Warning, this column has spoilers for Doctor Who season 4, including the two final episodes.
This year at WisCon, the feminist science fiction convention, I was on a panel called Martha Jones: Made of Awesome or Disappointing Stereotype? I had hoped we would explore the different fan reactions to the way the writers handled Martha’s character, story arcs, and race. The panel didn’t turn out as I expected, but something Chris Hill said sparked a thought. He mentioned feeling that the Doctor’s character was uneven–sometimes he’s incredibly cruel and judgmental and other times he’s compassionate and reluctant to do harm. My response was that I didn’t see this as unevenness, I saw it as purposeful part of his character. I truly feel, particularly after the events of Season 4, that the writers want us to think that the Doctor is a complicated and deeply flawed person. He is, to be blunt, a jerk.
The Doctor may not recognize this about himself, but judging from the interviews contained in the Doctor Who: Confidential episodes, the writers and the actor do. I’d go so far as to say that they expect the audience to feel this way, too. Not that they want the viewers to hate the Doctor, but to understand that, for all his running around the universe and time making things ‘better’, he isn’t always right. That’s what makes him such a great character and hero–he’s as flawed as we are and has just as much trouble admitting that to himself and others.
In Season 3, the Doctor sometimes acts horribly to Martha. Fans pointed out his propensity to yell at or speak harshly to her, his initial “just one trip” nonsense, and the complete thoughtlessness in bringing her to pre-WWI England (where her life would be far more complicated by her race) when he was hiding in “Human Nature”. In the last episode, he recognizes that but never verbally acknowledges it. It isn’t until Season 4 when he tells Donna how things went wrong with Martha and that it was all his fault that the viewers get solid confirmation that he understood that at all. Unfortunately, he didn’t say it to the person it affected.
He fixes Jack’s wristband so he can hop through time and teleport in “The Sound of Drums”, but in the end of season 3 (and again in season 4) he takes that ability away claiming that “I can’t have you running around with a teleporting time machine.” Why not, exactly? Why is the Doctor the only one allowed to travel through time at will? There he goes being a jerk again.
In the very first episode after the Doctor’s regeneration into #10 (David Tennant) he accuses Harriet Jones of committing genocide as if that’s something he would never do. We know better. Even Rose knows better, though she gives Harriet an evil look, too. And for a moment, even I was tisking her. But just for a moment.
My initial instinct to side with the Doctor (before realizing he was being a huge hypocrite) is probably shared with many viewers. He is, after all, the hero of the show. He, very often, is an exemplar of what we should aspire to–bravery, intelligence, compassion, willing to do and stand up for what is right. American audiences, especially, are used to feeling that whatever the hero/heroine or protagonist of a story feels is right and correct, the writers are saying we should also feel is right and correct. However, what if that wasn’t the case? What if, instead, the writers are presenting us with a character that we aren’t always meant to agree with? Perhaps I’m giving the Who team too much credit, but I think they are trying to create a character that has depth and flaws but is not all flaw and wrongness. That would be too easy and not nearly as interesting.
Look at the scene in “Journey’s End” (Season 4 finale) when Davros points out that the Doctor has turned all of his companions into weapons. “They’re trying to help,” the Doctor said, weakly defending himself, but he knew Davros was right. That countless people had died, sacrificed, and killed in his name. Yes, many of them were better people because of it. Rose realized a potential she might never have if not for her traveling; Jack was a coward and a con artist, now he’s a hero of a different mold; Martha was already going places, but her experiences opened up avenues she would never have known existed. But still, when Davros called him “the man who keeps running, never looking back, because he dare not. Out of shame,” he wasn’t wrong. When Russell T Davies wrote that, he wasn’t just creating some standard villain-speak. He was showing viewers the kind of character he (and the other creative team) created and saying: I meant to do that.
And even though the Doctor’s soul is laid bare by one of his greatest enemies so that he can’t help but face it, he keeps on being who he is. Doctor-clone has to go off to an alternate universe because “he’s too dangerous to be left on his own.” And who would know better? Passing judgment on himself is so meta, and yet oddly appropriate. It could be said that the Doctor was so tired of seeing the truths about himself that having a mirror of that around would have driven him off the deep end. But what he does next is, to many fans, inexcusable.
