MR 060: Medicinal Purposes

This one legitimately pissed me off. I almost turned it off after the first episode and it was a struggle to get through. It took me several days. And it's for all the usual reasons that I get pissed off at Doctor Who. Excuses like "we can't interfere with history" and "the web of time" and "fixed points in time" ect ect. This kind of thing is cowardly, feckless writing that has all the moral weight of a Star Trek episode where we let millions of people die because "prime directive." It's this sort of callous disregard for life that upsets me about these kinds of sci fi writers. They think they're so intellectual, thinking about the moral ramifications of letting people get murdered or die of disease for the greater good, but really their ideology leads to pretty evil places like malthusianism. It's the kind of ideology that falls apart, as it does in this story, the moment you consider the people being killed your friends. When it's your family member or lover or friend being murdered for the greater good or to preserve the time line or to prevent you from contacting a pre-warp civilization, well suddenly it's not so great is it? I'm glad to see that at least some people got to see why I get pissed off at this kind of thinking in sci fi. From what I can tell, this one isn't very well regarded. It's mostly just forgotten.

It's absolutely character assassination as well. The Sixth Doctor was not well regarded before Big Finish came along, obviously. They massaged his character, gently sanded down the rough edges but still kept the core character underneath. This is a return to the type of thing that made people dislike him in the first place. This is not a story I know well, as I'm not British, but from my understanding of this story: a medical doctor named Robert Knox paid two men, William Burke and William Hare, to kill people and to grave rob bodies so that he could experiment on them. The Doctor seems to think this is justified because of advancements in medical science that might save people in the future. That's one thing. It's another thing to go up to Burke and Hare and want to shake their hand and tell them "well done, you're doing great, keep it up."

That's what really pissed me off at the beginning. The Doctor HERO WORSHIPS THEM!!?????!!!!??!! Ok, let's take a step back and think about this for a few moments. There was a good Star Trek episode about this very concept: Nothing Human. It's the Nazi Doctor argument, like Mengele. We have medical research that was obtained through extremely immoral, illegal, and unethical means. Should we use that research? Yes, of course. If it exists, we should use it. Does that make that research justified? Absolutely not. That is an ends justify the means argument. It's not even a utilitarian argument. We can't normalize letting people conduct such immoral experiments because maybe in the future people will be saved by that research. That's abhorrent. It's quite another step to CONGRATULATE not only the people doing that research, but also the people digging up bodies and killing people for that research. That's quite frankly obscene. I don't know what this author was thinking. It feels like he doesn't understand Doctor Who at all.

He certainly doesn't understand these characters at all. He doesn't understand this Doctor and he certainly doesn't understand Evelyn. The writer fails even the most basic characterization of Evelyn. She's a HISTORY PROFESSOR and yet knows nothing of Robert Knox, a very popular urban scandal in the UK if I understand it correctly here. Sure, it's not her period, but a history professor would probably know some basic history about something that happened just a century and a half ago. Yet here she acts as if she has no idea what's going on at any given moment. That's step one. Step two, the writer has Evelyn act less like the oldest, most mature Doctor Who companion who gently tempers the Doctor's worst impulses and more like a typical 16-20 year old girl companion both in the way she talks to the other characters and to the Doctor. She's constantly rude to everyone, including an autistic boy (we'll get to it later), and makes sassy comments to the Doctor, but doesn't ever meaningfully challenge him on what he's saying or doing. "Oh he just has weird taste in hero worship," when he's congratulating a murderer. That's just the Doctor being the Doctor. You know him, always justifying murder for the greater good. Excuse me what.

