The Doctor's psychological limitations
Jun. 17th, 2007 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSomeone was complaining about Utopia. But what they were complaining about seemed to me to be part of the point. A side of the Doctor we get to see this season, how he's not always all that shiny but has these great big blind spots and flaws.
to have Jack's entire persona reduced to being wrong seems to me to be blinkered and narrow-minded of the Doctor in the extreme.
I figured that's the point. And Jack called him prejudiced, and the Doctor acknowledged that. Doctor been being wrong is the point.
Gallifrey reserved immortality as a punishment for those who aspired to too much power - see The Five Doctors. Their society was already full of the immensely long lived - if anyone got to be immortal... the Doctor is pretty clear on how he'd make a bad god, and he extended that to other Time Lords in this ep, they'd do bad things with it. And in a society that has the technology to go be bad gods or make themselves immortal or go back and bring their loved ones back from the dead there have to be other methods of control to stop them actually all doing it. Like strict taboos. Psychological barriers. Everyone thinking it's wrong.
Because otherwise any individual with the tech can tear apart the fabric of spacetime and/or their own society for their own convenience, and that kind of irritates everyone else. Makes it all chaos.
So it makes sense to me that Time Lords would have rules. And we've seen before the Doctor not going back to save someone because it would break the rules. So if he decides now he was wrong back then, he'd have to do some revising the inside of his head to make him able to live with it.
But the Doctor *blindly* following Time Lord rules would be new and opposite of improved, so I don't think that's so. I think we're just in the 'state the problem' stage of storytelling, like when we first met Jack and he was kind of a git. So this time the Doctor is the git and Jack is to teach him something.
And also, don't forget, Jack and the Master are both back at once. And what's the Master's abiding preoccupation? Immortality. Life. Extending his span beyond his alloted time. And look at all the ways and means he's used for it! Been a right bastard about it too. So that's the cultural background, that's the personal history, that's what trying to live forever means to the Doctor.
Jack isn't like that. But the Doctor hasn't been around him to see it, and he hasn't had to face his own prejudices while he was running from them. Like that bit where he lied to Martha about Gallifrey, sometimes he tells himself stories to make it All Okay. Bet he's got a story about this.
And he was always skating out on people. He just usually left them somewhere they wanted to be.
I'm not saying it's the only way to plausibly write him. Just that it seems plausible to me, and an interesting aspect to explore as a stated problem, as something he needs to fix about himself.
Now if they mess that up and just make him be a git then obviously badness ensues. So you never know. But I thought the point was sometimes the Doctor needs slapping, and it's his companions that have to do that.
ymmv
to have Jack's entire persona reduced to being wrong seems to me to be blinkered and narrow-minded of the Doctor in the extreme.
I figured that's the point. And Jack called him prejudiced, and the Doctor acknowledged that. Doctor been being wrong is the point.
Gallifrey reserved immortality as a punishment for those who aspired to too much power - see The Five Doctors. Their society was already full of the immensely long lived - if anyone got to be immortal... the Doctor is pretty clear on how he'd make a bad god, and he extended that to other Time Lords in this ep, they'd do bad things with it. And in a society that has the technology to go be bad gods or make themselves immortal or go back and bring their loved ones back from the dead there have to be other methods of control to stop them actually all doing it. Like strict taboos. Psychological barriers. Everyone thinking it's wrong.
Because otherwise any individual with the tech can tear apart the fabric of spacetime and/or their own society for their own convenience, and that kind of irritates everyone else. Makes it all chaos.
So it makes sense to me that Time Lords would have rules. And we've seen before the Doctor not going back to save someone because it would break the rules. So if he decides now he was wrong back then, he'd have to do some revising the inside of his head to make him able to live with it.
But the Doctor *blindly* following Time Lord rules would be new and opposite of improved, so I don't think that's so. I think we're just in the 'state the problem' stage of storytelling, like when we first met Jack and he was kind of a git. So this time the Doctor is the git and Jack is to teach him something.
And also, don't forget, Jack and the Master are both back at once. And what's the Master's abiding preoccupation? Immortality. Life. Extending his span beyond his alloted time. And look at all the ways and means he's used for it! Been a right bastard about it too. So that's the cultural background, that's the personal history, that's what trying to live forever means to the Doctor.
Jack isn't like that. But the Doctor hasn't been around him to see it, and he hasn't had to face his own prejudices while he was running from them. Like that bit where he lied to Martha about Gallifrey, sometimes he tells himself stories to make it All Okay. Bet he's got a story about this.
And he was always skating out on people. He just usually left them somewhere they wanted to be.
I'm not saying it's the only way to plausibly write him. Just that it seems plausible to me, and an interesting aspect to explore as a stated problem, as something he needs to fix about himself.
Now if they mess that up and just make him be a git then obviously badness ensues. So you never know. But I thought the point was sometimes the Doctor needs slapping, and it's his companions that have to do that.
ymmv