Shoutout to Lindsay Duncan for her tendency of showing up in the middle of a DT character's arc to tell him just how much of a dumbass he's being

Doctor Who The Waters of Mars | 2009

Is that the end of it? The Time War?

thinking about water symbolism, the meaning of the titular water in the waters on mars. time is referred to by many as a river (a brook), as a powerful current, flowing forever unstoppable. he says it to adelaide when the infected come: water is patient, water waits and water always wins. you can shock it with electricity and block it out with steel, but in the end the trickle always catches up with you.

imagine you’re the only person left that knows how to swim. everybody around you is drowning, while you — you can flail about in the rapids forever. but you can’t carry all of them out of the stream on your back. in the end, all you can do is watch. all you can do is float

you believe yourself a god of the waves, just for a second, because you alone remember swimming. but that doesn’t make you poseidon. you can’t wrench the tides out from under the moon’s grasp just because the water never fills your lungs

Do you ever think about how fucking brave Captain Adelaide Brooke was? How she begged the Doctor to save them, and then she actively tried to stop him, how he was on his power trip and she said "the Time Lord Victorious is wrong." How she killed herself to save the future of humanity, to save time herself. She was so brave. She braver than the Doctor ever was, she is so brave.

I think that “The Waters of Mars” and “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead” are soooooo interesting to view in parallel to each other because they have a lot of complementary beats. (CW: Suicide Reference for “Waters of Mars”)

The Doctor arrives at ‘x’ place—a cold, dark Library, a doomed base on Mars—and meets an extremely accomplished leader of a good crew in Adelaide and River. Both women are necessarily hardened by their experiences and responsibilities in some ways but clearly care for their loved ones and their colleagues all the same.

The Doctor knows almost everything there is to know about Adelaide from an impersonal standpoint—her history, her death, her cosmic place in the wider universe. He initially looks at the Bowie crew and is visibly stricken by the inevitable tragedy of them all. River knows almost everything there is to know about the Doctor from a personal standpoint—he’s her husband, but god, he’s so young, and he doesn’t even know it. Know her. She has years upon wonderful and complicated years of history with this man, and he looks right through her. (She thinks it might kill her.)

As the respective episodes wear on, the Doctor has a clear connection with both River and Adelaide, both of whom can boss him around like people rarely do skskdjnsns. They’re smart and driven and won’t suffer any fools, but they’re remarkably human when it matters most. River speaks softly to Miss Evangelista as her ghost fades from the neural relay. Adelaide doesn’t shoot the infected Andy even though she could have.

But he’s also increasingly frustrated and upset by his helplessness when it comes to them. It scares and unnerves him that River is clearly someone extremely important from his future; he’s always been insecure about not knowing what’s in store, and River is a walking reminder of his lack of personal perspective, his inability to totally have control. He’s drawn to her. She’s so clever and brave and good. He fears what she represents all the same. He snaps at her, clearly distrusts her. River calls him out on being emotional. The Doctor knows that he should leave Bowie Base One. There’s nothing he can do for these wonderful people. What happens on Mars has to stay on Mars; a fixed point is just that—an immutable event in time. But as he gets to know Adelaide—who is also so clever and brave and good—that responsibility becomes muddied by his increasing care and admiration for the captain. He grows taciturn as he watches the mission all fall to pieces. He’s emotional.

But why is he emotional? What’s another central tension that these episodes share? Both “Waters” and “Forest” either directly or intertextually deal with the Doctor simply reeling over the loss of Donna. The wrenching grief of having failed yet another someone that he loves drives the Doctor’s anger and affects his ability to think objectively. River tells him to focus on the present, on the five people who are still alive in the room. (“Dear God, you’re hard work young.”) And the last scene of “Waters” is in stunning and raw conversation with “The Runaway Bride.” Ten alone and grieving is a recipe for disaster. Donna is the first person who’s explicitly told him that he needs someone to stop him. Because if he isn’t stopped, he becomes his own waking nightmare. He becomes the Time Lord Victorious.

