Like many Doctor Who fans, I’ve become frustrated with the show in recent years. There are a number of reasons: female companions who are treated as little more than a pretty face, convoluted storylines, an inability to let things end (e.g. Clara’s non-death), Steven Moffat’s self-satisfaction. But one of them was exemplified in the season 10 teaser: the portrayal of the Doctor as a godlike figure. The push and pull between the Doctor’s power and his humanity has been a constant in the series. Yet if this season’s teaser is any indication, Steven Moffat is abandoning this complexity.
In the teaser, Bill describes the Doctor as “amazing” and “the most dangerous man in the universe.” The room explodes around the Doctor, and sparks rain down as she stares up at him wide-eyed. The whole thing feels more like an action movie than the cerebral, character-driven, moral-quandary-raising Doctor Who I first fell in love with. The entire focus of the trailer is on the Doctor—not on any of the worlds he travels to or people he meets. Bill merely exists as an astonished spectator. (There’s also Nardole, but Moffat has turned him into a companion without giving me a reason to care about him.)
This portrayal of the Doctor has been building for a while. It was embodied in the season nine premiere, when he rolled into a medieval fighting pit on a tank while playing the electric guitar. Watching the trailers for each season, you can see its progression. There’s a clear change at season five, when Moffat took over: less talking and more action, ominous choir music instead of fun ditties, the Doctor and the companion on less equal footing, more explosions, and, most jarringly, multiple appearances of guns, which the Doctor is supposed to abhor. Instead of an eccentric traveler, the Doctor is a powerful warrior. The Doctor has always been a hero, but in the earlier (read: Russell T. Davies) seasons, his heroism was incidental. He was a traveler who just happened to stumble into big adventures, and for this reason, he was ultimately relatable, despite his alien nature. Now, he’s portrayed as someone who inspires awe and terror throughout the universe and who actively seeks out heroic missions. He’s a larger-than-life savior, existing more to be adored than sympathized with.
Granted, even in earlier seasons the Doctor was often treated as a superior being. In “The Family of Blood,” Latimer describes the Tenth Doctor as “like fire and ice and rage . . . like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun.” In “The Waters of Mars,” the Doctor declares himself “Time Lord Victorious” and rages, “It's taken me all these years to realize that the laws of time are mine and they will obey me!” In both these cases, though, his godlike status is quickly complicated. John Smith agonizes over whether he should turn back into the Doctor because while being the Doctor comes with great power, it also means he can’t experience the joys of a normal life. The Doctor’s insistence that he can control the laws of time is proved flatly wrong when Adelaide, whose death he prevents even though it’s a fixed point, commits suicide anyway. Compare this to last season’s finale, when the Doctor defies the laws of time—and Clara’s wishes—to save Clara’s life. There are relatively few repercussions, as Clara gets to travel the universe in her own diner/time-machine, along with Ashildr, whose Doctor-granted immortality is ultimately treated as not that big a deal.
The Doctor’s relationship with his companions is an important piece of this. Donna’s friendship with the Doctor is refreshing because she doesn’t put up with the Doctor’s self-importance: when he says he can choose not to warn Pompeii residents because “Tardis, Time Lord, yeah!” she instantly retorts “Donna, human, no!” Even Martha, despite her unrequited love for the Doctor, realizes by the end of season three that he’s not all she thought he was, and that she’s more than just “second best.” Season two’s “The Satan Pit” brings us these words: “I’ve seen fake gods and bad gods and demi gods and would-be gods; out of all that . . . if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her.” The Doctor says this about Rose, an ordinary 19-year-old human. Earlier companions were given the same heroic capabilities as the Doctor. Crucially, the companions serve as audience surrogates. By watching these shop girls and mechanics and nurses and temps save the universe, viewers imagined that we could too.
Hero-worship of the Doctor is most powerfully explored in the fifth season episode “The God Complex.” The episode’s monster feeds on people’s faith, whether that faith is in a god, superstition, or, in Amy’s case, the Doctor. In order to defeat the monster, the Doctor must break that faith. He tells her he can’t save her because he’s not as wonderful as she believes: “I took you with me because I was vain. Because I wanted to be adored . . . I'm not a hero. I really am just a madman in a box.” Him admitting to his guilt about selfishly putting humans in harm’s way is one of the most powerful moments of the Eleventh Doctor’s run.
One problem with Moffat’s writing is that he’s too proud of himself. Even after Eleven had regenerated into Twelve, Moffat managed to ram in one last scene with “his” Doctor in the season eight premiere. (And speaking of the regeneration, what a self-congratulatory one it was.) This tone has been a criticism of Moffat’s Sherlock as well: of the most recent season’s finale, Allison Shoemaker of The A.V. Club writes, “Nearly all of [Sherlock’s] worst moments have come when the series seemed to care more about its own brilliance than these people and the stories they inhabit.”
The Doctor has always known he’s brilliant. But in earlier seasons, he also knew that his brilliance often veered into hubris. Saving the universe was rarely as simple as throwing on his stylish jacket and impressing everyone with his daring plan. Similarly, the show knew it was great TV, but it didn’t have to prove it with action-movie trailers. In the same way Mickey Smith once “saved the universe with a big yellow truck,” the Doctor saved the universe with a sonic screwdriver, heart, and, most importantly, humanity.
