Welcome to the 13 Days of Doctor Who, a blog tour counting down the days until both Santa and the Doctor make their annual Christmas appearances! I’m so psyched to take part in this Whovian celebration. Be sure to check Clara Kensie’s tumblr blog tomorrow for the next stop in the tour–and the bottom of this post for not one, but two Doctor Who giveaways!

And now for the pseudo-Academic Whovian wankery!

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I did quite a bit of complaining this past season about the sexism of Moffat’s Who. Although certain characters were eventually redeemed for me, I remained unmoved particularly by Amy Pond’s  story arc, which saw every small movement of growth retconned out of existence in favor of reiteration of the primacy of her marriage, appearance, and sexuality. Amy is shown as a wife first and an individual second; when she finally does get a career, it’s one capitalizes on her looks (and not, say, the hints of tremendous artistic ability that we’ve seen). Even her individuation from the Doctor is marked by her being called by her “married name.”

Nowhere did this seem more clear to me than in “The Girl Who Waited,” in which the Doctor and Rory choose to wipe an older, more independent Amy out of existence in favor of a young Amy more dependent on the two of them. If you sympathize with Older!Amy at all, their actions look monstrous, not heroic–though I thought it clear that we’re meant to sympathize, instead, with the Doctor when he lies to Older!Amy, locks her out of the TARDIS, and essentially kills her. Certainly, the rest of the viewing audience seemed to understand the episode in this way, that the Doctor was just making a difficult, but necessary choice, sacrificing one woman so that the other could continue in her young, married life.

But maybe we’re all reading this episode wrong.

What if the Doctor’s actions weren’t meant to be heroic, in the traditional, morally upstanding sense? What if the characters’ actions aren’t some show of latent sexism on the part of the writers, but rather an astute display of our hero’s very flawed personality? What if Older!Amy’s pronouncements about the Doctor are, rather than the realizations of a broken woman, meant to be right?

“The Woman Who Waited” isn’t the first episode of Who to view the Doctor’s actions or persona as less than heroic. In fact, there’s solid grounding to read the Doctor as an anti-hero, rather than a straight hero, going way back to the Hartnell days.

In the very very first episode of Doctor Who, “An Unearthly Child,” we don’t meet the Doctor himself until the thirteen minute mark. The narrative instead focuses on his granddaughter’s human teachers, Barbara and Ian, as they investigate Susan, their troubled but brilliant student who seems to have a unique understanding of both science and history. The reason for this narrative focus becomes clear when we at long last meet the Doctor. This is not the attractive young rogue we later come to now. The Doctor isn’t even particularly grandfatherly. He is, instead, an old man with a gnarly temper. He hurls insults. He grapples with Ian. He blames his granddaughter for even wanting to intend school, chastising her in front of her teachers. And then, rather then giving in to her impassioned pleas to let her teachers go, he kidnaps Barbara and Ian to keep his secrets safe.

 

These aren’t the actions of a purely self-sacrificing hero, someone who eschews guns and violence, someone whose story has been described as “the triumph of intellect and understanding over brute force and cynicism.” And this dark Doctor wasn’t seen only in the Hartnell years. In fact, the Sixth Doctor, played by Colin Baker, was widely disdained largely for traits he shared with the First Doctor (well, that and his ridiculous outfit): he was smug, insulting, temperamental, full of himself . . . and terrifyingly violent.

 

Audiences didn’t react so well to this new Doctor, who referred to his previous, mild-mannered incarnation as having a sort of “feckless charm”–so perhaps it’s surprising to see hints of his darkness in his new regenerations. But each Doctor since the ninth has shown a bit of darkness, his actions suggesting that he’s not the bastion of goodness and light that he purports to be.

In the case of the ninth Doctor, his emotional reactions often seem out-of-proportion to the “crimes” committed by those he punishes. In “Dalek,” he taunts the lone surviving member of the dalek race to commit suicide:

(To this, the dalek appropriately replies, “You would make a good dalek.”)

Just one episode later, one of the Doctor’s traveling companions feels the heat of the Doctor’s wrath. Sure, Adam Mitchell’s betrayal to the Doctor is clear, but Adam apologizes and begs for his forgiveness. In return, the Doctor dumps him at home with an infospike embedded in his head.

The lesson of the ninth Doctor seems clear: don’t piss off the Doctor. He’s a lonely god, but also a vengeful god, one who does not hesitate to punish those who wrong him, even if they ask him for mercy.

