Medicinal Purposes

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.

We return to the company of the 6th Doctor and Evelyn as they arrive in what they believe to be 19th century Edinburgh.  On learning the time and place, the Doctor is eager to meet the infamous graverobbers, Burke and Hare but soon discovers that all is not right and that, although Hare is up to dastardly deeds, no one seems to know who Burke is.It soon transpires that a time traveller, under the guise of Doctor Robert Knox, is manipulating time within a bubble as a show for alien tourists.

Medicinal Purposes is a brilliant 6th Doctor story and one of my favourites.  It is dripping with atmosphere and after a couple of releases for which I struggled to get a sense of time and place, Medicinal Purposes has it in spades.  When thinking of why this is, I realised that what this story has that the others have been missing: regional accents.  Medicinal Purposes is full to the brim with Scottish accents.  It immediately places you in the story.  The fact that a lot of the actors go for fairly rough sounding tones (the old woman murdered in the first (and third!) episodes; Burke; and even to some extent Mary and Jamie) places the story firmly in the rougher part of town and this is contrasted by Leslie Philips gentrified and suave performance as Knox, who spends most of the story in the more well-to-do part of Edinburgh.  The soundscape also helps the sense of place: the pub scenes are bustling and loud; Knox’s home/TARDIS is filled with ticking clocks – an early clue to his true identity.

The characters are well written and well acted.  Special mention has to be made of David Tennant’s performance as Daft Jamie.  He is superb.  A mentally and physically disabled character like Jamie could be horrendously overplayed or caricatured, but Tennant manages to make Jamie seem odd but endearing.  Evelyn’s reaction to him is, to be honest, a little nasty and it’s another occasion when I don’t think the writer has her characterisation right (I didn’t like her characterisation much in 100 BC).  I can’t see someone who shows such compassion in stories such as Doctor Who and the Pirates, being quite so horrible about someone with obvious mental or physical disabilities.  In fact, Evelyn’s characterisation is something I have a bit of an issue with in this story.  The writer seems to ignore the fact she is a history lecturer.  I know this isn’t her period, but she is written as being almost wilfully ignorant of anything related to Burke and Hare, rather than, at least, having a basic general knowledge – something I would find far more believable in a character of Evelyn’s implied education.

Jamie is also given some lovely lines, particularly about how other people in Edinburgh ‘drift in and out’ as only he can perceive that something isn’t quite right with reality.

The other performance of note is, of course, Leslie Philips as Knox.  I am undecided about Knox.  On the one hand, Philips is clearly having a whale of a time as this immoral time travelling doctor/businessman/carnival showman but on the other I think his performance sometimes tips to the hammier side of hammy and it takes the edge off what is, otherwise, a fairly grim and gritty story.

The beginning of Episode 3 plays a clever trick on the listener, being an exact replica of the opening to Episode 1 but exchanging Burke for Knox.  It is so similar that I thought I’d messed up transferring the audio files to my mp3 player!

Historically, this story introduces us to William Burke and latterly, William Hare.  Within the context of the story I am a little confused as to whether we are meeting the real thing or whether these are alternative versions trapped within Knox’s sideshow.  Indeed, the nature of how Knox is delivering the ‘Burke and Hare Experience’ to alien tourists is left a little vague.  Robert Knox is also a historical figure, along with Mary Patterson and Daft Jamie, but this Knox is an imposter so, as far as this audio is concerned, we are left without a clear picture of what the real man was like.  Mary and Jamie were both victims of Burke and Hare’s murder spree to gain bodies for the real Knox.  There were many other victims but these do not feature in the story and we do not actually witness either of the murders: Mary is dead by the climax of the story but offscreen and more tragically, Daft Jamie is returned to his rightful place and time (after a quick trip to the future) to fulfill his historical destiny.  We also witness the execution of Burke, betrayed by Hare (who was offered the chance to give ‘King’s evidence’, meaning he escaped prosecution).  (And here, I have a confession, that I’ve just had to swap around Burke and Hare’s names as I had got muddled as to which was which in both the context of the story and the real history).  We also have a anachronism as a clue for the Doctor to realise Knox is a time traveller when he mention Jekyll and Hyde, a novel not to be written for a good many years after.
The presence of Burke and Hare allows the story to ruminate on the morality of body-snatching.  The Doctor goes into quite a long speech about how medical science would never have advanced as it did without the machinations of people like Burke, Hare and Knox and how whilst he cannot condone the murders, he can see how the ends, ultimately, will justify the means.  It is an interesting point of view for the story to take and it is a topic perfectly suited to the more alien and colder 6th Doctor.

The only problems I have with the story are, as mentioned, the slightly off characterisation of Evelyn and also the slightly vague nature of exactly how Knox is manipulating the time bubble and allowing alien tourists to view the events in Edinburgh.  The atmosphere, performances and dialogue, however, are superb and contribute towards an excellent story.  It is unsurprising that Big Finish returned the story’s writer Robert Ross to pen a further 6th Doctor and Evelyn story…it’s just a shame it ended up being Pier Pressure (but that’s a review for a different day).

14.11.2023

Fundamentally misunderstands the Doctor — he unironically treats people as unimportant. Also hinges on the fact the Doctor knows the minutiae of a very specific history event (see Blake the Snake). Also David Tennant plays a caricature. Nothing about this feels Doctor Who. Also I can barely remember the plot just two weeks after listening to this. 1/5

The Doctor believes the ends justify the means, which is the kind of behaviour I thought we were trying to get away from with Big Finish's take on The Sixth Doctor. Evelyn is unobservant and doesn't know her British history. The villain monologues to himself and goes on poetic rants about morality for no apparent reason, yeah this whole thing is a mess.
Another thing, Evelyn dislikes The Doctor's belief that Mary has to die, but when he asks her to ostensibly bring her to her death, she does so without questioning it, which doesn't work for her role in the story, nor where Evelyn is in her personal relation to The Doctor at this point.
Though, being fair, those are the worst elements and the worst moments, the thing in and of itself is decently written and really well acted, those elements and moments just really irk me.

Also, they set up the mystery of who Knox is, letting it brew, letting people speculate, "He is a mysterious villain who seems to know The Doctor" "He has a TARDIS, a stolen TARDIS!" "Is it The Master?" "Could it be The Monk?" only to reveal it's........ someone you don't know! Not even a Time Lord, just some guy! JUST SOME RANDOM DUDE!

Also, tiny thing, yes Doctor, your TARDIS was stolen. Stolen personally, by you!

David Tennant is in this... I've got nothing to say about that, other than the role being a bit uncomfortable, as it is a person with a learning disability or some sort of brain damage, and that is treated with the delicacy one expects of the mid-2000s, that is to say, not great, but could certainly be a lot worse.

4.5/10