Howling:Why no mention of Martha?

In SJA Death of the Doctor, a whole bunch of ex-companions of the Doctor are mentioned, including Liz Shaw, Harry Sullivan, Tegan, Ace (possibly), etc, etc. Yet I find it a bit odd that all the way through the story, no one so much as mentions Martha Jones, a person who not only travelled with the Doctor, but was also affiliated with UNIT itself. Does this mean anything at all? 82.2.136.93 17:05, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

Sarah Jane was telling Clyde and Rani what she had just learned by Googling TARDIS, but she had already known that Martha was with UNIT from The Stolen Earth, and she and Mickey probably hadn't been going "freelance" for long enough to make an impression yet. Or, from a real world point of view, she was listing off the classic companions who we hadn't heard from in years, but didn't bother mentioning Martha because her most recent appearance was only a year ago and we all already know what her fate was.Icecreamdif talk to me 19:43, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

Sarah Jane might also have been reluctant to draw the youngsters' attention to two former companions (Martha and Mickey) who'd taken up a "gun toting" approach. She failed to mention Jack Harkness, too, possibly for the same reason. --2.101.57.89 22:25, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

UNIT themselves fail to mention Martha, which does seem odd. Then again, it's important to bear in mind that all this is after the Time Cracks started deleting history. Perhaps in the current timeline, Martha never travelled with the Doctor? 194.168.208.42 14:59, November 15, 2011 (UTC)

Well the answer is pretty simple. Sarah Jane had met Martha. When Sarah Jane was talking about the past companions, she was googling people that were inspired by the Doctor. She wouldn't google Martha or Jack, or mention them, because she knew of them already. Where as Ace, Tegan, Ian and Barbara etc were all people she never met, from all over, all inspired by the Doctor. As for UNIT not mentioning her, not only is she freelance now, so possibly hard to track down, but considering the plan to steal the TARDIS, would you rather invite someone who was part of UNIT themselves, have special training, and their husband, both young and strong, able to fight etc, or two older companions in their 50s/60s who won't be too fast, or strong, and easy to capture? So it was likely choice not to invite Martha. --The Thirteenth Doctor talk to me 15:15, November 15, 2011 (UTC)

As The Thirteenth Doctor points out, it wasn't really UNIT that omitted Martha, etc., it was a renegade colonel in cahoots with renegade Shansheeth. Tia Karim wouldn't have wanted to risk bringing in anyone who'd know enough about UNIT procedures to get suspicious of her story about security precautions. She'd also have wanted to keep the numbers down. More guests would mean a larger contingent to guard the place, requiring other commissioned officers -- and they'd be apt to get suspicious, too. She brought in what she (rightly) thought would be enough former companions to let them use their memories and what she (wrongly) thought would be a manageable group. --2.96.31.103 22:55, November 15, 2011 (UTC)

What people said above and
 * 1) You can't google everyone, especially a secret agent hunting aliens
 * 2) Martha and SJ know each other, so she could have visited the children offscreen and possibly quite frequently...It's not like one of them live on an alien planet or in another time...
 * 3) Martha may not be considered a proper companion by the Shansheeth or doesn't have enough memory to weave the key simply because she has only been revealed to have a few adventures with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Not only was she the companion in only 1 season but also the fact that many episodes of the season form arcs make her almost a mere guest. From canonical TV appearances only, the Shansheeth could think that Martha has only been to/met Shakespeare, New New York, hybrid Dalek in Manhattan, 42, end of time, and Messaline (Moon was transported by Judoon, Lazarus Experiment doesn't involve the tardis, blink was done by weeping angel, the year that doesn't exist doesn't exist). This is like nothing comparing to SJ and Jo.
 * 4) Martha may have already died
 * 5) Martha/Martha's adventures is unwritten/different due to cracks/big bang 2 and is only known by the Doctor and the TARDIS or became less heroic
 * 6) SJ hates/dislikes Martha or her profession or Mickey or her crush on the Doctor --～～～～

Only two companions were needed. The obvious choice for those two is the two that knew the Doctor the best, and Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith were the obvious candidates for that title. 178.78.81.210talk to me 17:06, January 2, 2012 (UTC)

Sarah Jane clearly didn't dislike Mickey and showed no sign of disliking Martha. She might, of course, have wanted to avoid drawing her young friends' attention to a couple who'd opted for the "gun-toting" approach. Tia Karim and the Shansheeth might (entirely reasonably) have thought Martha and Mickey too dangerous to handle. Several of those Sarah Jane mentioned would also seem too dangerous for Tia Karim and the Shansheeth. As 178 says, they wanted people with enough memories of the Doctor. They clearly thought Sarah Jane and Jo were too old to cause much trouble, so the choice made sense. Karim and the Shansheeth, of course, found out the hard way that Sarah Jane and Jo were not too old to cause trouble -- but by the time they found that out, it was far too late. --89.242.79.21talk to me 18:32, January 2, 2012 (UTC)

One thing I didn't get, though, how did the Shansheeth plan to stop death with the TARDIS? Would they do what Rose did and absorb the time vortex and immortalise everyone? Would they find Jack Harkness and cause Miracle Day? Or did they just overestimate the abilities of the TARDIS? 77.86.108.251talk to me 20:19, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

