tenrose | gallifreyan ramblings

ESFPs:

Outgoing, friendly, and accepting. Exuberant lovers of life, people, and material comforts. Enjoy working with others to make things happen. Bring common sense and a realistic approach to their work, and make work fun. Flexible and spontaneous, adapt readily to new people and environments. Learn best by trying a new skill with other people.

(N.B. If you’re confused about the odd MBTI terminology throughout this piece (“Extraverted Sensing”, “Fi”, etc.) this link explains it pretty clearly and succinctly. I’ve tried to make these posts as readable and comprehensible to those uninitiated with MBTI as I possibly can, but some use of theoretical terms and concepts is unavoidable. There’s no need to be intimidated, though, the concepts are actually really easy to understand, and the link above explains it all well.)

The first companion of the revived series of Doctor Who, the most beloved and arguably New Who’s archetypal companion is, to my mind, a classic ESFP. In my post on Clara Oswald (another ESFP), I characterised ESFPs as the adventurous, fun-loving thrill-seekers of the world. ESFPs are ruled by their need for sensory stimulation, which they seek out in the world of experiences, people and things. Unlike introverts and even many extroverted types, ESFPs are typically not drained by constant social interaction and activity—as SPs it’s what they thrive on, and much of an ESFP’s life is an unending search for novelty and stimulation. They’re always doing things, seeing things, experiencing things, having fun. ESFPs are the people who make life fun for everyone else. They also have a deeper, passionate side, and they feel very deeply and have a strong sense of who they are and how things should be. They’re very fluent with people, very warm, and sympathise with others easily.

Rose fits this characterisation quite well, I think. She decided to travel with the Doctor because she felt unsatisfied with her mundane, boring ordinary life and the mundane, boring trappings of that life: her job, her home life, her boyfriend, her future. Against this unsatisfying reality, she found irresistible the idea of leaving it all behind, relinquishing all her responsibilities and attachments, to travel in time and space with the Doctor, a free and unbound spirit. Nor can she keep away from it. Unlike some later companions, the Doctor isn’t her hobby, it’s her life, and a life of travel and adventure is just what every ESFP dreams of. It’s clear that Rose can’t stand the idea of leaving the Tardis behind and going back to her old, mundane life. She was thoroughly depressed when Nine sent her back home in The Parting of the Ways about having to return to her ordinary life of sleep, work and chips; and she couldn’t comprehend how others—Mickey and especially her mother, Jackie—neither wanted to join her in the Tardis nor felt happy for her travelling with the Doctor.

The above is basically a description of the way Rose’s Extraverted Sensing (Se) manifests, the dominant cognitive function of ESFPs. But more specifically, we see Rose’s Se in the way she likes to immerse herself in the new places she visits. Compare the way she reacted to visiting Satellite Five to the way Adam (probably an IxTP) did: Rose immediately took to interacting with her new, strange surroundings, buying a strange alien drink to share with Adam, while Adam felt overwhelmed by it all and needed to go clear his head and take it all in. See, too, how Rose loves to try on new pretty clothes to fit in with her surroundings: her pretty Victorian dress in The Unquiet Dead, her cute 1950s garb in The Idiot Lantern. She has a great dress sense in general, and, like Clara, her outfits are always distinctive and stylish. Rose also has a keen eye for a pretty face—although she’s theoretically tied down to a relationship with Mickey, she can’t help flirting and showing interest in every pretty boy who crosses her path: Adam, Captain Jack, and even the Doctor himself; and she doesn’t seem to feel very committed to Mickey. That’s a trait I’ve noticed in the ESFPs I’ve known, a manifestation of their dominant Se: they just can’t resist pretty things.

