9 and 10, The Davies Era: A God Who Must Not Know It
It was always essential during the Davies era that the Doctor not behave like a god, that he not know he was a god. In some ways, this was easy. The Doctor is a god who loves humans, who emphasizes with them, who looks at them in awe. From the Doctors perspective, we humans look like giants because we have the ability to live in and love this universe. And when the Doctor had a companion, he could maintain that perspective. Rose was important to the Doctor because she was someone he could believe in. As he said in The Satan Pit, in the great game of gods and devils, out of all the gods the Doctor has seen, he believes in Rose. He believed in her goodness, her humanity, and that she would be there when he came to get her. And Rose loved him for the man he was, not the god or the angel.
Madame du Pompador loved him for the angel. And later, River loved him for the god. But thats another story, one Ill get to later. Donna once told the Doctor that he needed someone to travel with him, because sometimes you need someone to stop you. Thats why he picked Martha up and invited her along: because he knew he needed someone. But after Martha and Donna, he stopped. He couldnt take the connections being broken anymore. He loved and believed in people, but they broke his hearts. All through this era, the limits of the Doctors power were important. He couldnt save Rose from an alternate dimension. He couldnt convince Nurse Redfern to travel with him. He couldnt help Jack, or save Donna. There were fixed points in time that he could do nothing about, and even if he tried he may make them happen. In Voyage of the Dead, when the Doctor ruled over angels, he was told that if you could choose who lives and who dies, that would make you a monster. And who hasnt wondered that, if gods were all powerful, how they could let terrible things happen. The arc of the Tenth Doctors story took him to Mars, to a fixed point in time. And he decided to change all that. He would decide who lived and who died. He would be the Time Lord Victorious. The Master once said that being a Time Lord Victorious must have been like being a god, and the Doctor shied away from the thought. Not anymore.
If the Doctor reached for more power, if he reached for godhood, it would make him a monster. That was the story of the Davies era. And it took a human sacrifice, the act of a human woman, to bring him back to himself. Because the fact that the Doctor is a god was, during the Davies era, his greatest secret from himself.