This last question by 77 is the sort that drives me nuts. How are we to know? Even if we were told, would we understand it? I'm an Australian aborigine, when suddenly some weird looking people show up and start digging up some yellow rock. When I ask why, I'm told that they're going to use it to burn down a city as big as Sydney. I demand they explain how. If they take a day off to explain they will refer the uranite into uranium, convert that into plutonium, make an atomic bomb and then put it into an ICBM to fire at Beijing, am I any the wiser if I've been to Sydney? Boblipton talk to me 21:57, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

Maybe they were just going to travel through time to prevent deaths that they knew would happen.Icecreamdif talk to me 22:27, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

Boblipton, the point of this forum is to answer questions we don't know. We can do this using speculation or logic, like Icecreamdif has just done. 77.86.108.251talk to me 22:32, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

Well, in Boblipton's defense, there have been many subjects discussed on these forums whose answers are clearly supposed to be beyond our comprehension. I can't remember, did the Shansheeth say that they were going to try to stop all deaths, or just some. If they wanted to stop every single death in the universe, then my theory isn't entirely practical, but it would work if they just wanted to stop the more prominent ones..Icecreamdif talk to me 22:42, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

Well I agree with you, more or less, the Shansheeth could have over-elaborated on their real plans and only intended to halt tragedies such as the Titanic or Vesuvius. It's also clear that the Shansheeth were slightly insane, and it's entirely possible they only used that plan as an excuse to do something evil. 77.86.108.251talk to me 22:51, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

Well I would say that they were more than slightly insane, but we should probably take them at their word regarding their motivations. It's not like they had any reason to lie at that point. Anyway, they probably were just planning on using the TARDIS to prevent the types of tragedies that they normally had to clean up after.Icecreamdif talk to me 22:56, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

What they said strongly suggested (a) they were indeed more than slightly insane and (b) it was all death -- or at least all mourned death -- that they intended to stop. They referred to "the endless wailing". It didn't necessarily suggest they'd come up with a detailed plan for doing this, beyond deciding they needed a time machine like the TARDIS. Even if they did have a detailed plan, there's no guarantee whatever that it would have made sense, let alone actually have worked: see (a). As Sarah Jane said, their intentions were exactly why people like them shouldn't have time travel. --89.241.67.245talk to me 00:57, January 5, 2012 (UTC)

Potentially Tia Karim told the Shansheeth stories of Jack Harkness, and that might have raised their interest in somehow immortalising everyone. However that would obviously cause numerous problems, and even the feather brained Shansheeth would have seen that a universe of immortals would be a terrible place to live, unless they were seriously unhinged. So it seems most likely that either 1. The Shansheeth were absolutely twisted OR 2. They were just going to go back in time and stop Holocausts / Wars / Massacres / Disasters. 77.86.108.251talk to me 17:09, January 5, 2012 (UTC)

The individual Shansheeth involved were renegades (as revealed at the end of the story) and they seemed to be focussed exclusively on stopping death that led to mourning -- focussed to the extent of monomania. There's no indication from the story that they had thought beyond that immediate aim at all. Sarah Jane immediately did, and said so to them, but they still had no regard for the (pretty obvious) consequences of what they proposed. "Death greatly distresses lots of people, so let's stop it by using a time machine!" seems to have been as far as their thinking ever went. --89.241.69.54talk to me 19:46, January 5, 2012 (UTC)

I think it's weird about the lack of companions at the Doctor's funeral. Even if the Shansheeth didn't want too many people involved there's still people who should have said to UNIT that more people needed to be at the celebration of the Doctor's life. Sarah Jane didn't even contemplate why there were so few people there. What makes it weirder is that by this time the cracks had been closed, Eleven's line about Amy and Rory's honeymoon suggests that. So why did Sarah Jane not find it at all weird how few people there were? 87.102.117.106talk to me 17:14, January 6, 2012 (UTC)

"there's still people who should have said to UNIT that more people needed to be at the celebration of the Doctor's life": Yes, if they'd known about his funeral -- but how could they if they weren't told? Sarah Jane and company did remark on the low numbers but "weird" compared with what -- the way the Doctor lived his life? "Weird" is relative. It looked very much as if Karim and the Shansheeth were in charge of informing people. They could easily have told UNIT that lots of people had been informed, while not in fact telling anyone but those they wanted. The deception wouldn't need to last long. Once they had the TARDIS, they wouldn't need to worry about UNIT finding out. They'd have a time machine they could use to help them deal with or avoid the consequences. --78.146.183.1talk to me 22:23, January 6, 2012 (UTC)

Until Sarah Jane Googled TARDIS, she probably didn't realize how easy it was to find the Doctor's past companions. She may have assumed that UNIT was only able to contact the few companions who they would know of. That would just leave Liz, Captain Yates, Sergeant Benton, Lethbridge Stewart and maybe Tegan and Ace. At least a few of them were given excuses for not being there. Wasn't Liz somehow on the moon? Well, I guess if we had manned space flights to Mars in the 70s/80s then that sort of makes sense.Icecreamdif talk to me 09:39, January 7, 2012 (UTC)