Eirwyn
Well, if you didn't like your hometown or the people there much & tried to stay away from it as much as possible, would it not still hit you hard if a bomb suddenly wiped them all out? That's part of my other take on this (the one that goes against my first - fiddlesticks to consistency!)
smile Gallifrey's always been what the Doctor's defined himself
against. The Time Lords were everything he wasn't - staid, dispassionate, reserved observers concerned only with thier responsibilities. However much the Doctor might change, the constant thing about him has been that he wasn't like those guys.
He's been the ultimate teenager in many ways, constantlly rebelling against Mum and Dad (by which I here mean the values Gallifreyan society). Where the Time Lords have been all about responsibility, the Doctor's always been about
running. About freedom, about release.
Losing Gallifrey is just the most incredible affront imaginable to his sense of personhood. It's like Lucifer trying to work out who he is if he didn't have God around to rebel against anymore. In fact it's worse, since the Doctor sort of has to step into the role he's defined himself against. He's gone from being someone who's opted out of being a Time Lord to being
the Time Lord, and even if he never stops running he can't escape that.
So, yeah, for me then the personal threat to how he thinks about himself, and the deaths of his family and friends accounts for the Doctor's feelings of isolation much more than what comes out of his mouth when he starts giving Martha soliloquies about Gallifreyan flora and fauna.
Your more practical and pragmatic take on things is all part of the picture too, of course.
smile In fact, I wrote a little entry on that side of things for the Wikia...
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Web_of_timeEirwyn
That would sure entail a lot of explaining as to how she got to that point, though. You can't assume everyone has read those Virgin novels, esp. the younger crowd. The younger crowd wouldn't have seen
Rememberance either, but that wouldn't stop the baseball bats.
smile Things generally need a lot less explaining than we fans think. Want to bring back K-9? You don't need to explain
The Invisible Enemy. You just say, "The Doctor used to have a robot dog." Job done.
Want to bring back the Time Agency? You don't need to explain
The Talons of Weng-Chiang. You just say, "Jack here was a Time Agent from the Fifty-First Century" Job done.
Want to have Ace crash onto the screen on a time bike? You don't need to explain
Set Piece. You just say, "Look! Ace has got a time-travelling motorbike!" Job done.
The big problem with bringing Ace back wouldn't be explaining a particular reinvention, but that you'd
have to reinvent her.
If you're bringing back a companion who used to be a straight-talking and erudite crusading journalist, then she can
still be a straight-talking and erudite crusading journalist when she's reintroduced as a glamourous granny.
If you're bringing back an explosives-fetishist whose key recognisable traits are teenage angst and eighties slang then you
can't bring her back as a forty-five year old woman without completely changing her.
