Note: This piece is in response to Bryan Dyne and Christine Schofelt’s article for the World Socialist Website under the title “Doctor Who turns toward militarism.” We reported on the article Here and you can read the full text of the article Here
During the transmission of Series 8 a number of threads and Tweets were popping up online from those disgruntled at the new Doctor’s apparent anti-soldier stance. Those unhappy with such a perceived stance argued that whilst Tennant made the odd annoying quip about the military, Capaldi’s Doctor ups the anti by refusing to have a soldier as a companion and by his open hostility towards Danny Pink.
And yet this week The World Socialist Website, makes the counter allegation. The article makes the bold assertion that Steven Moffat has gradually turned the show into a pro-militaristic, pro-imperialistic piece of propaganda. To strengthen their case, the editors of the piece suggest that the Russell T. Davies era of the show was with a few exceptions anti-war.
If there an agenda, whether pro or anti war, how is it possible for two such contrasting opinions to coexist? Let’s examine the evidence.
Shortly before its transmission in December 2005, Russell T. Davies openly admitted that David Tennant’s opening story The Christmas Invasion would contain an explicit critique of the military. Speaking to a BBC news he asserted “It’s Christmas Day, a day of peace. There is absolutely an anti-war message because that’s what I think.” As it turned out, that message was hardly a pacifist one. Instead in one scene the UK prime-minister Harriet Jones sets herself apart from the US president, preferring a diplomatic approach to counter the threat of alien invasion. “He is not my boss and he is certainly not turning it into a war.” But by the end of the story and much to the Doctor’s chagrin, she takes the surprising option to blow up the Sycorax ship.
Harriet Jones receives her comeuppance from the Doctor when he sets into motion the chain of events leading to her downfall. The message is clear - the power of words can be greater than the power of the sword (A timely maxim to be reminded of after recent horrific events in Paris). And yet when Jones returns to die a martyrs death, there is no contrition or repentance for her previous decision, instead the viewer is moved towards a more sympathetic portrait of a leader who claims to have had no choice in the circumstances (The Stolen Earth). Jones is a hero regardless of the military decision she made, and the Doctor’s judgemental action is called into question. The revived series frequently breaks with the past by not always casting the Doctor by default as the one in the right. Here is an example of the viewer being given the option to side either way.
One of the stories that the socialist website cites as an example of the anti-military stance of the Russell T. Davies era was written by Steven Moffat, but the article chooses not to mention that inconvenient fact. In The Doctor Dances Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor transforms an arms warehouse into a banana plant. It is a theme of Steven Moffat that he will repeatedly return to in series five onwards. In Victory Of The Daleks the Eleventh Doctor uses a jammy dodger instead of a real weapon, several times Moffat’s episodes draw attention to the Doctor’s weapon of choice being a screwdriver and not a gun much to the amusement of his opponents.
The Tenth Doctor in School Reunion concedes he no longer has mercy and the Krillitines are wiped out. In The Family Of Blood he exacts some pretty horrendous punishments on the family. By contrast the Eleventh Doctor in his opening story scares away the Atraxi with nothing but the power of the tongue, instilling fear with his rhetoric. On another occasion, when he is tempted to lead a war criminal to his death (A Town Called Mercy), he is talked out of it by Amy who points out “this isn’t how we roll”. The Doctor like his Tenth persona in School Reunion has again had enough of being merciful. He reflects upon how his mercy has caused untold suffering to others, and yet Moffat stops short of having him go through with it. It is very easy to find examples of the Doctor showing himself to be more of a force for peace under Moffat than he was under Russell T. Davies.
Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor is the good man who goes to war – or is he? There is some ambiguity about whether or not that accolade applies to the Doctor or Rory. Amy is insistent that she will be rescued, but the man she has placed her trust in is in fact her husband. Later the song, A Good Man Goes To War clarifies that it is the Doctor who is also in view, but the words are filled with pathos. A far cry from glorifying any act of war, it presents the good man as a tragic hero who has paradoxically lost love and so much more in the process of winning:
“Demons Run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun, when a good man goes to war. Friendships die and true love lies, night will fall and the dark will rise when a good man goes to war. Demons run, but count the cost. The battle’s won but the child is lost.” Not only is Melody Pond literally lost by the end of the episode, but the goodness of the Doctor has been compromised. It is a very modern message - that there are no winners in war. The Doctor’s light has turned to darkness.”
The WSWS article refers to the Doctor amassing an army to rescue Amy, but overlooks one crucial fact. The Doctor’s army is made up of those who owe him a favour. Among the unlikely alliance is a Sontaran, bred for war, who the Doctor has made a nurse, a saviour of lives. The Doctor has the power and inclination to break the military conditioning even of a member of an alien species. Shortly after the poem is read O/S Rory tries to invigorate the dying Strax by reminding him that he is a warrior. Strax simply replies “I am a nurse” It is a reminder to Rory that he has made the reverse move from being a nurse to the Centurion. Like the Doctor he too is a tragic hero.
