Much like the Big Bang Theory then! Boom! Zing! Someone commission me for ten series! I'm hilarious!

I think you are completely missing the point with romantic relationships. It's not just about having them, it's also the potential of having them. All those characters I spoke about show interest in the opposite sex, in quite healthy ways. And it certainly would appear one-dimensional if there were no romantic relationships - in much the same way that it's inconceivable to not represent other ethnicities and sexualities. It would be flat, and wouldn't fit into the world of television as it is now - representative of the audience watching it. The vast majority have or have had relationships, so it stands to reason that would happen in the show.

Hmmm... I have half a dozen friends in their 50's who would be these one-dimensional characters of which you speak.

Why does every companion have to a teenager or in their 20's? Why can't we have a more mature and less annoying companion?

I wanted Wilfred to stay on for awhile, but they just kept him on long enough to have The Doctor have to die in order to save him.

Sorry, I think I might have come across not as intended - what I meant was that it was just never written about, nor addressed in any way. That would be unbelievable. I'm assuming, as with my friends of all ages who aren't in relationships and never seem to be able to have one, they at least show interest or talk about it?

Not having it addresses in any way at all would be unbelievable and unsatisfying.

Anyway, let's look at examples of space operas and sci-fi that absolutely worked with romantic relationships: Star Wars; Star Trek; Babylon 5; Battlestar Galctica (both versions). They are just the obvious off the top of my head, but I'm absolutely sure there are other examples. And in other media (books and graphic novels, film, etc...) there are numerous other examples.

It's just not really valid to expect it to not be part of modern/current storytelling - Sci-fi at its core has to tell a 'human' story, otherwise it alienates the audience. Television has moved on (in my opinion: for the better) since that seemed to be superfluous. If it ever actually was - and to be honest I don't think so!

I guess the one thing we've established is that tolerance for romance isn't a black or white thing - that some relationship content is necessary, and fits better into the programme than it used to. Now we're just haggling over when the acceptable level is.

There are many people in the world who don't have legs. That doesn't mean that characters on Dr Who shouldn't wear shoes.

for the posts that made points about age gaps and the dr, the dr is 900 years old plus he's hardly going to find anyone his own age now is he! doesn't mean he should be destined to a life without love.. So its quite ok for him to love his friends ect as long as it doesn't topple into romantic love? how very strange an idea indeed......

Do you mean a statistically significant number? Of even just the population of the UK?

Those affected by limb loss in the UK (through amputation or birth) is at a rate of between 5-6k per year. That's total, not just for loss of legs.

The marriage rate, alone, in the UK is between 200-250k per year.

That's nearly 34 times as many marriages (alone, not counting co-habitation or just general relationships) per year. Those without legs are very much in the minority, so I don't know exactly what your point is, or how that helps any side of the argument, tbh.

It's an interesting subject. Certainly in C20 Who there was far less overt 'romance' , but always emotional content. Thankfully. The Doctor obviously loved his granddaughter, and always felt it was implicit that Ian and Barbara were in effect a couple.

As for C21, I must admit I never really bought the romance angle with Rose. I'm not a Rose disliker at all, but it never really convinced me, regardless of whether it was appropriate or not, and it had a negative effect on how Martha was treated as a companion IMO. That's why my beloved Donna was such a breath of fresh air.

I completely bought and enjoyed the Doctor/River relationship, although I know that splits opinion too. It helped that I thought Smith and Kingston just played it so beautifully.

Wow that's some impressive research for such a throwaway post.

I was poking fun, admittedly in a self indulgently cryptic way, at the "but lots of people aren't interested in relationships" argument.

I must admit, I'm a sucker for a bit of research, so I used your post as an excuse!

It's funny that some of those people want the show to go back as it was, yet it's a show all about moving forwards... I have to say, I don't understand that mentality!

No, I don't understand it either! The show would have a much narrower appeal if we went back to rather two dimensional asexual characters.

We've had older companions and most of the companions whether they're teenagers or in their 20s have displayed maturity at times.

I said less annoying. I did not find River Song, Amy or Rory annoying. Sometimes Donna was annoying, but mostly she was funny. Rose was annoying and incredibly rude to people at times. Clara is a bit irritating

Emphasis mine.

