Doctor Who and Philosophy

by Courtland Lewis

  Katy Manning and a Discreetly-Placed Sink Plunger

  Let’s turn to consider the beauty of the Daleks in this world. Talk of the beauty of the Daleks is odd because beauty and monstrosity are assumed to be opposites. But is this the case?

  Beauty itself isn’t a straightforward term. As Anne Sheppard observes, “beautiful” in the English language has a narrow usage. “In English,” she maintains:Landscapes, women, horses, and flowers may be beautiful but men are described as “handsome” and cows or wine as “fine” rather than “beautiful.” Aesthetic appreciation would have a very narrow range of objects if it were confined to those objects to which “beautiful” happens to be applicable in English.152

  The situation, Sheppard goes on, doesn’t just affect the English language. While the French “beau” and German “schön” have wider application than “beautiful,” nevertheless there are occasions when these languages require alternative terms of aesthetic appreciation, such as “joli” and “hübsch.” Here, then, is one reason why my notion of the beauty of the Daleks is odd: I’m applying a word which has a very narrow range in an unusual context. But this still leaves the wider field of what Sheppard calls “aesthetic appreciation”: the enjoyment we get from perceiving art, design, and nature at large. Other words are often used to acknowledge this wider sense of aesthetics, for example, “fine,” “elegant,” “handsome,” and “graceful.” Even if I give up the notion of the “beauty” of the Daleks and talk in terms of their “aesthetics,” this still leaves the aesthetics of the Daleks to be explained.

  But I don’t think I should give up referring to “beauty.” As we’ve seen from Sheppard, beauty shades into these other aspects, meaning there’s no definite point at which “beauty” is swapped for an alternative word. More importantly, there’s the view that we should actively encourage the broadening of our concept of beauty. Alexander Nehamas declares that the commonly-held notion of beauty described by Sheppard is, in fact, the narrowing of a much more worldly and passionate understanding of beauty entertained by the ancient Greeks.153 Looking on something as beautiful for Plato, Nehamas asserts, was the beginning of the desire of wanting to become engaged with and care for that particular person or thing. In the Phaedrus, Plato describes a man who sees a beautiful boy for the first time. The man at first “shudders in cold fear” but then “his trembling gives way to a strange feverish sweat, stoked by the stream of beauty pouring into him through his eyes and feeding the growth of his soul’s wings” to the point where he feels that losing everything “would make no difference to him if only it were for the boy’s sake.”154

  Does this mean I am moving towards saying “I love the Daleks”? Perhaps that’s what Katy Manning was declaring when she did her nude photo-shoot with a Dalek in 1978. Yes, I suppose I’m saying “I love the Daleks,” except I’m taking “love” not in the “sexual relationship” sense, but in the Platonic sense of being drawn in by something, being made to care for something, becoming attentive to the needs of another. Underlying all of Plato’s philosophy is a commitment to the Forms. Existing in a higher, metaphysical realm, the Forms are singular, perfect versions of each and every thing that exists in our world, and act as templates for our world. Love is the process whereby each person tries to make the world and others around them better, so each one moves towards becoming her or his perfect version.

  To find the Daleks beautiful in the Platonic sense then is to be fascinated by them as things (not creatures—we aren’t in the Doctor Who universe) to be engaged with. They’re things that we want to treat as creatures. Isn’t this where the design of the Dalek succeeds so well: as the portrayal of an alien race, something that’s distinctly different from us, something with which we have to engage? Whereas most science-fiction aliens end up being a person painted an unusual color with some additional knobbly bits on their face, the Dalek bears no resemblance to human form. They’re wholly other. They’re beautiful—the design works—because we see in them the possibility of another form of life, something that could move around and manipulate the world in a way that’s wholly different from our own.

