Anarchism in Doctor Who

[VoRus1]

So… This topic is inspired by another great thread by @realdoctor: But what does it all mean? Philosophical interpretations of Doctor Who

I recommend checking his (honestly amazing) work by yourself and in no way trying to interfere with his philosophical interpretations

This topic is perhaps even more ‘niche’ than his… All in all, I want to commit to writing at least 1 post a week here in which I will try to look at our favourite show from the anarchist position. I’m not saying that every Doctor is anarchist, but many of them are. I will try to give examples when Doctor Who feels very anarchist (spoiler - the first one disscused will be The War Games) and… not so much I love Jodie, 13th is my Doctor, as I already said in other threads, but Kerblam! is got to be properly analysed

So… Thank you! My next post is hopefully coming next week! Feel free to join me in this extremely anarchist interpretation of Doctor Who.

Personally I love the fact that I’m able to merge two of my passions: anarchism (I even had a school project that explored anarchist themes in works by Franz Kafka, Albert Camus and Leo Tolstoy, now I’m reading works by one of the founders of anarcho-feminism Emma Goldman) and Doctor Who (I don’t think I need to explain that too lol)

So, I guess… Goodbye for now!

[DontBlink]

@VoRus1

Kerblam! is got to be properly analysed

Kerblam! is, surprisingly, a favourite episode of mine, so interested to see your analysis!

[uss-genderprise]

Really looking forward to this.

[sircarolyn]

Excited to read your thoughts! I love it when people analyse DW

[felix]

i would love to hear more about this… kerblam! is so politically terrible to me (i lean underinformed communist) that it makes the episode irredeemable, i would be interested to hear an anarchist analysis.

[TARDIS32]

I find it to be a very politically confused story that fails to take any sort of stance in the end. It doesn’t seem to definitively say the Kerblam corporation is bad, but doesn’t really say it’s good either. They set up most of it as the boss man is the bad guy only to turn away from that, having him trying to solve all this and help. Charlie is shown as both right in that it will end up with fewer and fewer people able to find work the way it’s going and wrong in that he’s going to kill thousands of innocent people at the same time. “The system” seems to mainly refer to the computer system of Kerblam, which the Doctor says isn’t the problem, yet we see it decide to kill an innocent person to teach Charlie a lesson. They show that they will change things in a way that will allow more people to work, but show nothing to say that their conditions there will improve. There’s so much conflicting messaging throughout where it seems to be trying to have its cake and eat it too.

[realdoctor]

I love this thread. What a great idea, @VoRus1! I’ll certainly look forward to your analysis, to seeing the evolving conversation and to making my own contributions.

I agree that anarchism is a trait of the Doctors. As with philosophical leanings towards various schools that I explore in my other thread, some incarnations lean more heavily that way than others… but it’s always there to some degree. The second Doctor is an excellent starting point as he is, in my humble opinion, one of the most anarchistic and anarchic Doctors we have seen so far.

I shall also be interested to read your thoughts on Kerblam!. I wouldn’t claim that the story is perfect. Like @TARDIS32, I agree it comes across as confused in its messaging. That said, I also think it’s misunderstood and underrated. Specifically, the main story seems to me to be about the Doctor recognising the emergence of a new sentient AI and defending this emergent intelligence. This is a laudable aim in itself. The AI system, however, is far from perfect and does cause death. There’s plenty of mileage to be had here (end justifying the means etc. - which it absolutely doesn’t where Kira Arlo’s death is concerned). It is a shame that the story can also be read as a defence of huge corporations and the commodification of life is frustrating however. I focus more on the AI storyline which, to me, seems very Doctorish.

[VoRus1]

I want to say that I don’t hate Kerblam! It’s a good episode with solid directing and writing… But… There is something we can talk about in that episode

[realdoctor]

@VoRus1

I don’t hate Kerblam!

