[essay] The Doctor and the Daleks/The Doctor and humanity.
Okay so. Dalek Weekend has passed. And this means that the people I thread with most regularly at the very least have seen a side of the Doctor that I have not until now been able to portray in camp. We had some of it with Davy Jones, but the Doctor doesn't have the same determination to destroy Davy Jones as he does the Daleks. There's a distinct difference. And, with Dalek weekend being over, and the Doctor's post-Dalek weekend threads in mind, I feel the need to go through a few things. The Doctor's detachment to the importance of his own existence when bearing his enemies in mind, for example. The Doctor and the Daleks, in general. And ... some other things I'll make up as I go along, which is why I'm a piss poor essay writer.
But. This entire essay is based around something that Shigure said to the Doctor last night, which is:
"It is good to know that destroying your enemies is more important than protecting your friends, Doctor."
To destroy his enemies, once, the Doctor destroyed his entire race. Let's talk about that a bit.
The Doctor and the Daleks
Bit of history does us all good. Right, now spanning all the way back through Old Who the Doctor's number one absolute nemesis was of course the Daleks. Now, for the uninformed, a dalek is a creature created - not born, just sort of pulped and sculpted and made - to cause pain, to kill without mercy, and to kill all other lifeforms in the universe other than the Dalek race itself. The Doctor was there at their genesis point on Skaro, with Sarah-Jane, in his fourth incarnation. I think. Yes. Anyway, their creator Davros is a bit of a fucked up individual, to say the least. The Doctor met him again, recently - the last event that occurred before his canon update, in fact - and at that point he'd recreated a Dalek empire out of his own flesh in order to remove the entire universe from existence. This is the kind of person we're dealing with, folks. So! The Daleks, no matter who their commander is - in New Who alone, we've had the Emperor Dalek, the Cult of Skaro, the Supreme Dalek, Davros himself of course - all they want to do is destroy. They want to kill things. And they go through a variety of fabulous ways of killing things.
Now. Let's talk about the Time War. I've talked about it before, here, and I believe when I talked about it before I was discussing why the Doctor didn't talk about his home planet, things like that. And when I was talking about that, I discussed the sacrifice the Doctor made in the Last Great Time War to destroy the Daleks - buy one get one free on genocide. To win the battle and kill the Daleks, the Doctor destroyed his own people. It's at once his greatest achievement and the most tragic part of his life, and the Ninth Doctor - the incarnation he held during, perhaps, and after the war - was possibly the most broken incarnation of the guy we've ever seen. But he's gotten better. How so? Through Rose, first of all. She is incomparably the biggest factor in the Ninth Doctor's development and cleansing. We get to the man who will destroy his own race to kill another to this:
"What are you, Doctor, coward or killer?"
"... Coward. Always."
Rose changes the Doctor, picks up the pieces. I am not saying this in any sort of romantic aspect - anyone who's talked to me about the Doctor for more than ten minutes will know I'm not a shipper. I don't ship the Doctor in particular with anyone. However, by the time the Ninth Doctor has regenerated into the Tenth Doctor, he's doing it for her. She has changed him irrevocably into what is undoubtedly a better person. He comments upon it himself, to her, in the S4 Finale (paraphrased, lol my memory):
"Look at him. He was born in the middle of war and brought up on rage, and he's just committed genocide. He's me, Rose, when you met me. And you made me better."
At the end of season four, the Doctor looks back at precisely what he was just an incarnation ago, understands his own faults, and with that in mind, gives the version of himself that is broken to Rose to heal. So, the Doctor has to an extent moved on from the Time War. But he will never move on from his hatred of the Daleks. And the problem with committing genocide on a race that are rather akin to cockroaches is that they just keep coming back up from the floorboards. They're never truly gone. There's always a reason, a loophole, an excuse for them to come back. But the Doctor's people, with the exception of the Master who is, in the Doctor's timeline, now deceased, are not coming back.
"They always survive, while I lose everything.
The Daleks always come back. The Time Lords don't. They are gone. With this in mind, the Doctor is seized with the urge to destroy the Daleks, to stop them from hurting anyone else. This is not just because they're horribly dangerous in my opinion! I dunno, this isn't necessarily mentioned in canon, so it's my own thought, but the Doctor wants to finish what he's done. The Daleks keep cropping back up, which means the Doctor feels honour-bound - duty-bound - like he owes it to the Time Lords, in fact - to finish what he'd begun. To destroy them properly, make sure they never trouble the universe again. It's vastly important to him. More important than his own existence - more important than the existences of other people. The Daleks must not be allowed to spread across the universe again, there must never be another occasion where another set of Time Wars would be required, because there's nobody left to fight them. Just the Doctor. The Oncoming Storm, whatever they call him - the man who destroys the Daleks. And he is perfectly prepared to do this until they are gone, because that immediately becomes exactly what he is for when they arrive.