  Inferno

  Beauty then can have different meanings, narrow and wide. So far, Plato has been the most helpful. The Daleks are beautiful in a Platonic sense because their design gives them the appearance of a way of life, a set of capacities, that’s other than our own. But this still leaves us with the fact that we’re finding beauty in something that’s designed to be a monster. Notice I say “designed to be a monster.” It could be argued that, in our world, the Dalek isn’t a real monster, isn’t an evil thing, but merely something designed to be monstrous. But the very fact that a thing which has been designed to look monstrous nonetheless appears beautiful means that the beauty-monster contrast still stands.

  The problem is that beauty and monstrosity are taken as opposites. Is this necessarily the case? Conflicting accounts can be found in history. As Umberto Eco points out, beauty and monstrosity are opposites in ancient Greece. He notes that a variety of creatures in Greek mythology, such as fauns, Cyclops, chimaeras, and minotaurs “are considered monstrous and extraneous to the canons of beauty as expressed in the statuary of Policlitus or Praxiteles.”155 This confirms my problem. Yet, in the thirteenth century, in the Summa, attributed to Alexander of Hales, monstrosity is seen as a necessary condition of beauty. This is on the understanding that the universe has been created as a whole, and that the presence of monstrosity is needed to balance the presence of beauty. The words of Alexander of Hales from the Summa will in fact be echoed by the Fourth Doctor at the end of “Genesis of the Daleks” (1975):Evil as such is misshapen.... Nevertheless, since from evil comes good, it is therefore well said that it contributes to good and hence it is said to be beautiful within the order [of things]. Thus it is not called beautiful in an absolute sense, but beautiful within the order; in fact, it would be preferable to say: “the order itself is beautiful.”156

  So it’s the overall order of things—to which evil contributes—that’s beautiful, not the individual evil act or thing. But this doesn’t help the beauty of the Daleks, since it’s the Daleks themselves which I think are beautiful, not the universe of which they’re a part. Although this universe isn’t bad, it’s a lot better now that Doctor Who is back.

  Beauty and monstrosity (or ugliness) are given another relationship in Karl Rosenkranz’s “aesthetic inferno” from his Aesthetics of Ugliness, published in 1852. For Rosenkranz, there’s an intimate connection between the beautiful and the ugly in as much as ugliness only exists as the negation of beauty. Drawing on Dante, Rosenkranz presents the universe as an inferno in which beauty is “the original divine idea,” and ugliness is the negation of beauty. Because of its primary status, beauty is a necessary condition for ugliness in the sense that it brings ugliness into being as its own negation. Yet the same “beautiful” force negates ugliness and returns it to its original state. Beauty, Rosenkranz writes, “reveals itself as the force that brings the rebellion of ugliness back under its control and dominion.”157

  The idea here is that ugliness contains a component of the force of beauty. So when I look at a Dalek, although it’s been designed as a monster, its appearance is never wholly buried in monstrosity but rather contains a seed of beauty in as much as beauty is the governing principle of the aesthetic inferno. There’s some similarity with Alexander of Hales in that the possibility of beauty is claimed to reside not in the ugly thing itself but in a larger process. However, Rosenkranz offers us a slight advantage. Whereas Alexander of Hales can only apply beauty to the entire order of things, Rosenkranz allows talk of individual ugly things becoming beautiful as part of the transition from beauty to ugliness and back again.

  What’s attractive about Rosenkranz’s aesthetic inferno as far as the alleged beauty of the Daleks is concerned is that it represents perception as a dynamic process. In looking at a Dalek, we don’t see one thing or the other—beauty or monstrosity—but a transition in
which the two are moving between one another. If we adopted this line of argument, its strength would depend in turn on just how convincing we found Rosenkranz’s inferno theory. Rosenkranz was a follower of Hegel. We can see this in Rosenkranz’s idea that ugliness contains a seed of the beautiful.

  The notion that an idea or an object includes its opposite is the engine of Hegel’s thesis that life is the process whereby thought and reality become one. The principle of finding a notion within its opposite is one of the most potent forms of expression in the arts, and continues to be the subject of philosophical study, for example, the tension between presence and absence in art and literature examined philosophically by Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. Doctor Who has itself played with beauty and monstrosity as interconnected opposites. Typically, this has taken the form of the monsters turning out to be the good guys, as in “Galaxy 4” (1965), “The Curse of Peladon” (1972), and “The Impossible Planet” (2006).

