CHAPTER 2
RUSSELL T. DAVIES
RUSSELL T. DAVIES
Aside from Buddhist Barry Letts, whose scripts we will examine later, Russell T. Davies’ atheist and humanist interests make him the closest there is to a Doctor Who theologian. Accused of weaving both Gay and Atheist ‘agendas’ throughout the series, Davies comments: “It’s never didactic; it’s so the opposite of didactic, They’re little grace notes throughout the entire thing” [1]
Before writing for Doctor Who, Davies outlines his atheist manifesto in his 2003 drama The Second Coming. Christopher Eccleston plays Stephen Baxter, a Manchester man who discovers he is the Son of God. Stephen announces that there is to be a Third Testament- this time written by the people. The crux is an atheist reinterpretation of the atonement, where God dies, allowing humanity to ‘grow up’ and take responsibility for itself. “If God is dead… Maybe we’ll become better.”[2]
2005
Cast and crew similarities aside, the 2005 series of Doctor Who shares with The Second Coming both the excellent device of juxtaposing the cosmic with the domestic and Davies’ trademark atheist commentary. As early as the opening scenes of episode two -The End of the World - a computer voice announces: “Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion.”[3] Davies comments “If they haven't reached that point by the Year Five Billion, then I give up!”[4] Materialist gibes are put into the mouth of the Doctor: “You’re happy to believe in something invisible, but if it’s staring you in the face- nope, can’t see it! There’s a scientific explanation for that: you’re thick.”[5] In the wider context of science fiction, this is something of a throwback to pre-90s standards. Writing before Doctor Who’s return to the screen, Thacker comments: “There is no real hint in any Doctor Who on TV that there would be any Catholics or Muslims in the twenty-fifth century, but the idea that there will be faith in the future started to become wide-spread in science fiction in the 1990s.”
Alongside his comment about religion having been necessarily banned by the year Five-Billion, Davies says of the ‘omni-sexual’ Captain Jack “He’s from the fifty-first century, so of course he’s going to go out with men and women.” [6] Is Davies’ view of human progress that we shall become increasingly irreligious and increasingly ambiguous towards sexuality? The Doctor’s revelation that humanity’s mission is to “Seek out new life and…”[7] ‘dance’[8] is something of a tongue-in-cheek play on the bright-eyed expeditionary spirit common in sci-fi, but it is surely a rather depressing conclusion.
Humanism
Davies’ anti-religious sentiment is a necessary ingredient of a wonderfully humanistic theme running throughout the series. “Everything has its time. And everything dies”[9] proclaims the Doctor, offering the grim perspective of the near-immortal. This becomes the series’ central axiom, echoed throughout. In the resolution of the series companion Rose Tyler, having absorbed the Time Vortex and gained the Doctor’s god-like perspective of past and futures, declares; “Every thing must come to dust. All things. Everything Dies.”[10] The sentiment is wonderfully ret-conned[11] into the mouth of the Fourth Doctor in Series Two’s School Reunion[12], suggesting that it has always been a motto of the Doctor’s.
This is not a morbid fixation. The inevitability of death is prominent only to accentuate Doctor Who’s life-affirming message. Actor Christopher Eccleston sums up: “The central message of Doctor Who is to love life… you have a short life, make sure it's a happy one, seize every moment.”[13] Again, this agreeable life-affirming theme is rooted in Davies’ atheism and is connected to his conviction that religion is life-denying. The Second Coming’s Judy states: “Right now we’re promised an afterlife so we waste the seventy years we’ve got”[14]. This position has two possible foundations. One is the Marxist interpretation that belief in an afterlife is an ‘illusory happiness’ to numb the misery of the masses. The second is, more simplistically, that belief in an afterlife is life-denying because it presents an unbalanced view - those waiting for an afterlife may lack the urgency of carpe diem.