And, to destroy them, the Doctor becomes a killer. He always gives the Daleks a choice to leave, of course, because that's in his nature. Everything deserves a chance. But he knows full well that their natures will never allow them to leave peacefully, just as his nature - as the person who has fully earned the title "Oncoming Storm" as named by the Daleks - will never let them go. In destroying the Daleks, over and over again, he is committing genocide over and over again. The Daleks reappearing, despite Rose's existence being a healing influence, is like picking at a scab that is trying to heal over. Pick, pick, pick. We can mention the existence of the Master as well, as having that effect, even though the Master is a Time Lord. And to destroy his enemies, he will use people if he has to. People he cares about, people he trusts. Like Jack. To destroy the Daleks, to stop the Master, if Jack has to shuffle off this mortal coil one of the many times he does, that's okay. This is post-S3 Doctor, the "Lonely God" persona. The Doctor decides when and if people are going to die, he believes himself to have that ability. He was unstable, of course, after losing Rose, and Martha, while doing a good job as his companion, made the mistake of falling in love with him. And through that mistake, she wasn't strong enough to keep up with his hubris. So throughout S3, the Doctor is a strident, distorting presence. Borderline suicidal, at that. It's okay, for him to throw himself into fatal danger, throughout S3. He has lost something, and through losing that, it doesn't matter so much if he loses everything else.
By the end of S3, when Martha leaves him, the Doctor has changed through loss. The Master has died - that hope of not being the last of the Time Lords anymore is extinguished again. The chance for a happier future is once again gone. It's all very sad, because season finales are never good to the Doctor. However! Right. Now let's talk about Donna, because we can't talk about how the Doctor changes unless we talk about her. She is the most constant, most positive and most affecting presence on the Doctor throughout the entirety of New Who. She continues to pull him up on his issues, she's forward and prevalent and always has an opinion, and most importantly of all, she understands what he means when he talks. She can translate roundabout "Doctor" language to her own plain talk. She is, to all intents and purposes, the perfect companion. She knows how to stop him, and when to stop him, and she is massively important to him.
By the middle of S4, if we compare Nine to Ten we have an immensely healthier character. He's not the smug creature of S2, or the suicidal one of S3. He is happy. The kind of happy where he knows he's not going to be truly happy, of course not, but he can say "I'm always alright" and genuinely think it is true. He is okay with his existence.
Then, of course, along come the Daleks. They always survive. And, of course, the Doctor, having found Rose, lets her go. And he has to lose Donna, to save her life. They return Donna back to the way she was when the Doctor met her, which is the most heartbreaking thing of all, because the two had grown by each other, and while he remained that developed character, she returned to the beginning, and would never remember all of the wonderful things she'd done. And by the end of Doctor Who S4, every single character had someone else. The Doctor was alone. Not to mention, he has realised precisely what he does to people. People grow, by the Doctor, but they grow into soldiers who will fight for his existence. And he doesn't want that.
And that is the character I recently updated to in Camp. In some ways, he's a lot better, and in some ways, he's a lot worse. And that is the character that did battle with the Daleks this weekend. Of course, a lot of the manner in which he acts now is my own character speculation. I can see some trip back to the Doctor of S3, the Doctor happy to throw himself into fatal situations if need-be, but with the Doctor of S4 still there, wanting to protect people, still more content than he was.
So. That leads us to the Daleks appearing in Camp. And this place is no different from anywhere else, and the Doctor's behaviour was no different to that which it would have been had he been anywhere else. The default mode is to protect people from them, to get rid of them before they can get rid of everything. And of course, there were more people around that he had a direct, personal connection with here than he would have normally in the two-part finale of Doctor Who. Usually it's the Doctor, his direct companions, against the monsters. This was a camp full of people that the Doctor knew. And with that in mind, his decision to die for his plan makes complete sense. The fatalistic aspect of him and the protective aspect were in agreement. His death via Ticky, naturally, was nothing to do with Ticky. And although he was protecting Jack, it was nothing to do with Jack. He just didn't want anybody else to die. He'd already seen Donna shot down, Rose shot down, Jack shot down. He didn't want any more of it, so standing between them was the best option.
