Terror of the Time Lord

Terror of the Autons. As far as introductions for an excellent enemy go, this has to be one of the poorest. It's up there with The Daleks as the worst intro for a returning villain ever. I'm not kidding. This story is boring.

So this'll be a "short" post. I'd much rather write about more interesting episodes.

The Arrival of the Master

The arrival of the Master is heralded by one of the few interesting things in the episode: a Time Lord appearing out of nowhere, in mid-air, to warn the Doctor. And then a bomb that is placed in the most supervillain-esque way possible rigged up to a door. 

Side Note: A few things about the Master

The Master is a renegade Time Lord, like the Doctor. He has a more advanced degree from the Time Lord Academy than the Doctor (and yet a Doctorate is higher than a Masters degree. He he.) He has a tissue compression device, which never appears again that shrinks people into dolls. Yes, that's right. I mean, talk about a creative weapon. He has a beard of evil, dresses in black, plants obvious bombs, kills people with demon dolls, and his TARDIS has a working chameleon circuit and is a better model than Sexy.

Roger Delgado's Master, ladies and gentlemen. 

Now, we won't question how Time Lords can float in mid-air or time travel without TARDISes (because that's honestly not an issue for an insanely powerful species like the Time Lords) but we should be questioning why the Time Lords don't do something about the Master's presence on earth. 

Useless Time Lords

The Time Lords serve as the origin story for the Doctor. Even the Time Lord who appears in Terror of the Autons only appears to deliver so backstory about the Doctor and the Master, and to explain that the Doctor didn't do so well in school. (Where did I hear the figure 51% on his second try?).

The problem, though, with a species that exists to be an awesome origin story is that if the species is going to continue to exist, they have to continue to be awesome. Otherwise you get plot-holes galore. 

The non-intervention of the Time Lords is a problem in two stories this season: this one and Colony in Space. 

In this story, a Time Lord shows up to warn the Doctor about the Master, and then leaves without doing anything about it. Now, clearly this isn't the fault of the Time Lords no caring enough about the Doctor to help him (they came to warn him). Nor is it the fault of the Time Lords' non-intervention policy (the Master is a Time Lord, therefore they're not intervening in anything). So why do they sit there and do nothing?

Remember The War Games? At the end of that one, the Time Lords freeze time, send everyone back to their own time periods, and capture the Doctor. Easily. Like, they don't even have to work at it. So why can't the Time Lords just time-scoop the Master out of wherever he is and put him in some cell in the citadel? Or dematerialize him, like they did to the War Lord. 

There's no reason. The Time Lords are just sitting there and doing nothing for no reason. Because they can. Because they're too lazy. Because, well, who the hell knows? They're all too busying trying to get more regenerations or break into Rassilon's tomb, maybe. 

In Colony in Space, the Time Lords send the Doctor out to the planet to stop the Master from getting his hands on a--um--well--a superweapon that seems awfully like the Hand of Omega (in fairness, we knew about neither the Hand of Omega nor the Moment at this point in time). He's going to get his hands on a superweapon that can destroy stars that he will use to ransom the galaxy and they're like, "Well, maybe we'll send some other renegade who we happen to like picking on to go try to stop him. Never mind about the fact that we can scoop people out of time and it would save everyone the trouble and stress." That's not just lazy, that stupid and possibly suicidal. There is absolutely no reason for them to not use their technology to intervene here. 

The Moment

There's no getting around this one. The Time Lords are a plot hole. They simply are. Their existence means that the Doctor should never have to fight the Master, and we know that that's not true. 

So what do we do about this?

Nothing. RTD did it for us. Burn Gallifrey and turn them into a memory, like a proper origin story should be. An extinct race can be infinitely more powerful than a living one.

Now, obviously killing off an entire species is not a way to solve your problems in-show. But from a meta point of view, this is actually the best option. It's horrible that the Doctor killed 2.47 billion children and his entire species when he used the Moment, but it's wonderful that Russel T. Davies killed off the Time Lords. 

Total event collapse! Every star
will supernova. Every moment in
history will  never have happened!

Think of how many stories in NuWho wouldn't have worked had the Time Lords been alive, because they would have stepped in. The Stolen Earth/Journey's End (universal destruction), The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (total event collapse), The Wedding of River Song (death of time), The Name of the Doctor (destruction of the universe, massive temporal retcon). And that isn't counting the ones that use the non-existence of the Time Lords for emotional drama or as a cheap excuse to make travel between parallel worlds impossible.

A universe with Time Lords is a safe universe. A safe universe doesn't need the Doctor. 

Gallifrey Falls No More

Moving forward, what does this mean? If the existence of the Time Lords is a plot hole, what now?

Gallifrey has un-fallen (or never fell at all, depending on what you believe). The Time Lords are calling through cracks in the universe from another. What happens when they come back?