It is this dimension of the Doctor being a tragic hero that is picked up on in the WSWS article when the writers criticise the show for moving away from threats to humanity and the universe towards internalised threats against the Doctor himself. And yet this move is precisely why he is a completely different kind of hero from both a Superman, who supports and fights for the status quo and a Batman who is a vigilante, fighting violently against or apart from the system. The Doctor does not use physical powers to attack his opponents. A running joke in the Twelfth Doctor’s era is that his frame is slight, he is a matchstick man. A man who fights Robin Hood with a spoon is not military minded. He is the expert at putting himself down and in Time Heist we discover that the person who must hate him the most, the Architect, is of course himself.
The introspection of Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor is a more honest approach to the repeated denials of his three predecessors, whose anti-military stances are rooted in self loathing for what their predecessor did in the Time War. By asking “Am I a good man?” the Doctor is challenging his own moral code and coming to terms with the reality that he is neither good nor bad. The question is a red herring. The article suggests that for Moffat the Doctor is resigned to the need to commit atrocities. But the ending of Death In Heaven is quite different. He rejects the army that is offered to him. The salute to the Cyber-Brig is not a capitulation. It is a relational gesture, like a handshake – an acknowledgement of an old friend of whom in life he was too busy to regard. It is not an acceptance of military authority.
The imperialist mindset is one that uses control and subjugation as the go to response to opposition, whether from within or without. By contrast The Twelfth Doctor shares the approach of his previous incarnations in only using violence as a last resort. In Flatline his attempts at diplomacy fall on deaf ears and he expresses his frustration at having to label the Boneless and flush them out of this dimension.
Most surprisingly of all the article completely ignores the War Doctor. The introduction of John Hurt as an incarnation which the Doctor seeks to disown provided a real turning point to the direction of the program. The boldest move ever made in a show that has remained conservatively faithful to its roots. This Doctor is prepared to respond to suffering by obliterating both sides of the war, using the weapon of mass destruction, The Moment. But here again it is a last resort and the War Doctor has been in the struggle for many years. His war cry is eschatological, calling for the end game instead of glorying in the acts of war – “No More”. He takes no pleasure in torture, considering himself unworthy of the name The Doctor. His response is emotive, born of the same desire to see an end to suffering, but manifested differently in the twisted ethics of war. War is so anathema to him that in Night Of The Doctor he needed the assistance of the Sisterhood of Karn to manipulate his regeneration. This is the moment of capitulation, not the salute at the end of Series 8. And The Day Of The Doctor is the story of how the Doctor saved himself, and Gallifrey, from the consequences of his decision to take the cup in The Night Of The Doctor.
Series 8 saw a brief flashback to the War Doctor in the most introspective of episodes, Listen. It also featured the Doctor as a young boy, choosing not to take the career path of becoming a soldier. The broken toy soldier gifted to him by Clara becomes a metaphor for the true hero being one who does not require a gun. Not only does series 8 repeatedly remind us that the Doctor is hostile to the use of weapons (Into The Dalek, Kill The Moon) it goes far deeper by giving an explanation for the Doctor’s attitude, making it part of his essential character, one born out of his childhood and reinforced by his role in and reaction to the Time War.
The bulk of the WSWS article focuses on Death In Heaven as if that episode shows the full extent of a pro-military agenda. The Doctor’s lightbulb moment is this “I really didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. You lose sight sometimes. Thank you! I am not a good man! I am not a bad man. I am not a hero. And I’m definitely not a president. And no, I’m not an officer. Do you know what I am? I am an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver. Just passing through, helping out, learning. I don’t need an army. I never have, because I’ve got them. Always them. Because love, it’s not an emotion. Love is a promise.” It is Danny Pink’s love not as emotion but as commitment that saves the earth. And whilst an army of the dead rises to his command, the objects they will fight against are themselves the unnaturally born Cybermen, of no independent value unlike human enemies of human warfare. These Cybermen have no function other than to destroy. It is the enemy turning upon itself.
And yet the Doctor is faced with the expectation that he will have to kill Missy. That realisation means that even after Danny’s actions, Missy in the Doctor’s mind has still won. Once he shoots her he has been forced to be that bad man. He is let off the hook by the Cyber-Brig’s intervention but there is still a sense in which he has failed. Once again, in this series, perhaps more so under Moffat than any other, the Doctor does not always get it right. He is constantly placed in situations where he is forced to choose and as he says in Mummy On The Orient Express, very often there is no good choice. Ideologically it is hard to deny that the Doctor under both Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat is anti-military. But in a fallen universe where goodness is so often twisted and corrupted, even he is forced to do things that challenge his personal morality, and sometimes emotions get in the way. As a travelling Time Lord, not fully belonging to the civilisations he visits, he is able to maintain a critical distance, to be the idiot - the cynic who speaks and thinks from outside of the box. Danny Pink is right in that respect, such an approach keeps the Doctor’s hands clean whilst forcing others to get dirty. Neither intrinsically good, nor bad, the Doctor nonetheless creates good and bad consequences in others. Sometimes this means war.
