Doctor Chuck

[Darksider]

He (similarly) made a 'wrong' decision in Genesis, and during the Time War, and over and over during his life. Every time he chooses to be a killer he suffers, until in the Time War it basically drives him insane and he would rather be dead. You know all this... but can't get past 'but it's wrong I don't agree' and simply experience it.

I get what you're saying. The doctor set aside his carefully constructed moral code during the Time War. The desperate nature of the war forced him to push the metaphorical button once before and kill the Daleks, (and his own people, as we learn later) and it still didn't stop them, so from the Doctor's perspective, "coward" was the only reasonable choice to make.

All I said was that maybe, from an objective point of view, it wasn't the correct decision, even if it was right from the Doctor's, and the only decision he could have realistically made in that scenario. I'll give you the "daleks killing the galaxy" thing is an exaggeration, but these Daleks had just crushed the capital of the great and bountiful human empire like a particularly annoying insect, demonstrated an outright immunity to weapons that had been effective against them in the past, and slaughtered everyone that tried to fight them. At the end of the day, the Doctor's decision still leaves them as a threat, fully able to fulfill their only purpose and kill anything that isn't them. Obviously, from an out-of-universe perspective, we know that super-Rose is about to show up and take them down, but at the moment that the Doctor makes his choice, it really looks like this is the Dalek's final victory. I'm unclear as to how this viewpoint means that I did not "experience" the episode correctly.

[Stark]

I think that from an external perspective it almost certainly wasn't the right decision; but it was the right decision for him. This theme is so powerful in the first two seasons that in my fanfiction the Doctor didn't actually destroy the Time Lords at all, and his experience and loneliness were simply a purgatory, a test, for him to redeem himself from his abominable crime of genocide. Genesis can be viewed in this way; the Time Lords don't need to send a known hippy pacifist lunatic agitator to destroy the Daleks on Skaro. They could simply have sent a bomb instead. They didn't WANT the Daleks destroyed (not least for the amazing damage this would have done and the energy required to keep the time business stable) - what they wanted was to see if the Doctor would do it. It was a test and he almost failed in a way he flat out refused to fail in Parting of the Ways. When the TARDIS returned and he was redeemed by positive feelings rather than the negative ones he lived with, he should have been one step closer to rejoining the heavenly host.

But nah horrid EU of garbage means War Queen Of Time Lords so they're just like the Space UN and not literal untouchable gods for whom the greatest crime is ACTION.

[Darksider]

Whatever this fic of yours is, it certainly sounds better than the explanation of the Time War we actually got. The whole revelation that the Time Lords led by evil president bond were THE REAL THREAT ALL ALONG was just garbage. I get that davies was trying to make a comment about the viciousness of the war turning everyone involved into monster, but something like that is entirely beyond his ability to portray in a compelling manner


EDIT: Jesus. I posted that from my phone and it had a half-dozen spelling errors. I'm glad I caught it within the ten minute window.

[Stark]

Oh I didn't actually write it. I just think it's better than what we got conceptually, because the Doctor suffers and grows throughout the first few seasons and it would have made a lot of the shit finales better if the Time Lords stopped hiding themselves from him and said 'you did what was necessary but you did something almost unforgivable; you have atoned and you can come home'. And then all his hopeless arrogance and Time Lord pride might actually mean something, and maybe his character would be fundamentally changed by understanding that he was never a rebel from their staid society, but was in a thousand-year observed test to see if he could be trusted with the power. Of course he'd refuse it an continue his adventures, but he'd have had an emotional and philosophical epiphany.

Unlike most DW fans I don't view the Time Lord as fallible, or threatenable, or even really limited. They don't act because they're so powerful their every action has massive consequences, not because they're afraid the Daleks will sneak in on a disguised shuttle and kill all their policemen. Sending him in Genesis wasn't a SPACE CIA operation to stop those dastardly Daleks (something the Time Lords could trivially do themselves either directly or indirectly), but an operation given to the Doctor to find out if the concerns they had about his extremism were justified. They gave him a motive and the best target possible, and wanted to know if he was as dangerous as they perhaps feared, and he nearly was.

If you're going to have a show about non violence and pacifism, you have to actually show that non violence and pacficism is a valid choice, and not just lame shit like LET THEM GET AWAY TO COME BACK NEXT EPISODE.

EDIT don't make fun of me. maddoctor is allergic to capital letters and nobody cares, so yknow :V

[Darksider]

If you're going to have a show about non violence and pacifism, you have to actually show that non violence and pacficism is a valid choice, and not just lame shit like LET THEM GET AWAY TO COME BACK NEXT EPISODE.

