So I've been DYING to catch up on Doctor Who (I lost the Tivo battles on Friday nights so missed season two until now) and only just finally got to see and savor Season 2.

And what a treat, with David Tennant bouncing around the universe, bringing this brand-new hilarity and energy to the Doctor ("Ten"). I love Ten even though I miss Nine's odd purity and devotion. There was something lovely and steadfast to Christopher Eccleston that is the precise opposite of Tennant. I never doubted that Eccleston's Doctor felt romantically about Rose, for instance, yet doubted it constantly with Tennant. I do love Ten — I think he's cool, weird, sexy, crazy, and dazzlingly funny, but there is something about him that's more detached to me.

It's funny how different his arc is. Last season was about rage and grief, I think. This one was ultimately about loneliness and how close you allow people to get (or not to get).

I've been enjoying every minute of the season. Loved the body-switching. And werewolf meets Queen Victoria. Loved Anthony Stewart Head (Giles!) as the wicked (and wickedly tempting) schoolmaster. Loved Mickey and his adventures in an alternate dimension. Absolutely adored the two-part encounter with the Devil, in what was easily one of the show's best-written encounters.

And the finale, "Doomsday"... oh wow. I adored it, and thought it was heartbreaking, challenging, gruesome, gorgeous and smart, and even better than the finale for Season 1 (which I also loved). It even made me love the Cybermen (which I just felt was a bit clunky earlier in the season).

And what an ending to the relationship between Ten and Rose. I've never been sure that Ten loved Rose, really. Or to be precise, whether it was romantic versus just a genial "love ya kid" kind of thing.

Ultimately, I think the Doctor's thing for Rose (which I understand is very new in a Companion relationship, with Nine and Ten only) is that he's in love with humanity and Rose embodies the best of all of it. She's the best of the ordinary human being. She is pretty and scrappy, smart and capable, but she's no more so than millions on earth. She is everywoman — and yet, she is blazingly unique. She is ordinary; she is extraordinary. Often it's the distance between the two I love (Rose sees only the ordinariness in herself, the Doctor sees the specialness she cannot see). And to me that's what the Doctor loves in her, best of all. But is it romantic? I kept waffling on the issue throughout the season before deciding that yes, it was.

And in "Doomsday," at the end of the season, when Rose was being ripped away from him, screaming, and the Doctor screamed in return, their screams actually mingling as if they were one person - only then did I feel for sure that, "Wow, he does love her." It was one of those rare glimpses into the abyss in Ten's soul, that one moment, where you could see in his face that he was dying inside - not just because she was about to die horribly and eternally in the Void, but because she was leaving him alone.