Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary will celebrate a show with a simple concept and an idealistic message

Doctor Who, ostensibly a show about travellers running away from rubber monsters, down corridors and around Welsh quarries, has reached its 50th anniversary. While the basic concept of the show itself is fun enough, to have run for 50 years takes something more. And it takes something special to be, as Craig Ferguson put it:

'...beloved by geeks and nerds. It's all about the triumph of intellect and romance, over brute force and cynicism'.

At least part of what sets Doctor Who aside is that it possesses an idealistic streak. The half-century of stories about the renegade Time Lord, known as the Doctor, are about idealistic people from idealistic worlds. Explorers who seek out wonder, beauty and adventure. And in those adventures, violence is never shown be particularly ideal. So much more than many shows, particularly within the sci-fi and fantasy genres, violence is most often shown to be the particular tool that defines individuals as villains.

There are numerous examples in the rebooted series. In the two-parter, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, the Doctor celebrates when 'everybody lives', including those who had been his enemies. In the series two episode New Earth and in the series three finale Last of the Time Lords, the Doctor does not seek vengeance against villains but rather justice, and retains hope for their reform.

In the series six episode A Good Man Goes to War, there is a particularly telling moment. The Doctor raises an army to free and protect his friends in a strategy that ultimately proves futile. As the dust settles the Doctor is confronted by his friend and ally River Song who challenges his pursuit of these war-like policies and his intervention against dangerous villains. River warns the Doctor about the affects that inspiring fear in others may have on him and his enemies.

That point in reinforced when the Doctor first meets his current companion, Clara, in the series 7 episode Asylum of the Daleks. The Doctor admits that he has been trying to stop fighting the Daleks fire with his own, when a Dalek-converted Clara points out that fear of the Doctor has only made the Daleks stronger.

Doctor Who does something incredibly important. The show offers us heroes whose heroism is usually in the face of violence rather than wielding it. Violence is rarely glorified, and where matters come to violence there are usually negative impacts that go beyond the immediate - for those who wield it as well as those who suffer at its hands. Furthermore, it often finds a way to create drama and find resolution without resorting to violence.

Doctor Who presents us with diplomatic and intelligent heroes, who seek to find diplomatic and intelligent solutions to the problems they encounter. Those are the kind of examples the world sorely needs.