A TW vs. DW morality question

[neadods]

T3, Who-Daily: lj user="neadods"> a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/705917.html">has a TW vs. DW moral question (Spoilers for Journey's End)

A DW vs TW morality question: What is more of an assault - the Doctor wiping Donna's memories over her protests or Jack's/Torchwood's reliance on retcon?

[Poll #1218803]

Me, I think Jack is the one who is committing assault, plain and simple. Because he doesn't want to answer questions, or because of "the rules" which he cites but never explains, he whips out the retcon all the time, drugging people against their knowledge and then (in the case of Gwen) even sending in his team to erase computer records. We know retcon is considered a punishment, cleanup operation, and "retirement program" all in one - and note that the only other person who casually wiped people's memories was the villain from Dalek in Who S1.

Although Donna was protesting and definitely didn't want to lose her memories, the Doctor did not act for his own convenience or pleasure. He left Donna alone until such time as it became clear that her health/life was in question - at which point, her brains were becoming so scrambled that she was no longer capable of giving informed consent anyway.

By traveling with the Doctor, Donna had put her life in his hands. With her life in danger, he rescued her again.

And the more I talk about this online, the more confident I become that Donna can regain her awesome without either memories or Doctor. It was all *her* between Runaway Bride and Partners in Crime - all that growth, all that planning, all that accomplishment. That came from within *her,* while she lived *on Earth,* without the Doctor's input at all.

So, no... even if Donna is never un-fobwatched (because that is how I really see it), I don't feel that she is better off dead, that she is left without any hope of regaining her personal growth, or even that the Doctor did her wrong.

x-posted without poll to marriedonmars

And yet another fic rec from the tsunami coming out of the finale reactions: ionlylurkhere's utterly perfect The Moment Has Been Prepared For. Now this ought to be canon!

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I agree Jack's worse...

But what worries me about Donna is that meeting Ten was the spur to her developing - she wouldn't have done all that growth and planning if she'd married Lance (assuming that had wedding had gone ahead) - it's very clear IN TRB that it was her encounter with the Doctor that made her take an interest in the world at large. Now she's forgotten that, what spur does she have?

I'm not saying she's not intelligent, because she clearly is, but she lacks motivation to develop, esp with her mother beating her down...

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

What is more of an assault - the Doctor wiping Donna's memories over her protests

If that's assault, then amputating a leg badly damaged in an accident -- a leg that its owner would really really like to keep and desperately wishes someone could save -- is assault.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I still think the Doctor was more wrong to mindwipe Donna than Jack's recton usage.

When Recton is used, it's to wipe out one moment of realization of "OMG there are aliens living in Cardiff!" and doesn't fundamentally alter the person other than they might continue not believing in aliens. ( Other than Max, but since Suzie was programing him I don't think it counts. )

What the Doctor did was erase months of experiences, and more importantly, the inspiration to change her life. Before "The Runaway Bride" Donna was trying to change herself, and failing because she was just trying to change her life in the ways everyone expected of her. After "The Runaway Bride" she realized she wanted to change her life completely. Not only did the Doctor wipe away her TARDIS adventures but the whole reason for why she did what she did inbetween "The Runaway Bride" and "Partners in Crime."

And I don't think they whip out Recon all the time. They Retcon Gwen, possibly the guests in "Small Worlds", (in online Cannon) the people who where cutting up the space whale in "Meat" and everyone at Gwen and Rhys' wedding. The only one that comes close to what the Doctor did to Donna was the last, and pretty much everyone thought Gwen was mad for saying it was an alien, anyway.

But the reason why I think it was worse? It's horrible when someone assaults you, it's so much worse when it's someone you trust.

Bah. I still blame Rusty for creating the problem more than the Doctor trying to fix it.

Especially since it just takes Martha/Sarah-Jane/Jack to look her up and invite her to dinner to make her brain to start to "explode." again. He may have given The Talk to Syliva and Wilf, but I don't think he said peep to the rest of his Companions.

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

I don't see it as an either/or question - both are forms of assault. TW uses retcon in a variety of situations, including many in which I'm sure they'd argue they were doing it for the recipient's own good. Not that any of them, like Donna, get a choice in the matter.

I saw no evidence that Donna was incapable of giving informed consent. Quite the opposite, in fact, since the very reason she was so upset was because she knew exactly what was happening to her. Even if she were incapacitated, it would still have been RTD's choice to write her that way. However you look at it, Donna was textually denied the ability to make her own choices and that - not the question of whether it would be better if she lived or died - was what was wrong with JE.

Re: Donna

[taiamu.livejournal.com]

Oh, I much prefer the mindwipe than Dead!Donna. And the mindwipe didn't come out of the blue for me, as it seems to have done for so many people, mostly because a friend and I had discussed this possibility.

It was quite clear that Donna's neurons were frying. If the Doctor hadn't intervened, it was quite clear (imho) she would have ended up comatose or insane. He was trying to save her mind and personality as much as her life.

Am I sorry for what Donna's lost? Yeah, but it's mostly because she's lost all the /wonderful/ things she saw with the Doctor.

But that Donna's still in there. And she has the capability to be awesome, if her Mom gets off her back.

And I'm not entirely certain that unlocking those memories would lead to immediate brain fry. Donna's problem was that she got /everything/ all at once.

All this to say that I really don't think a mindwipe is the end of the road for Donna Noble. She's too strong for that. ;)

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Definitely Jack. One thing I like about Torchwood though is that the audience is constantly reminded that the use of retcon is morally ambiguous at best and downright wrong at worst-- far better than in something like Harry Potter, where the wizards wipe Muggle memories all the time, and no one even questions the ethics of doing so.

To me, the moment in Journey's End where Davros and Caan point out that the Doctor turns his humans into willing weapons, that sums up my feelings about Torchwood-- Torchwood is the dark shadow cast by the Doctor's light.

[lt-kitty.livejournal.com]

In TW, retcon is a morally ambiguous at best solution undertaken by morally ambiguous characters with a cobbled together collection of current technology and stuff they barely understand attempting to act imperfectly for the good of earth.

As with many things done at TW, its not presented as "good" but as "best we can manage under the circumstances."

In DW, though, we had a character with profound telepathic abilities and a ship that's both telepathic itself and carries a vast assortment of weird technology. We've seen the Doctor lock away his own mind and rewrite his biology, and telepathically remove what is essentially the mind of an alien more advanced than himself from a companion's mind so it wouldn't kill her, and took away only 30 minutes of her memories in the process.

I don't believe that removing every single memory of the last 18 months was the only alternative that could keep Donna alive or safe, nor the best the Doctor could come up with. So, the notion that what TW does is worse doesn't fly. We know the Doctor has better alternatives than they do.

I also don't think you can discount the idea that the Doctor *didn't* act for the sake of convenience. There have been two other companions who lost all their memories of the Doctor and were deposited right back where they were picked up. What the Time Lords did to Jamie and Zoe was part of a punishment on the Doctor for his interference in the timeline.

After Davros' pronouncement that he brings out the worst in his companions, after watching the worst of himself to save the universe... perhaps the Doctor just believed it was in her best interest never to have met him at all, no matter what she said to the contrary.