Response
Here there is only space for a tentative exploration of a possible response from Christian theology. Whilst a life-denying attitude has been adopted by some believers in the name of asceticism, it is at odds with Christ’s teaching. Indeed, Christ’s “Life to the full”[15] and the Doctor’s “Fantastic life[16]” have a common core. “Life in the next world is not where the attention of Jesus was focused[17]” writes Tony Campolo. Recent emphasis on the theology of the Kingdom of God is a reaction to an evangelical theology focussed on the after-life, but it is also at the very core of Jesus mission statement: “The kingdom of God is at hand[18]”
“And God wants this kingdom to become established on earth, now! “Your kingdom come… “ Jesus taught his disciples to pray… Which, of course, contradicts what both evangelicals and neo-Marxists believe about Christianity being an otherworldly, pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die religion that promises us mansions in the next world if only we endure the oppressions, inequities, and injustices of the present socioeconomic order.”[19]
Christ does indeed teach that his followers should “Store up your treasures in heaven”[20], but rather than an afterlife focus this is an anti-materialist exhortation for Christians to focus on activities that have an eternal bearing. This is in agreement with Doctor Who’s theme of “Seize every moment.” [21] The difference is the Biblical nuances of what ‘seizing every moment’ might involve.[22]
The Parting of the Ways
2005’s season finale addresses fears about religious fundamentalism and debates issues of godhood. In a somewhat ill fitting adaptation of the Daleks[23] [24], they are heard to exclaim, “Do not blaspheme!” Giving an explanation, the Emperor Dalek proclaims “I reached into the dirt and made new life. I am the God of all Daleks!”[25] This makes for some interesting dialogue between the Doctor and the Emperor. When the Doctor is faced with the dilemma of destroying both the Daleks and the population of Earth, or allowing the Daleks to convert every human, the Emperor taunts: “If I am God, the creator of all things, then what does that make you, Doctor?”[26]
The resolution juxtaposes the Emperor with companion Rose, now in control of the Time Vortex- The ‘goddess’ Rose versus the self-appointed god of the Daleks. One acts out of compassion, the other out of self-aggrandising belligerence. The Emperor is clearly a “False God”[27], presumably suggesting that Rose is something closer to the genuine article, but the Doctor rebukes her for her power: “This is wrong! You can’t control life and death-!”[28]
Godhood
“I’ve seen a lot of this universe. I’ve seen fake gods and bad gods and demigods and would-be-gods…”[29]
-The Doctor
Series Two takes up the theme of godhood, firstly with the Doctor portrayed as ‘The Lonely God’[30] Even the werewolf of Tooth and Claw is worshipped by the abbot and his acolytes: “Lupus deus est”. God-like beings are something of a staple in Doctor Who, and these are not always von Däniken gods. Before 1976’s The Deadly Assassin, the Time Lords were portrayed as mysterious and god-like[31]. The Key to Time series introduced us to the eternal Black and White Guardians, acting above the Time Lords to maintain the balance of light and dark in the universe.
Overall, Doctor Who has a dispute with the idea of Godhood[32]. In The Daemons (1971)[33], the Doctor says to the Demon-God Azal “I want you to go away and give Man a chance to grow up”[34]- a very Russell T. Davies idea. Godhood is inseparable from the idea of absolute power- an arch-sin in Doctor Who. As the Doctor says of the Time Lords: “Ten million years of absolute power - that's what it takes to be really corrupt!”[35] In School Reunion (2006) the Doctor is tempted to solve the Skasas Paradigm- “The god-maker…Time and space and matter, yours to control.”[36] The Doctor refuses the power that he would use to save countless civilisations. Likewise, in 1979 the Doctor refused god-like potential.
The Doctor :
"We have the power to do anything we like. Absolute power over every particle in the universe. Everything that has ever existed and ever will exist… As from this moment there's no such thing as free will in the entire universe. There's only my will because I possess the Key to Time."
Romana :
Romana :
"Doctor, are you all right?"
The Doctor :
The Doctor :
The Doctor refuses to give the Key to either Black or White Guardian. However benevolent a god-figure may be, their power is always viewed negatively as a hegemonic domination. They are rarely, if ever, benevolent, though. The first god-like being we encounter is the Toy Maker[38], who captures mortals and makes them his playthings. Gods in Doctor Who are like the gods of Greek myth, manipulating lesser beings to their own ends. Even the White Guardian is as manipulative as the Black.Doctor Who, which prizes freedom, is naturally fearful of the threat to personal autonomy. John Searle writes: “Acceptance of the current [naturalistic] views [in philosophy of mind] is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives.”[39] As the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan said[40] “Why are you Earth people afraid of the word ‘God’?”[41]
[1] Russell T. Davies in Cook, Benjamin The Russell T Davies Interview. Doctor Who Magazine issue 360. 14 September 2005. Pg.18
[2] Davies, Russell T. The Second Coming. Carlton Visual Entertainment. Red Productions. 2003. Ep2 0h 47m 00s
[3] Davies, Russell T. The End of the World in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 53
[4] Russell T. Davies in Cook, Benjamin The Russell T Davies Interview. Doctor Who Magazine issue 360. 14 September 2005. Pg.18
[5] Davies, Russell T. World War Three in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 198
[6] Russell T. Davies in Cook, Benjamin The Russell T Davies Interview. Doctor Who Magazine issue 360. 14 September 2005. Pg.18
[7] Moffat, Stephen. The Doctor Dances in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 378
[8] A metaphor for sexuality in stories written by Stephen Moffat.
