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The Doctor is not In

The Canberra Times 25 September 2006

Actor Tom Baker, who played perhaps the most famous Doctor Who (the one with the scarf), suggested that the series’ long-running success couldn’t be explained by grown-ups. “I believe adults pretend to understand the program as well as kids do, but they don’t,” he said in 1979.

Now, of course, Doctor Who has been revived, with great success, by some of the very children who were watching it back then. They are now adults, and it is no longer a children’s show. The new show is wonderful in many ways, so many have suggested that it has far surpassed the original… but they’re wrong.

It seems that Baker was right. Now that they have grown up, the producers – while they might have a better understanding of drama, suspense and character than they did as kids – seem to have lost their understanding of what made Doctor Who so special. I’m also one of the kids who was watching it in 1979 (so, yes, I’m also grown up), but it seems to be missing something. Quite simply, as it’s now done for adults, the Doctor seems to have (gasp) a love life!

Strangely, as the series is so well done, even long-term fans (who always despised any hint of romance) seem to have forgiven the fact that now his cute, female companion obviously has the hots for him; that David Tennant, the actor who plays the current Doctor (the sexiest model so far, so I’m told), says in interviews that it is more of a romance; that he now has lines like “I just snogged Madam du Pompadour!” (announced with bright-eyed excitement); and that when his old companion Sarah Jane Smith returned, it was revealed that she had never married in 30 years, waiting longingly for his return - rather like Great Expectations’ pathetic Miss Havisham.

Whining about this, of course, must sound terrible unfair. Why shouldn’t the Doctor enjoy himself like the rest of us? Because, quite simply, he’s not like the rest of us! Part of his appeal, rarely discussed (because so few people realised it) was that he was above such lower, human concerns. He was the ideal: endearingly human in some ways, but slightly superior to humans, physically, morally and intellectually. His procession of young, attractive, female companions, when the Doctor himself was usually middle-aged, was never romantic. As kids, we accepted that; as adults, we question it. (One Sydney reviewer recently called it the “Lolita syndrome”.) But it was never romantic, and rarely even paternal; it was more of a master-disciple relationship. They would happily travel the universe with such a wise man.

The new series gets it mostly right, but it has foolishly tried to add that element that is meant to be so essential to TV drama: sexual tension. It hasn’t ruined Doctor Who… yet. Let’s hope it doesn’t go too much further.

Nowadays, whenever a legendary hero is “modernised”, there seems to be an obligatory focus on their love lives. That’s fine with a few: Tarzan always had Jane, Robin Hood always had Marian, Superman always had Lois (except for when he was younger and had Lana). But in some cases, as is rarely understood, a character’s asexuality is part of their appeal. Arthur Conan Doyle never wanted anyone else to mess with Sherlock Holmes, but since he died, almost everyone has. Many authors have insisted on giving the great detective a love life. In some cases, they assumed that, with his detachment from women, he was obviously gay. That’s an easy explanation, but perhaps he had other focuses. While Dr Watson went through a few romances – and wrote of Holmes’s cases like a latter-day St John – Holmes focused on his quest for justice: not as amazing as the Doctor, but superhuman nonetheless.

One of the more popular recent versions of Holmes is a series of novels by Laurie R. King, in which a retired Holmes finds a new assistant, a feisty teenage girl. After a few novels of the required sexual tension, they eventually marry. (“Lolita syndrome”, indeed!) King’s Holmes is more fallible, which is interesting, but not as interesting as the real thing. Let’s hope that King doesn’t have a similar interest in Frodo Baggins, Hercules Poirot or (Heaven forbid) William of Baskerville. None of them ever needed romance, and even for today’s readers, they could do without it.

Sure, there will always be a place for the Lancelots and James Bonds of the world, but for some heroes, their detachment – more focused with a love of humanity, or a love of justice, than a simply romantic love – is part of what makes them work. If the Doctor continues to flirt with his companions and “snog” historical characters, a British institution will lose some of its magic.