I don’t hate it at all. I enjoy it and there is some really good stuff in there, but some of it is skated over, some of it is oddly presented and the overriding apparent message (I don’t believe it’s what was intended, but it’s what comes across) is contrary to what we’d expect from the Doctor or the show. It’s ripe for analysis.

[TARDIS32]

Yeah. I think Kerblam is decent, just stumbles a bit in some ways.

[VoRus1]

It seems logical to begin an anarchist analysis of Doctor Who with The War Games, as this episode is as anti-authoritarian as it is anti-war. Our heroes find themselves at the centre of a vast conspiracy by an unnamed alien race who are abducting human soldiers from Earth to participate in said war games. All of this is overseen by the enigmatic War Chief, who is only the third renegade Time Lord (after the Doctor himself and the Monk) to appear in the show. The authority figures immediately emerge as the main antagonists. To combat them, the Doctor and companions team up with a resistance force that is fairly inclusive and includes strong-willed individuals from across time (in my opinion, this side of the story was sadly severely cut in the new colourisation)

In this episode the Time Lords are equally antagonistic authority figures to the Doctor and companions. They use their powers to erase the memories of Jamie and Zoe in what is quite possibly the most tragic companion departure in the classic show. The Time Lords’ decision to forcibly change the Doctor’s appearance is an obvious example of state abuse. Although they helped to right the wrongs of the War Lord, they still showed a complete lack of empathy

The War Games is a truly terrifying episode, as the Doctor encounters resistance from almost all sides of the conflict

[VoRus1]

Last week I wrote about a classic serial, so, naturally, now I will talk about modern Who. And the perfect place to start a discussion about anarchism in New Who is Series 1 which not only includes a direct reference to anarchists, but also fully embraces Ninth Doctor to be as anarchist as possible

I think I can confidently say that Christopher Eccleston’s version of the beloved character is a different one from the rest of the Doctors. While classic Doctors showed their ‘alienness’ by being eccentric and a little extravagant, this new Doctor shows his ‘alienness’ by just… being an ordinary bloke? I often think of the Ninth Doctor as the ‘People’s Doctor’ because of how unapologetically ‘ordinary’ he is. Anarchism is always about people first, and this Doctor, while being cold and rude, is nevertheless a Doctor who deeply cares about others

Series 1 in general leans towards left wing ideas, and this will be discussed later in this thread

The most notable example is perhaps The Long Game (a very underrated episode imo) which directly reference anarchism by featuring a character from an anarchist organisation Freedom Foundation. While satirizing media effect on humanity, this episode is also very blatant in its ideas. When being asked if “a slave a slave if he doesn’t know he’s enslaved?” the Doctor just answers “Yes”. And that’s one of the most anarchist and simultaneously humanistic things any Doctor has ever said

[VoRus1]

When talking about The Macra Terror, the best thing anyone could do is quote great Robert Shearman, who wrote the following in the book Running Through Corridors (I don’t have an actual book and copying this from the article The Anarchist Doctor Who by St John Karp, here’s the link, I truly recommend reading it by yourself as it is very insightful: The Anarchist Doctor Who):

[The Doctor] arrives in a place that is happy, and the first thing he does is seek out the one man who believes in monsters. And it isn’t with any fear, or out of a sense of concern, no — he listens to Medok’s tale about swarms of insects with eager glee. This is the anarchist Doctor, never in his element more than when he can be the fly in the ointment, the one man in an idyllic society who’ll find its weakness and bring it crashing down around everyone’s heads

This serial is often compred to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell because both of this works tell a story of paranoia and feature the concept of so-called ‘Big Brother’

This serial, just like The Long Game, provides viewers with yet another simple, but very characteristic line of the Doctor:

-Stop! You’re breaking the law!
-Bad laws were made to be broken

I think The Macra Terror solidifies itself as an ultimate proof of anarchist nature of Patric Throughton’s Second Doctor

[nyssaoftraken]

I really need to get my hands on Running Through Corridors!