He takes away Donna’s memories of him and everything she’s done since she landed in the TARDIS on her wedding day in order to ’save’ her. And he does this against her stated will. No matter how much the Doctor might say that he did it for her own good so that she wouldn’t die, Donna said ‘no’ knowing that it meant her death. Anything was better, she felt, than going back to the way she was before. And the Doctor did it anyway. Because that’s the kind of man he is.
It was a selfish thing to do. And confirms that, despite everything else that happened in the episode, he would remain who he was: a wonderful, amazing, selfish, thoughtless man burdened by survivor’s guilt and crushing loneliness. The destroyer of worlds. It’s no excuse for acting like a jerk, sometimes, but it’s certainly a reason.
1 • Paul Jessup said:
July 17th, 2008 at 8:26 am, permalink
Of course he’s a jerk! I’ve been rewatching some of the old episodes, and he’s always been like that. Esp when it comes to his companions. Sometimes, I think he kept them around not out of loneliness, but as a tool to get what he wanted.
Esp with the original Daleks episode. He puts everyone in danger, just to get what he wants.
2 • Rachel Jessup said:
July 17th, 2008 at 1:15 pm, permalink
Thank-you for presenting such a refreshing angle of looking at the Doctor! The debates raging across message boards have either been condemning the Doctor for his actions, or trying to excuse them away (and I tended to fall into the second category, too). But regardless of whether the production team have intentionally moulded the character in this manner, or it was a happy accident, I think you’ve pinned it perfectly.
3 • la gringa said:
July 17th, 2008 at 2:10 pm, permalink
Martha Jones made my heart go pitter-patter. She’s pretty awesome. But so far I’ve really liked all the sidekicks. The casting has been spot-on.
4 • Moondancer Drake said:
July 17th, 2008 at 2:54 pm, permalink
I love Martha, though I admit I havn’t really like a Doctor since Baker besides the current one. Even so, even Baker’s Doctor could be a jerk. Baker just made him a charming jerk so you overlooked it. Maybe that’s why as much as I want to slap the current Doctor upside the head, I like him too. Weird, huh?
5 • Clint Harris said:
July 17th, 2008 at 3:32 pm, permalink
I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the other day and realized David Tennant was one of the main baddies revealed at the end. “Holy crap!” I thought. “The Doctor has really gone and done it this time!”
I don’t have much of an outlook on the sidekicks. K-9 was probably my favorite. The rest were just the outsiders to the Doctor’s…um…Doctoriness. In other words, they let us find a familiar friend in a virtually unfathomable universe. In a way, the sidekicks were always US!
6 • hologrammatical said:
July 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm, permalink
Ohhh, I do indeed agree! I love that you wrote an article about this because it’s been something I’ve been thinking about too! To me…The Doctor…(or..Ten especially, seeing as he and Nine are the two I’m most familiar with) is terrifying. He goes from happy and spastic to cold rage at the drop of a hat. He’s pretty darn inept when it comes to dealing with interpersonal relations and understanding emotions, both his own and those of other people…and I sort of love him for that. He can be a true asshat…but I’m glad that the show paints him that way…because sometimes…in a show where the main characters generally speak of him with awe and reverence…it’s good as a viewer to see him taken down a peg. It makes him a more relatable character, with real personality issues to deal with and work through. Just because he’s our hero doesn’t mean he’s always kind or honest or safe. And I appreciate that the show is willing to go there.
7 • Laura said:
July 17th, 2008 at 4:52 pm, permalink
I agree that they are portraying the Doctor as a flawed character who isn’t always right. He’s often selfish and emotionally insensitive. However:
* The Doctor didn’t choose pre-WWI England in HN/FoB; the TARDIS did. The Doctor could have been more thoughtful in setting its parameters, but he didn’t choose that time period on purpose.
* The Doctor isn’t being that hypocritical in taking away Jack’s wristband. The Doctor can travel through time and space because he’s a Time Lord who understands which time lines can be changed and which must stay the same. Jack doesn’t have that knowledge and could easily wreak havoc on the universe.
* he accuses Harriet Jones of committing genocide as if that’s something he would never do. We know better.
The difference is that the Doctor would only commit genocide as an absolute last resort, when it’s the only way to save others. Harriet Jones commits genocide on a race that has surrendered and is retreating. There’s a huge difference. I’d agree that he’s overly harsh in dealing with Harriet Jones, but it’s absurd to pretend that her pre-emptive strike is morally equivalent to his genocide-as-last-resort.