The climaxes of both “Forest” and “Waters” are about the Doctor wanting to change history. “Time can be rewritten,” he pleads. And River, angrier and more desperate than we have ever seen her before, pleads back, “Not those times. Not one line. Don’t you dare.” By making him watch her sacrifice, she implicitly shows him that this moment in time is inevitable, and he’ll one day do the same to her in a lake in Florida. (It’s horrible and it’s awful, but, god, if it isn’t an act of unspeakable love and forgiveness too.) But Ten in “Waters” doesn’t have anyone to stop him—not Donna, not River, not even initially Adelaide, even though she desperately tries by blowing up the base. The laws of time will obey the Doctor. He’s a Time Lord, and he makes the rules. This revelation elevates all of his worst impulses—his arrogance, his vanity, and his pride—and for a moment, as we watch him gleefully preen to a horror-struck Adelaide, Yuri, and Mia, we understand that he’s become the villain in someone else’s story. Someone has to stop him, and that Adelaide does. She understands that there are too many things at stake for the future—her granddaughters’ life, the lives of so many others—in the same way that River wasn’t willing to relinquish one fragment of hers and the Doctor’s history. The Doctor realizes the magnitude of what the captain did—what he forced her to do—immediately. He went too damn far.

“Forest” and “Waters” both end with the Doctor running. Running to River, trying to save this person who will clearly mean so much to him one day. Running away from his fate in “Waters,” unwilling to accept the death that soon awaits him. (“Oh, I’m good!” He exclaims jubilantly when he realizes that his future self has saved the professor. / “Oh, I’m good!” He grins at Mia, Yuri, and Adelaide, so pleased that he’s saved them, that he’s single-handedly changed a fixed point.) But the shared impact of these stories is that both River and Adelaide teach the Doctor a lesson about the inevitability of time—its forward march, no matter how much he wishes otherwise. They give him perspective, these remarkable women—and to a being such as the Doctor who is sensitive to the whole breadth of the universe—that’s often the most important gift that he ever receives.

No one should have that much power! Tough. Doctor Who (2005-) | 4.16 ‘The Waters of Mars’

Doctor Who Rewatch | The Waters of Mars

I'm willing myself to rewatch Ten's run in random episodes, and does anyone else get chills when Adelaide Brooke took her own life to prove to the Doctor that even he doesn't have control over her own life.

I feel like Ten and Twelve's run are some of the darkest episodes of DW history. I know that Eleven was really good at all the dramatic and bubbly stuff, but writing-wise, I feel like Ten and Twelve's runs were the darkest parts of Doctor's life.

Doctor Who 2009x02 - The Waters of Mars

Just caught myself shouting "Let's get FUCKED UP" in a perfect frat boy impression referring entirely to watching the Doctor Who episode the Waters Of Mars because I'm in a horror/tragedy mood. Can't say I'm wrong

Sorting all New Who companions

Don't hate me if I get some wrong.

Rose: Gryffindor Mickey: Hufflepuff Martha: Ravenclaw Donna: Gryffindor Jenny: Gryffindor Jackson Lake: Gryffindor Lady Christina: adrenaline junkie, so Gryffindor ig Adelaide Brooke: Gryffindor Wilf: Hufflepuff Amy: Slytherin Rory: Hufflepuff Clara Oswin Oswald: Gryffindor Clara Oswald: Slytherin Bill: Gryffindor Nardole: Hufflepuff Graham: Hufflepuff Ryan: Gryffindor Yaz: Slytherin Dan: Hufflepuff

Season 4 Special Episode 16: The Waters of Mars

AUGHH WHAT THE HELL!!!! the doctor only lives to suffer istg!!!! not only was he dragged into a fixed point in time that he was trying to escape from, but by the time he was allowed to escape he had already grown to care far too much for the crew to let them die, and while he was walking away he could hear the crew members start to die and panic, him blaming himself for pompeii, only for him to snap and decide hes a victor not a survivor and thus thinks hes worthy to rule over time????? AND THEN BROOKE BASICALLY KILLS HERSELF IN FRONT OF HIM????? oh my god just character wise this episode is a fucking rollercoaster and a half, not to mention the amazing soundtrack as usual, the amazing horror especially at the beginning, how good the side characters were, and how well their deaths were done, god this episode is just perfect, ESPECIALLY that ending oh my god!

5/5

Doctor Who Week 2022 Day 7: Wild Card

Doctor-Adelaide Brook

The Waters Of Mars