For those with some arcane knowledge of 60’s West Coast pop, so sang John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful. ‘Doctor Who’ supposedly has an ‘indefinable magic’, but magic in the programme itself? Not for me. We all have our own pet hates and bugbears – this is one of mine.
Inspired by the recent DWM Steve Lyons article on the supernatural in the programme and by various comments on the GallifreyBase forum about the nature of the Doctor, this is my view on the subject. The Doctor isn’t a wizard, or a god or a super-hero, he is a polymath scientist and explorer, who happens also to be a good man, someone who just does the best he can when he encounters iniquity and tyranny. Apart from his morality, his defining quality for me is his cleverness. It is what attracted me to the character as a child, as I suspect it did many a school swot, in the same way that Sherlock Holmes or Bernard Quatermass did later or any number of real life scientific heroes. Without that cleverness, he wouldn’t appeal to me at all, magic box or not.
So, here’s the rub, I am not in the slightest bit interested in magic or wizards or elves or faeries. The nearest I get to C.S Lewis or Tolkein is occasionally having a pint at the Eagle and Child in Oxford. So I’m not having any of that ‘he’s a wizard with a magic box’. If that’s what he is, then I’ve wasted a far amount of time and money over the last 40+ years (probably true anyway to be honest) and I’d be better off spending my time somewhere else. The Doctor I knew growing up was explicitly a scientist, he was UNIT’s scientific advisor, he would tell anyone he met that he was a scientist, he would counter anyone offering magic or the occult or the supernatural as an explanation (Jo, Miss Hawthorne, Leela etc.), with a rational, scientific reason, even if that is based on a science that is beyond the current level of human development. If that hadn’t been the case I would have abandoned the good Doctor when I should have, back when I was 14.
The DWM article talks a lot of about Clarke’s Third Law – ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’. Whilst that is likely true when a highly advanced technological species comes in to contact with one which is much less so, to me that isn’t the important thing, it is the fact that within the fictional universe that everything is explicable by science, even when it flirts with the supernatural. The fact that current science can conceive of time travel or a box with the interior dimensions large than the exterior, because the doorway is a threshold to different dimension is enough for me in the context of the show. Science can’t currently detonate a star and turn the subsequent black hole into an energy source to power time travel and may never be able to, but it can conceive that black holes exists and that time travel is theoretically possible. I don’t need the programme to be perfect, to always get all of its science right even, the writers aren’t scientists although simple use of a search engine these days would at least help with the basics. I just need science to form its basis, for the ‘supernatural’ to be explained away scientifically (even if those are in made up terms) and for its hero to be amongst other things a scientist and not a wizard. For the programme to be seen to be for science and against ‘magic’ and superstition. It is a simple case of enlightenment versus darkness, the explicable versus the unexplainable.
In a world where increasingly facts (and the truth) are merely something to be openly laughed at and basic things like empirical evidence and qualified expert scientific opinion no longer seem to matter, I personally think that we need a rational (if eccentric), clever scientist with a moral streak as a hero to children more than ever. Any wizards reading this can shove their magic wand where the sun doesn’t shine. So no, I don’t believe in magic.
The magic of the rational mind
Question: When is a magic wand not a magic wand? Well when it isn’t just a piece of wood that somehow has ‘magic’ properties. When it is a complex technological device with both hardware and software componentry. When its engineering, capabilities and design have clearly been augmented by its owner over the years – from a simple metal pen-like device that uses sound to manipulate screws (hence Sonic Screwdriver’) in ‘Fury from the Deep/War Games‘, to a device that seemingly can do anything when it needs to or not if the plot requires it not to – ‘it doesn’t do wood?’. ‘even the sonic screwdriver won’t get me out of this one!’. It can’t compete with Captain Jack’s digital squareness gun, it just assembles cabinets. Does it fulfil the same role in the fiction as a magic wand, well sometimes, but that isn’t the same as it actually being a magic wand. If it were there wouldn’t be a plot and the Doctor would just turn up, wave his wand about and we could all turn over to ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ or ‘Celebrity Wrestling’ or whatever. ‘Doctor Who’ at its worst uses it in this way. However like the ‘psychic paper’ it works in the new series 45minute format to shortcut all of that capture/have a chat in a cell/escape stuff that we used to have in 6-parters. So the temptation to use it is greater. The show survived its first 5 years without it and most of the 80’s, the Doctor found his way out of or into locked rooms, it just took longer – in the case of ‘The Aztecs‘ 4 weeks.
