Romance
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In the very first episode of the television series it is established that Susan Foreman is the Doctor's granddaughter, but neither Susan nor the Doctor ever speak of her parents. In "Fear Her" (2006), the Doctor states that he was "a dad once", suggesting that he reproduced at some point. Furthermore, in "The Doctor's Daughter", his DNA was used to produce an "offspring".
The First Doctor did flirt with—and was accidentally engaged to—the character Cameca in The Aztecs; although this was part of a plot to get the TARDIS back, there was a hint of mutual attraction in Hartnell's performance (especially as he is ultimately unable to leave behind the love token she has given him). The fact that the TARDIS crew kept pressing forward in their travels was probably also a factor in preventing any romantic attachments.
As the series progressed and grew more popular among children, the Doctor was firmly established as an avuncular figure to his younger companions, the one exception being the Third Doctor's hurt reaction to his companion Jo Grant's leaving him for an idealistic scientific adventurer whom she describes as "a younger version" of the Doctor (The Green Death). Jo kisses the Doctor on the cheek before she departs, the second time this form of affection had been shown on screen (the second Doctor having similarly kissed Zoe in The War Games).
Despite the press (and, occasionally, the production team) trying to play up the sexiness of some of the female companions or suggesting "hanky panky" in the TARDIS, the series reached the point where any suggestion of the Doctor as a sexual being was avoided altogether. One example was during City of Death, when the Fourth Doctor says to Countess Scarlioni, "You're a beautiful woman, probably". This rule held true even when the Doctor's apparent age was closer to those of his companions, or if there was on-screen chemistry between the actors, as there was between Fourth Doctor Tom Baker and his wife-to-be Lalla Ward's Romana II. In fact, a 1980 television commercial broadcast in Australia for Prime Computers showed Baker and Ward romancing each other, in character as the Doctor and Romana, with the commercial ending with The Doctor (prompted by the computer) proposing marriage. These commercials are not part of the regular series continuity.
In some of the voiceovers on Peter Davison's DVDs, the matter of physically expressed sexual attention is discussed. According to Peter Davison and Matthew Waterhouse (Adric), John Nathan-Turner had very strict rules laid down about how the companions were allowed to physically interact with the Doctor, and Adric was allowed more physical contact with the Doctor than the female companions to downplay any potential romantic and/or sexual connotations.
The perception of the Doctor as essentially an asexual character, uninterested in romance, is why some portions of fandom reacted so strongly to the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) kissing Dr. Grace Holloway in the 1996 television movie, breaking the series' long-standing taboo against the Doctor having any romantic involvement with his companions.
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Famous quotes containing the word romance:
“A guide book is addressed to those who plan to follow the traveler, doing what he has done, but more selectively. A travel book, in its purest, is addressed to those who do not plan to follow the traveler at all, but who require the exotic or comic anomalies, wonders and scandals of the literary form romance which their own place or time cannot entirely supply.”
—Paul Fussell (b. 1924)
“Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage makes her look like a public building.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let “born again” patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)