giant spiders. What? It's okay, they were just baby giant spiders. No, I'm talking about another man. He put a ring on your finger. For better or for worse. You weren't the first, and he admitted it, but there was something about him. And when he asked you to visit the stars with him, you told him goodbye. For six whole months. Too close to living, too dangerous. Nothing temp about it. Nothing safe. The Empress called you a wonderful key, and a holy bride in white. You were both. You are both. Nothing temp about that. So you settled, again, and built your life up again. Such as it was. You wrapped yourself in your loneliness.
In the library of your life, your grandfather remembers: You were about six, and your mother said no holiday this year. And off you toddled, all on your own. Got on a bus to Strathclyde, they called the police and everything. Where's she gone, then? Where's that girl?
You had that one day, with him, and you swore you were going to change. You were going to do so much... And then you woke up the morning, same old life. Like he was never there. Oh, you tried. You did try. You went to Egypt, barefoot and everything, but it's all bus trips and guidebooks and don't drink the water, and two weeks later, you're back at home. Nothing like being with him. You must've been mad, saying no like that. You knew it. You kept saying no. You're still saying it. I love you so much. But how mad must you be, to say no to every beautiful second?
Something dangerous had happened, hadn't it? He'd shown you that light in your grandfather's eye wasn't madness, but something better. Your grandfather was in love with the stars, and the day you got engaged you finally understood why. You went looking, all over. How do you find the Doctor? Look for trouble, and he'll turn up. You looked everywhere: UFO sightings, crop circles, sea monsters. And you found them all. He opened your eyes. All those amazing things out there, you believed them all. It was easier that way. You knew the Doctor would save you, from this life you'd trapped yourself in. You didn't put half that effort in, at HC Clements, did you? (Just the first man to pour you a coffee, and you jumped the train immediately. And then all that effort went into Lance.) He'd put a ring on your finger, hadn't he? For better or for worse. "I'm not drifting," you said. "I'm waiting." For the right sort of man. Again. For any kind of man, to take you away from all this. No turning left, no turning right. Just waiting. No punishment and no forgiveness. Just waiting.
You finally found him at Adipose Industries. You must have liked the idea of that place, no? If he hadn't lit a fire in you. All the reward with none of the effort: the fat just walks away. The easy way out. Exactly what you were looking for. You went looking for him. Which is to say, everyone that comes to Adipose is looking for the same thing. They wanted to lose weight measured in pounds and kilos; you wanted to lose weight measured in years, and loneliness, and sadness. They found a little pill, and you found your little Doctor-man. And oh, he was happy to see you. I wonder, were you wearing his ring?
"One more thing, before dying. Do you know what happens if you hold two identical sonic devices against each other?" No. "Nor me. Let's find out." And the Doctor said, "Mum and Dad have got the kids now, they don't need the nanny anymore." He knew more than he was letting on; he was thinking of Mad Martha, who fancied him. Blind Martha. Charity Martha. Wonderful Martha, strong Martha, soldier Martha, who didn't need the nanny anymore. Martha, who learned to save the world with the sweat of her brow, walking a world gone wrong, saving it one story at a time. All he wanted was a mate; you promised you would never mate with him. Funny old world.
"Children! Oh, my children, behold. I am taking you home... And you will fly! Up you go, babies. Up you go! That's it, fly away home!" said Miss Foster. And "That's Donna. And that's him! That's him! Go on, girl! Go on, get up there!" said your grandfather. The proudest man in the universe.
I was proud too. You'd jumped, again, after being bitten once by your own punishment. You knew you deserved more. But you still had no idea how to take it. The Doctor is many things: a man, a traveler, a helper, a God. Rose loved the man, and this was her tragedy and her triumph. Martha loved the God, and learned to be a helper. But you, weren't you just traveling alongside? You didn't love him; you liked him. Maybe that's the key to a good marriage.
Magic comes when the world outside our heads doesn't match the world inside. Sometimes it's dark magic: that man at work that gets enraged, or enrages you, no matter what he says. That face you can't kick out of your dreams. The ones we do violence to, the ones we cross lines for. And love, too; love is magic. You put all your crap on somebody else, all the wonderful things inside you, you apply them to this strange face, and think you can be saved. You never did it, though. You never let him be anything other than what he was: you saw both hearts beating, all the time, you saw the dark bits and the shining ones, and you took care of them all. And that's great, but it still leaves you out. You're still vacationing on somebody else's dime. You're a traveler, but you're unsatisfied with Egypt: you want the stars. You wanted somebody to hand them to you. That's dark magic, too: you needed the world to be more wonderful than it is, and you waited in silence for the moments that it was. You were in love with magic.