This pattern remains through his tenth incarnation. When Harriet Jones (prime minister) destroys a Sycorax ship, he gets so angry with her that he destroys her career–a career that was meant to bring about a Golden Age of Earth. Later, somewhat hypocritically, he destroys the Racnoss species–and gets so wrapped up in the act that his companion has to call him off.

Finally, in “The Family of Blood,” the Doctor doles out punishments right out of Greek mythology: one enemy is transformed into a scarecrow, another trapped in every mirror in all of time and space, another imprisoned in chains forged at the heart of a dwarf star, the last stranded at the edge of a collapsing galaxy.

Ten’s initial dark acts are all like this–perhaps disproportionate, but still made under a certain veil of righteousness. The Doctor is dark, but not altogether wrong. That might not the case by the end of his run.

For example, we now know that the end of the Time Lords was brought about by the Doctor himself, when he learned that his people planned to destroy all of time and space so that they could shed their corporeal bodies and essentially become gods. Yet what does the Doctor himself decide when removed from the Time Lord’s strictures?

(This godlike, willful bending of the laws of time eventually leads to one woman’s suicide!)

And so perhaps we can view the eleventh Doctor’s actions through this sort of lens as well; rather than a hero, whose goodness always prevails, the Doctor is, instead, a violent, self-satisfied, temperamental anti-hero. He expects obedience from his companions (“We’re his friends,” says River Song, “we do as we’re told”) and his enemies. Yet this faith that he demands from them makes them vulnerable–he’s lost Adric and Rose and Donna and so many others. He doesn’t want us to like him; he doesn’t even like himself. In this light, we can view his speech to Amy in the appropriately titled “God Complex” not as a noble act of heroism but instead as a rare show of honesty:

What if, likewise, we viewed the Doctor’s actions in “The Girl Who Waited” not as noble, but rather as the selfish actions of a man who can’t stand to face his own darkness? Older!Amy is dangerous not because she’s old, or because her existence means that she’ll miss growing old with Rory. Instead, she must be stopped because she does not like the Doctor. And he won’t–can’t–stand for it. It’s the love and adoration of his human friends that convinces the Doctor, over and over again, that he’s in the right.

Even if he’s not so sure of it himself.

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Now for the contests!

Since this is part of the #13DoDW tour, every comment here will be entered to win a series 6 boxset. Here are the official guidelines:

To enter the grand prize giveaway, please leave a comment with your name and email address. You may enter once at every stop on the blog tour for a total of thirteen chances. The Grand Prize giveaway is limited to the US and Canada, due to regional restrictions on the DVD. Individual contest will close at the discretion of the author, but the Grand Prize contest will accept entries on any site until midnight CST on December 24th. We will post the winner on December 25th, and notify the winner via email.

But, since I love you guys (and Who) so much, every comment will also be entered to win an official eleventh Doctor sonic screwdriver–or is it a probe?–fresh from the fields of amazon. I’ll be doing my drawing on the 25th as well, with entrants also limited to North America due to amazon restrictions (I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!).

Best of luck to you, and have a very Who holiday season!

Jordan and I recently decided to rewatch Star Trek: Deep Space 9 together, now that it’s available for instant viewing on Netflix. If you know me, you know that I’m a Trekkie. I grew up on TNG, spent my teenage years staying up much too late watching reruns on my old black and white television. I even went to the screening of the latest movie in full Vulcan regalia. Was in the paper for it, too.

Back in the day, I was never a huge DS9 fan. I liked the Ferengi, but otherwise the show always seemed a bit sedate to me.

I appreciate it much more now, as an adult. Sure, the outfits and pacing are pretty distinctively 90s. But in rewatching Deep Space 9, I’ve finally fully realized what people are talking about when they talk about “character-driven dramas.”

Ds9 is fundamentally character-driven, in much the same way that more recent shows like Mad Men and Broadwalk Empire are. This isn’t the case for most of Star Trek. The characters on The Original Series and The Next Generation are iconic, sure, but they’re also essentially static. The plot happens around them. They react in much the same way every time. By the end of the episode, the status quo is restored. Geordi never gets the girl. Kirk’s passionate worldview is affirmed. Growth tends to be moderate and is often only felt when needed for plot-based reasons (such as the trauma that Jean-Luc Picard faces at the hands of the Borg).

This isn’t the case for Deep Space 9. On the surface, you might not expect that to be the case. Many of the characters seem iconic–not so different from Kirk, Spock, and Bones. You have the scheming Ferengi. The militaristic commander. The brilliant doctor. The wise old Trill in the body of a young woman. The folksy everyman. The mysterious shapeshifter.

