The Doctor Cleans Up After Stupid and Greedy Humans, Part 3

And I turned around, and they were all
wearing eye patches.

There are so many brilliant things about Inferno. The parallel world is incredibly well done, the stakes are very real (I did not expect that the world would actually end), and it's all quite scary.

But what does it have to do with stupid and greedy humans?

This time, it's humans being unable to deal with our own technology that's the problem. We have reached the point, in this story, where we have the technology to wipe ourselves out, but we don't have the technology to realize that we're going to wipe ourselves out.

I speak, of course, of the drilling project. Unlimited sources of power, they said. And yet all it did was overrun the earth with lava.

What message does this send about the human race, that the Doctor has to be the one to stop us from destroying ourselves? We haven't just messed up relations with aliens. This time, we've just come inches from completely wiping out our own species without any help from aliens.

I think it's quite clear what it says about us, actually. We're not capable of handing technology over a certain level without outside intervention. Which is a fine point to make (and not true in the real world so far, let's hope it stays that way), but I'd like to look at it for it's implications on the Doctor Who universe.

The Necessity of the Doctor

Yup. That's going to be Capaldi's first episode title. Rassilon is mad; he wants his catchphrase back.

Anyway....

I'd like to start by not writing about the Doctor. I'd like to start with Torchwood, because I think Torchwood provides a great illustration of the point I'm about to make.

"Just this once, everybody dies! Especially Captain Jack. A lot."

There are four seasons of Torchwood: 1, 2, Children of Earth, and Miracle Day. The first two have the Torchwood team, headed by the amazing Captain Jack Harkness (who is basically a Doctor substitute, while the Doctor fills the role of absent god), fighting alien threats the come through the Cardiff rift almost every day. The city is overrun by these aliens, and it's all Torchwood can do to hold back the tide. 

You ever wonder what would happen if the Torchwood team stopped being there?

Well, we get to Children of Earth, and the team is down to three people. The first thing that happens is the Hub is destroyed, and they're basically on the run from the government. The whole alien invasion thing is going down with the 456, government leaders are engineering genocide while making sure their own children are exempt, and Peter Capaldi is...Peter Capaldi. But most of all, no one spares even a thought for the rift in Cardiff. The rift which hasn't suddenly sealed itself. It's still there. Aliens should be pouring into Cardiff by the time Jack and Gwen return there. 

But they aren't. Because that would ruin the plot, if the Torchwood team's existence, like it was in the previous two seasons, was the necessary band-aid to keep the rift from causing endless invasions. 

And then Miracle Day roles around and...well...there's no Torchwood anymore and everyone's gotten along just fine for a while. It doesn't make sense.

We don't want this problem to apply to the Doctor too. 

Now just imagine this is Twelve
and not John Frobisher. 

In fact, since I'm talking about Torchwood, I'd like to point out that the existence of organizations like Torchwood in NuWho (and to some extent UNIT in Classic Who) is the solution to this problem. The Doctor didn't appear in Children of Earth and send the 456 packing in under ten minutes (which, if he had shown up, is exactly what he would have done). Torchwood dealt with it. UNIT monitors alien activity and tries (though they aren't quite as successful) to eliminate threats.

The Doctor has the be able to come and go from earth as he pleases without the earth's continued existence being threatened every time he leaves. The Doctor is not the guardian angel of earth. He is some traveler who happens to like our planet and saves it from threats when he happens to find them. We cannot have the existence of the  Doctor be necessary for the existence of earth.

Side Note: Actually, I'd say that as long as the invasion of aliens is not a constant or certain thing on earth (a it is in Cardiff at the rift in Torchwood), it's acceptable that we need the Doctor to save us every time an alien invades. The TARDIS tends to bring the Doctor to earth when he's needed, and as long as it's not that often, we can have the Doctor save us every time. As long as these are freak occurrences and not some problem built into our species or our planet.

But when humans become incapable of dealing with our own problems without alien (the Doctor's) intervention, then we do start to rely on the Doctor for our continued existence. The Doctor might as well settle down on earth like he did on Trenzalore and save our asses every ten minutes, because we can't handle our own technology. 

