Fairytales, childhood and the re-conceptualization of Doctor Who
(some spoilers for The Beast Below)
"I was looking for something more, I don't know, something more Roald Dahl in a way, something madder and more, more fairytale. Fairytale is a very, very important tone for Doctor Who. Fairytales are the way we tell our children that there are people out there who might want to eat them. They are warnings in fantasy form of the reality and dangers of the world. When I say Doctor Who is a fairytale, I don't mean it's like a fairytale--I mean it literally is. Far more than it's a science fiction show, far more than it's an adventure show, it's a fairytale."
-- Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Confidential on The Beast Below
If I've ever conversed with you on Doctor Who, you're probably familiar with my love/hate relationship with the show. My main problem, as a subjective viewer, was that I saw potential in Doctor Who and wanted it to be something that it wasn't--at least, it hadn't been. Before the Russell T. Davies era, I had never heard of Doctor Who, so I am not a purist. And while I liked the Ninth Doctor's tenure, most of Ten's I could give or take, and not for reasons like how attractive David Tennant was or whether we'd see the Cybermen one more time. My problems were mostly related to theme, plotting, pacing and storytelling, the actors being only a part of that. Davies conceptualized Doctor Who as a melodrama, and I wasn't such a big fan of melodramas.
I'd loved Steven Moffat's work before he'd written episodes for Doctor Who. He's got a stellar track record, at least in my view--I now expect brilliance in his work and he delivers consistently. Having seen Coupling in its entirety a few years back and as a fan of the more recent Jekyll, I'd cheered to high heaven when Moffat was announced as the new showrunner. Not only had he written the best DW episodes so far, his ideas for the show really resonated with me. Because Doctor Who has been ingrained in science fiction and British culture for so long, I think everyone has different expectations and tastes for it. And it sounds absolutely ridiculous and egotistical putting it this way, but it feels as if Moffat heard every complaint I ever made about Doctor Who, and said, "just you wait!" When Moffat mentioned Roald Dahl and said he'd conceptualized Doctor Who as a fairytale, I started to think about just what features the new Who had that made me love it so much. It's very much attuned to my tastes, done in a way that I prefer.
For one, I love fantasy, and for two, I resent the Disneyfication of fairytales in popular culture. I love Disney, don't get me wrong, but I dislike how Moffat had to explain Doctor Who as a fairytale with a qualifier. Fairytales are creepy, uncanny, slightly unnerving warnings to children, and people who say the new Who has been so sexed up it no longer remains accessible to children, I'm thinking: what are you on? Because, as someone with a particular fascination with childhood and children's tales, I see it everywhere in the first two episodes of season five. Yes, Amy Pond works as a kissogram and owns nurse and french maid outfits, but doesn't that presuppose fantasy and imagination? It all began with the hugely imaginative Amelia Pond of the fairytale name, who spent years waiting for the Doctor, drawing, making up stories, play-acting and stitching dolls. And when the Doctor returns, she hasn't lost her sense of wonder even though she's been hardened by his absence.
This is why Amy Pond is such an important character in the new Who--because I see the series as being about the imagination and fantasy one felt in childhood, and not quite leaving that behind after becoming an adult. And discovering that you don't need to leave it behind. "I grew up," Amy tells the doctor when she's not sure about coming. "Oh I'll fix that," he retorts.
That's the point, isn't it? Doctor Who, the show full of endless possibilities? Any time, any place. Past, present, future, German Daleks, a galaxy far, far away, 18th century France, 1930s New York, Mars, England on a space ship. You meet historical figures, fictional ones, aliens, different aspects of yourself. It's a funfair, a playgound, a carnival. What drew me to Doctor Who was the fact that it could be anything at all, not bounded by time or space. It's a show that can constantly regenerate--and reconstitute itself--and always, always remain contemporary. That's the beauty of a show like Doctor Who... it lets your imagination run wild. So when Russell T. Davies kept reintroducing the same plot lines and the same villains, and kept bringing back former characters for sentimental value, I felt like it was disregarding all these possibilities for imaginative discovery.
With Moffat's Who, the Doctor is the vehicle for these discoveries... and dangers. Fear of the fantastic is the counterpoint to these imaginative worlds, where stuff might seem familiar... but isn't. And that's frightening and uncanny. Hell, Moffat is a master of the uncanny, and if I was better read on my Freud I'd write a whole paper on this. He can write fear into the mundane just by altering it slightly. How many fans of Doctor Who do a double take now when they see gas masks, squirm when they see frowny clowns, or refuse to watch Blink on Halloween? Fear of the dark--something just out of the corner of your eye--something that's there but isn't, or isn't but is--these games with my subconscious strikes more fear in me than the end of the universe for the thousandth time. I wouldn't be surprised if Moffat had an interest in psychoanalysis, because he plays on these fears by confronting the self, not external threats by the other. "Fairytale" is a perfect way to describe this genre, if we remembered the more sinister fairytales of old. These tales aren't only didactic (dear god, let's hope not), they're also full of moral ambiguity. Watching the doctor forced into a moral dilemma this week in the Beast Below reminded me of those tales, the times when you don't know what the right answer is, or if there even is a right answer. What do you do then? What do children do then?
That's why I loved The Beast Below. But this isn't the only episode focused on children, fantasy and imagination that Moffat has written. The Empty Child, Silence in the Library, all these episodes have similar themes, and that's why I like them best. The doctor has "put a lot of work" into earth, but he prefers not to intervene in times of trouble except on the behalf of innocents. And children, who unabashedly imagine and dream, who see the world without the shades of prejudice, who have an intuitive sense of right and wrong, make up a good part of those innocents. As an aside, I love the relationship Amy has with the Doctor, because it's so refreshing and different than what we saw with Rose, Martha and to some extent, Donna. I felt Donna was written as an explicit reaction against romantically-inclined companions. I think what Amy has with the Doctor is something so pure and untainted, something both simple and unfathomably complex as childhood friendship, compounded a million times by their circumstances. It's deeper than just unrequited (or requited) love.
Amy hasn't lost that imagination, wonder and love of fantasy, and I hope I never will. In five, fifteen or fifty years I'll still be blowing bubbles and chasing butterflies, I'll still read children's books and swing on the swings. I think that, for me, the boundaries between childhood and adulthood have always been blurred, since at a young age I was independent and full of initiative, and now I wonder about those carefree "childish things" I hadn't done. Then I realise, I can still do them, and I will do them. I'm an adult, sure, I'm not trapped in arrested development and I don't fear growing up. Because growing up doesn't mean I have to lose anything--I continue to gain insights and avenues into new worlds. If not literally, then in Moffat's Doctor Who.
"I was looking for something more, I don't know, something more Roald Dahl in a way, something madder and more, more fairytale. Fairytale is a very, very important tone for Doctor Who. Fairytales are the way we tell our children that there are people out there who might want to eat them. They are warnings in fantasy form of the reality and dangers of the world. When I say Doctor Who is a fairytale, I don't mean it's like a fairytale--I mean it literally is. Far more than it's a science fiction show, far more than it's an adventure show, it's a fairytale."
-- Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Confidential on The Beast Below
If I've ever conversed with you on Doctor Who, you're probably familiar with my love/hate relationship with the show. My main problem, as a subjective viewer, was that I saw potential in Doctor Who and wanted it to be something that it wasn't--at least, it hadn't been. Before the Russell T. Davies era, I had never heard of Doctor Who, so I am not a purist. And while I liked the Ninth Doctor's tenure, most of Ten's I could give or take, and not for reasons like how attractive David Tennant was or whether we'd see the Cybermen one more time. My problems were mostly related to theme, plotting, pacing and storytelling, the actors being only a part of that. Davies conceptualized Doctor Who as a melodrama, and I wasn't such a big fan of melodramas.
I'd loved Steven Moffat's work before he'd written episodes for Doctor Who. He's got a stellar track record, at least in my view--I now expect brilliance in his work and he delivers consistently. Having seen Coupling in its entirety a few years back and as a fan of the more recent Jekyll, I'd cheered to high heaven when Moffat was announced as the new showrunner. Not only had he written the best DW episodes so far, his ideas for the show really resonated with me. Because Doctor Who has been ingrained in science fiction and British culture for so long, I think everyone has different expectations and tastes for it. And it sounds absolutely ridiculous and egotistical putting it this way, but it feels as if Moffat heard every complaint I ever made about Doctor Who, and said, "just you wait!" When Moffat mentioned Roald Dahl and said he'd conceptualized Doctor Who as a fairytale, I started to think about just what features the new Who had that made me love it so much. It's very much attuned to my tastes, done in a way that I prefer.