* As for Donna–he certainly could have brought up the topic earlier and discussed it with her. They were both avoiding it when they shouldn’t have. But do you honestly think death is better than being an average human being? Donna said “No, I want to stay,” not “No, I want to die.” And her brain was already misfiring; we have no way of knowing how mentally competent she was to make that decision. I simply cannot see the Doctor as wrong for not letting his best friend die. At least this way Donna has another chance of living her life, now with a mother who understands her daughter’s potential.
8 • Naamen said:
July 17th, 2008 at 6:23 pm, permalink
I don’t know if I think it’s intentionally done by the writers if only because I don’t give the Who writers much credit for such planning and nuance but I do think you hit the nail on the head. The Doctor is a jerk and whether it’s my design or chance people who’ve been fans far longer than I have say this is just the character of the Doctor and I believe it. I think a lot of his jerkiness stems from arrogance and insecurity, or arrogance born of insecurity. He believes he knows what is best for everyone despite their wishes because he can’t not believe he’s made the right choice…if that made sense.
You’ve also pointed out the three instances where I have truly hated the Doctor: #1 his treatment of Harriet Jones, #2 going back to pre-WWI England with a black woman and #3 taking Donna’s memories without her consent – seriously during that scene I was screaming at the screen “Non-Consensual! Non-Consensual!”
9 • Angel said:
July 18th, 2008 at 1:40 am, permalink
He was a seriously vicious little man at the very beginning of Classic Who, and he’s been a jackass to varying degrees ever since.
Persistent, vocal belief that he’s the smartest being in the room? Check. Genocide? Check. Hypocrisy? Yeah, a bit. Selfish use of others? I have one word for you: Seven. Seven was an evil little man.
Just the other day I was watching a Five story and there he is, shouting at his companion and dismissing her valid point and I thought “yep, that’s him all right. Jerk. [minutes later] This is a really good story…”
10 • Ide Cyan said:
July 18th, 2008 at 5:48 am, permalink
“The Doctor can travel through time and space because he’s a Time Lord who understands which time lines can be changed and which must stay the same.”
Yep, and if he never lets anyone else travel in time on their own, of COURSE they’ll never understand, because they’ll never be able to learn.
11 • Laura said:
July 18th, 2008 at 9:09 am, permalink
Yep, and if he never lets anyone else travel in time on their own, of COURSE they’ll never understand, because they’ll never be able to learn.
It’s been made pretty clear on the show that this is something sensed via an extra sense that only Time Lords have. We’ve never been given any indication that other species can learn it.
12 • Tempest said:
July 18th, 2008 at 9:55 am, permalink
So is he goig to take away time travel devices from everyone in the time agency?
13 • Evie said:
July 18th, 2008 at 10:08 am, permalink
I totally agree with your annalysis of the doctor, and I think that it has always been true of him, not just true of the recent doctors. The classic doctors were always a combination of the negative and positive aspects. He could be selfless in the way he faces danger to save people he barely knows, but he could just as easily be selfish and manipulative. The first doctor locked his own grandaughter out of the tardis and left without her when she developed feelings for someone. She was fairly young to be cut off from her only family to be with a guy she had met recently and she had also chosen to go back into the tardis rather than stay. He decided what was best for her and put it into practice without a moments thought for what she would choose to do herself.
I liked the way they re-introduced the 10th doctor to Jack at the end of the third series. The way Jack confronted him made the viewer stop and think about the doctors actions and attitudes. The doctor admitted to Jack that he abandoned him knowing full well he was alive and alone. The way that he always disables Jack’s time travel device reminds me of the way that the Time Lords stranded the third doctor on Earth. At that point the doctor’s tardis no longer worked and so he had to stay on Earth and help out with the various problems that Unit had to deal with. At that point he couldn’t just walk away at the end of each adventure without having to deal with the aftermath. However, here we can see how selfish he can be. He is constantly trying to fix the tardis and whenever he thinks it is about to work he tries to leave in it, despite the fact that it might be still in the middle of an adventure and the Earth is still in danger.
I personally really like the 10th doctor. I love the way the writers portray him, I love the greatness and the huge flaws. Although I was a little wary of Donna as a companion at first I rather like the way she constantly highlighted these flaws and made him face up to them. I enjoyed a companion who stood up to him rather than worshipping him with the doe eyed look that the last two had. I liked Rose and Martha a lot, but I loved the dynamic of a companion who doesn’t let the doctor get away with anything.