ESFPs also have auxiliary Introverted Feeling (Fi), which makes them deeply, internally sensitive about things. They have feelings, man. They have clear ideas about what’s good and bad, right and wrong, and a strong sense of who they are, or who they want to be. Rose’s Fi is illustrated perfectly by her famous, character-defining outburst at Jackie and Mickey in The Parting of the Ways when the Doctor sent her back in time to protect her from the Daleks. She was overcome by emotion because one of her strongly-held principles was being violated by her having to sit safely at home while her friends fought for their lives in the far future. You could practically feel the Fi spilling out of her. There are other instances of this in other episodes: the way she sympathised with the Dalek in Dalek in defiance of the Doctor, and the way she stood up for Gwyneth against the Doctor and the Gelth in The Unquiet Dead.

But I also see Rose’s Fi manifested in the way she treats Mickey. For example, in Boom Town, she returns to her own time and sees Mickey again, and expects Mickey to return to her side at her beck and call like a loyal lapdog, and even feels indignity and confusion when Mickey tells her he’s seeing someone else. She’s snarky and mean to Mickey about it before Mickey expresses how Rose made him feel betrayed and belittled, which snaps Rose into realising, finally, how badly she’s treated him and how she’s made him feel. Rose was totally oblivious to the way her lifestyle and her choices make Mickey feel, because she’s led by what feels right for her, not necessarily taking account of the needs and feelings of others. The same goes for the way Rose treats her mother Jackie, who worries deeply about her, although Rose is dismissive of the anxiety her lifestyle causes her mother, and rarely checks back in with Jackie to reassure her that she’s alive and safe.

Rose’s character arc in Series 2 was characterised by the under-the-surface romance between Rose and the Tenth Doctor. Rose grew to become deeply in love with the Doctor, and she came to see her future, the rest of her life, to be spent with the Doctor, as illustrated by the dialogue in the opening to Army of Ghosts (“How long are you going to stay with me?” “Forever.”) What I think is happening in MBTI terms here is that Rose’s auxiliary Introverted Feeling (Fi) and inferior Introverted Intuition (Ni) are working together. Rose has fallen hopelessly, romantically in love with the Doctor, and her Fi has idealised a life and a future with him. Her Fi has created a picture of what she wants her life to look like—a life with the Doctor. Her Ni has gone ahead and told her that the Doctor is her future, but her inferior Ni is weak and unreliable, and it doesn’t raise the warning signs that should tell her that this vision is never going to work out, and that holding to it will end in tears. She becomes upset and angry when the Doctor suggests that she can’t stay with him forever, or that she’s not necessarily special to him, as in School Reunion.

So that’s Rose. She’s not a character without her flaws and weaknesses, and no personality type is without its flaws and weaknesses, but she’s undoubtedly one of the best ESFP characters in television. Rose sort of set the template for modern Doctor Who companions, and as such the default archetype for a companion is an ESFP—Clara and arguably Donna were also ESFPs, and Bill looks like she’s going to fit into that general mould (although, from what we’ve seen, Bill looks like she might be an ENxP). Nevertheless, I like writing about ESFPs because they’re some of my favourite people. I’ve had the privilege of knowing some fabulous ESFPs in my time, and I think they make for great people, friends and characters.

Let’s talk about sex. In particular, sex involving the Doctor. Or, you know, just love and romance in general. The topic of my fourth headcanon exposition is the Doctor and love, romance and sexuality.

The question of the Doctor’s sexual preference, or how (and if) the Doctor feels sexual or romantic attraction, is a nebulous one because we’ve never really got anything that could be described as a straight answer. Before the 1996 TV Movie, in which Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor kissed Grace Holloway, there were no suggestions that the Doctor experienced love or sexual attraction at all, apart from the occasional very subtle hint which may not have actually been hints at all*. We did know, at least, that the Doctor, in his first incarnation, had a granddaughter, Susan, so, logically, at some point he had to have had children and a wife or lover.

In the revived series, though, we’ve been hit hard and fast with pretty unambiguous evidence that the Doctor does, indeed, experience love or romantic attraction of some kind. The Tenth Doctor fell in love with Rose, became smitten with Reinette (Madame de Pompadour), Astrid Peth and Lady Christina de Souza, and began a fledgling romance with Joan Redfern (albeit as a human). The Eleventh Doctor and the Twelfth Doctor both loved River Song. The Eleventh Doctor clearly had a crush on Clara (“a mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into a skirt that’s just a little too tight…”), and there have been subtle suggestions of romantic tension between the Twelfth Doctor and Clara**.

