one of these days I’m going to go completely off the rails and write a doctor who fic from the pov of jackie tyler. I’m absolutely insane about her you see. yes the doctor and rose rose and the doctor but jackie loses her husband and she loses her daughter and she loses mickey and she loses elton and she loses the doctor and she loses everyone she’s ever known and any time they come back to her they are different. she gets a husband from another timeline and a mickey from another life and a doctor from a lost hand and rose is the same! but maybe she isn’t, maybe jackie never even had rose to begin with, because when push came to shove rose said she would stay with the doctor forever rose started to become something unrecognizable rose looked into the time vortex and became unknowable and jackie has never changed. jackie has always stayed the same. jackie is an anchor jackie is a harbor jackie is home and so she is always, always, the woman left behind.

Always the mothers. Every time.

The "raised by a single mom" syndrome.

The human race makes sense out of chaos. Marking it out with weddings and Christmas and calendars. This whole process is beautiful, but only if it's being observed.

DOCTOR WHO (2005-present)

I do often wonder what the Tyler's neighbours thought after the Doctor made an entrance into Rose's life. Like, Rose's disappears for a whole year. Jackie blames the boyfriend. Rose then turns up, and they hear from Jackie that Rose had been travelling with some kind of Doctor!

Not to mention, he looked old enough to be her dad! They see him around for a while now and then, when Rose comes to see Jackie. But suddenly, he disappears! And now Rose is off travelling with a younger man, who also seems to be a Doctor!

Poor Mickey! Dropped by his girlfriend for two different blokes! And then of course, one day Mickey disappears as well! Rumour has it he had been at that school which blew up, but never came home! Then came the ghosts, and then Rose is back with her second Doctor, holding hands and giggling. They seem totally surprised by the turn of events. Like, where on Earth could they have been travelling that didn't have any Ghosts?

By the end of the day, all of the Tylers are missing.

Only a man in an army coat comes by once to knock on the flat door. But there's no answer, and he leaves looking crestfallen. And now the Powell Estate feels less joyful. The Tyler's had been a fixture for over two decades. They'd comforted Jackie when her poor husband had died in that tragic accident. They'd watched little Rose grow without her father, but incredibly close to her mother.

They watched a heartbroken Jackie as she searched for a whole year for her only child. And watched with happy surprise as they reunited unexpectedly.

But now they were all gone. Even Mickey Smith, the happy go lucky kid who'd always had a soft spot for Rose. All they knew for sure, was that that family fell into trouble the moment Rose met that first Doctor. And it had only gotten worse from there.

Couple of years pass, and they hear rumours that Mickey Smith has suddenly reappeared. Only he doesn't return to the estate, and marries a woman named Martha apparently.

They don't blame him for not returning to the Estate.

Too many ghosts.

We do NOT give Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith their props for their character growth in the Parting of the Ways. Rose is absolutely amazing, an absolute ferocious beacon of hope and stubbornness and bravery in the finale, the absolute reason why the Doctor lives and the world is saved and an equal hero to Nine, but she has a moment of doubt. A moment of hesitancy.

And Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler step in and help her save the day. Both Mickey and Jackie give up on their idea of Rose and their hatred of the Doctor and help her pull open the TARDIS. Even within this one episode we see them struggle with their feelings and decide to put them aside and help do this because Rose is right- this is a better way of living your life.

Doctor Who is about ordinary people making extraordinary decisions and making themselves extraordinary and this doesn't just apply to official companions (who I love with all my might)- it applies to the people they love, too. We see it over and over again in Davies' era, with Jackie and Mickey and Sylvia and Tish and Wilfred and Francine and Harriet Jones and every one-off character as well, from Lynda-with-a-Y to Jabe to Gwyneth to Novice Hame to McDonnell to Sally to Chantho to Nancy to all the rest.

Doctor Who is at its strongest when the story is focused on the strength of the bleeding, beating heart of humanity (and character in general, in its non-humans), when the characters drive the story, when at the end of the day you understand why, for all of the world's flaws, the Doctor comes back over and over again because of people like this- not just his companions, but the Jackies and Mickeys and all the rest of the world.

Do you think, in Journey’s End, when Martha threatens to blow up the Earth to stop the Daleks, the Tenth Doctor has a flashback to him destroying Gallifrey?

And how Davros says The Doctor turns ordinary people into soldiers, he realizes it’s true. Because The Doctor was an ordinary person turned into a soldier and he did destroy is own planet to stop the Daleks. And Martha was going to follow in his path. A path he created first.

Do you think he saw himself in Martha? And all the things he’s ever done? All the deaths he caused? How, the only other planet he’s ever called home, was going to be destroyed by him, again?

How it was going to happen all over again, all because of him?

Cause I do.

DOCTOR WHO | 2.12

minor detail but that scene in army of ghosts when rose is like “my mum’s still on board” and it cuts to jackie in the farthest corner of the tardis possible just chilling. that image is so fucking funny to me for no reason. she couldn’t have just hung out at the jump seat or anything, no, she said “fuck this ship fuck this alien i am getting on this little ledge so far away from the console”. jackie tyler is my literal spirit animal

Does it ever drive you crazy. Just how fast the night changes?

2005:

2023:

The Christmas Invasion is now an adult.

My time of life, I'm not gonna do much better. Don't be like that. Never know. There could be someone out there. Maybe, one day.

People who say The Avengers: Infinity Wars/End Game was the most epic crossover ever attempted has clearly never watched Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.

“He tells me that he absolutely, 100%, loves Rose. And that he loves me. He tells me how my daughter - my wonderful, beautiful, clever, little girl - saved him from himself before. And he says that’s all because of me. Because I made her into the Rose Tyler that saved him.”  — DOCTOR WHO: FLIGHT INTO HULL (2018)

2.00 | 3.00

“nine hundred years of time and space, and I've never been slapped by someone's mother.”

✨proceeds to get slapped by all three✨