Question: When is a magic cabinet, not a magic cabinet? When it’s a technological wonder partially built and partially grown by one of the most technologically advanced species in the universe. A species that has mastered time travel, stellar and dimensional engineering. Where the internal dimensions are almost infinite, because they exist in a different dimension from the exterior box and the architectural configuration can be manipulated by software. Where the magic box disappears because it enters space/time and reappears elsewhere. Where the technology is so advanced that the magic cabinet is sentient and understands the whims and requirements of its owner and is his best friend or even his ‘wife’. My God that’s clever, stuff, so, so clever and a brilliant bit of enduring design and imagination. But it is still presented as advanced science, with a rational explanation, just science beyond current human understanding – such that it needs to be explained by analogy – images on TV in the living room, larger boxes held further away than smaller etc. That’s far better than a simple magic box – that’s easy to write and really a bit rubbish. What we have is far more magical and far, far more imaginative. So, again take your magic and shove it.
Question: When is a wizard not a wizard? When he stands for the rational, for exploring and gathering knowledge, not the supernatural. Does that mean that he can’t appear ‘magical’? Of course not, he is far in advance of our current knowledge – a right show-off too. And a ‘boffin’ in the tradition of the British gentleman scientist.
Question: Does that mean that the programme can’t absorb fairy tale, the supernatural, horror stories, ghosts, demons, the magical into its makeup? No of course no it has dealt with all of those things over the years, many times. It can use the trappings of them and does so in many of the best stories. However when it does adopt and re-purpose them it deals with them in it’s own way – ghost are aberrations in time or stranded time travellers (in ‘Doctor Who’ ‘ghosts’ are from the future or the past), demons are creatures from other dimensions or technologically advanced alien species worshipped as gods, psychic powers can be developed by proximity to tears in the fabric of space/time, Mummies are servicer robots, Vampires are just alien species. All we need is a plausible concept, one that can be imagined – we are looking at science from our own future or from far more advanced species. Doctor Who isn’t hard science fiction, I don’t much care for that anyway – it is fantasy – a mixture of H.G Wells, John Wyndham, Nigel Kneale, Conan Doyle (Holmes and Challenger) and many more besides – including horror and fairy tale. I like it that way. The show gets to have its cake and eat it too, the best of both worlds.
Take ‘Castrovalva‘ – there’s a castle on a hill (so what castles are real?) and a magic healing box (actually it is more like an advanced immersion tank – cutting the patient off from the rest of the world, reducing complexity and distraction and allowing the post-regenerative synapses to heal). It has the air of a fairy tale. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that. It is a world built out of pure mathematics, where the people find out that they aren’t real and their history is a forgery, but they are still people, the have free will and the most intelligent (Shardovan, Mergreve) discover the truth. A world created out of pure mathematics – far better than a mere fairy tale and a magic spell. You get the trappings of a fairy tale, plus the recursion of Escher, plus equations that create a world and all its people and a people learning that their existence is a lie and deciding to do something about it. That is far, far better – far more magical and far more intelligent. Very ‘Doctor Who’ in fact – the show for brainy kids. The Rainbow is unwoven just a little bit and it is all the better for it.
Question: Are there things in this world that science cannot currently explain? Yes there are lots of them. I’ve worked in some of those areas myself – there are huge gaps in our knowledge. Science does however strive to fill these gaps and it is rare in ‘Doctor Who’ that there isn’t a scientific, rational explanation for the events in stories or at least a hypothesis to be tested. Even if it seems just like technobabble, sometimes that’s fine – the stories sometimes project far in our future and far beyond our current capabilities. When there isn’t a rational explanation, it is conspicuous by its absence – transmigration of object for example is an aberration – it stands out. Or it can be a deliberate choice – in ‘Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit’ it is a deliberate choice to present the Doctor with something earlier than the known universe, beyond his comprehension. The Doctor shouldn’t always know everything – that would be boring, but he should always seek a rational, enlightened, evidence-based, scientific explanation. Because that’s what a scientist does. And the show should present the world it builds as being capable of being explained by science. That’s the important thing to me.
Question: Is he just a scientist? Well first of all there is no ‘just’ about being a scientist – give me Edward O Wilson, Richard Feynman or Charles Darwin over any fictional wizard any day of the week. But no of course he isn’t – he is a traveller, explorer, historian, bon viveur, lecturer, philosopher, expert on any number of subjects – an all round renaissance man and clever clogs. Simultaneously a snob and ‘man of the people’. Someone once said to me they didn’t really understand why I loved the Doctor so much – unlike Superman or Spiderman he didn’t have any super powers or special ‘magic’ abilities. He has one super power though – he is really, really clever. He appeals to the swot, the bullied, the geek, those somewhere on the spectrum, those who are a bit different. He is cleverer than the bullies – not simply more magical. If he were that would be rubbish.
The day that the Doctor no longer offers a rational, scientific. enlightened view for the seemingly’ magical or supernatural and just becomes Harry Potter or Gandalf, is that the day I sadly say goodbye and walk away, happy memories and all – it is that fundamental to my enjoyment of the series. It is absolutely a core part of the programme for me – a renaissance man in increasingly dark times, where expertise, knowledge and facts are starting to become old fashioned. The magic of being clever. That will do for me.
A Journal of Impossible Things 