The Woobie/Live-Action TV/Doctor Who: Difference between revisions

* The Doctor. ''Particularly'' his [[David Tennant|tenth incarnation]]. The Series 4 finale, "Journey's End", gave him so many examples of this in one episode, it managed to top the last three seasons ''combined''.

** On that note:

** Ten's Woobieness can actually be partly attributed to [[Puppy Dog Eyes|David Tennant's eyes.]] Those things are enormous. And beautiful, but we won't go into that.

*** Especially, ''especially'' in "Midnight," when he's {{spoiler|immobilized by an [[Eldritch Abomination]] and is being forced to repeat everything it says}}. The way he manages to convey so much terror and anguish with his eyes alone makes that episode downright hard to watch. Of course, "Midnight" [[Mind Rape|really deserves]] [[Psychological Horror|its own section here]]...

** And let's not even get into all the crap she's put through in ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]''.

* Fans of Adric tend to see him as a woobie rather than [[The Scrappy]]; his parents died at some point before his first appearance <ref> the show never elaborates on this, but the [[Expanded Universe]] and [[Word of God]] say it was a forest fire</ref>, then his brother was killed in front of him. He's constantly trying to prove himself to the Doctor only to be scolded when he messes up (and even sometimes when he ''doesn't''; there's a moment in the novel ''[[Virgin Missing Adventures|Cold Fusion]]'' where the Doctor ignores and then chides him for ''asking if he's okay after having a seizure''), repeatedly fails to save people (including his mentor and his brother ''in his introductory story'', which itself contains a bit of [[Reality Subtext]] since Matthew Waterhouse's own older brother had committed suicide just 2 years earlier), spends ''nearly all'' of ''Castrovalva'' being [[Mind Probe|Mind Probed]] by the Master while desperately fighting to keep him from hurting his friends, pretty much everything that happens to him in "Kinda" (is left to his own devices by the Doctor, which included being a played-completely-straight [[Only Sane Man]] trapped in a research station with at least one [[Ax Crazy]] and being assaulted by ''an entire native tribe intent on killing him'' while stuck in a transport robot that feeds off his brain waves) and then he [[Dying Alone|dies alone]] thinking he'd just ''failed to save the world''. Oh, and he was almost turned into a vampire. And when he was tired of being an outcast (see quotes below) and wanted to leave the TARDIS crew to go back to E-Space, the Doctor blew up and argued something to the extent of "you can ''never go home again.''"

'''Adric:''' Yeah, but not as often as me... }}

** The [[Big Finish Doctor Who]] audio ''The Boy That Time Forgot'', debatable canon aside, cranks it up quite a few notches, especially when we learn the true nature of {{spoiler|how he survived ''Earthshock'': The Doctor's subconscious guilt had taken over during block transfer computations, creating an alternate universe for the freighter to crash in harmlessly, leaving our young Alzarian all alone in a jungle world without humanoid contact for ''500 years''}} and eventually turning him into a crazed insect-king abomination in time obsessed with revenge and just wanted someone to love him again. Oh, ''Adric...''

* Rory's also a case of going from a [[Butt Monkey]] to a Woobie. The first time we see him, he's just Amy's (pathetic) male friend (the one the Doctor identifies as not being the "good-looking one"), who seems to be an [[Unlucky Childhood Friend]], perpetually bound to come in second to the Doctor. Amy leaves him on her wedding night to go travel the universe with the Doctor. When they finally pick Rory up to go along with them, he ends up basically being the [[Butt Monkey]] for all of his first episode. By [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31 E07 Amys Choice|Amy's Choice]], though, we grow to see him more as a Woobie who barely believes his luck that he's the [[Victorious Childhood Friend]] and just wants things to be normal. By [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31 E09 Cold Blood|Cold Blood]], his woobie-fication is complete: {{spoiler|he pulls a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] for the Doctor and dies telling Amy that she's beautiful. When he returns at the end of the series, Amy can't remember him, and just after she does, he accidentally kills her. Then he spends 1894 years guarding her body waiting until she comes [[Back From the Dead]].}} And they've {{spoiler|killed him again}} since.

** There's [http://doctorwhotv.co.uk/the-killing-game-19667.htm a tweet out there] where a fan asked Moffat if he was going to kill Rory once every season.

* Amy herself hasn't had an easy time of it- abandoned by the Doctor as a child, growing up obsessed and thought to be mad with ''four'' psychiatrists, gets [[Mind Rape|mind raped]] by an angel, gets dragged underground thinking she's going to be buried alive, fails to save van Gogh, has {{spoiler|her boyfriend die in her arms before being erased from history}}, then she {{spoiler|finds him apparently revived, and just after she manages to remember who he is, is shot and killed by him. To top it all off, her family got eaten by a crack in time before she ever met the Doctor.}}

** No wonder Eleven/Amy/Rory has become such a popular [[One True Threesome]] in fandom. These 3 Woobies suffer so ''beautifully'' together.

* Katarina. Acolyte to a priestess who is a world-class bitch until her whole city is sacked, and then she goes more than five thousand years into the future into a world she cannot possibly understand. She {{spoiler|is held hostage by a desperate criminal and ends up having to [[Heroic Sacrifice|space herself and him]] to keep the Doctor from diverting from their mission.}}

* Haroun, Maimuna, and Safiya from ''The Crusade'':

'''Haroun''': Yes. Well, when Safiya and I were away he came and burned my house. My wife and son were put to the sword. }}

* Any decent person under [[Villain with Good Publicity]] Ramón Salamander, especially those thirty-odd people in the shelter.

** He has a {{spoiler|controlling}} father who {{spoiler|Ianto says broke his leg}}. Or there's the way he {{spoiler|dies just as he's getting his life and relationships in order}}.

* Toshiko Sato spends most of her time pining for a man who makes no secret of the fact he's having sex with dozens of other women 24/7 yet doesn't even look twice at her. Falls in love with a woman who turns out to be a heart-eating baddy. Finally gets the man she loves to agree to go out with her and he winds up dying. He then comes back as a zombie, replete with heaping loads of angst. And finally she has to comfort him as he's about to die WHILE dying herself. Oh yes, and she also gets [[Brainwashed]] into falling in love with someone, so technically she's been raped as well. Seriously, if there's a female character in the history of the Whoniverse who's had it tougher I can't think of them.

''Tosh'': [[Tear Jerker|"Because you're breaking my heart."]] }}

** We also have the whole reason she joined Torchwood in the first place. {{spoiler|Her mother is kidnapped and she's forced to steal top secret info in order to free her. Then of course the kidnappers refuse to let Mum go to force her to steal more. Then she's arrested and thrown into a UNIT prison for who knows how long with no trial. Jack eventually comes to her rescue but only if she'll work for him. She'll be allowed to send an occasional post card to her mother.... }}