In Pompeii, you were still working it out: what is it, to be a God? To be a helper, and a traveler? He'd seen what it was, to control events, to ignore the trees for the forest, the big picture for the people in it, but he needed you there, again, to stop him. You wanted to pull everybody into the amphitheater, ring the bells, save everybody at once, but he explained it. The enormity. "Every waking second, I can see what is, what was, what could be, what must not. That's the burden of the Time Lord, Donna. And I'm the only one left." And he was. But your question was equally important: "How many people died?" He begged you to stop, then, but you wouldn't.
"Not this time. Pompeii is a fixed point in history. What happens, happens. There is no stopping it." Says who? Says him. "What, and you're in charge?" TARDIS? Time Lord? Yeah. "Donna, Human, no!"
But this is the gift of Pompeii. Every single oracle tells the truth. Even those who don't inhale. You and the Doctor told the people there that you were Spartacus: He was Spartacus, and you were Spartacus. Heroes, interchangeable, self-sacrificing, brave: He was Spartacus. You were Spartacus. They thought it meant you were married. They weren't wrong.
"A name is but a cloud upon a summer wind. But the wind is felt most keenly in the dark. But what is the dark, other than an omen of the sun? I concede that every sun must set..." All true. And the Doctor's answer? "And yet the son of the father must also rise." Every oracle tells the truth.
"A seed may float on the breeze in any direction," said the oracle. And he was talking about you. But nobody should know the story before it's told. (Spoilers!) The Doctor said, "It must be awful being a prophet, waking up every morning: 'Is it raining? Yes. I said so.'" All you need is somebody to tell you to come in out of the rain.
"Do you know I met the Sibyl once? Hell of a woman. Blimey, she could dance the Tarantella! Nice teeth. Truth be told, I think she had a bit of a thing for me. I said it would never last, she said, 'I know.' Well, she would... Let me tell you about the Sibyl, the founder of this religion. She would be ashamed of you. All her wisdom and insight gone sour. Is that how you spread the word? On the blade of a knife?" In the barrel of a gun?
In Pompeii, in Rome and Sumer, anywhere they could still touch God, they celebrated the hieros gamos, the sacred wedding. Take on the garment of a God, channel and bring him into you, and by union with a human you provide fertility: for yourself, for the land and for the people. You save the world. The Sumerian Kings would lie with Inanna's High Priestesses. St. Theresa built a ministry on it. The Wiccans play it out, every spring, with their daggers and their chalices.
But in all this truth, the oracles couldn't see the volcano. The Pyroviles -- that's who was orchestrating it -- had stolen its power, and were ready to build an army. There's nothing the Doctor hates more than armies, so he realized he had a choice. Or more properly, you had a choice: set off the volcano, naturally, invert the system and destroy Pompeii... Or let the world perish in fire. "If Pompeii is destroyed then it's not just history. It's me. I make it happen." He was infecting you, even then, wasn't he? Like huon particles in a coffee cup, making you special without you even knowing it. Taking what was already there, and adding something else. Something he had no right to add.
And you were returning the favor: you called to him, of Gallifrey, that perished in flame. "Don't you see, Donna? Can't you understand? If I could go back and save them then I would, but I can't. I can never go back." And if you cannot save the world, you said: "Just save someone." And so he did. And your name was written in the stars, and in the household crèche. The first monument, to the Doctor and Donna, was born of that choice. Your memory is spread across the universe, Donna. That's how special you are. I am only telling stories.
The Ood Sphere. A planet of beings so calm, so united, so peaceful and weak that they're born with their brains in their hands. They sing unendingly, in brilliant harmony. Holding nothing back. The libraries in which you and I spend our time, our selfish little stories: they'd never comprehend that. Not until the Second Great and Bountiful came, and took away their songs.
He knew you didn't want to hear the songs that were left them, but you insisted. And he put his hands against your head, like a father to a blessed daughter, like a husband to his holy bride, and showed you the truth of the world. The broken songs of their hearts broke yours, and you begged to retreat. Back into the library, back into the selfishness, away from their pain. You weren't built for this; for the pain inside of everything. For the everything inside of everything. But he was. That's his story, and yours. "I spent all that time looking for you, Doctor, because I thought it would be so wonderful out here," you said. "I want to go home." You already were.
"I don't understand," you said. "The door was open, why don't you just run away?" For what reason? "You could be free." I do not understand the concept.
You were horrified. How could someone stand there, door wide open, and not accept her freedom? It broke your heart. You were always sympathetic to a man or woman caged. You were always the one screaming when the doors were getting closed: as long as it was someone else whose weakness was exposed. Their spirit was locked in a circle, a jail, and it drove them mad. They served up horror, in a cup. Like huon particles, they changed their captor into something like themselves. But their captor, he was somebody's son too. "The circle must be broken," they said, "So we can sing." And you and your little Doctor, Spartacus and Spartacus, the Doctor and Donna Noble, set them free. They still sing about you, too: the Doctor, Donna, who heard a song on the wind, and followed. You will never be forgotten.