There is only one option for dealing with the existence of Time Lords. And that's to move away from timey-wimey plots and Time Lord villains.

Timey-wimey plots (at least those I'm refering to here) rely on the fact that time itself is in danger or being altered in some way that it shouldn't be. The War Games, City of Death, Father's Day, The Last of the Time Lords, Time Crash, The Big Bang, The Wedding of River Song, The Name of the Doctor, The Time of the Doctor. Only the first and last involve the intervention of the Time Lords, and in both cases the intervention immediately solves the main problem of the plot (how to stop the war games and how the Doctor will save Christmas and survive respectively). All the other ones never would have happened if there were Time Lords. 

Time Lord villains rely on the fact that the Time Lords don't keep control of their own. Terror of the Autons (and all Delgado Master stories), The Three Doctors, The Brain of Morbius, The Deadly Assassin, Invasion of Time, Keeper of Traken (and all Ainley Master stories), Arc of Infinity, The Twin Dilemma, Mark of the Rani, Trial of a Time Lord, Time and the Rani, Doctor Who (Roberts Master), Utopia, The Sound of Drums, The Last of the Time Lords, The End of Time, The Day of the Doctor, The Time of the Doctor. Plenty of these have explanations (Three Doctors was a genuine case of "we can't handle this" as was Deadly Assassin, Invasion of Time, Trial, Day and Time of the Doctor. End of Time had the Time Lords as the villains). But most Master and Rani stories are simply down to the Plot Hole of the Time Lords. 

You can bring the Time Lords back, but it's at a cost of certain types of stories. Or the logic of the plot. 

Shall we hope that they remain firmly in their pocket universe for quite some time?

Season 8 Preview

Well, I'm on the last serial of Season 8 right now, and I think I've got my new topic for this season.

Time Lords. Each story in this season, rather than focusing on how humans mess things up, deals with the implications of Time Lord(s) meddling in history. I'm referring, of course, to the schemes of the Master.

A Little Preview for Each:

TERROR OF THE AUTONS

Meet the Master. Renegade Time Lord, the Doctor's ex-boyfriend, hypnotic, and the only one with a working TARDIS.

Focuses: History of the Doctor and Master, the Time Lords' effect on the plot

MIND OF EVIL

Well, there's a reason the Doctor/Master ship exists. Also, many parallels with NuWho. And anyone else find that machine really cool and scary?

Focuses: Me gushing over how this is my favorite Pertwee-Era episode, Worst Fears, the Doctor/Master relationship.

CLAWS OF AXOS

Aliens who have BAFTA faces. The Master's first JOIN ME speech. The danger of human greed subverted. Stunningly bad American accents.

Focuses: The beginning of Jo's anti-usefulness, Time Lord relationship with earth (contrasting the Doctor and the Master) and the Master's join-me's throughout Season 8.

COLONY IN SPACE

Time Lords. Superweapons that aren't as awesome as the Moment. Higher species. Crony capitalism like around 1900, but IN SPACE. People-colonizing-other-planets-but-don't-even-have-smartphones-to-take-pictures-for-evidence.

Focuses: In-depth analysis of the Doctor and Master's TARDISes, Time Lords and higher beings in relation to morality level as wells, ruling the universe for good and the Time Lord non-intervention policy, superweapons of the Whoniverse, the dated-ness of sci-fi, I could write a whole series of posts on this one.

THE DAEMONS

Well, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm excited to find out.

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..."

The Doctor Cleans Up After Stupid and Greedy Humans, Part 2

EEEEEEERRRWW-TWAAANG!

Can I just stop right here and say that there has never been a seven-part story as non-boring and filler-less as Ambassadors of Death?

Nonstop, nail-biting, amazing-ness. A great mystery, tons of action and excitement, basically out and out awesomeness.

Human Diplomacy

The human race has once again managed to create a global destruction level diplomatic crisis with another species, this time over the capture of a few diplomats by an insane general.

You'd think that an all-out war over this general's friend being killed and three ambassadors being kidnapped would be a bit of overkill, but...well...look at history. World War 1, if you need a really big example. This is exactly that kind of thing that starts wars for humans, and these aliens, at least, seem no different.

We're just about average. Well, more like
the median. I mean, the Dalek brings down
the average quite a lot. 

Is it any consolation that we as the human race really don't stand out among the universe in terms of how horrible we are? We're like, average horribleness, as opposed to super-horribleness (the Cybermen), unreasonable horribleness (the Sontarans), or universal-destruction horribleness (the Daleks). We suck, but we suck in a way that is somewhat understandable and still allows us to do incredible good.

This idea of average horribleness is one that I'd like to discuss with this episode. (Yes, that is the technical term. Average horribleness.)

Our Aliens

Sirius Black wants his line back.