Time Lords + Silence

But that's not how Doctor Who works. The Doctor wanders around and gets into trouble; he doesn't set out to save worlds. His retirement on Trenzalore being the exception, and for a very unique reason. 

Inferno shows us using our own technology to end our world. The Doctor stops it. By NuWho standards, the end of the world should have been a fixed point in time, because it's wasn't the result of alien intervention that the Doctor had to stop. 

The Show is Ruined Forever and Terrance Dicks/Barry Letts/Don Houghton Must Go!!

Well, that's what we say nowadays, isn't it?

No, the fact that Inferno creates this world in which humans need the Doctor does not mean that the show is ruined. Or even that this is, in fact a problem.

Several factors that make the situation unique can be used to handwave it away, or if you like, you can sit back and accept that the human race need the Doctor. 

Handwaves:

1. This is a unique situation. Inferno would not happen again in the Doctor Who universe. There will never be another situation in which we would destroy ourselves without the Doctor's help when no menaced by an outside force. 
2. This technically involves aliens.Those lava monsters could as aliens if the Silurians do. Therefore, it's not human incompetence that would have destroyed us, but monsters. Therefore, it's a normal Doctor Who situation and nothing to worry about.
3. We have moved on. Maybe in the 1970s we had a problem with technology that would wipe out our race without us knowing, but in the 2010s we have the monitoring equipment and communication technology to keep that from ever happening. We will still build things that can destroy us, but we will know the consequences of using them. Therefore, the Doctor was only absolutely needed on earth during his exile, when he was there all the time. The Time Lords knew when he would be needed and sent him to the right time period. The rest of the time, we don't need him.
4. We didn't actually need the Doctor. Time is a funny thing. There's a reason the Doctor coined the phrase timey-wimey. The fact that the Time Lords sent the Doctor to earth in this time period meant that he was going to become involved in events, but anything that he does become involved in would have, broadly speaking, happened the same way anyway had he not been involved. I would no recommend this view, as it makes the Doctor seem pointless and is worse than the actual problem we are trying to fix.

Acceptance:

You don't have to think that this is a problem. You can believe that we need the Doctor to keep coming back to earth all the time to save us from ourselves. In fact, there are plenty of good reasons to do so. 

And this pic is back!

1. Day of the Doctor. "Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up, never give in." Also, "You know the sound the TARDIS makes. That wheezing, groaning. That sound brings hope, wherever it goes, to anyone, however lost." The Doctor will always be there to save us, because the Doctor is the good man. (We discussed this in the previous post). As Steven Moffat says, "There will never come a time when we don't need a hero like the Doctor.
2. Torchwood. Think about how the Doctor is treated in Torchwood. He is practically a god. For a series that makes a big deal of there being nothing after death and life being meaningless, I can't help but feel that they actually do believe in a higher power. That higher power just happens to be an alien and travel in a police box. Every problem that Torchwood runs into, the Doctor could have solved in ten minutes. Particularly Children of Earth, when as the viewer, you are practically listening for the sound of the TARDIS because you are so desperate for him to come and save the world. Captain Jack even points at the sky when he talks about the  Doctor, invoking god-like imagery. There's nothing wrong with needed a god to save the world, right?

What do I personally think? Well, I hate the idea of the Doctor being a god, however well it works in Torchwood. And I don't like the idea of the Doctor being necessary to our survival, however able he is to discharge his duty. I also don't think that the Doctor has no impact on history and everything would have happened exactly the same way without him.

The idea of Inferno being a unique situation or actually involving aliens sort of avoids the problem, so I think the best bet is Option 3. We as humans still have the ability to destroy ourselves, but we know the consequences and can deal with it.

When we can't, the Doctor is there. (Like in The Lazarus Experiment) But it's on a case-by-case basis, not a problem embedded in our species. That means the Doctor can both be a hero who we need to help us through our darkest times, and not a band-aid on our problems. 

Win-win, right?

No, Doctor! There will be no win-win!

"Any moment now, he's a-coming."

"Who's coming?"

"He is usually referred to as the Master..."