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First, a full disclaimer: I am not an all-out Whovian. I have not seen any of the original seasons of Doctor Who, nor every episode of the recent series. I do not understand why Rose Tyler is so amazing, and I find the Daleks to be the most laughable arch-villain I’ve ever seen. Seriously, they’re giant toilet plungers.
That said, I do love Doctor Who quite a lot. And though I agree with most that David Tennant plays the Doctor best of all three actors so far, it’s the Matt Smith series that touch me most deeply. (Series 5 & 6, to be exact.) Because these are the series where it’s no longer enough to have a really powerful Doctor, or a really powerful companion. Because these are the series where the Doctor can save the universe only by sacrificing himself. Because these are the series where the Doctor must die.
I would venture to say that this shift in the shape of the climax mirrors a shift in the genre. No, Doctor Who doesn’t suddenly stop being science fiction. But its most important episodes draw less on the excitement of action and adventure, and more on the deeper emotions of fairy tale and mythology. The first clue to this shift comes in the opening of series 5. We meet the new companion as a child, not as an adult. Then the next episode (“The Beast Below”) centers around what happens when children cry. Not that fairy tales are only for children, but fairy tales are very much tied to children. And so, as Doctor Who starts to emphasize its fairy tale side, we see a lot of children.
We also hear more songs and poems, for instance, the ditty in “The Beast Below,” the Tick-Tock nursery rhyme reappearing in various episodes of series 6, and (my personal favorite) the prophecy in “A Good Man Goes to War,” which sounds as if it came right from the Oracle of Delphi:
Demons run when a good man goes to war / Night will fall and drown the sun / When a good man goes to war
Friendship dies and true love lies / Night will fall and the dark will rise / When a good man goes to war
Demons run, but count the cost / The battle’s won, but the child is lost / When a good man goes to war
Prophecy and poetry is an essential element of mythology and fairy tales – the kind of language that tells you what’s going on, but in such a mysterious way that you don’t understand it until after the event – the king of language that touches your heart more than your mind.
Finally, I’d point us to the characters themselves. The arch-villains are much more psychological, drawing on deeper fears than just that of being killed. Weeping Angels that only move when you’re not looking, the Silence that you can’t remember… now these are actually scary to my soul, and not just to my body. As for the heroes, we are constantly reminded that these aren’t just heroes. They’re legends. The Girl Who Waited, The Last Centurion, The Woman Who Killed the Doctor (or was she The Woman Who Married Him?)… all have gained titles beyond their names, to show that their stories are being told and told and told again. Not to mention that the whole plot of “A Good Man Goes to War” points out the dangers of becoming as big a legend as the Doctor is.
I’m not saying that these kinds of elements are absent from the previous series, just that they’re not as strongly emphasized. And I am glad of their greater prominence in the later series. Fairy tales are some of the most important stories we’ll ever hear, not because they help us escape from the real world, but because they bring us back it. It is just as River Song said. When the Doctor told her the Pandorica was a fairy tale, she replied in the only way one can,
Oh, Doctor! Aren’t we all?