EDIT don't make fun of me. maddoctor is allergic to capital letters and nobody cares, so yknow :V

Something that's always bugged me about Doctor Who is similar to what you're saying here. If you want to do a show with a recurring theme of pacifism/nonviolence, does that theme really hold up when you have a recurring enemy like the Daleks? I mean can a force like the Daleks be dealt with in a non-violent manner? They've tried to show that there is a possibility to change when they have Daleks turn away from their main philosophy through extraordinary circumstances, like the one in "Dalek" that started to change because of Rose's DNA, or Dalek Sek's attempts to evolve their species in "Evolution of the Daleks," and Dalek Caan's rejection of the Dalek philosophy in "Journey's end." But these are always isolated incidents that end in either the Dalek in question dying, or going completely insane. Like you said, they have to have the Daleks back as the big bad for the next two-parter, so they Doctor can't really find a way to change them, mind you, this also means that they can't be dealt with in a violent manner either. No matter how many times they get wiped out, the protagonists always have to miss one so they can survive to rebuild. I guess what i'm getting at is that at many points in the series, it seems to me like the only time the Daleks are going to be removed as a threat is when someone finally manages to genocide them without missing any. Regardless of how it fits with the Doctor's philosophy, no matter how much not killing is always the right choice from his perspective, the events of the show make it seem like violence is the only way the Daleks are ever going to be defeated, that there is no non-violent solution.

tl,dr version: Essentially whenever I watch the show, there's always this lingering question in my mind of "when the doctor makes his decisions based on his personal philosophy of non-violence, is it actually working to stop the bad guys in a permanent fashion? or is he just enabling them to come back later and kill more people."

[Stark]

Its pretty sad that the current show spent ages in Tennant's run presenting his attitude as one of basically moral cowardice. They set up enemies as 100% irredeemably bad and then had the Doctor not do anything about it until the last minute (and then slaughter then wholesale). That's why recurring villains are bad and especially 'super villans' like Daleks are bad - because they weaken the core idea that you don't have to kill people and blow shit up to solve problems and that sometimes killing people and blowing shit up creates problems.

If the show was a mystical journey, a kind of thirteen labours of doctor who, and he was actually shown living to a hard philosophy or standard because the alternative is go ape shit and become part of the problem, then it would have been possible to show that the important part was the struggle within the doctor's mind and that of his friends. The choices they make and the responsiblity they accept should have driven the show, but I'm not sure if this is possible without showing the results of poor decisions or negative philosophies. I don't think the show had a consistent message in that way (at least not when I actually watched it).

I mean fucking Gundam has a stronger message of non-violence than Doctor Who, and it's a show LITERALLY ABOUT VIOLENCE. Appalling.

[Havok]

Stark...

[Gandalf]

Its pretty sad that the current show spent ages in Tennant's run presenting his attitude as one of basically moral cowardice. They set up enemies as 100% irredeemably bad and then had the Doctor not do anything about it until the last minute (and then slaughter then wholesale). That's why recurring villains are bad and especially 'super villans' like Daleks are bad - because they weaken the core idea that you don't have to kill people and blow shit up to solve problems and that sometimes killing people and blowing shit up creates problems.

I could never work out whether it was deliberate to always have his companions (or locals) get him around the acts of killing. Rose disintegrated all of the Daleks in Parting of the Ways. In Doomsday they got thrown into the void with the Cybermen. In Daleks in Manhattan, angry locals killed Thay and Sec. Finally, in Journey's End the clone Doctor kills all of them with the help of Dalek Caan.

"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun, but this is the truth, Doctor; you take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor, you made this."

[HMS Sophia]

"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun, but this is the truth, Doctor; you take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor, you made this."

This quote is, I think, perfect. The doctor himself may avoid it at all costs, but he creates armies, leaders and soldiers without thinking about it. Rose was part of that dimension jumping outfit eventually, Martha travelled the world as something of a 'lone wanderer'. Amy, when time falls apart, is a major part of the anti-silence thingy... Maybe it is an accident, as he never seems to see quite how dangerous he is not just at the moment he is present, but with the impact he leaves on people after he is gone.
If it's not intentional subtext, then it's an accidentally brilliant one.

[Stark]

Brilliant at what? Brilliant at highlighting how broken the writing was? Brilliant at there being no theme? Brilliant at showing how terrible the attitude we'd continue getting for years was? Brilliant at distracting people from the presence of a 'kill all Daleks' button?

If all you want from a show is shit writing and then after years someone saying 'haha that's pretty bad' and then NOTHING CHANGING, then yeah I guess it's 'brilliant'.