Then he let you drive. His TARDIS! I know! He let you put your hands on that old blue angel, and you steered her for awhile. Just long enough for a call from the Doctor's daughter. Well, one of them. Mad Martha, soldier Martha: calling the Doctor back to Earth, presenting her accomplishments and her fiancé like a child with a trophy. She was engaged, too. And she was a soldier -- oh, he didn't like that! The Doctor hates armies, unless they are his own. He was born in war and fire and destruction, twice in succession with more to come: he hates the war because it rides in fire along his blood. His two hearts beat against it.
But that's fine for divinity, isn't it? To disappear, when mortal pain intrudes? It's left to us, to the children of time, to carry on in his wake. And that means battle, strategy, time's arrow moving forward in a single direction, choices with consequences... All the things a lonely God doesn't really understand. Things Martha learned in his absence, and puts to use even now. He can afford to get bitchy about it, because -- like all children do -- she's covering his ass. Like Harriet, like Rose, like Astrid. There are things he will never understand, because he is a God. He sees the world turning, the fixed points in time, the potential for darkness and for greatness, but he doesn't know the slow path. How hard it is to save the world with just your hands and sweat.
This is what it is to be a soldier: to be the one to do the things that other people must not do. In this case, in the case of the children of time, to do the things the Doctor can't do. Not because he's better, or a hero, not because he's stronger or weaker, but because they are happening here, now, right in front of us. And here and now are never what's in front of him. He can never truly love, because love's desperation arises from the death of moments. It is sweet because it ends. And he never does. When he loves, it is half-hearted.
Rose/Eros never knew that -- the Doctor never knew that, with her -- which is why their story never really ended. Martha/Philia figured it out with a quickness, and it burned her strong. But you... There is no desperation in your love, because there is no passion in it. It is just love. It's just the library of love: Agape. It is what all love becomes.
That year on the Valiant, it wasn't the Doctor's fault. Martha knew that. But she also knew this: he burns. Like fire, and ice, and rage. He's like the night and the storm and the heart of the sun. Martha knew what he is always almost turning into: she knows the beating of the God's heart, in that tiny man's body. How it wants to burn with you. You went to visit your mother, and grandfather. He made the Doctor swear to keep you safe. I wonder if he regrets that now, somewhere alongside?
"That's my Donna! She was always bossing us 'round, even when she was tiny. 'The little General,' we used to call her." We all have war within our hearts. While he was giving you a key to the TARDIS, Martha's was given form, on Earth: a clone, a child of Sontar. The Doctor asked her if she'd called her family, during the emergency, and she asked him why she would. "The gas? Tell them to stay inside." And Donna, he said, "She's gone home. She's not like you, she's not a soldier." Not a daughter of the war. Martha's feelings were hurt, but it was true. And Martha nursed her soldier-self to sleep, into death, and put on the Doctor's coat, and became another daughter. Returned to being a doctor. And the last words clone-Martha spoke were love: "All that life."
He doesn't turn people into things. That's a misconception. He doesn't change you. He doesn't make you stronger, or better, or smarter, or faster. He doesn't make you kinder, or make you love yourself more, or believe in yourself more. He doesn't give you anything you don't already have. He can inspire, and he can love, but nobody on this earth can change you. Nobody ever made you greater, and nobody ever made you crawl. Martha knew that: knew she was a soldier because she was a soldier. But it hurt to see him say it, because he'd been the one to inspire her. She was saving the world. I think the more he fought it, the more he complained about the guns and the salutes and the armies and the battles, the prouder she should be.
Guy's clinging to the roof of a house, and the flood is rising. He prays, he lifts his voice up to God in song. And a helicopter comes by, and the guy says, "No, it's cool. God's got me covered." And the water's rising, and pretty soon the guys with the boats are floating by, at eye level. He's got himself curled around the chimney, praying his ass off. And one of the boats stops, grabs a branch from the live oak in what used to be his backyard, and tells him to hustle. But at this point, it would be kind of rude, right, to get in the boat? Wouldn't that be like standing God up? So they roll their eyes, and float away. He gets smaller and smaller, in the distance, on the top of his little house, until they can't see him at all. And he keeps waiting. Hoping. And this big strapping superhero with delts to spare and an ass Midshipman Frame would be proud of arrives, touches down ever so lightly under a yellow sun. And the guy, he's tempted. Because this is it, Earl. This is his last chance. But God's got him covered.
And when the guy ends up in heaven, the first thing God does is slap the everloving shit out of him.
It's not a joke. Your only duty in this lifetime is to be magnificent. Or, as John Green (possibly the most charming man in the world but definitely the best YA writer) would say: "Don't Forget To Be Awesome." That's not God's problem. And it's certainly not the Doctor's. Any second you let go by without being awesome is a second you've wasted, and you can't ever get it back.