[9] Davies, Russell T. The End of the World in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 87
[10] Davies, Russell T. The Parting of the Ways in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 507
[11] Abbreviation of ‘retroactive continuity’ A phrase used among fans meaning to rewrite past events. The best example is how 1975’s Genesis of the Daleks reinterpreted the creation of the Daleks originally described in The Daleks in 1963.
[12] Past companion Sarah Jane Smith tells the Doctor ‘Everything has its time. And everything ends.’ Whithouse, Toby. School Reunion. (2006) 00h 32m 26s
[13] Christopher Eccleston in Doctor Who arrives in the 21st Century. BBC NEWS. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/4329271.stm(3/5/2007)
[14] Davies, Russell T. The Second Coming. Carlton Visual Entertainment. Red Productions. 2003. Ep2 Ch4 00h 04m 40s
[15] “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”. John 10: 9-10 (NIV)
[16] Davies, Russell T. The Parting of the Ways in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 488
[17] McLaren, Brian D. and Campolo, Tony. Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2003 Pg. 28
[18] Mark 1:15 (KJV)
[19]Campolo, Tony. Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2003. Pg.43
[20] Matthew 6:20 (NIV)
[21] Christopher Eccleston in Doctor Who arrives in the 21st Century. BBC NEWS. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/4329271.stm (3/5/07)
[22] Other biblical parallels are “Everything has its time and everything dies” echoing Ecclesiastes’ maudlin attitude, particularly 3:v2’s famous “time to die”. Likewise, “Every thing must come to dust” intentionally echoes the language of Genesis 3:19’s “To dust you shall return”.
[23] In many ways it is a great shame that these themes were not reserved for the return of the Cybermen, to whom they are much better suited. There is much room for Davies-esque criticism in terms of fear of conversion, fear of eternal life etc.
[24] It is interesting to note that it is the Daleks’ self-loathing that has apparently driven them to religion. “Worship him!” order the Daleks. The Doctor responds “They’re insane” “Driven mad by your own flesh.” (Davies, Russell T. The Parting of the Ways in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 481)
[25] Davies, Russell T. The Parting of the Ways in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 480
[26] Davies, Russell T. The Parting of the Ways in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 490
[27] Davies, Russell T. The Parting of the Ways in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 507
[28] Davies, Russell T. The Parting of the Ways in Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2005. Pg. 509
[29] Matt Jones The Satan Pit 00h 39m 20s
[30] The implications of this are addressed in Chapter 6 “Remythologising the Doctor’”.
[31] The Deadly Assassin revealed them to be pretentious indolents organised into a Church of Rome-style patriarchy.
[32] This explored explicitly in the 2001 Big Finish audio story Primeval by Lance Parkin.
[33] This is explored in Chapter 3.
[34] Doctor Who: The Scripts. The Daemons. Robert Sloman and Barry Letts. Titan Books, London. 1992. Pg. 154
[35] Holmes, Robert. The Trial of a Time Lord (1986) cited in ‘Memorable Quotes from “Doctor Who”: The Trial of a Time Lord’. IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0562970/quotes (15/5/2007)
[36] Whithouse, Toby School Reunion (2006) 00h 20m 30s
[37] Doctor Who Episode Guide - The Armageddon Factor - Details. Doctor Who. http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/armageddonfactor/detail.shtml (13/5/2007)
[38] Hayles, Brian The Celestial Toymaker. (1966)
[39] John Searle Rediscovery of the Mind, cited in Couch, Steve; Watkins, Tony; Williams, Peter S. Back in Time: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who. Damaris Books, Milton Keynes. 2005. Pg. 150
[40] Or ‘would have said’, had this story been produced.
[41] Coburn, Anthony. The Masters of Luxor. (1963) cited in Thacker, Anthony. A Closer Look at Science Fiction. Kingsway Publications, Eastbourne. 2001. Pg. 44
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