fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5957 ]

[ SECRET POST #5957 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5957 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

Everything is a spoiler or comes with content warnings today!

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01. [SPOILERS for Doctor Who, Buffy the vampire slayer]

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02. [WARNING for rape/sexual assault]

[Oz]

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03. [WARNING for body horror]

[Monster Factory]

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04. [WARNING for discussion of pedophilia]

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05. [WARNING for discussion of child abuse]

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06. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #851.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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01. [SPOILERS for Doctor Who, Buffy the vampire slayer]
https://i.imgur.com/bAr2xdL.png

Funny thing, OP, is that Donna's final episode wasn't designed to be a tragedy. RTD was very surprised at the backlash (and there was a lot) at the time because he thought he was making a gift to DW viewers: that everybody could've been Doctor's companion, they just had their memories taken away from them. No one, and I mean no one, who saw the episode had came to that conclusion. RTD failed to get his point across. It is bad writing.

He shouldn't have written it so rapey then.

I didn't know that. That makes it even worse somehow. What the fuck was he thinking.

I still don't like that explanation personally. The attraction toward the idea of being The Doctor's companion (for me anyway) is that I can have an ordinary life before and after but still have done all these extraordinary things with my extraordinary friend. The Doctor even says several times that they like humans because we're capable of so much while being just regular people. Our shorter lifespan and not being able to re-visit certain timeline points (especially if they witnessed the companions aging and dying) sucking for The Doctor aside of course.

Even erasing her short-term memory would've been better than taking away EVERYTHING. I'm sorry, I just can't get over her pleading for The Doctor not to take away everything that had made her the person she was over the course of her journey with him - and that's maybe a credit to Catherine Tate's acting, but it's still a plot that I absolutely loathe to this day.

Edited 2023-04-28 22:18 (UTC)

Is that confirmed? It's the first time I heard anything about it, despite having been in DW fandom at the time and Donna's ending always being a hot button topic whenever it comes up.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-28 23:39 (UTC) - Expand

I see bad fiction writing but it's not Donna ending, it's your comment. Your RTD hateboner can be seen from space

I can see if you like tragic stories how you can enjoy Donna's ending. And I like a good tragic story now and then, but Donna's just felt unnecessarily cruel. Or maybe I cared more about her than others or over identified with her or something. But she was the first companion I saw that was just genuinely friends with the Doctor. She was fully her own person and their friendship was so genuine, and at the same time you saw Donna grow and really become her best self. She was so unhappy before her adventures with the Doctor, and had had such a journey of self discovery throughout, and then they just dropped her back to that sad unhappy state before hand. Lost all that self confidence and joy and growth.

Also I have a real issue with people fucking around with memories. I have a general big issue with people lying, and erasing memories and then everyone in her life knowing about it? Big fucking lies from people that are supposed to love and support her.

But as for Anya, fuck Joss for that. It felt like he just didn't like the actress and fucked her over in a cheap way to get the original gang alone.

It was the loss of her growth and confidence and joy that got me, like you said. At that point death would have been /kinder/, because at least she could have died as her best and happiest self--she understood what was happening to her and could have made a choice. And like yeah, we saw her get married, but that wasn't the Donna the Ood sang about, or the Donna who turned left; it was a Donna robbed of all of that by her best friend because HE thought it was best for her, and it fucking /wasn't/.

Hell, Rose and Martha didn't have what I would call happy endings to their adventures, but at least they had /themselves/. Same with Amy and Clara later--especially Clara. Her time had its faults but man I had some kind of catharsis when she got to tell the Doctor that he did NOT get to make a similar choice for her.

(no subject)

philstar22 - 2023-04-29 13:44 (UTC) - Expand

OP

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 20:21 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 22:18 (UTC) - Expand

I loved Anya's death. It was quick and brutal. It was realistic. In war, not everyone is getting a slow motion, long goodbye to their loved ones. I wish more shows would do that.

I hated Donna's ending but Donna was also my favorite companion.

I think people's problem with it is not that Anya does, but how dismissively Xander spoke about it. How dismissively we learned about it, really. And possibly also that it happened offscreen to begin with.

(no subject)

kaijinscendre - 2023-04-28 23:42 (UTC) - Expand

AYART

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 00:09 (UTC) - Expand

Re: AYART

kaijinscendre - 2023-04-29 00:20 (UTC) - Expand

Re: AYART

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 00:33 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 00:33 (UTC) - Expand

Same. It was sad and tragic and brutal, the kind of death that happens all the time in battle. Not to mention the fact that it showed how much she had grown as a character - that she was willing to risk her life for something greater than herself.

Donna’s ending hurt for me. I would rather any other companion get that ending. Donna grew so much and was so amazing and I adored her and she was just…wiped. It hurt. It still hurts. And I think that makes for good storytelling.
(I’ve never heard any of the meta being claimed ITT though and I was huge into DW at the time so idk)

But Anya’s death was perfect. She’s one I would have preferred survived but an eye-blink moment in the midst of a huge battle felt so real.

Ugh. I hated both a lot.

There was actually a recent discussion in Buffy Stakeposting (on FB) about how much Anya's death sucked.

I thought Anya was one of those times where the actress wanted the character dead.

my (admittedly limited) understanding was that she wanted to be killed off, but later said "okay, maybe not like THAT", so...

I don't get what the thematic argument for Donna's death is, or why it makes sense for her character, her storyline, or the overall tone of the show.

The thing about Donna's ending, to me, was that she was pleading with him not to take her memories and the writers didn't even bother to write them trying to find another solution. It was cheap tragedy and horribly written. If they'd tried to find an answer and failed, or let Donna choose, I still wouldn't have liked it, but I wouldn't have hated it like I did.

As for Anya, I was very over the shock! random! deaths! of non-main characters (Larry, Tara, Jonathan, Anya) by this stage, so I was more annoyed than anything. I'm not counting Joyce here because that was very well done, and I wouldn't even count Larry except that it was the start of a trend.

Also Jesse in the first episode. I think Joss said he intended to add Jesse to the opening credits just to shock the audience and make them feel like no one was safe on this show, but it was too expensive to do.

I loved Donna's ending too, OP. Because the entire season set up for Donna losing her memories: several episodes foreshadowed it in various ways. "Planet of the Ood" showed that Donna could not handle taking on even a small portion of the Doctor's mind in order to hear the Ood's suffering--she asked the Doctor to take that power away from her. Four more episodes explicitly showed characters losing their memories (Agatha Christie in "The Unicorn and the Wasp"; Donna herself in "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" and "Turn Left"). "Midnight" showed how it would happen (the DoctorDonna subsuming Donna similar to how the Midnight Entity almost subsumed the Doctor and stole his voice). "The Stolen Earth" pointed out how Donna was "something new." The narrative also suggested (in TUatW) that while she would lose her memories of the Doctor, she'd still retain some unconscious awareness of them.

Yes, a lot of fans hated the ending and that's entirely understandable--but that does not mean the ending was objectively bad. Any other ending for Donna would have cheated the narrative that was set up. No viewer paying attention in S4 should have been surprised by its ending.

Thank you! I understand not loving tragedy but calling writing bad because you want happy end... On the other hand it's been fandom's favorite past time since forever.

LOL no

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 12:36 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 20:31 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 20:39 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-04-29 21:53 (UTC) - Expand

I was sad Anya died but people die in the middle of a battle and it was important to show that. It was seriously improbable that all the Scoobies would come out of that melee alive. I thought her death was shocking but appropriate, even if it was a serious bummer.

Thank you for making this secret Secret Maker. You do good work. I appreciate the time and effort you put in to help keep this community going. :)

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