So where's she gone, then? Where's that girl?
I can tell you these stories all night, and I probably will, but I don't think you'll believe me. Not even in that "metaphor is the lie that tells the truth" way. Not even in that "I heard the nicest story the other day" way. It's too deep. She's gone too deep. She's waiting.
I love the Sontarans, maybe even more than the Dalek. I love the Dalek because they don't stop, and I love the Sontarans because they are hardcore. They are so hardcore it's silly. But as I'm telling you this story -- a three-parter, about the Doctor's daughters -- it's interesting to think about why here, now, so close to the one. So much about war, and soldiers, and turning people into things. Facts on the ground. You can't explain war to God, even when you're fighting in his name: he won't get it. He doesn't need to. War is a fact of life, and time, and he doesn't understand those things: he is those things. He's so terrified by Martha, and by Genny, because of what they represent. Because they represent action. He'll always love Rose because he's half a man, but he'll always love you because, I think, you don't act. You're like him, a traveler. He cheers you when you do, but I think on some level he knows you'll never be like them.
Donna, you need to be more like them. We were given our time in this world to make a difference, Doctor or no. Life, like war, is a fact. You have to grab hold of it. Less screaming, more doing. He'll never get his hands dirty because compared to us, he doesn't have hands.
When Davros sets up the comparison, then, he's wrong by being right. He says, in the end, that the Dalek are all his children, and the Companions are the Doctor's children. And they are tools, and weapons, and things. But the difference between an army and a family is choice, and love. Davros would never understand that every single one of them -- even you! -- was there by choice, because of love. That they represent a family. The kind of family that can work with the angel and tow a whole planet home. The TARDIS was built for six pilots, for a family. He's been doing all that work alone. Davros would never understand that, because he always does the work alone.
I love the Dalek because they never, ever stop: they only want to kill. They're what happens when you draw the line from mercy to justice and out into the dark places. But that unity, that scarce feeling, that darkness: that came from Davros. That's what his soul is like. And the Doctor? I love the Companions, I love you, because you never, ever stop: you only want to save the world. What happens when you draw the line from innocence to experience, and on into grace? No contest.
Of course, what's better than a metaphor is the real thing. On the planet of the Hath the Doctor had another daughter. A new daughter, Genny. She reminded him of everything he'd lost -- Gallifrey, the Academy, family -- and everything he feared about himself. War. The scars and madness of the war were implicit in her, and they were radiant. Down to the five thousandth generation. It was a paradox that you were there at all, Donna: the TARDIS brought you and Martha with him to the planet before Genny ever existed. But if you hadn't come, she never would have. This is the way a Time Lady should be born.
But this is no ordinary war, of course. She's not an ordinary soldier, in an ordinary war. Five thousand generations, in seven days... How would that look to a Time Lord? How do we look? Five thousand human generations, all those infinite stories: hard to remember how long it takes, for us. Even harder for the children of the machine: "I have a body, I have a mind, I have independent thought. How am I not real? What makes you better than me?" That was all she had to say, for you to love her.
"If you really wanted peace, couldn't you just stop fighting?" Spoken like a God. "I'm trying to stop the fighting."
"Isn't every soldier?" Spoken like a human. Spoken like every Companion that ever walked those halls, or heard those heartbeats.
Of course, this is only a story, so he turned out to be right: in the muck and the filth and the stinking baseless hatred, there was beauty: a mistaken myth, a story about life and time, was forgotten. You helped him uncover it, and a world was born. You thought all the buildings were in ruins -- that time, and life, had passed you by -- but they were only empty, and good as new. Waiting to be populated.
They'd mythologized their entire history, until it was all they thought they were. And oh, you sympathized, didn't you? Totting up your facts and figures, discerning where it all went wrong. Exactly the moment they forgot the breath of God, and turned upon themselves: you could calculate it to the day. They could have turned left, but instead they turned right. They lessened their punishment, but didn't forgive their crime. They fought a war for clemency, instead of redemption.
Lady Clemency Eddison was hosting the party, with her husband the Colonel. Attending were writer Agatha Christie, Professor Peach, Robina Redmond, and the Reverend Arnold Golightly. Things went poorly. There was a forgotten son, the miscegenated offspring of an alien and a woman. There was a thief, traveling incognito. There were at least two poisonings, a few giant wasp attacks, and a thousand Christie references. The saddest was the truest, but you didn't know it yet: all the wonderful experiences and stories she had that weekend, that vanished from her mystery after the fact. She and Lady Clemency had imprinted on the Reverend, you see, a certain form of story: the murder mystery. It was all he could do, once he had been reborn: live out the fantasies of a woman he never knew. He thought he was trapped inside it, and he burned to be released. Stories, children, and unnatural influence.
