I don’t like how we’re led to side with the Doctor when he’s behaving rudely
psa if u think ur supposed to side with ten on the occasions inS3 when he is rude to martha or treats her unfairly then ding dong u are wrong
the entire series is written from her POV, as were the previous and following series written from the POV of rose and donna. the camera focuses on her reactions to his interactions with her, you get cutaway shots of her whenever he talk about rose because you are meant to sympathise with her. when she talks to characters like tallulah or cheen or jenny or john smith or chantho or the people of earth when she is walking the world- about him, you are meant to feel for her not ten. and when she ‘gets out’ of her unrequited love situation you’re meant to cheer for her
the very notion that someone would create a companion for the specific purpose of ‘being hated’ is ludicrous
yeah i find the prevalent attitude that s3/rtd “wanted us to hate martha” really baffling — if people hated martha that’s on them, that’s not what the text was asking of them. like you said, if we were meant to hate martha and side exclusively with ten we wouldn’t have shots of martha looking sad every time he was mean to her, we wouldn’t have scenes where martha talks to others about her POV, we wouldn’t have her “getting out” scene, etc
the other day i saw someone angry that the master calls martha “useless” and mentions “companions that could absorb the time vortex” — but like, it’s the master? he’s clearly the villain and he’s clearly taunting martha and we’re clearly not meant to think the master is right.
the other thing is that the way martha’s exit is written, even if you’ve spent all of s3 obliviously seeing only ten’s perspective and only thinking about “bawww rose” etc, her “getting out” speech should be a wake-up call for you, just like it is for ten.
but yeah clearly martha was designed to be hated because rtd hates her and he wanted the audience to think she sucked.
#also it is not impossible to sympathize with both ten and martha at the same time for different reasons #i know in fandom the attitude is that neither can live while the other survives #one has to be 100% at fault and one has to be 100% victim #but that is not actually the case (via oodlyenough)
