I watched the final episode of Doctor Who Season 2. Please do not post comments that will spoil future seasons.
I thought of Doctor Who and Rose all day today, remembered them standing on the beach. I remembered the sadness in his eyes at their inability to touch. The tears on my cheeks matched hers. I watched them say goodbye and wept that the time was over too soon. Even as I type this, tears roll down my face. I grieve for them, for their loss, for the things they didn’t get a chance to say. But they are not real. Off the screen, where I do not see, there was a director who yelled “cut!” Then the actors dropped their grief and smiled at a job well done. I know it is not real, and yet I cry. Why do I cry?
Sometimes a film pulls tears out of my by cheap tricks and emotional manipulation, a swell of music, a soft glow in the lighting, a blatant scene of loss. These things draw tears from me, but also anger. I know I am being manipulated, tricked by something that is not real. But there are times when I am fully immersed, when the characters leap off the screen and become real inside my head. Then I willingly accept the tears as a necessary price for other times of happiness.
I can count three times when characters became so real to me that they haunt me long after the show or book is over. This is time number three. In each case the characters resonated for me. Their joys and sorrows were echoes of my own. In the case of the Doctor and Rose, the parallels are easy for me to see. An intelligent, goofy, determined man and a cheerful, intelligent, loving woman go adventuring to see amazing new things while trying to make the world a better place as they go. I want the Doctor and Rose to have happiness together, because I have happiness with Howard and I want it to last.
That is why I cry. I cry to see the parting of the Doctor and Rose, because someday partings will come to me whether I want them to or not. I cry because I do not like to watch friends in pain and they are friends to me even though they are fictional. Rose is gone and the Doctor moves on. I’m glad the series continues. I’m glad I don’t have to give up both of them. I hope that the Doctor finds new happiness, but I also hope that no one replaces Rose in his heart. I may feel differently later, as I watch the Doctor continue to grow and change, but for now this is what I hope for.