  Daleks in Moscow

  One final possibility remains. Although the Daleks are presented as monsters, their monstrosity is arguably not to be found in their casings. Instead, it lies in their actions, the roles they’re assigned within a story. This means we can talk about the beauty of the Daleks as objects, as casings alone, without having to consider them as monsters. In aesthetics, this position is called “formalism”: finding beauty in purely the formal, material aspects of objects, their line, shape, form, and color, irrespective of what the objects are or what the objects themselves might signify. According to Clive Bell, one of the formalist movement’s principal voices: “to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions ... we need bring with us nothing but a sense of form and colour and a knowledge of three-dimensional space.”158 159

  Formalism can be traced back to Kant’s preference for finding beauty in objects which serve no purpose or which aren’t exemplars of a particular kind. The play of forms—lines, grills, slats, spheres—in the Dalek design, considered independently of any function the forms might have, means the casing could easily occupy a plinth in a Bauhaus or Constructivist exhibition. As Adrian Wiltshire observes in his letter in Doctor Who Magazine 371 (19th July 2006), there’s a strong similarity between the Dalek casing and the Flying City or “ville volante” design from 1928 by the Russian Constructivist Georgii Krutikov. Although upside-down as far as a Dalek is concerned, and looking more like a shuttlecock, the design nevertheless possesses a head semi-sphere, head rings, and discs which closely resemble skirt bumps.

  Whether Cusick was inspired by Krutikov’s design isn’t the point. Rather, the 1928 work cements the notion that the beauty of the Daleks can reside in an appreciation of their form alone, as something abstract, removed from any connection it might have with its worldly values of evil or monstrosity. But this option means that our response to the problem of the beauty of the Daleks is to deny it: to talk about the beauty of the Daleks as objects is to lose the Daleks, to lose them as Doctor Who monsters. We would instead be dealing with an object, a sculpture almost, which happens to bear a strong similarity to a certain early twentieth-century Russian architectural design. I don’t think we want to lose the Daleks.

  A Beautiful Destiny

  I haven’t reached a definite conclusion with regard to the beauty of the Daleks. That’s sometimes the way with philosophy. The value of the subject lies in its drawing attention to the ideas that are at work in a situation. The question of the beauty of the Daleks has a puzzle at its heart: how can something monstrous be beautiful?

  As we’ve seen, beauty is a complex idea. Far from being in the eye of the beholder, it’s a state of pleasure which has been understood in terms of some of the deepest ideas in the history of philosophy: Plato’s realm of the Forms, Alexander of Hales’s universal order, Kant’s intersection of mind and reality, and Hegel’s union of mind and reality. While we may still dispute whether or not the Daleks are beautiful, we at least know now that the dispute, rather than just being a conflict between personal opinions, is something which requires us to consider the nature of the universe and our place in it.

  If the Doctor must continue his annoying habit of thwarting every attempt the Daleks make at universe-domination, then maybe they might achieve it indirectly, by another means, namely, by their crushing good looks.

  28

  Monadology of the Time Lords

  GREGORY KALYNIUK

  If you consider the conceptual premises used to philosophically ground the science-fiction realities of Doctor Who, you’ll find many having a great deal in common with the thought of the great early modern rationalist philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz. From the monadic character of the dimensionally transcendental TARDIS to the pre-established harmony overseen by the Time Lords, Leibnizian motifs recur throughout the long history of Doctor Who—though the manner in which they’re evoked, more often than not, proves to be fragmentary, just as Leibniz’s philosophy (called “monadology”) was.

  Some of Leibniz’s ideas truly seem to be the stuff of science fiction, and it’s hardly surprising that contemporary readers use science fiction to help make sense of them. In fact, Doctor Who and the epic 1986 serial “The Trial of a Time Lord” are uniquely useful in helping us to understand of some of Leibniz’s key ideas.

