| |
|
But isn't the whole point of Newho to have one's cake and eat it too? Militarised companions is merely a side-effect of wanting to have 'splosions to run away from and nice-looking folks in combat trousers to fire at the doctor from three feet away and miss AND have Ten say something clunkily pacifistic ("A Man who NEVAH WOULD!") in every episode. They've written themselves into a contradiction by taking a character that was, at best, an outsider in his society* and at times an outcast or renegade who had a strong aversion to authority, violence and the military solution - and then making him the Galifreyan Field Marshall or some such.
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in that planning meeting:
Time Lord 1: We're receiving reports of Dalek incursions across all Time and Space.
Time Lord 2: Bugger.
Time Lord 1: There is no other solution, Chancellor, we must mobilise our entire culture to a war footing.
Time Lord 2: But we don't have an army - we've progressed beyond conflict. That's why it's so fucking dull around here.
Chancellor: Not to fear, gentlemen. I have a cunning plan.
Time Lord 1: This is going to suck badly, isn't it?
Chancellor: Moving on. Despite being a career politician at the zenith of personal authority, I have decided to hand over the reins of power to an un-elected ex-criminal with no experience.
Time Lord 1: Who?
Chancellor: Yes.
Time Lord 2: There's no way we're doing that tired old joke. Anyway, isn't he a senile, crotchety old coot?
Time Lord 1: No, he regenerated. He's now a recorder playing simpleton who looks like one of the three stooges.
Chancellor: Actually, he's been getting through bodies at quite a rate since then. So far we've had a grey-haired dandy, a booming loon - all teeth, curls and scarf, an effete public-schoolboy, a round-faced misanthrope, a machiavellian dwarf, a pretty-boy who no-one remembers and a bi-polar northerner with a chip on the shoulder of his leather jacket. He's currently a geek-chic gurner.
Time Lord 1: Don't you mean he will be - after we're all wiped out under his command?
Chancellor: Is, will be, how the fuck should I know, I'm only a Time Lord.
I think the Doctor's pacifism is currently supposed to be an indication of how he is CONFLICTED ABOUT HIS TRAGIC PAST!!!!! And there is a collective assumption that a) pacifism=lack of conflict=bad drama and b) there is no moral conflict or hypocrisy involved in being a pacifist but keeping warriors around to do the fighting for you.
* I'm discounting his election to leadership in The Five Doctors because... well, because it's worth ignoring and made bugger all sense. |
|
|
