Can you really go wrong with the
Second Doctor and Jamie? They’re a fun
comedy duo, make a surprisingly-effective team, and are just so genuinely fond
of one another. When I think as an
aromantic asexual about the Doctor’s relationships with their companions, this
is one of the ones that, to me, exemplify the best kind of platonic
partnerships.
Two has several companion
configurations throughout his tenure on the show, but Jamie is his
constant. Introduced during the new
Doctor’s second serial, Jamie was originally conceived as a one-shot character,
but the show’s last-minute pivot to make him a companion really shaped the Two
era. Once his first few serials are out
of the way (since the show hadn’t at first planned for Jamie to join the
TARDIS, they initially just had to slot him into scripts that were already written,)
his bond with the Doctor quickly becomes his most defining feature, and while
Two of course cares deeply for all his companions, what he has with Jamie is
something special.
Much of their dynamic is down to
Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines’s chemistry as actors, especially their
shared agenda of slipping extra bits of comedy into scenes. Knowing that the show’s budget was so small
that they literally couldn’t afford to cut more than three or four times in any
given episode, Troughton and Hines planned out little bits of unscripted shtick
that they could sneak in when the camera couldn’t afford to stop rolling, and
that brought us so many delightful Doctor-Jamie moments. The way they bicker like an old married
couple. The way Jamie clings wildly to
the Doctor in frightening situations (which, for any companion, come up a
lot.) That fun banter they do with Jamie
bring a little slow on the uptake but pretending he isn’t. There’s a slight vaudevillian air between
them, somewhere in their comic timing and the nature of the routines
themselves, that’s really entertaining to watch.
More than that, the Doctor and Jamie
have a strong understanding between them that allows them to work well together
when they need to. For every moment when
the Doctor rattles off some technobabble and Jamie dazedly replies, “Oh, aye – what?”, there’s another when the two
exchange a wordless glance in a crisis that communicates what they need to do
to get out of it. They get each other,
and that gives them a sort of telepathy when it really counts.
And through it all, the devotion
they display to one another is its own kind of touching. Now, I know these two are a popular ship, and
I get it, but for me, it’s enough that they’re close friends who would do anything
for each other. Jamie’s deep loyalty to
the Doctor always gets to me – from the way he fights tooth and nail on the
Doctor’s behalf to the way his fraidy-cat tendencies usually go out the window
whenever the Doctor really needs him – and most villains quickly clock that the
surest method of hold the Doctor at bay is to threaten his friends. In this, Two is very like his predecessor and
all who come after him, but there’s something extra-dismayed in his frantic cry
of “Jamie!” whenever his highlander friend is in trouble.
I know that seeing these two in action
again in “The Two Doctors” fits dubiously into the canon, and we’re just
supposed to ignore that they both look almost 20 years older than they
technically should, but I don’t care.
It’s wonderful to see them again, and I love the unspoken thought of the
two of them still traveling together.
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