It might have been 'brilliant' if the show about non violence didn't consistently end with acts of violence that are shown to be positive, too, but I'm just crazy. Maybe even INTENTIONAL tragedy, or consistent and meaningful personal struggle to meet difficult standards of behaviour to create a better future and not ROFFLE KILL ALL DALEKS.

I mean serious, fucking Gundam is better at this. Really, maybe Unicorn being better at the alleged message of Doctor Who (ps not actually the message) is why I stopped watching. Messianic figure with special abilities makes personal sacrifices to help people deal with hate and brutality? Nah, sonic screwdriver you die fucking alien scum.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Doctor has become a villain. This happened during Family of Blood at the latest, but the best example might be from Day of the Moon. The son of a bitch brainwashed the entire human race to make them commit genocide. And the Doctor doesn't even act like he's regretfully doing a horrible but necessary thing. He's boastful.

I think they should make it clear that the Doctor is now the villain and then have him be killed and regenerate into a new version who spends the next season trying to repair the damage he's done and atone.

[Stark]

That might require more self awareness and consistency than the roomful of monkeys they've got as writers at the moment. Where will you get the 'zany' 'jokes' then?

Maybe the Doctor just doesn't have the inner god called 'possibility' and isn't a catalyst for hope and reform. Luckily, there are other shows that do this stuff properly. Hell, fucking SBY 2199 has a stronger sense of the futility and tragedy of violence than Doctor Who, and that's just terrible.

[The Romulan Republic]

I agree that the current writers suck. If I had my way I'd fire Moffat. But I doubt he'll be fired because the show is successful. So I hope he decides to quit.

[Crazedwraith]

Chuck Does a Third Doctor Story: The Green Death

I think I saw a repeat of this when I was quite young. It scared the crap out of me.

[Havok]

The son of a bitch brainwashed the entire human race to make them commit genocide. And the Doctor doesn't even act like he's regretfully doing a horrible but necessary thing. He's boastful.

What a crock of shit.
The Doctor didn't say "hunt the fuckers down to the last" he made it so they see one they kill them. Cure for this? Get off of Earth and don't try to influence humans. He gave the humans the only defense mechanism that would work and as I explained in another thread, they were a conquering invasion force, but only showed up in places with tactical and strategic significance. Little kids aren't going to be killing anyone, it is going to be soldiers and cops that are tasked already with killing in defense of XYZ that will be doing what they would be doing on their own if they could.

Yeah 10 is pretty fucking bad when it comes to wiping out races, but this one isn't an example of that.

[The Romulan Republic]

If a civilian member of the Silence (if they exist) ran into a human, it would be killed. And its not just beating an invasion because members of the Silence will be killed anywhere in the universe that humans go (which in Doctor Who is a huge area).

Moreover, he took the free will of billions of people. Humanity wasn't liberated. It just had a new master.

You could try to argue that all of that was necessary. But what I saw was not someone regretfully doing a horrible thing because it was the only option. I saw the Doctor joking and boasting about it.

[Havok]

So instead of giving humanity the only defense possible, he should have just let the Silence continue to use them as slaves?
One option guarantees that humanity is forever enslaved.
The second option gives humanity back it's freedom/independence while allowing the Silence to live, they just have to avoid humanity.
The Doctor gave humanity a new survival instinct. It's as much brainwashing as convincing humans to run from an attacking lion or to find shelter when it rains.
He also warned the Silence about it, who after all were an invading force. They have the option to avoid getting killed.

[Crazedwraith]

Chuck really didn't like Fear Her

dull episode. Pretty dull review as well.

[Captain Seafort]

Chuck really didn't like Fear Her

dull episode. Pretty dull review as well.

Really? I thought the review was pretty good. Agree about the episode though.

[Crazedwraith]

Chuck has a review ofAslyum Of The Daleks and a video about the John Hurt Doctor.

Not watched the second because I stopped watching after the last christmas special. And Chuck is far kinder to the contrivances and stupidity of Asylum than I was. But hey opinionated. I do feel he spends an overly long time comparing RTD and Moffat though, especially since he more or less already did it in the Eleventh Doctor review.

[Ahriman238]

Eh, the John Hurt one is just a listing of the theories, and places in the continuity it makes sense to have him. The one about him being an older 2nd Doctor, at the end of that life makes surprising sense, but will never happen. The Time War Doctor seems most likely, or the Valeyard.

I do like the idea that he's a future Doctor Nine and Ten wouldn't recognize because they haven't met him yet, and Eleven knows that someday he'll be in the same situation and make the same choices. Not sure what could cause more self-loathing then the Time War though.