Saturday, December 5, 2015

Doctor Who: Ashildr/Lady Me [ISFP]




Introverted Feeling (Fi): Young Ashildr is fiercely loyal to her village. When she is teleported aboard the Mire spaceship she is at first frightened by her new and dangerous surroundings but when fake Odin insults her village she becomes oblivious to the danger and challenges him directly. She ignores Clara’s attempts at talking down the Mire subtly and has no doubt that the warrior’s of her village can back up her threats. Afterwards when she realizes the consequences of her actions (the Mire are coming to destroy her village) she is devastated, remaining sullen and withdrawn for the rest of the episode.
Seventeenth century Ashildr AKA, “The Knightmare” or “Lady Me” has suppressed her Fi to the point of behaving like an unhealthy ENTJ. In her journals The Doctor reads about her life that she can’t remember. She was nearly drowned as a witch trying to save a village from scarlet fever and she wrote vividly about the pain of losing her children. When The Doctor tries to correct her morally dubious behavior she simply tells him, “Shut up. You’re not my dad.” Later on when Ashildr sees people dying around her, her moral compass solidifies and her only thought is to help them. She only needed a nudge to remind her of what she already knew was right.
Modern Ashildr or “Mayor Me” Is much more mature being three hundred years or so older. She runs the, “trap street” of refugees fairly, if strictly. making it a haven for anyone in need.  When her plan goes wrong and people get hurt she is genuinely upset, showing that she would avoid hurting anyone if it wasn’t completely necessary.


Extroverted Sensing (Se): One of the first definitive actions that Young Ashildr takes in the show is impulsive. Aboard the Mire ship she challenges the fake Odin. Spurred on by her Fi she reacts to Fake Odin’s testosterone fuels rant in kind. Even though this is the worst option she could choose she isn’t mature enough to direct her Se productively and instead brings disaster for her village.
Knightmare Ashildr has a much more developed Se, living life, “on the edge” as a highway-woman. Over the years she has become a formidable warrior despite having the appearance of a slight young woman, fighting at the battle of Agincourt. The explanation for her skills is the sheer practice she has accumulated over her long life. Living so long has made her reckless as well and she cares little for her own safety as she grows tired of the life of a regular, albeit immortal, human being. When the Doctor refuses to take her with him she takes the initiative, going ahead with a risky plan instead.
Modern Ashildr shows almost no Se other than her audacity in trying and succeeding to trap the Doctor. We see no Se in this period simply because Ashildr is mature enough not to fall into unhealthy Se behaviors and healthy Se behaviors are not important to her plan or her job at the time. Doubtless we would have seen more but Ashildr doesn’t get as much screen time as she did in the last episode.


Introverted Intuitive (Ni): One of the only statements young Ashildr makes about herself is that, “Everybody knows I’m a little strange.” She’s referring to her habit of making puppets and imagining stories. She constructs detailed accounts of the villages warrior’s exploits in an idealistic and romanticized fashion. She does this because she is worried about them and hopes that if she thinks up the right story they will come home safely. Her Ni, coupled with her Se, also allows her to project a convincing image of a sea serpent into the Mire’s helmets even though she obviously hasn’t seen one before.
The first time we see “Knightmare” Ashildr she is scheming to improve her situation. She behaves in an almost NTJ way, strategizing to achieve her goal. She has always been waiting for the Doctor, hoping he might come back. When he does come back she isn’t even surprised. She isn’t especially intellectual but she has the foresight to record her adventures in journals to preserve them even when her memory fails during her long life. The one thing that keeps her going is the thought that some day she might travel among the stars and when the Doctor takes too long and eventually turns her down she already has a backup plan in place.
Modern Ashildr also utilizes Ni to her full advantage. When her home is threatened she accurately predicts The Doctor’s actions in order to trap him, even though The Doctor is notoriously unpredictable. At this point Ashildr has Developed her Ni to the level of an extremely intelligent  INTJ and could be mistaken for such if not for other examples from her life.

      

Extroverted Thinking (Te): The young Ashildr not surprisingly hasn’t developed her Te yet. One of the only instances is the negative “in the grip” example of her confrontation with fake Odin. She lets her stress get out of hand and pairs her Te with her dominant Fi to form an illogical and confrontational combination. Later however she is brutally honest, admitting that when the Mire attack, “we will be cut down like corn.”
“Knightmare” Ashildr relies heavily on Te due to her weakened, almost dormant Fi. She nearly kills Sam Swift “The Quick” (redundant by the way) in cold blood until The Doctor stops her early on in the episode. She gets into a similar confrontation during a robbery tells The Doctor, “It’s kill or be killed.” She rationalizes her actions not just in the sense of self defense but also by saying that humans live such short lives (compared to her's anyway) calling them mayflies. She first chooses Sam swift to use the eyes of hades on, rationalizing that he is sentenced to die either way, but when he is pardoned she kills him anyway.
Modern Ashildr runs the "Trap Street" fairly using Fi but she organizes it with Te. She is not afraid to put aside her emotions to protect her "citizens" and to keep the peace her justice is swift and terrible. She does what she thinks is right and doesn’t falter if it is unpleasant. She lies to the citizens of The "Trap Street" when it was necessary to keep them safe. She also lies to The Doctor. manipulating him masterfully and almost flawlessly.

Ashildr is a really interesting study because of her presentation in the show. In the first episode she appears she is just a girl but in the second she is three hundred and in the third six hundred. Each episode has a concise and distinct image of her that is neither too broad nor too narrow.
Another very interesting point is the way she seems to retain the same functions consistently but they vary in strength. In the first episode she seems very ISFP but in the second she seems to regress into an unhealthy ENTJish state. By the third episode her lower functions are so well developed that she is functionally an INTJ in terms of strategy and Objective reasoning. It just goes to show that the only thing your type says about you are which functions you have and which ones you prefer to use the most. The strength of each function can change even though it might take a while.

This might be long but that is because I had three versions of her to analyze. There were few enough examples for all of them to be distinct and mentionable but enough of them to make for a very long analysis.

No comments:

Post a Comment