For one, I love fantasy, and for two, I resent the Disneyfication of fairytales in popular culture. I love Disney, don't get me wrong, but I dislike how Moffat had to explain Doctor Who as a fairytale with a qualifier. Fairytales are creepy, uncanny, slightly unnerving warnings to children, and people who say the new Who has been so sexed up it no longer remains accessible to children, I'm thinking: what are you on? Because, as someone with a particular fascination with childhood and children's tales, I see it everywhere in the first two episodes of season five. Yes, Amy Pond works as a kissogram and owns nurse and french maid outfits, but doesn't that presuppose fantasy and imagination? It all began with the hugely imaginative Amelia Pond of the fairytale name, who spent years waiting for the Doctor, drawing, making up stories, play-acting and stitching dolls. And when the Doctor returns, she hasn't lost her sense of wonder even though she's been hardened by his absence.
This is why Amy Pond is such an important character in the new Who--because I see the series as being about the imagination and fantasy one felt in childhood, and not quite leaving that behind after becoming an adult. And discovering that you don't need to leave it behind. "I grew up," Amy tells the doctor when she's not sure about coming. "Oh I'll fix that," he retorts.
That's the point, isn't it? Doctor Who, the show full of endless possibilities? Any time, any place. Past, present, future, German Daleks, a galaxy far, far away, 18th century France, 1930s New York, Mars, England on a space ship. You meet historical figures, fictional ones, aliens, different aspects of yourself. It's a funfair, a playgound, a carnival. What drew me to Doctor Who was the fact that it could be anything at all, not bounded by time or space. It's a show that can constantly regenerate--and reconstitute itself--and always, always remain contemporary. That's the beauty of a show like Doctor Who... it lets your imagination run wild. So when Russell T. Davies kept reintroducing the same plot lines and the same villains, and kept bringing back former characters for sentimental value, I felt like it was disregarding all these possibilities for imaginative discovery.
With Moffat's Who, the Doctor is the vehicle for these discoveries... and dangers. Fear of the fantastic is the counterpoint to these imaginative worlds, where stuff might seem familiar... but isn't. And that's frightening and uncanny. Hell, Moffat is a master of the uncanny, and if I was better read on my Freud I'd write a whole paper on this. He can write fear into the mundane just by altering it slightly. How many fans of Doctor Who do a double take now when they see gas masks, squirm when they see frowny clowns, or refuse to watch Blink on Halloween? Fear of the dark--something just out of the corner of your eye--something that's there but isn't, or isn't but is--these games with my subconscious strikes more fear in me than the end of the universe for the thousandth time. I wouldn't be surprised if Moffat had an interest in psychoanalysis, because he plays on these fears by confronting the self, not external threats by the other. "Fairytale" is a perfect way to describe this genre, if we remembered the more sinister fairytales of old. These tales aren't only didactic (dear god, let's hope not), they're also full of moral ambiguity. Watching the doctor forced into a moral dilemma this week in the Beast Below reminded me of those tales, the times when you don't know what the right answer is, or if there even is a right answer. What do you do then? What do children do then?
That's why I loved The Beast Below. But this isn't the only episode focused on children, fantasy and imagination that Moffat has written. The Empty Child, Silence in the Library, all these episodes have similar themes, and that's why I like them best. The doctor has "put a lot of work" into earth, but he prefers not to intervene in times of trouble except on the behalf of innocents. And children, who unabashedly imagine and dream, who see the world without the shades of prejudice, who have an intuitive sense of right and wrong, make up a good part of those innocents. As an aside, I love the relationship Amy has with the Doctor, because it's so refreshing and different than what we saw with Rose, Martha and to some extent, Donna. I felt Donna was written as an explicit reaction against romantically-inclined companions. I think what Amy has with the Doctor is something so pure and untainted, something both simple and unfathomably complex as childhood friendship, compounded a million times by their circumstances. It's deeper than just unrequited (or requited) love.
Amy hasn't lost that imagination, wonder and love of fantasy, and I hope I never will. In five, fifteen or fifty years I'll still be blowing bubbles and chasing butterflies, I'll still read children's books and swing on the swings. I think that, for me, the boundaries between childhood and adulthood have always been blurred, since at a young age I was independent and full of initiative, and now I wonder about those carefree "childish things" I hadn't done. Then I realise, I can still do them, and I will do them. I'm an adult, sure, I'm not trapped in arrested development and I don't fear growing up. Because growing up doesn't mean I have to lose anything--I continue to gain insights and avenues into new worlds. If not literally, then in Moffat's Doctor Who.