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| He's the same man, always. |
So here comes a three part series of blog posts, because I think I've spotted the major theme of Season 7 - humans are really stupid. Well, not stupid. But greedy, selfish, mentally unstable, and generally a menace to the peace of the galaxy and incapable of any reasonable diplomatic relations with aliens. And the Doctor, that Time Lord exiled to our stupid planet, has to deal with our inability to handle our own affairs without blowing stuff up.
Doctor Who and the Silurians
I'll admit, the first few parts of this serial are dead dull. They just are. There's no getting around it. There are some monsters in some caves, and there's a nuclear power plant that's been having problems. Some people are getting mad, and there's this one guy whose been interacting with the monsters because he thinks he can get some technology from them. Oh, and UNIT is very unwanted in this plant because the guy who runs it believes that they'll ruin his operation (and he's right).
But other than that, it's all setup. It's seriously two hours of setup before we finally find out what the monsters are and stuff starts happening. And when it really gets interesting is when you start seeing how the humans are interacting with the Silurians, and all the different agendas that are going on that basically preclude any sort of peaceful contact. So I'll start with the anti-peace agendas on the humans' side.
Greedy, Incompetent Humans
The first of these is a guy named Quinn. Quinn has known about the Silurians for some time, and has been keeping one of them captive in order to threaten the Silurians into giving him secrets of technology.
That's literally all you need to know about his guy, and it says a lot about him, but it also says a lot about humans as a species. Think about how many times in Doctor Who (or really in any show or movie that includes an alien invasion) we have had these menacing monsters who invade or try to destroy earth just for its resources or because they're greedy. They never want our knowledge - they already have interstellar space travel, why would they need our knowledge or technology? - but they do want our stuff. Greed is greed no matter what you want. We have the Slitheen (a family, not even a species), the Sycorax, Max Capricorn (whatever species he is, something humanoid), even the Adipose to some extent. And there's lots more that want our planet or our people for their own gain (the Pyroviles, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Gelth). We look at these species, and if we saw one of them, we would assume that they were evil and going to be the villains of the story. Well, maybe not that Adipose, but never mind that. Some of these species are pure evil. The Cybermen certainly exist only to convert more people into them, and the Sontarans do nothing but wage war. But most species are not so homogeneous: the Slitheen were sentenced to death by the Raxicoricofalapatorian government, Max Capricorn was certainly a rogue element, and for all we know, the Gelth were a perfectly harmless species before the Time War messed them up.
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| I mean, seriously, how can you think of these things as evil? |
But we still think of them all as villainous species. What does that make humans? Our species abducts aliens for our own personal gain.
The next is the man who runs the power plant, Lawrence. All he wants is for the plant to keep running, because it's his life's work. Fair enough, seems reasonable. He's not abusing the aliens in any way, just feeding them power - oh, and enabling a potential catastrophe if anything goes wrong with the power.
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| Well, I liked this episode |
How many aliens are there in Doctor Who who we consider villains who fit that description? Certainly a lot of Moffat villains are simply doing their job and causing unwanted side effects. The Clockwork Droids have been in the speculation and spoilers surrounding Series 8 recently, and they certainly fit. The Siren from Curse of the Black Spot, the Silence's TARDIS attempt from The Lodger. They're all technology wreaking havoc because someone didn't care enough to turn them off.
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| Does not appreciate being called an alien menace |
And then there's the Brigadier. If the Silurians had been humans in this episode, and the Brigadier an alien, he would have gone down in Doctor Who history as a definite evil one. He blows them up. He kills all the Silurians at the end.
How many evil aliens attempt to do that? Not out of malice, but because they want to protect themselves or were scared. Well, there's the species from Ambassadors of Death that I'll get to next post. And then there's the Dalek from Dalek (although that one doesn't quite pass because, well, it's still a Dalek, and they actually are pure evil), Blond Fel Fotch Passameer Day Slytheen from Boom Town, even the Church of the Papal Mainframe from Time of the Doctor.
This has been a theme in a lot of Doctor Who episodes, but it seems a lot more important in the context of this season. Humans are monsters. Not all of us, maybe not as a whole species, but we are monsters. There are some of us who could come to an alien planet and act exactly like many of the aliens that we view as pure evil in alien invasion stories. And the Doctor is stuck with us. He got exiled by those stupid Time Lords to a primitive planet with a species so violent it can't seem to interact peacefully with any other sentient species. Let alone have peaceful relations with its own kind. In these stories, he's not some sort of science consultant or technical helper (I mean, he does do that too), he doesn't bring the great technology of the TARDIS to save the day. He's the voice of reason, the moral conscience, and the only sane man in a frankly primitive and violent world.
