It is Valentine’s Day, which I’m reliably
informed has something to do with the emotional exchange, commonly referred to
as ‘love’.
As such, I thought today would be a great
day to evaluate what a group of science fiction writers think love is, as
they’re really the best people to judge, because…shut up.
Rose and the Tenth Doctor.
Starting us off for this one is the
relationship that got young girls and mums all around the country into this new
show called Doctor Who. This relationship shows us that love is a process of
pairing off by which, one man and one woman screw over another man with whom
she was already paired and embark on a trip which involves a lot of talking to
each other with no sexual tension whatsoever. It should also be noted that once
this initial pairing has occurred the man is barred from speaking to or saving
the lives of any other creature that possesses a uterus, on penalty of angry
pouting. So this relationship shows us that love is a simple process of finding
a mate, leaving that mate for a more interesting one (without telling the
original mate, so as to keep him in reserve) and then becoming jealous of any
other female that has the audacity to talk to the new mate.
Amy and Rory
This relationship tells us a lot about
love; namely that the male partner in the relationship will never be able to
live up to the female’s expectations. Should she, for example, find out she is
unable to conceive children (something the male wants) she will take out her frustrations
on him and expel him from the family home. A silly male, for whom the
relationship (due to time travel and “science”) has been going on for over 2000
years may expect her to be willing to share her insecurities with a man who she
married, following an intimate relationship that lasted a number of years. This
is a massive miscalculation on the male’s part, given that (as the who writers
will tell you) it is well known that women do not like to share their emotions
with their husbands, preferring instead to think of convoluted ways that her
strange and hurtful behaviour can be his fault.
Anybody experiencing problems like this
in their marriage should seek to be kidnapped together (along with a mutual
time travelling friend) and placed in immediate peril. This will cause the
female to explain her specious reasoning and somehow convince the male that it
is indeed his fault. While silly readers of this post will try to point out
that that makes no sense, you can rest assured that it will in fact work
because…shut up.
Lessons to take about love from this
relationship:
No gesture of love by the male (even
spending 2000 years waiting and fighting for the female) will ever encourage
the female to have conversation with the male in lieu of kicking him out of the
house, when she starts to feel a bit insecure.
It is also perfectly permissible for the
female to abandon the male the night before their wedding and then return
without any form of apology. If the male should feel hurt by this, he is simply
being stupid and deserves to be erased from history, brought back in the form
of a plastic Roman soldier and then killed in various new ways after that.
Vastra and Jenny.
This relationship…is actually pretty
good. I mean we don’t see a lot of it, but the bits we do see actually make a
good case for love. For example, the normally calm Vastra will tend to openly
panic when Jenny is placed in peril. She also takes note when she’s been
insensitive and apologises for it. She also has the exchange with Strax that best
sums up love, in that she says that it’s not simple. This line came from the
same man who penned most of the Amy and Rory love story, which is weird, as in
that story it was simple. There was a simple overriding rule that Amy was in
the right no matter what she was saying or doing and Rory was just being slow
on the uptake. Any problems they had (even those instigated by Amy) were Rory’s
fault. There was no possibility of anyone ever turning around and pointing out
how emotionally abusive Amy was as a person.
The Tenth Doctor and Rose had a rule too;
they were two attractive people in close proximity; therefore they were in
love. Well there is a place where you can find an example of them acting like a
couple…in a deleted scene from series 2. Yes the only good example of intimacy
between them was cut out of the show to allow more time for the comic relief of
Rose’s mother talking.
So what can we take from these lessons in
love from the writing staff of Doctor Who?
Well…ultimately if you want to have a successful
and decent relationship , one of you should be a giant lizard and the other a
servant.
