I should preface this by saying that if you're coming into this expecting some variation on 'The Doctor/Rose relationship was the Bestest Thing Evah!' 'Or 'The Doctor/Rose relationship was Sooooo Stoopid! Die, Rose, Die!' then you are probably going to be disappointed. Because I'm not actually interested in the narrow 'Channing Tatum meets girl, Channing Tatum loses girl, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan meet on the space needle (or wherever)' definition of 'romantic' In fact, it's precisely because of the way that we insist on such a narrow definition of 'Romantic' that fuels that particular argument. To explain what I mean more clearly; Doctor Who - historically- has always taken the much broader definition of 'romantic' ; That being- the focus on Joy and freedom, and the embueing of a thing with idealism and a thirst for adventure. You know- what they actually used the word 'Romantic' to mean when they named an entire art movement after it. So the concept of a man who could no longer stand sitting around and just observing things, stole a vehicle and fled purely for the sake of seeing the universe - That's the core
definition of Romantic. The whole Boy meets girl Rom-Com thing - That's just one tiny manifestation of the word. However, because we live in a culture that has forgotten that the word used to mean more, we tend to
only see the boy meets girl stuff and lose sight of the bigger picture. In days of yore that wasn't really a problem for Doctor Who in that they almost never did the Boy meets Girl stuff and so it was never a distraction. So when Rose came onto the scene, we'd forgotten that it was possible to do both Capital 'R' romance and lower 'r' romance at the same time. Which is where a lot of the unhappiness with the Rose storyline comes in. Fandom as a whole tended to feel that it was overshadowing the larger sense of 'romanticism' that the show had always done so well (although very few articulated the feeling in quite that way.) It didn't, of course, but I understand why folk felt that way. To make the case - here are ten of the most Romantic moments in Nu-Who. (Doctor Who Classic is a different kettle of fish and an article for another day) Some mild spoilers...