  What Makes the Doctor “the Doctor”?

  When a Time Lord’s body is approaching death a process of regeneration is triggered which produces a new body from out of the old one. With each succeeding incarnation, the Doctor assumes a new physical form. What qualifies these physically different incarnations of the Doctor as the same person? For the Doctor at least, it’s never as simple as a mere body switch. Regeneration seems to affect his whole personality, and his companions often can’t believe that he’s still the same person without some convincing. Not only does his body change, but his mind also changes as a result of these transformations. What, then, makes the Doctor “the Doctor”?

  Leibniz believes that everything which can be analyzed to be true about a subject, meaning all the relations which it forms and all the events which it can undergo, are already contained within the individual concept of that subject. This individual concept belongs to a point of view upon the world occupied by what Leibniz calls a monad, or simple spiritual substance. According to Leibniz’s “principle of sufficient reason,” each monad has an individual concept that contains all of its relations and events as a subject contains its predicates. We might picture, for instance, a monad which contains the Doctor’s individual concept as a point of view upon the universe, with his changing bodies, his relations with other individuals, and relations with things in the universe, all of which are predicates of his individuality.

  Sufficient reason helps illustrate what makes the Doctor singularly “the Doctor” distinctly from the events in which he participates. Leibniz distinguishes necessary predicates, inherent to the singular individual, from contingent predicates which arise through substantial relations with other monads, or appurtenances. The Doctor’s contingent predicates are incarnated through relations of appurtenance between the thinking monad which defines him as a singular individual and the simple monads that belong to the parts of his body, which become instantaneously renewed in their totality each time he regenerates.

  The Doctor nonetheless remains identical to himself between incarnations because a thinking monad, which contains his individual concept, endures while the appurtenant monads fall away and are replaced. While the Doctor may contain certain predicates within himself necessarily, it’s through his actions in the world that his individual concept acquires contingent predicates, which impact who he becomes and the worlds to which his various incarnations belong. Whether necessary or contingent, all predicates must have a sufficient reason for belonging to a particular subject. This sufficient reason is expressed through their individual concept, which can only be completely known by God, since attaining such knowledge would requi
re an infinite analysis. As we’ll see, Time Lords have quite a bit in common with Leibniz’s God.

  But this still leaves us at a loss to explain how the necessary predicates which make the Doctor “the Doctor” are different from his contingent predicates. In “Inferno” (1970), the TARDIS console transports the Doctor “sideways through time” into a parallel universe, where he encounters Liz Shaw’s double in a fascistic version of contemporary England. While Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw never becomes a scientist in this parallel universe, she still has many of the same characteristics as the version of Liz in the Doctor’s universe, so much so that the Doctor is able to use his familiarity with these common characteristics to gain her trust.

  This scenario demonstrates how an individual concept could possess necessary predicates which would remain the same across parallel universes, such as Elizabeth Shaw’s ambition to become a scientist, realized in one universe and abandoned in another. Leibniz would say that the two Lizes are incompossible with one another.

  The Laws of Time and the Best of All Possible Worlds

  The Time Lords oversee that the Laws of Time aren’t broken and the primary timelines of the cosmos aren’t disturbed. On several occasions, they enlist the Doctor’s help to restore order to Time when some event skewed the proper course of things. Like Leibniz’s God, the Time Lords apparently know the sufficient reason for the proper course of things

  Leibniz famously styled himself as God’s attorney, justifying why there should still be evil in the best possible world. Because each monad reflects the whole world from within itself, while not allowing anything to come in or go out, they’re “windowless.” Since monads have no windows and are isolated from one another, their ability to have a point of view upon themselves and the world depends upon God’s point of view. God pre-establishes a harmony between the monads that guarantees the greatest diversity of elements in the combinations that make up their world, leaving evil as the unavoidable consequence of this diversity. In the best possible world, there’s only a minimum amount of evil, but evil nonetheless.