But DS9 quickly subverts these characterizations, and then continues to do so for the remainder of the series. Quark deals with changes in his society as a direct result of their interaction with the Federation. Sisko isn’t only a commander but also an unwitting religious leader. The Dax symbiant will eventually find itself in yet another body. Bashir has a dark secret. O’brien will have to deal with marital strife. Odo will learn the ugly truth about his people.

Indeed, at first glance many of the alien species seem to be flatly allegorical for human racial or cultural groups. Jokes about the Ferengi as stereotypes of Jews aren’t so uncommon even among enlightened Star Trek fans. Meanwhile, the Cardassians are Nazis; perhaps the Bajorans, then, are the occupied French.

But Deep Space 9 confounds these easy allegories, too. Part of this is thanks to the strength of the actors involved. Those playing the Ferengi (Armin Shimerman, Max Grodenchik, Aron Eisenberg) are particularly masterful in bringing nuance and complexity to what could be a one-note, jokey race; what’s more, the story of Nog’s eventual ascension to Starfleet officer is a powerful one of integration and cultural complexity. And where would “plain, simple” Garak–sly omnisexual tailor, dangerous spy–fit into a simplistic allegorical interpretation of his species? What would a flat allegorical reading do to his friendship with Julian Bashir, or even Odo?

The episodes, individually, often make for wonderful science fiction, from the phenomenal season four episode “The Visitor,” an SF story about parents and loss; to the understated season three episode “Second Skin,” which sees Kira Nerys begin an unlikely friendship with a Cardassian who may or may not be her father. But what makes Deep Space 9 really transcendent isn’t any individual episode. It is, instead, how one hundred and seventy six episodes, in seven seasons–a long story about war and its repercussions–sees the characters change over time.

I’m finally just about caught up on my post-VP television viewing (except for Terra Nova, which I’m considering dropping, because man, that show’s a snooze and I already put in my time on V like the good SF fan that I am, and feel I should give myself a break sometimes, it’s just television, et cetera). A few nights ago, Jordan and I tuned into “Subject 9,” the latest episode of Fringe.

“Spooky,” I said, about ten minutes in, when Walter Bishop watched a time-shifted video of Olivia being attacked by a bunch of metal objects in her apartment.

“God, this is well-acted,” I commented a half hour later, when Walter Bishop was freaking out over leaving his lab for the first time in three years.

By the time the episode was over, I felt certain of the truth. “Best episode of Fringe in a season!” I giddily declared.

It’s not that I felt that Season 3 of Fringe was bad, per se. But I did think that there was a noticeable dip in the quality of writing right around the entrance to the red universe (and at this point, this entry will likely begin to both be spoilery and opaque for viewers not familiar with the series). The first two seasons slowly built the thesis of the series. Though Olivia Dunham is a significant (and strong, and awesome) character, the show’s primary conflict is actually the one between Peter and Walter–between a distant, life-hardened sort-of-son and his grieving, insane, but loving kidnapper.

Of course, the show initially appeared to be little more than a millennial spin on The X-files. Those first early episodes gave little acknowledgment of the complex character conflicts that lurked beneath the surface. But the truth was always out there–in the way that Peter never called his father “dad,” in Walter’s barely-conceived grief that hinted at a darker truth. By the end of the second season, when Peter finally began to embrace Walter as his father, then learned that he was a doppelganger for Walter’s actual son, the central themes of the show became clear.

But then these themes were diffused again last season, in favor of focusing on the growing romance between Olivia and Peter–a romance I admittedly enjoy. However, the writers engaged in some hasty and overly-convenient plotting (hello, time-lapsed pregnancy), and then, when we returned to the show’s earlier monster-of-the week format at the beginning of this season, I worried that they’d completely forgotten the primary emotional core of the show–the relationship between Peter and Walter.

Last week’s episode confirmed for me that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

I don’t just mean that this episode saw Peter’s literal return–born again in a new universe in the center of Reidan Lake. Instead, “Subject 9″ illustrated that the writers are aware of the importance of their own central themes, and this was evident both in character development (we learn that this universe’s Walter has not left the lab in three years) and dialogue:

Elizabeth, my wife, used to say I was a man of contradictions. She liked that about me. I liked everything about her. She committed suicide. Did you know that? After our Peter died. I’m glad she never knew me like this… afraid of things I can’t even see.

