Doctor Who and Philosophy

by Courtland Lewis

  It’s also produced two spin-off series, each filling a gap in Doctor Who’s overall appeal. The Sarah Jane Adventures follows Sarah Jane, a companion of the Fourth Doctor, now in her forties, and the adventures of her son and his friends. Though Doctor Who is indisputably a family show, it’s not precisely one for children, giving Sarah Jane Adventures an area to cover. The violence and more traumatic themes of Doctor Who are left out, leaving a simple adventure plot with lots of fun puzzles. This isn’t, of course, to suggest that Sarah Jane Adventures is trivial. Far from it, in fact. It’s a children’s show that manages to engage its audience and teach about courage and adventure, without condescending or alienating its audience.

  Torchwood, the other spin-off, takes an entirely different route. Given that Doctor Who is, in fact, a family show, there’s no room in the script for gratuitous violence, any sex, or any swearing. All of that comes out, instead, in Torchwood, a grittier story about a companion of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, Captain Jack Harkness, and his team of alien fighters. While Torchwood does on occasion devolve into nothing more than the wish-fulfillment of frustrated Doctor Who writers, as in the episode about the sex alien or the fight between the Cyberwoman and the pterodactyl, most of the time it manages to live up to its concept as a darker, more intense outpouring of the same ideals as Doctor Who. Where in Doctor Who one sees clearly a story about the need for hope, with an uncomplicated happy ending and the restoration of harmony, in Torchwood one sees a more complex story with an ambiguous ending, stressing perseverance and skin of their teeth luck.

  More than just a television show, Doctor Who has become a cultural phenomenon. When it was canceled in 1989, mostly due to BBC budget cuts, not at all due to a lack of public interest, the characters took on lives of their own, living on in book series, fan magazines, comic books, and radio plays. Resurrected in 1996 for a movie, the show was retired again until it was fully revived in 2005 by Russell T Davies and his creative team, who imagined an even deeper, and higher budgeted, Doctor Who. When it was off the air, Doctor Who began receiving a large amount of belated critical acclaim. In 1996, BBC declared that Doctor Who was the best “Popular Drama” they’d ever produced, and in 2000, it was ranked third in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of all time.

  But all of this says nothing about what Britain is like today, forty-seven years after the Doctor’s debut. On the surface, it doesn’t seem that much has changed. The world is still a messy place, and British politicians still strive to make sense of it all, only to find themselves ostracized for their efforts. Yet there’s an undercurrent of hope and optimism that was, if not lacking, then at least much harder to see in the early 1960s. Even throughout all of the tribulations of the new millennium, Britain retained that idealized sense of itself as a just, courageous and persevering nation, and one can only think that this ideal has helped it.193

  While I call this recent time “post-Doctor Who,” that’s actually inaccurate. It’s actually more accurate to say that this is the “Second Age of Doctor Who,” as the show is experiencing a sort of renaissance right now. With the arrival of the new series in 2005, record breaking ratings and some fantastic critical awards, Doctor Who seems to have finally broken out of its place as a well-done children’s show, and become recognized as a true drama. It’s even been exported to the United States, where it enjoys a dedicated and growing audience. It serves as a more perfect mirror for Britain, showing how the nation wishes it were, and how it thinks it ought to be.

  All of this is thanks to the character of the Doctor, and the way that he’s so entirely a heroic figure. A show about a lesser man, or more accurately, a man at all, would’ve had considerably less cultural impact, and one could say reasonably would’ve done little to raise the spirits of the British people. The Doctor’s status, then, as a being more than human but less than god, allows him to transcend our lives and go off on adventures, while still retaining the authority to tell us how to live. As a hero, that’s all that we can ask.

  31

  Doctor Who as Philosopher and Myth Maker

  ALEXANDER BERTLAND

  The echoes of myths pervade Doctor Who. Myths often serve as models for the narratives of the Doctor’s adventures. The Fourth Doctor serial “Underworld” (1978), for example, is an imaginative retelling of the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Doctor Who also plays with myths by suggesting that they’re historically true. In the Fourth Doctor serial “Pyramids of Mars” (1975), the Doctor reveals that Egyptian myths are actually historical records of an alien race called the Osirans.

  Myth becomes a philosophical question when we wonder why it has a lasting hold on our culture. People remember the stories of Zeus, Thor, and Isis, even if only through cartoons and comic books. Why are these myths still hanging around? Is it good we remember them? Are they positive institutions that hold our culture together? Or are myths a threat to the advancement of science?

  Doctor Who often portrays the conflict between myth and science, between ancient traditions and new scientific technology. What does Doctor Who ultimately suggest about resolving this conflict? One would suspect that being science fiction, Doctor Who would praise science and deride mythic superstition. Nevertheless, Doctor Who presents a deeper point about the relationship of myth to science. It reminds us that while myth may appear primitive and naive, science is also made by humans and it has its limits. Rather than simply rejecting myth, Doctor Who suggests we ought to find a balance that respects both ways of understanding the world.

  Tigella: Battlefield in the War between Myth and Science

  Doctor Who often champions the power of science, and rational investigation in general, to free people from the grip of superstition. This is typified in the Third Doctor serial, “The Daemons” (1971). The Doctor reveals that all the horned creatures portrayed by Earth religions, like the devil in Christianity, are misrepresentations of an alien race, the Daemons. This serial reduces myth to mere superstition, assuming that myth is nothing more than bad science based on random observations with no methodology. It sees myths as nothing more than attempts of a fortune-teller to predict the future.

  However, myths can be thought of more richly as a way of confronting the world. Myths aren’t just stories or allegories but ways of constructing reality. One of the first and most important thinkers to see myth this way was the Italian philosopher, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). Vico suggests myths shouldn’t be seen as a bad form of science. He argues philosophers misunderstand myth because they assume that ancient thinkers thought the same way as modern thinkers do. Vico calls this “the conceit of scholars.”194 “The Daemons” assumes that when myths were written, the mythmakers were trying to write actual history and actual science but somehow were too primitive or ignorant to do so. So they misinterpreted the alien race as gods and magic as science. Vico argues this doesn’t make sense because the mythmakers wouldn’t have history or science as a goal. Instead, they must’ve wanted to achieve something else.

  Vico speculates that the original mythmakers must’ve thought like children. He means this in a positive way, suggesting that children have an ingenuity that adults lose, and writes, “Children excel in imitation; we observe that they generally amuse themselves by imitating whatever they are able to apprehend.”195 Children don’t learn by theorizing about what to do but by imitating the actions of their elders. Children on playgrounds often imitate the actions of sports heroes or television characters. So, Vico speculates, the first people must have used their imaginations to imitate actions rather than to analyze them, and notes that when children learn to speak, they often do so with rhythm and songs that they combine into dances.196

  Vico surmises that mythical thinkers conceived the entire world through rituals, powerful dances where followers imitated tribal leaders. The rituals held society together by forcing people to control their violent passions. Mythic thinkers, much like children, must’ve had strong selfish and animalistic urges to eat and roam wh
erever they wanted. The ritual dances sweep up that energy, forcing the people to stay put and work together. Every activity of these thinkers, whether it be farming, hunting, or socializing, must’ve had ritualistic dances to channel passionate drives into productive activity.

  Vico claims myths weren’t originally stories. Rather, these stories are remnants of those dances. Over the centuries the actions of the dancers were turned into fictional tales. Yet, the fundamental purpose of myths is to develop compelling rituals that bind community together. The rituals force primitive people to put aside selfish emotional desire and work for the group. Leela’s tribe the Sevateem in “The Face of Evil” (1977) stays together through a ritualistic devotion to the god Xoanon. Their rituals are good because they keep the tribe alive in such harsh conditions. Unfortunately, these rituals also tend to keep primitive people from thinking freely. The members of the Sevateem are so locked into their rituals that they can’t easily understand the power of technology.

  As society gives rise to science and rational thought, conflict inevitably develops between tradition and technology. In the Fourth Doctor serial, “Meglos” (1980), the inhabitants of the planet Tigella have a mysterious power source called the dodecahedron. The Tigellans are divided into the religious Deons and the scientific Savants. The Deons, led by Lexa, hold the dodecahedron to be a religious artifact and prescribe strict rituals of worship to it. The Savants, on the other hand, use reason to investigate its power. As the serial unfolds, Meglos, the evil alien antagonist, compromises the power of the dodecahedron. Lexa claims that science is blasphemy, refuses to listen to any scientific resolution and tries to sacrifice the Doctor to the gods. This almost destroys the Tigellans.197 This serial reveals myth’s dangerous ability to prevent people from thinking freely even to the point of working against a community’s self-interest. The Doctor ends up the hero and science prevails over the binding power of myth. However, other serials show a positive side to the power of myth.

  Terra Alpha and Varos

  Vico argues that the conflict between science and myth can’t be resolved. Instead, history travels in an eternal cycle, shifting between the two structures of thought. When civilizations are born, they grow through the power of myth. This growth leads to the rise of science and critical thinking, which breaks the power of myth. This brings technological benefits and political rights to the people. However, the cost is that the rituals keeping society unified break down. The moral codes associated with these rituals weaken. People become greedier as their selfish desires take over. People start caring about their own selfish pleasure instead of working for the community. This creates a state of decay that Vico calls “The Barbarism of Reflection.” Since the people of a nation no longer channel their passions into common rituals that unite society, they head off separately to fulfill their own wants. This leads to civil war and the collapse of society.198 Vico suggests that myth is necessary because it’s the basis of morality. Myth will inevitably be outgrown, but this will only call for a return to myth

  Sometimes, science creates its own myths to replace superstitious myths. Science hopes to hold society together while eliminating superstition. However, when science tries this, there have been devastating results. The German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) describes how the Nazis created modern scientific myths and rituals to strip the Germans of their freedom.199 Doctor Who often portrays this totalitarian use of myth. In the Seventh Doctor serial “The Happiness Patrol” (1988), the government of Terra Alpha forces citizens to act ritualistically happy. In the Sixth Doctor serial “Vengeance on Varos” (1985), humans must ritualistically vote in elections in a way that keeps them from questioning the political system as a whole. In both of these cases, totalitarian regimes combine technology with the ancient power of myth to take control of a society. This is clearly a bad way to combine myth and science. Can we find a deeper mythical wisdom? Is there a way that mythical thought can be portrayed as liberating? What’s the true power of mythical thought?