Of course, once Ticky decided to pluck his heart out, plans changed. The Doctor's greatest aspect is the brilliant mind part. He simply formulated a plan around happenings that he knew had to occur, particularly when it looked as if Rabi and Rose would be in danger. Again, a unison of the fatalistic aspect and the protective aspect of him. And as long as they were safe, he was alright. And yes. He let it happen. But to be honest, it wasn't like he could do much about it anyway. Of course, once that had happened, the plan unfolded, he woke up, they got on with it.
Then, the second big characterisation event of the weekend happened. Instead of letting Rabi and Rose help him, he sent them on a nonsensical errand and went alone. Or at least, that was the plan. Aeris decided to put her foot down, and anyone who's read even one of their threads will know that he has problems saying no to her. But he shut Rabi and Rose out. Why? To protect them, of course. "They've done enough." The Daleks are the Doctor's problem. That's just how it is.
And all of this, of course, is leading to just how the Doctor relates to humanity. Humans are a surrogate family for the Doctor, it's identified by Sarah Jane by the end of season four. And the Doctor relates to them well as friends and companions. But when push comes to shove, there is a genuine sense of detachment. The Doctor needs humans, but he doesn't know he needs humans. He just thinks he wants to have them around. The Doctor wants to save humanity, to protect humanity, because it gives him a purpose, an absolution to strive for. If he saves one planet enough, he can forgive himself for destroying another. But the detachment between him and humans remains - he doesn't like being thought of as human, he doesn't like being counted among humanity, because to him he is something far beyond that. He understands the importance of a normal human being, but he would never be happy to be one. The Doctor is always going to be the older and wiser party, even to characters like Jack who are a) technically older than him and b) have seen nearly as much. He is alien. Different. And with that in mind, he will make decisions for people. He made the decision for Jack, to protect him from Ticky; made the decision for Rabi and Rose when he decided to send them away, to not allow them to go with him. That's how the Doctor functions, how he operates. Your opinions are very important to him until the crunch time, when he knows what has to happen, what he has to do, what comes next. The Doctor has fought Daleks time and time again, the scab that never stops getting picked, he understands how they operate, and therefore he knows the exact strengths and weaknesses in having companions to fight with. The last time he was on a Dalek ship with human beings, one of his friends was shot down. Having that happen again is not on his to-do list.
And this leads us back to Shigure. "It is good to know that destroying your enemies is more important than protecting your friends, Doctor." For Nine, this was entirely true, but it isn't true anymore. Defending the Earth - protecting people - is precisely as important, for the Doctor, as destroying the Daleks and completing the task he set for himself. Rose taught the Doctor better than to do it, and Donna taught him precisely when it's necessary and when it isn't. And the Doctor doesn't forget what people teach him, even if he ends up having to let them go.
Okay I could write so much more but god I am not spending an entire day on this THERE. HA.
But. This entire essay is based around something that Shigure said to the Doctor last night, which is:
"It is good to know that destroying your enemies is more important than protecting your friends, Doctor."
To destroy his enemies, once, the Doctor destroyed his entire race. Let's talk about that a bit.
The Doctor and the Daleks
Bit of history does us all good. Right, now spanning all the way back through Old Who the Doctor's number one absolute nemesis was of course the Daleks. Now, for the uninformed, a dalek is a creature created - not born, just sort of pulped and sculpted and made - to cause pain, to kill without mercy, and to kill all other lifeforms in the universe other than the Dalek race itself. The Doctor was there at their genesis point on Skaro, with Sarah-Jane, in his fourth incarnation. I think. Yes. Anyway, their creator Davros is a bit of a fucked up individual, to say the least. The Doctor met him again, recently - the last event that occurred before his canon update, in fact - and at that point he'd recreated a Dalek empire out of his own flesh in order to remove the entire universe from existence. This is the kind of person we're dealing with, folks. So! The Daleks, no matter who their commander is - in New Who alone, we've had the Emperor Dalek, the Cult of Skaro, the Supreme Dalek, Davros himself of course - all they want to do is destroy. They want to kill things. And they go through a variety of fabulous ways of killing things.
Now. Let's talk about the Time War. I've talked about it before, here, and I believe when I talked about it before I was discussing why the Doctor didn't talk about his home planet, things like that. And when I was talking about that, I discussed the sacrifice the Doctor made in the Last Great Time War to destroy the Daleks - buy one get one free on genocide. To win the battle and kill the Daleks, the Doctor destroyed his own people. It's at once his greatest achievement and the most tragic part of his life, and the Ninth Doctor - the incarnation he held during, perhaps, and after the war - was possibly the most broken incarnation of the guy we've ever seen. But he's gotten better. How so? Through Rose, first of all. She is incomparably the biggest factor in the Ninth Doctor's development and cleansing. We get to the man who will destroy his own race to kill another to this:
"What are you, Doctor, coward or killer?"
