Tuesday 12 September 2017

Dr Who : Marxist or Suburban Rebel?

Hi All,

In which I'm objecting to the implication that portrays the Doctor as a golden child leftist Marxist revolutionary come Che Guevara poster boy .

So let one be a 'devil's advocate ' here :

The Doctor could equally be described as a paternalistic aristocratic "white man's burden" figure, although he never follows through with said paternalistic guidance . So maybe he's even a George Bush " neoconservative " , in so much as he might overthrow a tyranny and then be clueless as to what happens next, hoping they'll make "the right decision ".

You see the Doctor often does as" Pontius Pilate" and washes his hands of the post change " revolutionary " situation : episode two of the current series is a good example. The doctor sort of sorts the situation , but doesn't bother in trying to guide or help afterwards. We never see if the robots & human colonists make up and create a successful society or if in fact they cannot coexist and war or an apartheid happens and the doctor clearly stated "it's up to them" in some vague hope they'll come together via rational dialogue (even though this is counter to human experience) .

In the Sutcliffe episode we never see how exactly that wealth is used and how would Bill feel if that money had been in part "invested" in ( from a left wing viewpoint exploitative and wicked ) British Empire or buying the gilts to compensate the slave owners ?

In the latest episode we have no idea what happens when these big biz corporates are challenged. , e.g. it would it have created a "Lehman moment " i.e. a systematic economic crash and a bailout? That would've been a cool part 2.

But the thing is the Doctor never sticks around for the consequences. In some ways he is like a "frat boy" or an aristocratic Oxbridge student , who puts the soap suds in the fountain and vanishes , i.e. he never has to watch the consequences of his actions or policies.

In a way I do doff my cloth cap to Moffat for the previous season , where he does explore this via the character "me"....

Having said that I think that the Doctor isn't a socialist revolutionary or a neoconservative. I think politically he's a soft or small "l" liberal democrat or a blend of social democrat and classical John stuart Mill's liberalism....

So I'd like to see a spin-off series where we go and explore what happens after the revolutions the Doctor brings. ... it's one thing I've discovered in my life is that actions have consequences. But our lovely Dr who always seems to run away from those. Maybe one day he will be forced to confront those. When the time lords put the Doctor on trial, the charge shouldn't have been interference, but inference with neglect.

Discuss.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Defence policy is in Νεφελοκοκκυγία

 Hi All, Much to my delight I have learned something new today and that is that Cloud Cocko Land was first thought up by the ancient Greeks,...