This is not one of those anonymous fandom confessions. My thoughts, my words, my observations. I’ve been in fandom for a long, long time and I’ve seen it far too frequently to count.
This right here!
B-b-but what’s Martha Jones doing there? She was awesome!
1. “Maligned by fandom itself, particularly when the presence and actions of said female character seems to threaten the OTP and romantic ‘shipping dreams of the show’s fans.”
2. How often is it mentioned — forget in fandom, how often is it mentioned in the show — that Martha Jones spent something like four years with the Doctor? There’s the year we saw from episode to episode, and then there was the year she spent living as a servant in 1913, and immediately after that she spent a year stuck in the Sixties, and then there was that year she spent trekking through an apocalyptic Britain spreading stories of the Doctor so everyone could shout “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do!” at exactly the right moment to defeat the Master. Four years! Three of which were mostly spent suffering and serving him, with no assurance that she would ever get to go home again. Oh, also her entire family is traumatized from that time they were enslaved by the Master? And then, even though she fell head-over-heels in love with an adorable pediatrician after she left the Doctor, she ended up with Mickey. And yet the show regards Rose as the most loyal and special companion, and Donna as the most tragic, and when the Doctor describes his relationship with Martha, he’s like “I ruined her life…by not liking her back when she totes had a crush on me. PS - Her poor family.”
Now tell me she didn’t get shafted by the writers and producers.
