Everything I Learnt About Life I Learnt From TV:

Part Four: A Good Person

I’m sure I’m like most people in that I just want to be a good person. This is something universal amongst everyone no matter what the religions are; being good. But how to we be ‘good’? What constitutes a good act when there are so many shades of grey in the world? As usual, I turn to TV for guidance and found two examples of men doing good even when they didn’t want to.

One of my favourite scenes in all of Firefly is at the end of the episode The Train Job. Mal and the gang are hired to steal something from a train and they are away scot free when they learn that the items they are stealing is not gold or jewels but much needed medicine. They decide to give it to the original recipients and this exchange takes place:

Sheriff

You were truthful back in town. These are tough times. If a man can get a job, he might not look too close at what that job is. But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours, well, then he has a choice.

Mal

(looking angry and upset)

I don't believe he does.

Mal is angry and upset at the end because he doesn't think that a man has a choice in this situation: of course the medicine has to go to those who need it. This is one of my favourite scenes because Mal knows that he couldn't have taken the medicine from the needy because he is a good man and he hates himself for it. He hates that he is a good man who does these things for other people.

This is similar to the scene at the end of End of Time, Tennant’s last episode of Doctor Who. Deadly radiation (as opposed to the non-deadly kind… who am I?) is being contained by a dead mans switch: one person has to be in a secure room at all times. Things have gone to the south and when letting the original monitor out, Wilf has gotten himself stuck in the booth. Radiation is about to leak in  and he needs someone to get in the other room and let him out.

The Doctor

OK, right, then, I will. Because you just had to go in there, didn't you? You had to go and get stuck, oh yes! Because that's who you are, Wilfred! You were always this. Waiting for me all this time!

Wilf

Oh, really, just leave me. I'm an old man, Doctor, I've had my time.

The Doctor

Well, exactly, look at you? Not remotely important. But me... I could do so much more! So much more! But this is what I get, my reward. And it's not fair! Oh... lived too long.

I know a lot of people were really annoyed but this scene, how far the Doctor has fallen that he is yelling at the person who needs help, but I liked it because it showed more about the Doctor than we’ve ever seen before. Like Mal in the Firefly episode, the Doctor knows that he has to save Wilf because he wouldn’t be a good man if he didn’t, but right now he hates that he is a good person.

In both of these scenarios, these good men have come to a point in their lives when they know what’s right and what’s wrong and it pains them when the right thing hurts them. But these good men will do whatever the right thing is, to the detriment of themselves.

And yes, sometimes good men get pissed off. Sometimes they get annoyed that they have to get themselves or their friends into dangerous situations because the outcome will be good overall but, not for them. For Mal and the crew on Serenity it meant loosing a lot of money, for the Doctor it meant a lot of pain and essentially death.

So what do you think constitutes a good person? What did you think about these scenes? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Kathy

Themes: Doctor Who, Firefly, The Doctor's Wife,  Mal, good person, hero, Wilf, End of Time, Train Job

TV time: Doctor Who, The Doctor's Wife

I'm not gonna lie; I am a shipper.
For those unfamiliar with the phrase, a shipper is a person who roots for a particular romantic relationship that won't happen in 'real life'-relationshipper-shipper. If you are a shipper, then you're used to rooting for something in a scene or an episode that will probably never happen and you're fluent in subtext that doesn't need to be there. Because of my shipper training (I started when I was young, watching reruns of MASH and longing for Margret and Winchester to kiss already), I fell right into the group of people who imagined what the TARDIS would do if she were able to speak to the Doctor. Not in a romantc way, but I felt that sometimes when the TARDIS was throwing everyone around that it was the only way she could give the Doctor a slap upside the head and tell him to calm down. I felt that she and Donna got along great because the two are alike; they give the Doc a hug when he needs at as willingly as they give him a slap.
So when I heard that they were bringing the TARDIS to life in a way, I was nervous. It's happened enough to everyone that we want something to happen with a character and it happens, but not in the way that we want it. I had a sinking feeling that the canon TARDIS would not be the TARDIS who I saw in every episode. Luckily, I was wrong. Suranne Jones plays the TARDIS aka Sexy, in such a way that she is just as I imagined. Although the other cast were great, it was Sexy who made the episode worth watching. I love the relationship between she and the Doctor, and how they both have such love for each other. It's not entirely romantic and it's clear that they are each others sole mates no matter what happens. I love that she called him her thief and that she knows that she stole him when he thinks that he stole her. The TARDIS would have to have wanted to go, but he is so stubborn to believe that he tamed her.
The Rory/Amy storyline didn't gel with me; I think that it would have made more of an impact if it hadn't been such a short amount of time between young Rory and old Rory. It happened to fast that I didn't believe it to be true, and it annoyed me that Amy did. I also would have liked to have seen more of the inside of the TARDIS rather than just the same hallways that the couple were running through. I wanna see the pool, the library, the wardrobe, and all of the other rooms that Sexy is capable of making. Alas, that may never come to be.
I can't honestly say if I would have liked this episode if Sexy wasn't the incarnatin of the TARDIS that I was hoping for, and I'm glad I don't have to say.
What did everyone else think? Did you like the TARDIS incarnation, and the homemade version she and the Doctor made together? Did you think that Rory had aged? Let me know in the comments.

Kathy

Tags: Doctor Who, Amy, pregnany, Rory, TARDIS, sexy, Suranne Jones, Doctor's, Wife, The Doctor's Wife