Tag: opinion

The Illness of Doctor Who

There has been much discussion of the ending of the BBC television series Doctor Who. Nobody knows what its future will be, even if it has a future. Everybody seems to have some opinion about what went wrong. Since I fit in the category of “everybody” I have an opinion as well.

Disney Didn’t Help

The joint venture of Disney with the BBC for Doctor Who did not help anything. I admit I don’t know any of the backend details, but there did seem to be some Disney-like characteristics. For example, franchises like the Marvel comic universe had their movies build and build into a crescendo until the story grew so big that there wasn’t anywhere to go afterward. Since then, there haven’t been many Marvel movies.

We can feel that in some parts of the later Who series. I don’t know if this was a Disney influence or if it started some time before and Disney encouraged it. But this sort of growth was seen in the Timeless Child

God of the Timelords

Before the Timeless Child story arc, the Doctor was just a particularly clever and well-intentioned member of the Timelord social class on the planet Gallifrey. For story purposes, this made the character a standard trickster who went around defeating enemies by being clever.

With the Timeless Child, that no longer applies. Now, the Gallifreyans are just a scientifically advanced group of normal humanoids and the Doctor is a godling from who-knows-where from whom they stole a power. The Doctor is no longer just the trickster Gallifreyan who ran off to do good in the universe.

Now, with a much more important character, the enemies have to be made larger as well. The stakes have to be far more extreme. They had to have the Doctor’s perennial enemy the Master convert all the Gallifreyans to Cybermen, leaving the Doctor to destroy them. It couldn’t stop there, though.

With the Flux, the threat had to start eating up the entire universe. When your main character becomes a god, the existential threats must be cosmic in nature. There is just no way to go back to the old storylines because you no longer have the old characters.

Even then, this added far more incarnations of the Doctor, such as the Fugitive Doctor and Garda. So many times we’ve seen somebody gather up “all” the versions of the Doctor, such as the Five Doctors special, and completely miss the “bio scan” results for those countless others.

Is There Hope?

As an opinionated fan, I have suggestions that could still fix the show, return to the previous glory, and get things rolling smoothly again. Much of this relies on the absolute deviousness of the Master.

Throughout the old and new series, there were many mentions of the Old Days of Gallifrey with many myths and mysteries. The concept of a Timeless Child who kept regenerating and was subject to unethical experiments at the hands of Tecteun (the supposed finder of the child). It is possible that this child was an anomaly created by proximity to the Time Vortex that shows up in so much Timelord lore. It is also possible that this is the source of the Timelord ability to regenerate. It does not have to be the Doctor.

It would be easy to imagine the Master using the ancient myth to mess with the Doctor to convince the Doctor that they are the Child. Given the Doctor’s mental state so long after the Time War, this is plausible. The Master is the type to get another Doctor, through cloning or kidnapping a future incarnation, and hypnotizing them to think they are an earlier version.

Finding Gallifrey deserted, the Master could populate that world with Cybermen augmented enough to register as Timelords. All of this could then be used to create a situation where the Doctor, who really doesn’t want to be alone any more, must destroy what remains of the Gallifreyans, even if they are modified. The absolute despair of such a choice would be excruciating for the lonely do-gooder.

All it would take would be to run into another Timelord, one from Gallifrey, who tells the Doctor how they abandoned their world due to some threat and were seeking another. They weren’t on Gallifrey when the Master did the Cyber conversion. They are all fine and out in the universe.

This would put the Doctor on a new path, as their original self, to help the Timelords, defeat the Master and those who helped, and still spend time meandering around getting into trouble.

Still Special

If you want the Doctor to still be special, that’s easy too. Back in the Key to Time series of the Tom Baker days, the lore established the existence of the Black Guardian and the White Guardian. The Doctor defeated the Black Guardian and was pursued for a while until another defeat.

It would be easy to extrapolate that the White Guardian has been guiding or otherwise interfering with the Doctor to do good things in the universe. This still lets you think of the Doctor as a “chosen one” without needing them to be an actual god in the story.

Advice for Charles

Like any good American, I have plenty of opinions on matters I know very little about. In accordance with long standing tradition, I feel very comfortable communicating those opinions to everybody whether they want to hear about them or not. Now that he’s had time to get settled in, I have my advice for His Royal Highness, King Charles III of the United Kingdom.

First, there is the context. Not too long ago, the European Union grew strong. They built power both economically and militarily. The strength came predominantly from the three leading nations: Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. This was a bother to other powers such as Russia and China.

One could easily find issues with those three leading nations. France tends to be politically unstable, changing their ruling coalitions regularly, and they have done this for a very long time. Germany itself didn’t become a single country until 1871 and it spent a good part of the twentieth century split in two. The only truly stable part of that three-legged stool was Britain.

The Brits have been ruled by the same family for the past thousand years. Even their civil wars just decided which branch of the family got to sit on the throne. That is a type of longevity not matched by other European nations. On top of that, the late Elizabeth II was queen for so long that most people only knew her as the monarch. Again, this is an extraordinary type of stability.

