My friend is currently watching Doctor Who for the first time (she's seen all of series 1, 5, 6, and 7, so she went back to watch 2-4) and she's on TGITF right now. I have a lot of things to say about this episode, so I figured I would just write it all out. (Keep in mind that these are a few of the reasons I dislike the episode, but I also like it!)
The Girl in the Fireplace written by Steven Moffat is listed as one of the greatest Doctor Who episodes by many, and it even won an award. Taking a closer look, the episode isn’t as well-written as some people may consider it to be. There are several problems with this episode. I’ll start by saying that yes, I am a Ten/Rose shipper (meaning that I like their relationship). I'm pretty flexible with my shipping, though. My dislike for this episode is NOT because of rage against an opposing shipping. In fact, the only reason why I would dislike another shipping would be because of writing errors, and that’s exactly the problem with this episode. I also disliked this episode the first time I saw it, before I really cared about Ten/Rose for the same reasons as talked about below.
Now that that is cleared up, let’s move on.
The episode takes place right after School Reunion, an episode focused on Rose and The Doctor meeting old companion Sarah Jane Smith. Throughout this episode, Rose openly expresses jealousy towards Sarah Jane, and comes to realize that The Doctor has had other people he was close to in the same way he is close to her. She confronts him on this, and upon doing so, The Doctor tells her that he will never leave her, not like he had to leave Sarah Jane. Yes, he will have to move on someday because Rose will die at some point, but until then, they will stick together. That’s where we come to the first error in this episode: continuity.
The Girl in the Fireplace focuses on The Doctor and a woman he meets, Madame de Pompadour. Throughout Madame de Pompadour’s life, The Doctor meets with her at several different points. This is, apparently, enough for her to fall in love with him. The Doctor, being the heroic man he is, ends up having to save her from some robots that want her head to power the ship. Okay. Saving people… that’s very “The Doctor.” However, the real problem comes at the end of the episode. The Robots transport themselves to the time where Madame de Pompadour’s head would be “complete” so they could power their ship. The only way that The Doctor could save her is to crash through the time window and stop the robots. However, when he does so, there is no way for him to get back.
So he rides on a horse, jumps through the window to save her, and then gets stuck with no way out that he knows of. It’s only good luck that Madame de Pompadour happens to have a way back, but there was no way The Doctor would know that. In other words, The Doctor risks never being able to come back to the TARDIS for one woman he’s just met. Again, the Doctor would do that. However, by doing so, he also leaves Rose and Mickey trapped in some spaceship centuries away from their own time with no way of getting back.
Sound like The Doctor now?
He just abandons Rose there, after explaining an episode ago that he would never leave her until she died and how much she meant to him. It’s as if that conversation never happened, because guess what, he just leaves her there. Not to mention Rose can’t fly the TARDIS, so she couldn’t get back. There’s nothing on the ship for her, either. She and Mickey would eventually die of starvation if something else hadn’t already gotten to them.
This fits nowhere into continuity. One episode, he’s explaining that he would never leave her, the next, he runs off and risks killing her and his whole life as a Time Traveler just for the sake of one woman. The next episode, The Rise of the Cybermen, he is one again by Rose’s side, running after her in the parallel world. Like this episode never happened. Everything in this episode ignores the previous ones and seemingly all the episodes before. For example, in The Parting of Ways from season one, The Doctor kills himself to save Rose from the Time Vortex, causing him to regenerate. Does that seem like the sort of man that would just go off and abandon her on some ship with no way of getting out?
Not to mention that there were other ways The Doctor could have gone and saved her without losing Rose or her. He states that he cannot use the TARDIS to go back in time because of some random reason Steven Moffat came up with on the spot, but what about getting INTO the TARDIS and physically flying it through the window? That way, the window breaks, Rose and Mickey are in the TARDIS, and The Doctor has a way out. They never explained that. Simple, really. This could have saved a load of trouble, and yet, it was never even thought of.
Of course, the head was needed to power the ship so that the robots could go and attack or some other unspecified reason. However, this brings us to our second error in the episode. Nothing is ever explained. Why do they need the head of Madame de Pompadour? Why her specifically? Why can’t they use anything else to power the ship? As far as we know, it’s possible to power the ship with fuel. You know, like every other spaceship in the series. Okay, a bit off topic there. Back to the head. If The Doctor had left Madame de Pompadour to die, then they would have gotten her head to power the ship and go to their bloody schemes that may kill hundreds of people. However, we don’t even know if this would even help them in the first place. Even The Doctor says it at the end of the episode.
ROSE: Why her? Why did they think they could repair the ship with the head of Madame de Pompadour?
DOCTOR: We’ll probably never know. There was massive damage in the computer memory banks. It probably got confused.
That’s the only explanation we’re given for the whole body part-run ship. We don’t know why. The head may have not even helped in the first place, causing no one to die aside from Madame de Pompadour. The Doctor knew this. So, that leaves us with one more question, the one that Roes asked. Again, the only answer we get is “we don’t know.” Ever other episode of Doctor Who is well explained, giving us why, how… but this episode doesn’t. Why did they needed the body parts to power the ship? We don’t know. Why Madame de Pompadour? We don’t know.
Not to mention that earlier in the episode, the idea of using Rose’s head came up as well. The Robots said that she was compatible. Right. So why didn’t they use Rose? This means that it isn’t just Madame de Pompadour. So why didn’t they just take Rose’s head then? again, we don’t know. Another confusion that popped up was that the robots could only use her head when she was thirty-seven. Why? Apparently, she was “incomplete.” We’re never told what this means. What changes when she’s thirty-seven? They could use Rose’s head when she was twenty. So why can’t they use Madame de Pompadour’s?
When people talk about this episode, they say it’s heartbreaking and that’s why they like it. However, I find it hard to see it as heartbreaking when it doesn’t make sense and The Doctor acts completely out of character. In the end, this episode fits nowhere into continuity and is just Steven Moffat doing as he likes with the characters, not even bothering to fit it into the series.
I honestly adore some things that Moffat has does, just as I love and dislike things that other writers have done. This is one of the episodes I just cannot stand. It's absolutely gorgeous (the set and costumes, as well as the 'monsters?' So amazing.) and has wonderful quotes in it, but it just does not do it for me.
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