You loved Christie, oh! How you hated her self-effacing way. She said aloud, "I've no answers. None. I'm sorry, all of you, I'm truly sorry. But I've failed. If anyone can help us, then it's the Doctor, not me." And you hated it. You promised her, again and again, that her books would be read forever. That she would never, ever be forgotten. She couldn't believe you; she could barely hear you. You couldn't hear yourself.
But you were right, and why? Not because some bloody Doctor dropped out of the sky and took her hand. Not because God sent her an enchanted pen and ink to write with, by parcel post:
"Plenty of people write detective stories, but yours are the best, and why? Why are you so good, Agatha Christie? Because you understand! You've lived, you've fought, you've had your heart broken. You know about people, their passions, their hope and despair and anger, all of those tiny, huge things that can turn the most ordinary person into a killer. Just think, Agatha! If anyone can solve this, it's you!" She still didn't believe. Even after she solved the case, and drowned the son just like his father, and saved the world, she didn't really believe.
"And tomorrow morning, her car gets found by the side of a lake. A few days later she turns up in a hotel in Harrogate with no idea of what just happened. No one'll ever know." All those heroic deeds, all that brilliance, that real-life suspense and crimefighting: she'll never know. Only the Doctor will know. And yet somehow, she managed to have a magnificent life. Imagine! Having never met the Doctor, she still managed to be magnificent.
"Saw the world, wrote and wrote and wrote. She never thought her books were any good, though." You asked, noted, suggested that she spent the years wondering. Donna, you asked him. And he said, "Thing is, I don't think she ever quite forgot. All the stuff her imagination could use..." But far in a future library, look at the copyright page: facsimile edition, published in the year Five Billion! People never stop reading them. Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, and she never knew. But then no one knows how they're going to be remembered: All you can do is hope for the best. Maybe that's what kept her writing: the same thing that keeps him traveling. Traveling onwards: every single oracle tells the truth.
Then came Moffat: a beautiful, ancient building that was also a girl, and a chance at love for the Doctor. You were kind, and you were considerate, and there was a whole hour about River Song. I like River Song. She deals with his complete freeze really well, deals with your future really well, and in the middle she uses screwdrivers and squareness guns with aplomb. And she dies. And because the Doctor loves her, or trusts that he will love her one day, and likes her well enough now, he takes her out of death and into light.
I like her because I think she represents a point in time in which the Doctor becomes enough like us, and we become enough like him, that the veil hangs not quite so heavy. That we can play with those screwdrivers and what they mean, without risking death or loss of memory. It's not given, to men and women, to love Gods. Not now. We can't see what they see, and they have a devil of a time seeing what we see. I think Rose taught him to be a man, and you taught him what that means, but I don't think he can ever love, with both his hearts, until that day.
In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a male is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and thus broader spirituality, by creating new paradigms as he encounters/projects new forms of femininity. The first is Eve, the Maiden: the emergence of the object of desire; has the troubling habit of simultaneously generalizing all females as evil and powerless. If you haven't met a guy stuck in this place... Well, trust me. You have. I don't know what else to say.
That's where Rose started. She fell in love with him, and he fell in love with her. But only with one heart. It's the heart the Master could never break, and it's the heart that keeps him tied to Earth, now Gallifrey's gone. Not to get all mass-market paperback on you, but just imagine for a second there was a person, both divine and human. With all working parts. Sent from the heavens, to remind us of our redemption. And maybe he met a girl, they say, and maybe they fell in love. When Rose goes back home to the last time, that last painful time on Bad Wolf Bay, she's not getting cheated: she's taking home the part of him that she loves. The only part that can love her back. A whole man, albeit with a Chiswick accent, but one who knows nothing of divinity, and everything to do with war. The man she fell in love with.
The second is Helen, as in Helen of Troy. In this phase, women are viewed as capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, even if not altogether virtuous. This second phase is meant to show a strong (untempered) schism in external talents but still lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination). You want the key to boys? This is it. Halfway through the rubric, and they're still not convinced women have an internal sense of ethics. Welcome to being the Other, if you hadn't noticed yet.
So at the time that he was most broken and befuddled by the loss of his one mama-duck in all of creation, the Maiden/Mother who carried him from violent childhood to manhood, and he was totally bereft, he found himself a new girl. And oh, she loved him; and oh, he didn't care. That'll show them. And he spent a year traveling with her, with his ass totally covered -- that's an American expression, the ass-cover -- because he thought he could lie in the bed with her, and never touch her. He'd learn to be a God, a Master, and without Rose that was the only thing that made sense.