It’s for this reason that foreign powers encouraged the rabble rousing that led to Brexit, the British split from the European Union. It was easy enough to find manipulable UK leaders to go along with the idea, and the general populace are always willing to vote against the status quo, even if they are being lied to. With this, the European Union weakened, and the UK faced many new problems, many of them economic.

The new Brexit-related problems are not the only issues in Britain. High urban crime rates, especially among the youth, is a big issue. Some of that involves unemployment and other economic problems. There is a large immigrant community that is not integrating well into the tiny island nation. Generally, they are suffering the same issues as most other modern western nations.

What Does That Have to Do with the King?

Due to the lateness of his coronation, Charles is unlikely to rule for as long as his mother; sorry to sound morbid. She was able to be that beacon of stability not just in Britain, but to much of the western world. Even anti-monarch types knew exactly where they stood. Charles won’t be able to build that stability, even though the stability is important.

Humans like stability. As children, we need a stable home life to grow up healthy. As adults, we need our anchors in the sea of chaos, so we turn to “trusted” institutions, even if we only trust them to be there. The British monarchy and Queen Elizabeth provided that anchor to many, again, even if they didn’t like it.

But Charles can’t do that.

What can he do instead? He can take advantage of his position to be disruptive.

As a constitutional monarch, his official powers are limited. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have influence over how things go. By pressing certain issues, he can bring things to the political and social forefront and get them discussed. His words (and wealth) carry weight that few can match. He can direct this power toward things that are needed but may be unpopular or would make political enemies.

For example, the high youth crime and high unemployment could be addressed through mandatory military service. Many countries have this and it seems to work well. Provide a few reasonable exemptions (doing well in school, sole provider, etc.) and send every sixteen-year-old to training and service. Plenty of places in the world could use the British military humanitarian aid, so there are things for these swelled ranks to do. For an island nation, putting more of their population on ships frees up a lot of space.

As for the large number of immigrants, many of whom are of the undocumented kind, make some new requirements. For example, each must swear to place British law above all other laws (including Sharia law). Make sure each has a plan to integrate into British society through education and work, with regular check-ins to assure progress. Tie this progress to not being deported. This processing creates new jobs.

Crack down on outside foreign influence in politics. Make it so that persons, such as the Brexit advocates, must declare any support they are getting from outside sources. Failing to do so makes that person a foreign operative and a criminal subject to prosecution. That would be fun to watch.

There are probably countless other needed but unpopular changes to push. As an opinionated but poorly informed outsider, I wouldn’t know all of them, but the idea is clear. Find the fixes that are harsh and abrupt and push for them to shake things up and fix what can be fixed.

How Does This Help Stability?

Every so often, you need to do a good shakeup to get rid of all the settled crap. There is nothing stable about that. You take out the rug, beat it until everything is out that is going to come out, and you leave it to hang in the sun and breeze for a little bit. Then, however, you take it back in and place it back on the floor where it will stay for a long time.

That’s the thought here. As mentioned, Charles, sadly. will not have the long, stable reign of his mother. However, his son might.

William, the Prince of Wales, is still young. If he gets to the throne soon enough, he can have a long, peaceful life as the ruling monarch. Following the patterns of his grandmother, he could help maintain that lighthouse of stability for quite a while. It would help if many of the more serious problems of Britain were addressed before he took his seat.

This is where Charles can pave the way. He can make use of his time to beat the rug and get rid of as many issues as he can as fast and as harshly as he can. Then, William can ascend to the throne with a freshly aired out rug at his feet, ready for many years of peace and stability.

If they don’t already have this sort of thing in their handbook, it really should be. The same family has been ruling for quite a while, so they seem to know how to keep that going. It’s not just something for royal families, every leader should understand the importance of stability and the occasional, necessary shakeup.

Why Should Outsiders Care?

As mentioned, there is a stability that comes from the setup in Britain. It is an anchor in western Europe that helps maintain order. All commerce, agriculture, and political discourse relies on that order for progress, even if it slows things down sometimes. The fact that the enemies of the European Union chose to remove Britain in order to weaken the Union shows how important that is.

In the United States, we talk a lot about defeating the British and starting our own nation. Despite that, we have maintained a strong connection, both politically and culturally. When Charles was crowned, many in the U. S. took note, even if it was to complain about it. There was an impact. Again, the long history provides structure to an otherwise chaotic life.

A stable Britain helps maintain a more stable world. For the U. S., it is our jumping off point into Europe. For the western Europeans, it is the cousin they can always complain about, but still remember as strong. For the eastern powers, Britain’s stability is a threat.

So that is why I offer up this advice. His Highness will never see it and it would have no actual impact on the world. Like so many, I’m just shouting into the void of the Internet to get the thoughts out of my head. Still, now the thought is out and I have no control over where it goes. May the winds catch its sails and take it wherever.