We’ve spent three years with these characters, and the narrative keeps returning, over and over again, to this same central event: Peter Bishop’s death. In fact, I’d posit that explorations of a parent’s grief is the primary narrative goal of Fringe. We’ve seen, first, how losing Peter drove Walter Bishop to scientific extremes, then to desperate, universe-destroying acts, then to insanity. Then last season, we saw how the same event played out in a different universe: Walternate, galvanized by his own loss, vows revenge on the other side. This season gives us a third possibility–that our Walter would have lost not only his own son, but Walternate’s son as well, and in succumbing to grief and madness became a complete shut-in, unable to function in the outside world.

(I can’t help but be curious as to how this loss affected the new Walternate.)

Fringe is network TV sci-fi, but it’s also the best kind of network TV sci-fi. It’s success is clear when you hold it up against the failures of other ambitious network sci-fi shows. Take The X-files. The mystery of Samantha’s disappearance was the emotional hook of the show. However, the writers’ lack of planning muddled both Samantha and Mulder’s stories. There was no clear relationship between the science fictional elements and the emotional elements, which meant that, the further we got in the series, the less sense could be made either of the show’s myth arc or Mulder’s emotional evolution.

Or take LOST. I know I’ve complained pretty extensively about the way that series unfolded in the past, and I’m not really very interested in reiterating those arguments. Still, it’s an interesting example of the sort of speculative fiction that explicitly doesn’t work for me, and I think that the way that Fringe does, instead, is revealing. The show-runners and fans have addressed arguments against the show’s ending by responding, “It was about the characters, not the SF.” The problem here is that the characters were in no way necessary for the series’ SF hooks, and vice versa. As one commentator to an io9 post put it:

[I]magine LOST with all the mysteries intact, but all of the characters are different. The self-doubting doctor is now an Italian cabbie running from a massive gambling debt. The washed-up junkie musician is now a recently released inmate who was wrongly convicted of murder a decade ago. The absentee father trying to re-connect with his son is now a novelist who’s been plagiarizing work from his alcoholic brother. But everything else is there. Is it still essentially the same show? In my opinion, it is. And that (again, my opinion) proves that the characters were never the focal point of the show.

(Defenders of LOST might answer that the show was about Jack’s rejection of science, and so the tantalizing mysteries were just meant to tempt both he and the viewers deeper into the rabbit hole so that they could ultimately be shown how wrong they were–that’s fine, but that still doesn’t answer the question of, “Why this self-doubting character, rather than any other?”)

Fringe doesn’t have this problem. The SF-conceits and the characters are so deeply interwoven that to remove one is to negate the purpose of the other. Why are there alternate universes in Fringe? Because a mad scientist opened a door to one. Why did he do that? Because he was desperate and grieving because his son had died. Why is the main character a mad scientist? Because it allows the writers to examine SFnal tropes–including alternate worlds.

When you strip Fringe down to its core emotional premise, the truly character-driven nature of the show (as opposed to the nominally-character driven nature of LOST) becomes clear: it’s about the inevitability of grief. In every universe, Walter Bishop will lose his son. Fringe is about the many possible outcomes of this event–the many possible, painful results of his grief.

This isn’t just good writing. It’s damn good sci-fi. The best science fiction isn’t just an accessory or a background prop, like on LOST. It is, instead, a way of examining human stories through the lens of science. Just like on Fringe, the science should amplify and explain the existing human drama–not supplant or muddle it like on The X-Files. It might be hard for new viewers to enter the universe (or universes) uninitiated–Fringe‘s low ratings might disappoint me in some ways, but they don’t surprise me. But the narrative and emotional potential is huge, much richer than what you get with unadorned character drama alone.

So here we are, at the beginning of season 4, with the primacy of Peter and Walter’s story reiterated. Now that he’s back in the orange world, with the focus returned to the interplay between Peter and his “father,” I’m psyched to see where the writers will take us.

Last night I started my second annual River-Song-chronology Doctor Who rewatch. If, after my last blog post about her, you doubt my love for River, I suspect that I’ll have proved my adoration after this. Last year it was a simple task–eight or so hours of television. This year it’s harder. River crosses her own timestream two and sometimes three times in an episode, which means I need to rewatch certain eps two or three times if I want to really grok her growth and development as a character.

That’s why I do this, by the way. I know that now I could just watch the BBC-approved video summarizing her life–but that wouldn’t really help me with her evolving character or the rich continuity that Moffat’s seeded through her episodes. Last year, already, I was able to understand the tragedy of her downfall and loss of the Doctor. But it was a little strange, like reading the last half of a tragic love story. I suspect this year will be strange, too; we have River’s origins, and her end, but we don’t have the middle third of her story yet, where she transforms from the impetuous psychopath from this season to the experienced, bad-ass, self-sacrificing woman she becomes.