The third phase is Mary, named so because of duh. At this level, females can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving male (even if in an esoteric and dogmatic way), in so much as certain activities deemed consciously unvirtuous cannot be applied to her. It's not all about sex, or Evil Mommy syndrome, or puppy-eyed romance with Mary. She's just a lady. Maybe you marry her. Maybe she thinks she's just a temp, and you've stepped back enough from the magic that you don't understand why that's a problem. Maybe enough so that when she says she's nothing, it pisses you off. Maybe you try to tell her, over and over, that she's already wonderful. That you can't play the part in the four-part animus development drama that is her lot, because you see her the way she really is. Which is beautiful.
The fourth and final phase of anima development is Sophia, named for the Greek word for wisdom. I kinda feel like we've talked about that before. Complete integration has now occurred, which allows females to be seen and related to as particular individuals who possess both positive and negative qualities. Ya know, like, human beings. Most males reach this stage sometime between 18 and death. But I mean, if you never die...
The most important aspect of this final level is that, as the personification "Wisdom" suggests, the anima is now developed enough that no single object can fully and permanently contain the images to which it is related. If you were River Song, which would you rather be? Building a life in the Matrix, or dead forever? Now, I would not choose the gauzy tampon commercial that the Matrix provides her, if I had the choice -- but who's to say she didn't choose? Maybe she just wanted to rest. I think the only real cruelty would have been to put a Matrix Doctor in there with her. That would have been bad. Maybe time she walks down to the duck pond, there's going to be new bad guys to fight, or ruins to excavate. You can have everything you want, in the kingdom of the mind. You just have to reach for it.
I think I didn't like this story, at the time, because it seemed so uneven. The first part was definitely one of the best things I've ever seen, and full of promise, but I didn't enjoy the second half. Too much telling, not enough showing. And it seemed actually unbalanced, as though nothing of import were going on. But I think I was wrong. Because this wasn't another story about the Doctor and Donna, it was a story about the Doctor and then a story about Donna, with the Library story lurking around it. A Doctor/Donna story, if you will. And I think that because of the circumstances in the way that came about, I was biased as a viewer, because what happened to you wasn't real. Not real like the Vashta Nerada and River Song's whole Niffenegger deal. So even though as much time was spent with you, in the second half, as was spent with the Doctor in the first half, it didn't count. Wasn't real.
Except, of course, the entire point is that it was: to you. If instead of telling you these stories you were here, watching, with me, I wonder what you would think. I think you would agree: Donna's in a mysterious Matrix kind of world, so it hardly counts. Donna's finding time passing all around her so quickly it's terrifying, Donna's driven mad by her experiences in the library, Donna's the recipient of a wonderful stuttering husband, with no effort at all, who loves her dearly. She receives everything she ever wanted, and has it taken from her. And she's expected -- I expect, we expect, you would expect -- to get up and get on with it. Move along to the adventure.
And the fact is that you did, Donna. Thinking that Lee, your magically perfect husband, was too perfect to really exist, that you didn't deserve that kind of luck, you moved right on. And I mean, half there. You knew you were better off in the life you were forging. But it was a sign of things to come: the rescue, the damsel, the way he gave you meaning. It was a lie. Even though he was real, and you were real, the whole thing was a dream. It didn't change who you were, when it was over: you still had your hands, and your feet, and your ability to be awesome. You cleared that level in one, girl. Took Rose thirteen tries. Be proud of that, at least.
No wonder you chose to sit the adventure out. You'd just had your whole story told back to you, in machine cruelty. You'd just been rescued from it, by your own hand and by the kindness of a limited woman, to whom you had been kind. Oh, that was a heartbreaker, when Evangelista died. And when she killed you in her turn.
There's a theme throughout the stories I'm telling you, having to do with cleverness. What it does and what it doesn't do. Rattigan, he thought his cleverness exempted him from morality. Evangelista, she went from not very clever to awfully clever indeed. But let me ask you, who would you rather spend time with? No matter how smart they made her, they didn't change the essential quality of her. Her goodness, her desire to help. Midshipman Frame can tell you: All they do in Hufflepuff is make things with glitter and safety scissors.
That's not a consolation prize. The Hufflepuffs among us are the greatest among us, because they're not trying to be special. They're not trying to be clever. They know that cleverness isn't what's important. They know they're special and don't need to be told, over and over and over, like some of us. Some clever boots among us, we spend our whole lives trying to be told how special we are. They just know. Donna, you should be more like them too. And stop thinking it's a bad thing. Everybody wants to be smarter because they think it will make them more special. It won't.
