These are, to say the least, interesting times to live through. I started writing this piece during the UK lockdown in Spring 2020 and as I finish the piece now, we are heading back that way, with parts of the country already under heightened restrictions. If you take away the uncertainty for the future, the millions of deaths and those who may suffer the long-term effects either physically or mentally of Covid-19 and the ensuing social isolation. Step back for a moment and look at us with a sense of scientific detachment – individually or as families or groups of friends, work environments or communities or as nations – and there surely must be something interesting to discover about our behaviour in these times?
Last year, I was in Svalbard – up as far North as I have ever been – huge, wide vistas, sea ice, fjords and glaciers, Reindeer and Polar Bear and Arctic Foxes. By the same time period this year – I had barely left the county, never mind the country. In fact, between March and July I hadn’t travelled further than about 7 or 8 miles – walking or by bike, the car unused and covered in a layer of lichen. It wasn’t exactly prison or solitary confinement, not by a long way, but it is a massive reduction in the scope and scale of the world that we usually inhabit. Not just overseas trips, but travel for work or leisure. Add to that in my case (and many others) a period unemployment and the removal of my usual role in life, well let’s just say it is a pretty big change.
So why do I bring all of this up?
Well, it struck me that this is exactly what the Doctor is faced with in season 7 – on a universal and existential scale. A huge reduction in the scope of his life, tied to one place and time. Not just a reduction in scale, but critically a huge reduction in the variety of his life – his experiences reduced to his lab at UNIT HQ and a series of research bases. Some of the behaviours he exhibits – baiting the Brigadier or laying into civil servants, politicians and bureaucrats are repetitive, almost stereotypical – the Doctor’s equivalent of excessive pacing. Given all of this, it is little wonder that by ‘Ambassadors of Death’ he can’t wait to volunteer to crew the recovery capsule and head back out into space. Or that he that he actively seeks and initiates contact with the Silurians and the alien ambassadors.
Zoochosis is a term usually used by animal welfare campaigners and is applied to animals kept in captivity –in zoos or wildlife parks or in some cases domesticated animals in our homes or farms. We all have ritualised behaviour patterns – they are ingrained in us – grooming, pacing, hand gestures or tics. When trapped, stressed or taken out of our natural environment, such patterns can become compulsive, repetitive, stereotypical – the behaviours no longer serving a useful function, rather just serving as signifiers of distress and discomfort or just plain boredom. In zoos and wildlife parks – such stereotypical behaviours have lead to the development of programmes of environment enrichment. Challenges – finding food for example, puzzles, toys, distraction behaviour, learning, play. All to occupy and stretch the animals and to try to mimic or replace their natural foraging behaviour, daily activities or social interactions.
Season 7 is obviously a huge change for the Doctor. He is trapped in one time and one place. He has a job and a car. In the Countdown comic strips, he even has his own cottage in the country. This is isn’t really explored to any huge degree on TV, except in a very light touch sort of way. I think the reasons for this, is that none of this is the rationale for his exile. His exile is for stylistic and economic reasons – cost reductions and a desire to tell stories in a more realistic setting, rather than it might be seen today as desire to see what happens to the Doctor as a character when placed in our own mundane, domestic lives. Even in modern times, series 10, with Capaldi’s Doctor stuck on Earth, doesn’t really explore his reaction to that – he gets to sneak off with Bill on adventures on other planets. Again, his period of ‘exile’ isn’t based on an exploration of his character, it is a plot arc point and an excuse to see him as a university lecturer and in a ‘Educating Rita’ type relationship – which in all fairness works very well. But one episode exploring him trapped in one place and dealing with the domestic and every day might at least have been interesting – a more realistic version of ‘The Lodger‘ for example.
When I thought about it though, the Doctor does bear some signs of zoochosis during his exile on Earth. It brings out his impatience and shortness – particular with figures of authority, of rules and regulations, petty bureaucracy. Pertwee himself obviously displayed those traits – he was kicked out of every school he attended for rebelling, even RADA. His Doctor is trapped within this small world, his lab at UNIT HQ in the 70’s (or 80’s) – with the Brigadier, even Liz to some degree. He yearns for the wider universe – it is why he seizes on the Silurians so fervently as a cause or is prepared to run off even during an invasion in ‘Spearhead from Space’. His behaviours, rubbing the chin or the back of the neck, impatiently pacing all display signs, if you chose to read them that way of compulsive, ritualised behaviours. The degree to which any of this deliberate or just performance choices by the actor are up for debate, but for me it feels like an interesting avenue to explore.
Throughout his imprisonment, he looks to enrich his environment – tinkering with Bessie or trying to fix the TARDIS, even though really, he knows he has no chance of escape until the Timer Lords decide to free him. There is also the compulsive building of gadgets – does that shed door in ‘Inferno’ really need an electronic lock, does Bessie really need a remote control? It reminds me of Alan Partridge. Bored one day in the Linton Travel tavern, taking apart his Corby Trouser Press! As season 7, moves into 8 he gains a family and ersatz daughter/niece/best friend, the Brigadier slowly becomes Alastair, he still gets to berate civil servants and politicians and be impossibly rude seemingly at random – but now his he has a new challenge – the Master. The Master enriches his environment – gives him a purpose, even joins him trapped on Earth for a while. By season 9, he has even joined him in ‘prison’. The Master is as much trapped on Earth as he is – his island prison even a mirror of UNIT HQ in an old country house. They even gain their freedoms at roughly the same time – end of season 9, into early season 10.
For my own part, I didn’t realise I was pacing in March and April 2020. I was though. Ok, my pacing was rather less obvious than a big cat in a zoo enclosure or cage. I paced for miles, walking for hours. Other people I know weren’t so lucky – they paced a single room. Some, like my friend recovering from cancer or a relative with an immune system syndrome had to be 2m apart from even the people they live with and share their life with – socially isolated within their social isolation. My other stereotypical behaviours included the rituals of making coffee – grinding of the beans, extracting the expresso and steaming and texturing the milk, perfecting the pour. Or cooking. My enrichment coming from books, learning new recipes or re-listening to music that I haven’t heard in years or growing fruit and vegetables or indeed writing these reviews and watching the show.
As exiles go, it wasn’t a bad one, not by any measure, at times I even enjoyed it. But. And there is a but. We are learning to live with our exiles, much like the Doctor did. Lives which if not severely impacted by the disease itself, are left as ‘collateral damage’ as a result of the pandemic and the measures to control it. It can’t be helped, but one day we can only hope that our own ‘exile’ will be lifted.
Sometime, I will pick up this thread over in my Audio review thread. By coincidence June 2020, saw the Eighth Doctor similarly trapped on Earth – in part 1 of the ‘Stranded’ series. He, Helen and Liv are trapped in London. His former Baker Street bolthole having been converted to flats, no UNIT to fall back on, no sonic screwdriver and a TARDIS that is just an empty box. There is no Covid-19 in this version of 2020, but his predicament – trapped in a much, much smaller world than his norm is curiously and accidentally, brilliantly of its time. It also explores his feelings at being trapped, in a lot more detail than was attempted in the Pertwee era or series 10 and looks at how he deals with society at large – not just UNIT or research bases or a university – but trapped with people he doesn’t know, who have everyday problems. So, whilst I will return the effects of exile on the Third Doctor as this thread progresses through to season 8, I will also look at his eventual successor and how he deals with confinement in a very different world.
A Journal of Impossible Things 