  Manussa and the Power of Mythical Thought

  Rituals can subdue primitive animalistic passions to get people to work together, but instead of emphasizing ritual, it’s also possible to talk about the nature of mythic wisdom. The Fifth Doctor serial “Snakedance” (1983) and its prequel “Kinda” (1982) are extremely rich, relying heavily on Buddhist imagery and ideas of the unconscious. These serials reveal the importance of respecting ancient wisdom.

  The Mara is an evil snake-like creature that possesses the minds of its victims. In “Snakedance,” the Mara manipulates the Doctor’s companion, Tegan, to trick the Doctor into bringing it and her to the planet Manussa. Five hundred years earlier, the Federation had defeated the Mara. The battle in which the Mara was banished back to the unconscious has attained the status of myth and is now recreated in ritual. However, over the five hundred years, the power of the mythical Mara ritual has lost its strength and the people of Manussa seem morally weak. The Director of Historical Research, Ambril, dismisses the importance of the ancient rituals, particularly the value of the ancient Snakedance. He’s revealed to be a greedy, selfish researcher who’ll do anything to advance his career. The prince of Manussa, Lon, is lazy and decadent. Souvenir sellers and crowds of curious tourists drain the sacred aura from the rituals.

  Throughout the story, the Doctor critiques this decadence and shows that the ancients may know more than they’re given credit for. In one scene, Ambril mocks the ancient religion because an old headdress, which ostensibly represents the six heads of delusion, only has five heads on it. The Doctor has Ambril wear the headdress, pointing out that when the headdress is worn, the wearer becomes the sixth head of delusion.

  The Doctor saves the day by seeking out Dojjen, the former Director of Historical Research who left his position to learn the truth of the ancient customs. Rejecting the decadence of the society around him, he studies the meditative practice of the Snakedance that has the power to resist the Mara. Dojjen teaches the Snakedance to the Doctor, who uses it to destroy the Mara. The Doctor provides something of a scientific account of the ritual. However, it’s not really technology that wins the day. The Doctor overcomes the Mara because he has the mental ability, unclouded by moral depravity. The ancient mythical wisdom saves the society from decadence. Myth has the positive force to reject the temptations of selfishness and see the world clearly.

  In contrast to “Meglos,” mythical thought in “Snakedance” isn’t just a binding force. Mythical thought contains a positive wisdom that can maintain the health of a civilization. Further, science can sometimes lead to its own sort of decadence by encouraging greed and the selfish quest for knowledge over social responsibility. This contrast makes one consider whether myth is more or less liberating than science.

  The Doctor at the Walls of Troy

  The Doctor may be seen as a symbol of science and its limits. Sometimes the Doctor can do whatever he wants, defying what seems consistent with the laws of science, other times he seems bound by them. In the Second Doctor serial, “The Invasion” (1968), the Doctor prevents a Cyberman invasion of contemporary Earth with no concern for the future time stream, thereby defying what might be “the laws of time.” Other times, the Doctor struggles to keep history consistent. For example, in the Fifth Doctor serial “The Visitation” (1982), the Doctor lets the great fire of London burn because it’s a historical fact. In the Tenth Doctor episode, “The Unicorn and the Wasp” (2007), the Doctor leaves Agatha Christie ignorant of what happened during her time of disappearance because that’s historical fact. In these cases, the Doctor seems limited by “the laws of time.”

  But what is it that limits the Doctor’s power? Is it that there are things he simply can’t do or things he can’t understand? There’s good reason to think the latter. In the Ninth Doctor episode “Father’s Day” (2005), Rose Tyler changes the course of time by saving her father’s life. This rupture in the time continuum causes winged, dragon-like creatures to attack Earth. When
asked about the creatures, the Doctor explains that the Time Lords used to prevent these creatures from attacking Earth, but this explanation is incomplete and unsatisfying.200 It seems that the Doctor’s knowledge of science is limited in that he really can’t grasp how time may be altered. The Doctor isn’t, in fact, all-knowing, and so it seems to be his own incomplete understanding of time that limits his power, rather than the laws of time.

  Another example where the Doctor is limited by his lack of scientific knowledge occurs in the First Doctor serial, “The Myth Makers” (1965).201 The Greeks capture the Doctor and threaten his life, if he doesn’t help them infiltrate Troy. His companion, Steven, tells the Doctor the obvious choice is to invent the Trojan Horse. The Doctor refuses because he actually doesn’t think it will work. Instead, he introduces a more technologically advanced scheme involving flying machines carrying Greeks over the Trojan Walls. The Doctor’s prototype fails; his knowledge of science can’t resolve the situation the way he wants. Out of ideas, he must instead go along with the “proper” course of history, and invent the Trojan Horse. The Doctor is unable to change the past simply because he doesn’t have the appropriate scientific knowledge to arrive at a different solution.