Because speaking of the pitfalls of cleverness, both within and outwith the story: "Midnight," I do not like, so I will not tell you the story. There are moments, I suppose, but really it's just one moment repeated ad infinitum by a very talented actress, followed by amateur sociology hour and a heavy-handed yet strangely light-on-depth seminar on group dynamics. Yes, the fear of what's unseen is the fear that controls us, and yes, people act like dickholes when they get in groups, and yes, lesbians are scary when they get dumped. Yes, old people suck and are hateful, and young people are awesome but easily manipulated. I agree with these things because they are self-evident. But I don't need forty-five minutes of that when I can just look outside. I think I would have been more excited by it if I were A) claustrophobic, B) afraid of crowds or public speaking, or C) capable of being scared by things on TV. I like how it took apart every crutch the Doctor has, his arrogance and reliance on his cleverness and blarney skills -- but did not so much enjoy being told that was exactly what was happening, over and over.
I get that it's a tonal piece, and the dialogue stuff really adds to the atmosphere. But I'm not able to go there. Maybe it's from doing this job. Show me Lesley Sharp repeating dialogue for a half hour and I will marvel at her technical efficiency and I will be amazed as always by the amazing angles of her face, but I won't get scared. So I don't have a lot to say about it. It's like "Blink" last year (or "Dalek," or the Cybermen two-parter): I get why it's awesome, I just don't have the thing that gives me entry and makes me freak out about it. Or maybe I just missed you. God knows if you'd told me what "Fires Of Pompeii" or "Partners In Crime" were about, I would have laughed in your face. You made those live. (Sadly, not even you could save the final act of "Planet Of The Ood," which had me rolling regardless.) This one just left me feeling like I was at a workshop for actors and playwrights, which I hate. Too many ideas, not enough art.
I am trying to think of things to say about "Midnight," if it's not obvious, because I don't want to keep going. We're almost done. One more story, and I will say goodnight. And maybe you'll read this, maybe you'll see the words but they won't help, maybe you never read it at all. Maybe you're somewhere these words can't go. Maybe that's better; it's certainly safe. But Donna, if you could see yourself. If you could see Donna the way we do, it would be like an infinite library: every stall: such comedy, and such humanity. Such depth of feeling. Such beauty, in every movement and every word. And you just walk away.
That's how it works: we see our stories, we live them. We don't see all the stories around them, moving through time, twining around each other. It's one of the things wrong with the world: we see the little things, not the big picture. Sometimes we miss the small things, too. You'll wake up tomorrow and you'll go back to your unhappy life, the life you've settled for. You'll paste on a smile, and wait for the day to end. And there will be a quiet sigh, a crack, a fault, a tiny little place, an ache, in your heart. And you'll wonder where it came from: what memory, just out of reach, explains this sadness and this loneliness. This feeling that things should have gone better, this trapped feeling that now they never will. Just for a moment; it'll hardly qualify as a thought. It won't be a memory. Because that's something you were born with: we all were. It's the keyhole.
There are things that words can't do, places words don't go, where time and space don't matter. Where everything that ever was and will be, is, all at once. Nobody's meant to hold that, or to feel it. So instead of driving each other mad, we use images, and metaphors. We tell lies. Stories. This is how the world went wrong. This is how you fix it.
Your adventure with the Doctor took the form of a horror, a quasi-racist Yellow Peril encounter on a ching-chong stereotype planet. And you were tricked, by a Trickster, into creating a whole world. St. Eco and St. Calvino bless us and keep us, you've got stories within stories in your stories. And in this world, you didn't choose hope. You chose to settle for even less than that. And the world ended, on your word.
But the way you earned your wedding -- two years too late! -- was the way in which you saved the day. You took a look around yourself, and you hid and you cried and you whined, you let them do such awful things to you, but in the end you'd had enough. Enough pain, enough horror, enough of being controlled and abused. You believed, out of nowhere, in a better world. You sacrificed yourself, and saved everyone. You closed the loop, and in dying, you ended a world. You wrenched time back into alignment, the way the Doctor would. And you did this in a world where not only did you never meet him, but you also never saved him. And the results were ugly. Horrific, in fact. But the truth remains that in your death, you saved the world. And how? It's nothing to do with him -- he was already long dead -- but by saving yourself. End your fantasy, and the world is changed. Fix yourself and fix the world.
And the Cloister Bell was ringing, and the TARDIS was freaking out, and the Doctor was more terrified and more in love than you'd ever seen him. You spent hours, days, getting at the secrets, when you returned. You helped him find where the world had gone, and all the other stolen worlds. With your brilliance, and your wisdom, and your instinct, you pushed him further than he'd ever gone before. You smiled, in the midst of the greatest war, and pointed him to Rose. You watched him die. And you were cut off, locked up in the TARDIS like a tower, while the war raged on. It was such a terrible war, with such a final enemy, that grace was required, in the form of two Doctors. And you gave birth to one of them.
Karen Young tells it: "Abu yazid Bistami... approached God as a lover. Sacrificing his own desires to become one with the beloved. Yet the introspective disciplines he adopted to achieve this led beyond this personalised conception of God. As he approached the core of his identity he felt that nothing stood between God and himself; indeed, everything he understood as self seemed to have melted away."