There, I said it.
There are quite a few stories where the Doctor's human companions teach him to care about others or challenge his lack of morality. But this story is exactly the opposite. The Doctor is the moral voice, and the humans are the ones who simply want to destroy.
What a planet to be exiled to. I wonder what he sees in us?
Violent, Power-Hungry Silurians
Planet earth has not exactly spawned kind species. I go on about how humans are monsters, but the Silurians are just as bad.
Let's talk about two Silurians, who I'm pretty sure are the only two with any actual characterization.
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| Old |
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| New |
Side Note: People complain about the Silurian redesign for The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, but the old Silurians are so hard to watch because they literally have no facial expressions. They're giant rubber monsters that they're trying very hard to characterize well, but something gets lost when you can't see what the thing is thinking through it's face. The new ones are much better with that. Though I do like how alien and reptilian these look.
Anyway, the two Silurians - I shall call them Younger and Older.
Older is the kind one. He wants to establish peace on earth, and to coexist with the humans on the surface. The Doctor manages to convince him that the humans would be willing to consent to this, because the Silurians would inhabit all the areas that humans would not want to, because they are too hot. Like humans, Silurians have some good in their species. They are capable of being reasonable and peaceful, despite being very difficult circumstances.
And then there's Younger. He's violent, wants to take over the earth and destroy the humans, etc. And he's the one who manages to take over the Silurians.
Nasty Genocide Plots
Or as the Doctor put it, "That was murder."
I interrupt your usual scheduled commentary on Doctor Who and the Silurians to point out that when I was looking for images to put in this section, Google Images did a thing:
And back to the commentary
The Doctor is a Time Lord, stuck on this planet because he has broken the laws of his species. And one of the first things he has to do is keep the two sentient species on the planet from wiping each other out. He fails, though presumably quite a few Silurians survive. It's only the one little colony that gets wiped out.
Younger, the Silurian, wants to wipe out the humans using some sort of bacteria. It's a very fast acting disease that causes a mini-epidemic in London before the Doctor and Liz manage to find a cure for it. Just like humans, Silurians are obviously capable of hatching incredibly evil plots when they feel backed into a corner or don't view those who they are fighting as being people. Which is basically Younger's problem. He thinks the humans are still apes, and that they can be gotten rid of like you would get rid of pesky animals. Even when told that they are thinking, reasoning people, he still goes along with it because he wants the planet back.
The Brigadier, on the other hand, just wants to get rid of the danger of ever having to worry about the Silurians again. He, from a much safer position, orders the destruction of this one colony that he perceives as a threat. It doesn't matter to him that there are innocent Silurians frozen down there who had nothing to do with the plot to kill the humans.
The Doctor's Verdict
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| Well, he wouldn't want to leave his car behind |
Lucky the Doctor's friends with Liz - who is actually a reasonable, sane human being - because I think otherwise he'd be hitching a ride off this planet with the next alien spaceship that lands here.
Except he wouldn't.
See, here's the thing. In the entire time the Doctor is trying to stop the humans from killing the Silurians and the Silurians from killing the humans, he never once makes a statement about the relative merits of either species. He never calls them monsters, he never comments on it. He just works tirelessly to make sure that they don't hurt each other.
Because I think the Doctor knows enough about us now that he knows not to judge our species by the actions of individuals. The Time Lords are a very homogeneous race. They seem to all be dusty old politicians who do nothing but watch the universe and occasionally kill each other over political offices or the promise of immortality. Other than a few renegades, they're mostly the same. Humans, on the other hand, vary wildly between the dusty politicians that the Doctor ran away from to the violent and scared generals to the kindest and bravest of our species that he picks up as companions. And the Doctor knows that. So he fights the villains and he protects the good guys, whatever species they are.
Good for you, Doctor. Though I have to say, it doesn't last. As the picture above with Ten and hypocrisy indicates, maybe Three doesn't judge like that, but you bet Nine, Ten, and Eleven do.
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| You know, doing this is going to turn you into a real judgmental hypocrite. |
But for now, let's stand back and admire the fact that the Doctor manages to maintain an unprejudiced view of our species. Good for you, Doctor!