[st4rshiptr00per]

LOVE this. Instantly reminded me of this bit of Paul Cornell’s Timewyrm: Revelation.

Cornell definitely deserves a place in this conversation, considering how frequently anarchism comes up by name in his writing, and in a positive light too.

[VoRus1]

I didn’t write anything last week, but now I’m back. So… Let’s look at one of the most controversial stories of Doctor Who (and one of the very best imo)

The Deadly Assasin is written by Robert Holmes during the time when he was the script editor. Producer of the show during that period of time is Philip Hinchcliffe. Their era is universally praised as one of the best eras of the whole show, so it would be odd of me to use a word ‘controversial’ to describe this serial, but it certainly was at the time!

Why? For the quite simple reason: showing Time Lords, The Doctor’s people (as it was thought at the time) to be, well… A group of highly corrupted people who were:

1. Not as powerful as it could be perceived in The War Games
2. Genuinely kinda of terrible bunch of guys

I would say that this episode is the first one which outright deconstruct the whole concept of Time Lords. Their authority is, to put it mildly, questionable, and it seems all they truly care about is the public vision of themselves

The Master and The Doctor, however, indeed make a difference. The Master is… Well, really terrible guy who can prolong their lifespan by pure hate, and The Doctor is the protagonist of the whole show (one of the rare examples of companion-lite story which uses the potential of that trope pretty marvelously)

And it was also an episode which was famously critisized by Mary Whitehouse, which is another great thing about it

[VoRus1]

Thank you! He is definently one of the strongest writers of Whoniverse and certainly deserves a place in this conversation as his work does indeed portray anarchism in a semi-positive light (if we can judge by the TARDIS.wiki). I, sadly, only read one book by him (I will try to read the others someday), but I just wanted to say that if you (or anybody reading this) wants to share their own thoughts about this topic and write about anarchist traits of the TV Show and Extended Universe - you are welcome! This topic is free for everyone

[VoRus1]

So, I’ve decided to alter frequency with which this thread will be updated. I realized that I can’t really make one post a week, so now it will be updated with new analysis every month (hopefully). However, I’ll try to compensate and write a larger essays than previous ones

And let’s look at one of my favourite serials of the whole show (maybe the best McCoy imo): The Happiness Patrol

This episode, which depicts how the Doctor and Ace literally destroy a totalitarian regime, is one of the most anarchist stories of the whole show. Again, there’s a great quote said by the Doctor that highlights revolutionary themes of the story:

I can hear the sound of empires toppling

When talking about this serial the mandatory thing to do is to remark on two aspects of the story: the way it satirized the conservative goverment of one Margaret Thatcher and the Queer subtext

Helene A, fanatic leader obsessed with eliminating unhappiness, was intended to be seen as a caricature of then prime minister

Andrew Cartmel, the script editor of the show at the time, said that he ‘was very angry about the social injustice in Britain under Thatcher’ - this open disapproval of the goverment’s actions is quite certainly something anarchists and left-wing people in general could find relatable. Sheila Hancock, the actress playing the villanous dictator, even expressed her hatred for Thatcher:

I hate Mrs Thatcher with a deep and venomous passion

1988 was also the year when the Conservative Party of Britain passed Clause 28, which banned so-called ‘promotion’ of homosexuality (a shameful law that however is still existing in many other countries) so the whole camp aesthetic of this episode can be seen as a deliberate appeal to marginalised queer people. After all, one character wears a pink triangle which was used as badge of shame and later reappropriated as a symbol of LGBTQIA+ community

Satire is an integral part of the resistance movement and this is a perfect example of utilising it to critique an oppressive government

I believe the subversive genius of this story is very apparent. When you try to use oppresive forse to ensure everyone’s happiness you are basically contradicting yourself. The whole serial argues that people should have a right to be unhappy. It is as essential as a right to protest. After all, happiness may prevail but it should be achieved by the society itself without deliberate push from the government