The very last story we heard was Arrangements for War in which Evelyn had to have some time away from the Doctor because of his CALLOUS DISREGARD FOR DEATH. Two young people had died in previous stories and it deeply affected Evelyn to the point where she didn't know if she wanted to continue in the TARDIS. And it's at this point that I just throw up my hands in frustration. That story ended with the Doctor getting extremely upset at the deaths of two young people and trying to go back in time and change it followed by the Doctor saying that he doesn't just turn his emotions on and off, it affects him even when it doesn't seem like it. And Evelyn accepted him for who he is and seeing that to be the case. He isn't just an inhuman monster. Ehem. THIS FUCKING STORY ends with the Doctor taking the autistic boy to the exact place and time where he dies in the history he knows, exploiting and abusing said autistic boy's trust and friendship in him, in order to get him killed so that history will remain the same as he remembers it. And now that I type it, I hate it even more. Talk about stories with bad politics and morals. THIS IS IT! And after he does this, Evelyn doesn't immediately go back to her time and shut the Doctor out of her life completely. In fact she says she UNDERSTANDS WHY the boy had to die. I just... no words. No words at all. I can understand if the writer hasn't listened to the past few stories with Six and Evelyn, but did the producers not give him at least a summary of what just happened? I doubt it would have made any difference even if they did.

And the Doctor hypocritically suddenly starts thinking these murders are bad when he learns that Robert Knox is not actually the real historical Robert Knox after all. He is a human from the future. Or something. So now that it's not the history that you remember, it's suddenly bad to murder these people. I hate this. I hate it so much. So once you take the abstract preservation of history angle off, now it suddenly matters that people are dying? Indeed, the story has to go out of its way to make this Robert Knox seem so horrible to make the murders seem less justified. He's doing it to save an alien race on another planet. Except not really because he's just created a time loop and having people play Burke and Hare in an obscene play for entertainment over and over again to make money. None of this changes the fact that an hour ago this story wanted to justify and congratulate the real Knox for his work. Indeed, it even says that the real Robert Knox was probably a good man. The primary point is not changed. This is just an out that the story tries and utterly fails to take to escape its abhorrent morals.

Oh and yes, as I mentioned earlier, there is an autistic boy named "daft Jamie" played by David Tennant. It's treated with exactly the kind of delicacy you'd expect from the mid-2000s. Evelyn initially and especially the Doctor throughout the story are extremely condescending towards him. To the point of luring him to his death at the end of the story. The Doctor even uses him to infect Knox with the virus he is trying to kill (Jamie is infected because he doesn't drink and drinking prevents the virus from taking hold). The Doctor eulogizes that Jamie had to die, but he was such an honorable and brave boy as the Doctor is luring him to his death. As I said, this ideology falls apart the moment the people dying "for the greater good" are your friends. Now suddenly you're not so happy, not so ready to shake Burke and Hare's hands and congratulate them on a job well done huh? As I said as well, seeing the Doctor lure this boy to his death should have been the catalyst to piss Evelyn off and get her to leave permanently as well, given her entire character arc up until now. She certainly shouldn't be agreeing with it. Imagine having David Tennant and then wasting his talent so thoroughly like this.

Indeed, there's a great character here: Mary, who is historically one of the people who dies. The Doctor keeps telling her that she's supposed to die, that she's supposed to be dead and she doesn't like the way the Doctor keeps looking at her. Understandably when the Doctor offers to protect her she says "and who's going to protect me from you." So when she goes off on her own she dies. I can't blame her for thinking the Doctor wanted to kill her because he certainly acted like it.

This is abhorrent. Easily the worst morals in a Doctor Who story I've heard so far both because it doesn't understand Doctor Who at all and also because it understands Doctor Who only too well. Normally Doctor Who is not about the ends justifying the means. Normally the Doctor doesn't congratulate murders. But all too often, unfortunately, the Doctor does let people die to preserve history as he sees it or the "web of time" or "fixed points in time" or other such excuses and nonsense. That is all too evident here. Even though it pissed me off, I'm glad it exists because it exposes the rotten underbelly of stories like that in Doctor Who. And I'm glad that at least some people saw the evil of that kind of ideology here when we pair it with "ends justify the means" morality. Preserving history the way you remember it was always an "ends justify the means" argument, but it's all the more pronounced here.