"... Coward. Always."
Rose changes the Doctor, picks up the pieces. I am not saying this in any sort of romantic aspect - anyone who's talked to me about the Doctor for more than ten minutes will know I'm not a shipper. I don't ship the Doctor in particular with anyone. However, by the time the Ninth Doctor has regenerated into the Tenth Doctor, he's doing it for her. She has changed him irrevocably into what is undoubtedly a better person. He comments upon it himself, to her, in the S4 Finale (paraphrased, lol my memory):
"Look at him. He was born in the middle of war and brought up on rage, and he's just committed genocide. He's me, Rose, when you met me. And you made me better."
At the end of season four, the Doctor looks back at precisely what he was just an incarnation ago, understands his own faults, and with that in mind, gives the version of himself that is broken to Rose to heal. So, the Doctor has to an extent moved on from the Time War. But he will never move on from his hatred of the Daleks. And the problem with committing genocide on a race that are rather akin to cockroaches is that they just keep coming back up from the floorboards. They're never truly gone. There's always a reason, a loophole, an excuse for them to come back. But the Doctor's people, with the exception of the Master who is, in the Doctor's timeline, now deceased, are not coming back.
"They always survive, while I lose everything.
The Daleks always come back. The Time Lords don't. They are gone. With this in mind, the Doctor is seized with the urge to destroy the Daleks, to stop them from hurting anyone else. This is not just because they're horribly dangerous in my opinion! I dunno, this isn't necessarily mentioned in canon, so it's my own thought, but the Doctor wants to finish what he's done. The Daleks keep cropping back up, which means the Doctor feels honour-bound - duty-bound - like he owes it to the Time Lords, in fact - to finish what he'd begun. To destroy them properly, make sure they never trouble the universe again. It's vastly important to him. More important than his own existence - more important than the existences of other people. The Daleks must not be allowed to spread across the universe again, there must never be another occasion where another set of Time Wars would be required, because there's nobody left to fight them. Just the Doctor. The Oncoming Storm, whatever they call him - the man who destroys the Daleks. And he is perfectly prepared to do this until they are gone, because that immediately becomes exactly what he is for when they arrive.
And, to destroy them, the Doctor becomes a killer. He always gives the Daleks a choice to leave, of course, because that's in his nature. Everything deserves a chance. But he knows full well that their natures will never allow them to leave peacefully, just as his nature - as the person who has fully earned the title "Oncoming Storm" as named by the Daleks - will never let them go. In destroying the Daleks, over and over again, he is committing genocide over and over again. The Daleks reappearing, despite Rose's existence being a healing influence, is like picking at a scab that is trying to heal over. Pick, pick, pick. We can mention the existence of the Master as well, as having that effect, even though the Master is a Time Lord. And to destroy his enemies, he will use people if he has to. People he cares about, people he trusts. Like Jack. To destroy the Daleks, to stop the Master, if Jack has to shuffle off this mortal coil one of the many times he does, that's okay. This is post-S3 Doctor, the "Lonely God" persona. The Doctor decides when and if people are going to die, he believes himself to have that ability. He was unstable, of course, after losing Rose, and Martha, while doing a good job as his companion, made the mistake of falling in love with him. And through that mistake, she wasn't strong enough to keep up with his hubris. So throughout S3, the Doctor is a strident, distorting presence. Borderline suicidal, at that. It's okay, for him to throw himself into fatal danger, throughout S3. He has lost something, and through losing that, it doesn't matter so much if he loses everything else.
By the end of S3, when Martha leaves him, the Doctor has changed through loss. The Master has died - that hope of not being the last of the Time Lords anymore is extinguished again. The chance for a happier future is once again gone. It's all very sad, because season finales are never good to the Doctor. However! Right. Now let's talk about Donna, because we can't talk about how the Doctor changes unless we talk about her. She is the most constant, most positive and most affecting presence on the Doctor throughout the entirety of New Who. She continues to pull him up on his issues, she's forward and prevalent and always has an opinion, and most importantly of all, she understands what he means when he talks. She can translate roundabout "Doctor" language to her own plain talk. She is, to all intents and purposes, the perfect companion. She knows how to stop him, and when to stop him, and she is massively important to him.
By the middle of S4, if we compare Nine to Ten we have an immensely healthier character. He's not the smug creature of S2, or the suicidal one of S3. He is happy. The kind of happy where he knows he's not going to be truly happy, of course not, but he can say "I'm always alright" and genuinely think it is true. He is okay with his existence.