"I gazed upon al-Lah with the eye of truth and said to Him: 'Who is this?' He said, 'This is not I nor other than I. There is no God but I.' Then he changed me out of my identity and into his Selfhood... Then I communed with him with the tongue of His face, saying: 'How fares it with me with Thee?' He said, 'I am through Thee; there is no god but Thou.'" How was it? You'll have to ask Rose. But it's interesting information. In alchemy we call it the marriage of the Red King and the White Queen. They create the most precious thing of all, in their union. And it brings fertility and life, for everyone.
Mother, wife, lover: all the things you'd never been before. All the things you thought you wanted. You were all of them to him. Your breath gave him life, gave us all life. You were the Source. Because it's never a one-way street, is it? In touching the divine, you became more than yourself. Doctor Donna, the first human Time Lady. Burning up inside, with knowledge and power. You were the greatest thing in the universe; you were the most important woman in any of them. For a moment.
It doesn't last. It never lasts, for the same reason Gods and men can't love yet. Ask Rose about both of those. The Doctor can't get his hands dirty because he doesn't have hands, the way you and I think of them. We are the hands. And Rose's Doctor, the Best Wolf we could call him, he was born of the hand, cast off in war. Down in time, the slow path, with the rest of us. Life is fatal; for those of us with human bodies, so is the divine. The sun and the moon, but why do they hurt? Because it's not a dance that ever stops.
If Rose is Mary Magdalene, what are you? A Goddess, written across the stars, in the household gods of Rome and the songs of the Ood. Your history is myth, and your kindness is legend. And you knew, once you'd taken Davros and his demons off the map, you knew what would happen . The way it burns. But you're still human, and you were afraid. I'm so sorry for that. You didn't deserve the pain, or the fear, or the knowledge that you were dying. That any solution to the problem was a worse death still.
In the space of five minutes, the Doctor went from family, surrounded by family -- you, his closest, most faithful friend, and Martha, and Rose, and Jack, and all of them -- to completely alone. More alone than he'd been since the war. All of those whistling cracks and empty places were filled; he'd found something to live for. The TARDIS was singing her heart out, more powerful than she'd been in eons. And then it was gone, just like that. This man, who loves nothing more than to travel with the ones he loves, lost everything. He ends the season in darkness, staring out. Having killed the one he loved most.
In the moment he put his hands to your head, like a father to his daughter, like a husband to a wife, like annunciation, what were you thinking? That this is the last time you would feel this: this strength, this beauty and this power. The last time you would be anything, or mean anything. That he would take it all away, and you'd be left with nothing. Just some girl, getting on. Just a temp. Nothing special. Once you'd tasted it, Donna, how could you ever go back? That warmth around you, the power inside, the way even time and the TARDIS wrapped you in their embrace. You couldn't.
You'd go mad, like Caan, if they asked you to do what Rose did, and step across the Void. You'd touched too much of the world. You couldn't be allowed to remember it. We can never remember it. Every one of us has touched that, and every one of us has forgotten it. And the hole that it leaves is the song that we share.
The definition of madness is the inability to filter out the false from the true. But everything's true, given enough time and space: that's the difference between us and them. That filter is a biological necessity. If we knew everything there is to know, we'd die. The fact is, we do. Our bodies know better: they call it dreaming, and they force us awake. Stay there and become mad, become chimerical, abominable, something that cannot exist. The secret marriage cannot go on indefinitely: permanent direct contact with the divine is another definition of madness.
Nobody wants Donna Noble for an ex-wife! Give us peace.
These are just stories. I'm sitting here in my army man pajama pants wondering if you're even going to read this, or if you'll even care, or understand what I'm trying to tell you with these stories. Because I love you, and I know that wherever you are, you could be doing better. You could leave the Library. You could be living.
I just wanted you to imagine that you met a man, the most wonderful man in the world, and that he showed you the stars, wonders and terrible things, all the majesty our world can muster. All the kindness and the brilliance and the bravery that lies in you. That he, among all of us, was capable of teaching you how wonderful you are, every second of the day. That you have a better choice than to turn right, or left. Look up at the stars, or laugh. Or jump.
I want you to imagine that you were chosen, of all the women and men in the world, to go on a wonderful adventure. Because of who you are, and what you can become.
And then I want you to forget that he never existed. In story school they teach you a very simple thing. First there are facts: "The King Died." Then, there are plots: "The King Died, The Queen Died." And then there are stories: "The King Died, The Queen Died Of Grief." But this isn't a story, it's your life. That's not how it works in the real world.
Dear Donna, the real world sucks. The world is wrong. So fix it. The Queen Lived.
So live.