Some viewers and bloggers are insisting that River’s story is over. After all, when she meets the Doctor in that diner in Utah before his death, he says that they’ve already done Easter Island and Jim the Fish together. Or does he? I suspected he was lying. He has the motivation for it–his death must look real, so it has to seem like he’s both at the end of his life and therefore at the end of his travels with River–but I didn’t have proof.

ETA: It’s been pointed out in the comments that he doesn’t need to lie to River, since she remembers what happens. He does, however, need to lie to Amy and Rory so that they accept his death. If he implies that he and River have travels to go, and then he dies, it makes his return self-evident.

This morning I rewatched “The Impossible Astronaut” (the second in my chronology–I’m still working out the order for later episodes, but this one is clearly the first episode where we see Melody Pond as a little girl). And I noticed something awesome.

A bootstrap paradox!

A bootstrap paradox is when an object or information exist without having been created, thanks to the slippery and circular nature of time travel. In this case, it enables the Doctor to talk about experiences he’s never had. Moffat’s played with these paradoxes before, like in last year’s finale, and in “Blink.” But this one is so subtle that you might miss it–and most people do. From our perspective, we first get this scene in the diner, and we take it at face value:

River: Right then, where are we. Have we done Easter Island yet?

Doctor: Um, YES! I’ve got Easter Island.

River: They WORSHIPPED you there! Have you seen the statues?

Doctor: Jim the Fish!

River: Oh, Jim the Fish! How is he?

Doctor: Still building his dam.

Later, to confirm that the Doctor they’re dealing with is a younger Doctor, River references the above conversation, and he has no idea what she’s talking about. This, she thinks, proves that this is a younger man, one who hasn’t traveled with her.

What you miss here in watching the interaction the way they laid it out in the episode (roughly from River’s perspective) is that the Doctor still doesn’t know what she’s talking about two hundred years later. “The Doctor lies” is easy enough to believe with his stuttering affirmation that they’ve “done” Easter Island, but how does he know about Jim the Fish?

He knows because River tells him! She drops a big shiny spoiler for him.

Here’s how this plays out from the Doctor’s perspective:

At age 909, he gets an invite to a Utah diner, pops out to get his special straw, and returns to find Amy, Rory and River there. And they’re inexplicably peeved at him. Amy asks how old he is, and then River completely loses her temper.

River: Where does that leave us? . . . Jim the Fish?! Have we done Jim the Fish yet?

Doctor: (smirking) Who’s ‘Jim the Fish’?

Nearly two hundred years later, as he prepares to go to his [fake] death, he meets River in that same diner. It has to look real. It has to look like he’s really dying. He lets her rifle through her diary, throwing out experiences–like Easter Island. But he can’t contribute anything because he hasn’t experienced any  of this. So it doesn’t sound very legit. But then he remembers that he knows something! River’s given her a spoiler! “Jim the Fish!” he blurts out.

But then River wants details. How’s Jim doing?

Watching this scene from the Doctor’s perspective makes it pretty hilarious. Just look at this face and tell me it’s not the face of a man caught in a lie by his maybe-someday-wife. And he seems pretty relieved when River buys his jokey response (“still building his dam”) before their conversation is interrupted by Rory and Amy.

This means, of course, that Jim the Fish and Easter Island might still be to come for the Doctor. Sure, it doesn’t prove anything definitively, but evidence in the episode opens it to more than one interpretation–including the interpretation that River’s story isn’t done yet, not for us, not by a long shot.

Anyway, neat little nods like this one (and others–I’m noticing so many already from, “Time can be rewritten” to “We’re his friends. We do as we’re told” [my emphasis]) are what makes something like a River-order rewatch really powerful and worth undertaking. Watched from her perspective, with knowledge of the order of the events for both parties, River’s story becomes one of the most complex and interesting on television–and it’s not even finished yet! They’re also what gives me faith in Moffat’s ability to continue writing an awesome timey wimey story.

So yeah, I’ll report back to you if I notice anything else awesome, Gentle Reader, though again it might be awhile–by my reckoning I have fifteen more hours of River’s story to watch, an experience that will have to be interrupted when I go to Viable Paradise this week (because it’s not cool to stay holed up in your hotel watching Doctor Who on your laptop when surrounded by a bunch of kick ass sci-fi writers . . . at least, I don’t think it is). But I thought this self-contained little paradox was neat enough to share immediately.

 

ETA: Added a second River Rewatch post today! Come weigh in on her timeline. Before my head explodes.