Human beings are complicated. We're diverse. We've got light and dark inside of us, and its the part we choose to act on that shows...no wait, that's Harry Potter. But the point is, we have a lot of different types of people who see the world in very different ways.

For the most part, aliens are simple. They're monsters or kindly helpers. They're homogeneous groups of rubber faced people who all have the same purpose. Time Lords exist to watch over time; Daleks exist to exterminate; Cybermen exist to Upgrade; the Nestene Consciousness exists to invade.

Aliens often represent certain facets of human society if they're sentient, or parts of the animal world if they are not. I've heard it said that the Daleks are like Nazis, and that the Cybermen are Communists. I'm not sure the analogy is perfect, but I see where people are coming from. We base our fictional characters on what we see in the real world, so aliens will always be simplified versions of humans.

Sutekh wants to know our location from
galactic zero center. 

But when an alien species is not simple, what do they become? If a simplified version of a human is no longer simplified, it is simply a human. So the more complex and diverse an alien race becomes, the more human they become.

We are not just average horribleness. We are the point from which all horribleness and goodness emanates. We are galactic zero center in the species morality galaxy, the star from which all the rightness and wrongness exploded to form the planets that are our good and evil aliens. We have to be average, because we base everything on ourselves, extrapolating goodness from the best of us and evil from the worst.

Astronauts and Diplomats

The aliens in Ambassadors of Death are not evil. They are not even mean. They provide the astronauts they have captured with a nice place to live, and a virtual reality that will keep them happy until they are returned to earth. They are willing to negotiate with the Doctor when he lands on their ship.

But they also threaten to blow up the earth if their ambassadors are not returned.

Would not humans do exactly the same thing? Imagine Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in this situation. Some alien has captured the Doctor, Liz, and, I don't know, Sargent Benton. He would sure threaten to blow up those aliens if his people weren't returned.

Stupid and Greedy Humans

I said that this series was the Doctor cleaning up after stupid and greedy humans. And it is.

But there's one more thing to add while we're talking about humans being average. The Doctor is a Time Lord, better than us, helping us fix our mistakes. He's better than us, and helps us primitives be better people.

Actually, no. That's how it seems; that's not how it is.

I mean, only two of them voted against
the Final Sanction. TWO!

Let's look at the Time Lords. The Doctor may be better than us, but not because of his species. As cool as the Time Lords are, as much as they are my favorite species ever (and have the best and most magical technology and the most badass characters and powers), they are not better than humans.

Let's all agree to forget it ever
happened.

Time Lords are complicated and diverse, and they may even tend towards the lesser side of the horribleness continuum that humans are the center of. They watch the universe and don't even try to stop the evil in it (The War Games); they, well, let's not talk about The Deadly Assassin because they're basically a bunch of stupid old men in that who are as human as it gets (and it makes me very angry, though strangely I did enjoy watching that serial); they even hit a point where they're up with the Daleks at universe-destroying evil (The End of Time, The Night of the Doctor). But they've also got 2.47 billion innocent children, good people like Romana and the Woman, and they're capable of being reasonable (like the tribunal in The War Games). 

The Doctor cleans up after stupid and greedy humans because the Doctor is the Doctor. Because he (and I know this is sort of a retcon) is the man that makes people better, never cruel or cowardly. There's a reason this mad alien is our hero, and it's not because his species is better than ours; it's because he can be a model for how we should be.

Ambassadors of Death

What? You thought I forgot that I was supposed to be reviewing an episode, not waxing phony-philosophical about the morality of the human race?

Ambassadors of Death is simply a good story. There are many turn around, the mystery keeps up the whole time, until it's finally revealed that the general is behind it all, and the peril is very exciting.

I particularly like that the Doctor, who is used to traveling in the TARDIS, has to go up in a clunky, primitive, human spacecraft. And it almost kills him with G-forces because, of course, it gets sabotaged.

There are just so many wonderful moments in this story.

Awesome.

• The whole sequence where the Doctor goes into space. And the alien space ship. And the tense sabotage scene. And at the end of it when he gets gassed after making it back to earth.
• That wonderful little moment where they're interrogating that one man, and the Doctor yells at him something about standing at attention and calling him sir, and they use his response to figure out that he has a military background. It was just so brilliant of the Doctor. 
• The Ambassadors are also really cool, with their zappy powers. 
• That device the Doctor builds to communicate with the Ambassadors.
• Taltalian's death. I sort of expected it, but it was still really freaky when he got blown up by the time bomb.
• The Doctor going to shake hands with the Astronauts at the end, and then realizing that they kill with a touch of their hands. That seemed like something Eleven would do.
• The insanity of General Carrington. He was just nuts.

Basically, this is my favorite story of the Pertwee Era so far.


Inferno's awesome too, but it's majorly depressing, so this one still wins. But that's for Part 3. More human problems for the Doctor to clean up.