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mophobia · 4 years

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Imagine 11’s potential.

10 has just lost/said goodbye to everybody he had in his life: his entire family, his true love, his best friend, everyone. He’s just had to make the horrible choice to send his own people back to Hell along with the Master who he only wanted to help and save and be close with. All this causes 11 to be born out loneliness and despair. It’s not the same as 9 being born out of war and bloodshed, but 11 is clearly darker than 10 (who was born out of love).

As a result we see 11 struggle, but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself or anyone else. He isn’t pompous and rude and idolizing himself. Why would he be like that when everything he has done has resulted in failure in his eyes? Rather, he’s scared and untrusting. He isn’t demeaning and horrible to people, he’s just avoiding creating close attachements to protect himself and others. He isn’t carefree and shortsighted and ignorant. He obsesses over every decision he makes and just pretends like he’s always living on a whim so people don’t think he’s in pain (hence the childish persona he builds). He still cares, but it’s also so hard for him to decipher between what’s right and wrong now when it seems like doing the “right” thing only ever leaves himself and those he cares about in pain. He doesn’t know how to trust anything anymore. Even the closest person he has at this point (River) only pops in and out of his life and he still barely knows her, so how can he be trusting when he doesn’t have anyone/anything to count on.

He meets Amy Pond (who doesnt have a crush on him, who was never obsessed over him her entire life, who is quite lonely and untrusting herself after losing her own family, who loves Rory with all her heart but is so scared they will lose each other that she’s looking for a way to sabatoge their wedding-think Amy in Sondheim’s musical Company). But the Doctor struggles to let her in because how can he trust the universe to not hurt her therefore hurting him? He still invites her to join him though because all they both want is run away. They are lonely and hurt and understand each other’s pain. And thus the building blocks behind their faith in humanity may start to be restored.

Amy is able to transform into a more open person as she travels with the Doctor and so eventually Rory joins them and they all become more of a family unit. The Doctor is slower to change, though. He can’t trust that there’ll always be there because he knows something Has to happen to them (that’s just how it goes), but he loves them and loves being a part of their family as much as he doesn’t want to. He isn’t careless with their lives, but when he’s able he tries to leave them out to protect them. It isn’t that he doesn’t believe in their abilities and can’t trust them so much as he doesn’t believe in or trust himself/the world. They don’t let him push them out of the way though, and slowly, we start to see him trust more and more. He isn’t scared to have them on board as much as he was, and rather than just acknowledging their family-type relationship, he leans into it. He’s not alone.

Then that family is threatened from him and he stoops down to a low point in his life (close to 10s timelord victorious) where he’s willing to do anything he can to save them and prove that humanity is on his side. The audience doesn’t praise him for committing genocide or blowing up a spaceship to get a piece of information, but sees that he is dissenting into madness. He rescues the Ponds, but he’s never quite the same and they know that too. Still, they stay with him because he is part of their family and they know he needs their help. As audience members, we only pray he can pull himself out of this horrible place he’s found himself in.

Eventually, he loses Amy and Rory like he’s lost everyone else in his life. He chooses to continue alone (because he’s not just going to mope about for hundreds of years in a cloud cuz that’s not who the doctor is). But he’s alone for so long that he starts to lose whatever perspective he had left before losing the Ponds. He flat out refuses to work as a team with anyone anymore no matter who they are because somehow he needs to prove to himself that he’s worthy and he just can’t trust them. He keeps imagining (if not physically seeing) those he knew before- Rose, Jack, Mickey, Jackie, Sarah Jane, Martha, Donna, WILFRED, Amy, Rory, River. He can see their faces and see the pain in what he’s become in their eyes but he chooses to ignore it. Because maybe if he had taken his place of power seriously like this before, maybe he would still have them so who were they to judge. That dissent into madness is wreaking havoc on his life even more now. But he’ll be damned if more good/deserving people are lost because of his foolishness, even if it means killing off entire races and planets and galaxies in the process. None of this is ever used for laughs, or to show how “good and strong and god-like” the Doctor is, it’s taken just as seriously and scarily and gut wrenching as it’s meant to be.

Eventually he meets Clara (who isn’t just a mystery wrapped in an enigma in a tight skirt, who is a very loving and protective and smart person in her own right, who’s willing to go to hell and back if it means helping and saving the people she loves because she couldn’t help her own mom and feels guilty for it) and after seeing the pain in his eyes she flat out refuses to leave his side. He almost begrudgingly takes her along because she literally just won’t budge out of the TARDIS without being physically thrown out. But deep in his heart he knows he’s tired of being alone and does enjoy her presence.

Clara never gives up on the Doctor, but she damn well points out when he’s losing his mind and doing the wrong thing. She doesn’t let him stoop to his lowest points and she’s always there for him, always fighting right alongside him to do what’s right. Again, he starts to trust, he starts to see what he’s become. They go somewhere that reminds him of who he was as 9 (NOT GALLIFREY BECAUSE GALLIFREY IS GONE) and how he had to heal from that time and move foward and with his FRIEND Clara by his side supporting him he knows it’s possible again. He knows he can be the Doctor again.

In the end there’s a big battle standing between life and death, not only for him but for humanity. He’s taken all of these lessons away and when it matters he decides to choose life. He’s so tired of killing out of the “sake of goodness” so tired of lying to himself, and he decides to take a stand and do the right thing. If he can do just one right thing in his entire life as this man, that would be enough.

Everyone else survives, but he doesn’t make it. His last act as the man he is is life, and he’s more proud of it than anything else in maybe all his regenerations. But it wasn’t enough for him to survive. And maybe that’s okay with him because maybe it’s time to move on from being this inherently lonely and mad man and become someone better.

He regenerates and recognizes his new face, the face that proves he was right. The face that represents that even if he can’t stop the rest of the world from going into flames, if all he can do is save just one family, do one right thing, then he will be okay. That he can be the man he once was. That even through loss and pain, he is never alone.

He starts to pick up the pieces.

#just something thats been on my mind #dw #anti moffat #original

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