Then, of course, along come the Daleks. They always survive. And, of course, the Doctor, having found Rose, lets her go. And he has to lose Donna, to save her life. They return Donna back to the way she was when the Doctor met her, which is the most heartbreaking thing of all, because the two had grown by each other, and while he remained that developed character, she returned to the beginning, and would never remember all of the wonderful things she'd done. And by the end of Doctor Who S4, every single character had someone else. The Doctor was alone. Not to mention, he has realised precisely what he does to people. People grow, by the Doctor, but they grow into soldiers who will fight for his existence. And he doesn't want that.
And that is the character I recently updated to in Camp. In some ways, he's a lot better, and in some ways, he's a lot worse. And that is the character that did battle with the Daleks this weekend. Of course, a lot of the manner in which he acts now is my own character speculation. I can see some trip back to the Doctor of S3, the Doctor happy to throw himself into fatal situations if need-be, but with the Doctor of S4 still there, wanting to protect people, still more content than he was.
So. That leads us to the Daleks appearing in Camp. And this place is no different from anywhere else, and the Doctor's behaviour was no different to that which it would have been had he been anywhere else. The default mode is to protect people from them, to get rid of them before they can get rid of everything. And of course, there were more people around that he had a direct, personal connection with here than he would have normally in the two-part finale of Doctor Who. Usually it's the Doctor, his direct companions, against the monsters. This was a camp full of people that the Doctor knew. And with that in mind, his decision to die for his plan makes complete sense. The fatalistic aspect of him and the protective aspect were in agreement. His death via Ticky, naturally, was nothing to do with Ticky. And although he was protecting Jack, it was nothing to do with Jack. He just didn't want anybody else to die. He'd already seen Donna shot down, Rose shot down, Jack shot down. He didn't want any more of it, so standing between them was the best option.
Of course, once Ticky decided to pluck his heart out, plans changed. The Doctor's greatest aspect is the brilliant mind part. He simply formulated a plan around happenings that he knew had to occur, particularly when it looked as if Rabi and Rose would be in danger. Again, a unison of the fatalistic aspect and the protective aspect of him. And as long as they were safe, he was alright. And yes. He let it happen. But to be honest, it wasn't like he could do much about it anyway. Of course, once that had happened, the plan unfolded, he woke up, they got on with it.
Then, the second big characterisation event of the weekend happened. Instead of letting Rabi and Rose help him, he sent them on a nonsensical errand and went alone. Or at least, that was the plan. Aeris decided to put her foot down, and anyone who's read even one of their threads will know that he has problems saying no to her. But he shut Rabi and Rose out. Why? To protect them, of course. "They've done enough." The Daleks are the Doctor's problem. That's just how it is.
And all of this, of course, is leading to just how the Doctor relates to humanity. Humans are a surrogate family for the Doctor, it's identified by Sarah Jane by the end of season four. And the Doctor relates to them well as friends and companions. But when push comes to shove, there is a genuine sense of detachment. The Doctor needs humans, but he doesn't know he needs humans. He just thinks he wants to have them around. The Doctor wants to save humanity, to protect humanity, because it gives him a purpose, an absolution to strive for. If he saves one planet enough, he can forgive himself for destroying another. But the detachment between him and humans remains - he doesn't like being thought of as human, he doesn't like being counted among humanity, because to him he is something far beyond that. He understands the importance of a normal human being, but he would never be happy to be one. The Doctor is always going to be the older and wiser party, even to characters like Jack who are a) technically older than him and b) have seen nearly as much. He is alien. Different. And with that in mind, he will make decisions for people. He made the decision for Jack, to protect him from Ticky; made the decision for Rabi and Rose when he decided to send them away, to not allow them to go with him. That's how the Doctor functions, how he operates. Your opinions are very important to him until the crunch time, when he knows what has to happen, what he has to do, what comes next. The Doctor has fought Daleks time and time again, the scab that never stops getting picked, he understands how they operate, and therefore he knows the exact strengths and weaknesses in having companions to fight with. The last time he was on a Dalek ship with human beings, one of his friends was shot down. Having that happen again is not on his to-do list.
And this leads us back to Shigure. "It is good to know that destroying your enemies is more important than protecting your friends, Doctor." For Nine, this was entirely true, but it isn't true anymore. Defending the Earth - protecting people - is precisely as important, for the Doctor, as destroying the Daleks and completing the task he set for himself. Rose taught the Doctor better than to do it, and Donna taught him precisely when it's necessary and when it isn't. And the Doctor doesn't forget what people teach him, even if he ends up having to let them go.
Okay I could write so much more but god I am not spending an entire day on this THERE. HA.