14 • Paul Jessup said:
July 18th, 2008 at 10:23 am, permalink
“The first doctor locked his own grandaughter out of the tardis and left without her when she developed feelings for someone. ”
She wasn’t actually his granddaughter though- she was a follow timelord who was disguised as his granddaughter while they were on earth.
You know, I’m starting to think the Doctor is a Social Path.
15 • Paul Jessup said:
July 18th, 2008 at 10:26 am, permalink
Sociopath is what I meant to say. He exhibits all the classic signs- charismatic, influential, power hungry, socially lovable, uses people for his own ends, has no concept of ethics (oh, that whole genocide thing isn’t really an ethical thing- he committed genocide on two races, the Time Lords and the Daleks during the time war, and now he doesn’t like genocide because he’s LONELY. Like most sociopaths, it all goes back to him)
16 • Evie said:
July 18th, 2008 at 11:26 am, permalink
While there are a lot of theories as to whether Susan was a Time Lady unrelated to the Doctor but adopted by him or whether she was in fact not a Time Lord at all there isn’t yet anything contradicting Susan and the Doctor’s statements that he is her grandfather. The theories on her being unrelated to the Doctor began in the 90s and not by people involved in the making of the television series. There have been Doctor Who novels and a radio play that have her as unrelated to the Doctor, but the novels aren’t cannon and sometimes contradict the direction the television series takes the Doctor. Other Doctor Who novels chose to keep her as the Doctor’s grandaughter. Every time she has been seen in the television series she has been presented as his grandaughter. The BBC’s official Doctor Who website, under the classic series section, describes her as his grandaughter too. Just like the Doctor very little history is given on her life or family previous to start of the series and perhaps at some point a future writer may decide to introduce information into the series saying that she was actually adopted.
Whether she was adopted or not, she was raised by the Doctor so it still seems cold to abandon her. Also, at the time that they wrote that episode the writers saw her as his actual grandaughter, so intended to write the Doctor as the kind of person who would leave his daughter stranded because he thought it was for her own good.
17 • Evie said:
July 18th, 2008 at 11:35 am, permalink
I forgot to say though, I agree with you on the doctor being a sociopath. There are times when he certainly looks like he might be.
18 • Paul Jessup said:
July 18th, 2008 at 12:21 pm, permalink
Evie-
I just pull my information from the official British Doctor Who magazine re: the doctor’s granddaughter
19 • Kay said:
September 21st, 2008 at 10:40 pm, permalink
Do a lot of sociopaths spend their lives saving everyone else, again and again? Come on. Even by the definition given above, the Doctor is not a sociopath. He’s not power-hungry — he has power, but he in no way wants to accumulate more. The power he has seems to be more than he wants. And he certainly has ethics, which he consistently displays by his efforts to come to peaceful resolutions avoiding loss of life and inspiring others to stand up and fight, to be heroes in their own right.
20 • tigtog said:
April 30th, 2009 at 7:06 pm, permalink
Why do you think that “power-hungry” is in some way diagnostic of sociopathy? It’s not even diagnostic of psychopathy in general, let alone sociopathy specifically. (There may be some common (but not universal) control-freak tendencies but they often operate at the micro-social level rather than the macro.)
You do know that there are many sociopaths out there who don’t know that they are sociopaths, right? They’re not power-hungry in any socially unacceptable way, they do “right” by the lights of their community and culture because they grok the manifold benefits of social approval, and that being an outlaw involves discomfort and risk. Simple risk/benefit analysis means they stay within social bounds.
Sociopaths just don’t find empathy and compassion compelling motivators in the same way as more neurotypical people. Unless they move outside the bounds of acceptably competitive behaviour they will never come to a psychologist’s attention to be analysed and written up.
21 • Heidi said:
December 4th, 2009 at 11:46 pm, permalink
Oh gosh, I’m reading this so late, but I agree with ALL of this. This is one of the reasons why I never warmed to the show. Alot of my friends are like “Isn’t he DREAMY?” and I would go “BAH! HE’S A BIG JERK!”
I’m glad other people agree!
Also, I feel like all these seemingly arbitrary moments of jerkdom could be explained by the fact that he’s a Time LORD, emphasis on the Lord. Like the Judeo-Christian God, he’s full of mysterious, seemingly unfair ways and plans for everyone else.