This proves the point, however. You can have adventures without the female companion (sidekick) pining romantically for The Doctor. It was done just fine in the original run of the series. When Rose pines and pines for The Doctor for years (to the point that she will take a Meta-Crisis clone of him if she can't have him) and Martha pines and pines for The Doctor for years, by the time we get to Donna and she doesn't want anything to do with him, she is that big breath of fresh air just because of that. (She is involved romantically with others - she is literally pulled out of her wedding day in her first appearance, and that is fine, but she is not pining for The Doctor like everybody else.)

Heck, the whole Amelia Williams saga of her pining for The Doctor is emblematic of this mess. She slavishly pines for him to the point that her husband has to beg for attention. There is a whole episode about who she will choose, her life with Rory or with The Doctor called "Amy's Choice". The entire time Rory is completely devoted to her to the point that his automaton spends millennium guarding her in the pandorica, but the viewer is left with the impression over the years of Amy's run that, if The Doctor showed the smallest bit of romantic interest in her whatsoever, she would ditch Rory and run straight into his arms. In fact, Amy only seems to accept the fact that this will never happen and that she should spend her life with Rory, her husband, when The Doctor marries her daughter.

All in all, the change of The Doctor from avuncular to dream-boat towards whom all of the women should throw their panties (a la Tom Jones) is horribly, horribly annoying and frustrating. This is one of the reasons that I am very happy to see Capaldi in the role. I prefer my Doctors avuncular.

i don't see where you get that impression from re. Amy. It was made clear in Amys choice. It was even explicitly stated in the dialogue to make it super clear. Amy chose Rory and from that episode on there was no question. Yes she flirted with the Doctor but there was no romance there after the fumblings at the end of the Angels two parter. And I was glad they did this. It settled it fairly early on.

There was a moment or two in the The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon where I worried they were dragging it back up but thankfully they didn't. Amy and the Doctor were friends. Yes there was always a frisson of attraction but no pining or a realistic chance Amy would ditch Rory. She always chose him and ultimately left the Doctor to be with him. Whereas Rose never got over the Doctor.

It's all about conflict and loss and an attempt to get you, the viewer, emotionally engaged with the characters in the hope you'll care enough to tune in next week. They want you to care that the Doctor is sad or happy. They want you to care that Rose might die. It's all about emotional investment in the series.

And for a large part of the audience it works. You only have to scan Twitter after an episode like "The Time of the Doctor" to see that people are talking about how sad it was to see characters again or how they are going to miss Matt Smith's Doctor. Personally, I don't much care for it; I like my old fashioned adventure in time and space but I'd be a fool to deny it's a formula that works. It's nothing new, most series do it but most series didn't start in 1963 so for some of us it's still a jarring thing

I enjoy both aspects as long as they are well balanced. I don't like too much schmaltzy stuff but at the same time I just dont want no emotional core there. It adds to the drama. I love Classic Who but one of its frequent failings is it does lack 'soul' sometimes. Things happen that should have real emotional punch but they dont because the characters reaction is strangely robotic.

Fact is the introduction of more realistic human relationships including the romance helped drag Doctor Who out of the Sci-fi ghetto it could've remained stranded in when it returned. If all the show offered was knockabout adventures where the good guys beat the bad guys and Ewwww no kissing and stuff because Ewwwww then it might as well be Scooby Doo. Audiences rightly expect more these days.

I agree with all of that. And your comments regarding Amy and Rory above. I too was thinking "Uh oh" at points in Astronaut/Moon when Rory's self doubt came into play, but thankfully that's all it was. They played around with it again at the start of A Good Man Goes to War, but again thankfully it was a Red Herring. Amy's Choice is the turning point in the Doctor/Amy/Rory dynamic and I love that episode.

It was odd that Moffat brought that back up like that. I remember thinking 'oh god not this please!'. I was loving the episode and there was so much going on I dreaded them making this a plot point again. Especially after spending the latter half of S5 making it very clear. Its Amy and Rory. It seemed like Moffat had forgotten all that but like you say it was swiftly resolved and dropped and the mention in A Good Man...almost seemed like a nod and wink saying 'No really! It is Rory. We aren't going there again'. And they didn't. Thankfully.

They expect more from the TV shows but less of themselves as the audience. lol

Or maybe the audience doesn't think they should have to fill in the gaps where decent characterisation would be on behalf of writers who are too interested in tedious technobabble to even begin writing a well rounded character that has even a semblance of truth about them. Yeah. Maybe that.

Well said.