Incoming spoilers for the entirety of season 3 but that shouldn’t be a problem seeing as you’d need to have seen the show for any of this to make sense
There is a very long essay on the myriad of ways that Doctor Who failed and mistreated Martha Jones coming soon but it spawned from this insomnia-motivated mission to fix season 3 and its treatment of my favorite companion. I’m sure someone more creative than myself could dream up an entirely new season, but I’m rewriting the season within the frame of the existing episodes; as if someone had handed me scripts to edit in 2007 and these changes could have been accomplished with moderate re-shoots. So here’s my version of Season 3 with an extra helping of Respect Martha Jones juice.
Episodes 1-5 proceed basically as normal. However under my reign, the Doctor isn’t needlessly a dick to Martha. Looking at you The Shakespeare Code.
The first big change comes at the end of Episode 5, Evolution of the Daleks. In my rewrite, this is where Martha and the Doctor have the “one more trip” conversation instead of at the end of The Lazarus Experiment. Martha says she wants to be treated like a proper companion. And why wouldn’t she? She just fought the Daleks, give this girl the TARDIS key! She has more than earned it.
We skip The Lazarus Experiment and go straight to Episode 7, 42. No real changes here, this episode slaps.
From there we proceed to episodes 8 and 9, Human Nature and Family of Blood.
These are interesting, well-done episodes and the premise of the Doctor forgetting who he is is great but I do not care for how Martha suffers for that story to happen. However, by my own restrictions I can’t make major changes (like setting the entire story in the US in the 80s, for example) so they proceed as is. But Martha does get to tell everyone they suck (including John Smith, fuck his weepy ass). The episode ends with Martha confronting the Doctor about what she had to deal with when he was John Smith but how the real insult to injury was inviting Nurse Ratchet along (because Ew.) when he got his memories back with no concern for how she’d feel about it.
Instead of Martha randomly being out in a field in the rain, she could have just been outside the door while the Doctor and Redfern talk (wearing her jeans at the school because screw 1913 propriety in the face). In the show Martha seems fine with the Doctor’s offer and even volunteers to help convince Redfern but IN WHAT WORLD?? What Black woman is eager and willing to share space with Miss “know your place” 1913? Anyway the episode ends with the Doctor non-apologizing as per usual and Martha requesting he take her home. Something in the vein of “I’m so happy you’re back but I signed up for time travel, and new planets and even Daleks and living suns, but not scrubbing floors for racist schoolboys”. And that really needs to explicitly be brought to the attention of “walk around like you own the place” man.
Now we’re at Ep 6 (newly episode 9) The Lazarus Experiment. Martha is returned home and determined to forget the whole thing but talks to her sister, who tells their mom, about vague guy problems. She goes to Lazarus’ event where the Doctor shows up to apologize (aaaaand to investigate Lazarus because obviously). Francine’s suspicion of the Doctor now makes a hell of a lot more sense because she knows there’s some kind of man problem and now this man she doesn’t know is following around her clearly irritated daughter. Compared to in canon where Martha’s mom’s behavior towards the Doctor is over the top antagonistic for no discernible reason- even before Saxon’s men tell her he’s dangerous. Awkward cocktail chatter and Doctor-esque half-apologies ensue until Lazarus’ demonstration goes all wonky. Doctor goes to investigate and of course Martha helps but this time she gets to pull the one last trip line. Episode proceeds basically the same until Lazarus dies. Martha and the Doctor hug, he gives a real apology, she agrees to travel again. oh happy day. Last scene before the credits is Saxon’s goons showing up at Martha’s mom’s house and saying “we need you to call your daughter.”
These theoretical changes give Martha a modicum of respect and appreciation for what she went through, acknowledge that she’s not just “the rebound” because the Doctor is making a (for him) herculean effort to use his words and express her importance to him, and gives them a more even power dynamic. He has to earn her companionship through treating her well. Additionally, we get some of these issues out of the way now instead of in the finale. Because there’s plenty of people (including myself) who think “ahh Martha was too nice to him when she left. She should have told him about himself! Look at what she went through because of him!!” but of course that doesn’t happen because 1) sadly, people rarely call the Doctor out and 2) that would have been a really negative send off for a companion that people were already chomping at the bit to hate on for being Black and Not Rose Tyler. So better to do it now and then have a little room to breathe. ALSO, it means there’s a stop gap between Family of Blood and Blink. Because it’s kinda weird to have 3 episodes back to back where Martha gets stuck in the past. Like is she cursed? What goes on?
Next episode is #10 Blink– an iconic episode! No notes. (Lies, one note- that line about Martha working in a shop to support him? NEIN. After all the maid shit?? HA! No. Martha is chilling and becoming a hippie and the Doctor has been fired from no less than 6 jobs. He’s overqualified for all of them but is completely unable to stick to a schedule)
The three-part finale “Utopia”, “The Sound of Drums”, and “Last of the Time Lords” remains mostly unchanged. The Doctor isn’t a dismissive asshole to Jack in my version though because truly, it was so uncalled for. Jack waited 150 years to basically get ignored and called an abomination? Hate that. But other than that, it basically proceeds as normal and Martha Jones saves the world like the champion she is. She still decides to leave though because hello trauma, and plus her family needs her. The Doctor is more openly sad about it though because he can at least act like he’ll miss her, accepting her choice doesn’t mean he has to just “ok, bye” her exit.
If I had unlimited resources then I’d want a version of these finale episodes where Martha and the Doctor are actually together- like maybe they still need to do the psychic link up thing because the Doctor is injured/weakened in some way and they at least walk part of the world together but that falls outside my self-set restrictions I think. But as a very brilliant tumblr user noted, part of why Martha and the Doctor’s relationship doesn’t hit for everyone is because they actually spend so much time apart (even in her season 4 appearances- she’s a clone and then she’s separated from the Doctor and Donna for the Doctor’s Daughter episode. Like damn- just let them hang out), so I’d like to get them together because when they’re really given a chance to bounce off each other they’re wonderful. It’s absolutely tragic how one of the best episodes to show their natural chemistry is the first one in which they’re complete strangers. They should have grown closer from an excellent starting point but at every opportunity to do so the show went in the opposite direction.
I have other thoughts on the various ways Martha was mistreated and how obvious it is in comparison to Rose Tyler and Donna Noble that I will explore in a much longer piece. But this little thought experiment, in which I try very hard to make reasonably small and easy changes, shows how simple it would have been to give Martha Jones a season worthy of her.