So, my interpretation of the above is that it’s pretty clear that the Doctor experiences romantic attraction. It used to be the general presumption among the Doctor Who fandom, at least until the 1996 TV Movie, that the Doctor is asexual, in that he doesn’t experience sexual attraction—which would be consistent with the proposition that he still experiences romantic attraction, because asexuals can still feel romantically or personally attracted to someone, although not sexually or physically attracted. None of the evidence negatives the idea that the Doctor is asexual—in his various attractions he has always displayed an attraction or infatuation that is personal but not necessarily sexual or physical, i.e. we never saw the Doctor sneaking peeks at Rose’s bum or checking out River in her tight, revealing outfits.

I would propose that the Doctor is asexual, but for the complication of that one line of the Eleventh Doctor’s about Clara (“a skirt that’s just a little too tight…”). You could reason it away by suggesting it was just a throwaway line, that the Doctor was just babbling, as is his usual manner, but somehow I don’t think the Doctor would know to make a comment like that if he hadn’t noticed that Clara, er, not to put too fine a point on it, has a very alluring figure which is particularly pronounced in the tight dresses she wore in Series 7. At the same time, there’s the issue of how the Doctor had a grandchild***, and therefore children, if he didn’t at one point have a wife or lover with whom he conceived those children. In short, the Doctor must have had sex.

I’m concluding that the Doctor does experience sexual attraction, but I don’t think to the same extent as humans do. I’m inclined to think this would be a product of the Time Lords’ evolution: beings that have such advanced lifespans, that can live “practically forever, barring accidents” would very quickly overpopulate and ravage their own planet, and go extinct, if they had the same hyper-charged sex drive as we short-lived humans. But, at the same time, they would also go extinct if they were a completely asexual species with no natural impulse to reproduce. I’m thinking that a latent or negligible sex drive evolved in the Gallifreyan species alongside its ultra-extended lifespan to ensure its survival. The other possibility is that, like Tolkien’s Elves, Time Lords have a normal sex drive in youth but which quickly wanes after peak childbearing age, leading to a condition for the rest of their lives of virtual asexuality, although we could assume that, even then, some latent sexual attraction remained (evolution is rarely so neat and tidy).

Either of those theories could account for the Doctor’s history of onscreen romances and attractions, I think, and I don’t necessarily have a preference for either. The point is that, in my headcanon, Time Lords’ sexuality differs greatly from human sexuality for evolutionary reasons, with the implication being that, the Doctor, as a mature Time Lord, doesn’t experience sexual attraction to the extent humans do, although he’s still perfectly capable of experiencing romantic love and personal attraction.

What do you think of my headcanon? What do you think about the Doctor’s sexuality?

* I.e. Jo Grant and Sarah-Jane Smith. I personally ship Four and Romana.

** Disclosure: Whouffaldi shipper.

*** There are fan theories suggesting that the Doctor’s relationship with Susan wasn’t actually biological, that Susan is the Doctor’s “granddaughter” in some other sense that didn’t involve the Doctor conceiving children with someone. There is also the pseudo-canon of the Virgin novels (i.e. Lungbarrow) that suggests that Time Lords don’t actually come into being through sexual reproduction, that they are artificially conceived through genetic “looms”. I’m ignoring all this and assuming that Time Lords do reproduce the same way as us (given that they have the same parts as us, as confirmed amusingly in Deep Breath) and that Susan is the Doctor’s biological granddaughter.

Admin note: Maybe you’ve noticed my absence over the last two weeks (I’d be flattered if you did!). I’ve just got back from a holiday to Melbourne this week, which I kind of needed badly, and enjoyed very much. So now I’m back, and my regular (erratic, disorganised) posting schedule should resume normal service!