The past few seasons of Doctor Who have seen the Doctor face a crisis of confidence. His crisis has centred on the way he fights evil, and we can learn a lot from it. When it comes to fighting monsters, there aren't many of our fictional heroes who take the words of Nietzsche to heart:
'He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.' (Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)
Fighting fire with fire presents many dangers - as John Green put it referring to the dilemma of Shakespeare's Brutus, 'when, if ever, is it okay to stab someone 23 times'? If it isn't ever okay, is there still a way to oppose evil without actually fighting?
This problematic dilemma is played out in Doctor Who's sixth season episode A Good Man Goes to War. River song, the Doctor's sometime companion, admonishes the Doctor for the reckless way he meets the might of his enemies with a might of his own. Over the next season and a half, the Doctor's attempts to wrestle with this dilemma becomes a particularly prominent theme. He fakes his own death and even starts erasing knowledge about himself in order to lower his profile and the fearful stature he has attained in the cultures of his enemies.
However, some people took issue with River's dressing down of the Doctor over his heroics, including John Ostrander, writer of Star Wars comics amongst other things. Ostrander (2011) argued that by saving so many lives, the Doctor was above such criticism of his methods and should never be expected to apologise for them.
And it's not hard to see why we are willing to turn a blind eye, when we see the genocidal threats that many of his enemies pose.
However, even when the Doctor merely outwits his opponents he still intimidates and antagonises them, forcing them to become stronger in fear of him. In the seventh season episode Asylum of the Daleks, we see this exposed in the Doctor's relationship with his great enemy the Daleks.
In the Doctor's darker moments he also uncovers the hidden dangers of the utilitarian viewpoint - where the means are justified by the ends - and faces the question: if you fight monsters with their own methods, how are you any better than them?
When the Doctor uses his name and his reputation to fight his opponents he is using fear to oppose blow-for-blow the might of his enemies. The problem with utilitarianism, such as this, is that it ignores the value and impact of means. The way in which we oppose evil has a profound affect upon both ourselves and the struggle itself, helping to give meaning to the outcome. Our methods help to not only define what we have achieved but also the world that victory then creates. If we achieve our victory by using fear to coerce, or with might by force of arms, what do we justify? What do we legitimise? What do we say it is okay to do in the name of the things that people adamantly believe in?
The harder road, the slower road, is civil disobedience. The likes of Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, all led campaigns of peaceful opposition and suffered for their victories - but that suffering was part of what defined their success. Civil disobedience seeks not just to oppose attempts to control and tyrannise, but also to win the argument through reason and evidence. By rejecting their enemies' methods and embracing peace; by refusing to comply with authority; these people rejected coercion, and all attempts to motivate and control people through fear.
In doing so they gave up any pursuit of conquest or destruction of their enemies. In peace, they sought to use mercy, hope and forgiveness - combined with reasoned argument - to instead win over their enemy. The aim is not to strike them down but to lead them away from the evil with which they oppressed others. But at no point does this involve backing down in the face of evil or letting evil get away with evil.
In Doctor Who, the Doctor is at his most heroic, his most fantastic, when nobody dies. When the Doctor tries to save his enemy rather than destroy them, he represents the very best to which we can aspire.
==========
References:
==========
+ Friedrich Nietzche's 'Beyond Good and Evil'; 1886.
+ William Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'; 1599.
+ John Ostrander's 'Why Doctor Who's Time Traveller Should Never Apologize for Fighting Evil'; on comicmix.com; 28 August 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment