Get into trouble. Make mistakes. Fight.Love.Live.

It’s 10 years later and we are in the running for America’s Favorite couple!

It would mean the world if you see this and you took a moment to vote!

🔗 https://americasfavcouple.org/2025/angel-and-jo

“What was her name?”

Ten was born from love and adoration of the human race.  He changed himself for Rose; he made himself more approachable, silly and much more human. He engaged himself in human traditions, sat down to Christmas dinner and did whatever it took to protect the human race. He favoured humans over all other species, even his own. His darkness was probably the least pronounced of the New Who Crew; it only wavered when he met the Master again. Even then, the first emotion he sought was love. Love for his friend, love for a chance at righting past wrongs. Ten was born from love.

Eleven was born from loss. He watched all his friends leave him and with this new regeneration he never saw them again, never crossed their paths. He created a new image for himself and alienated himself much like Nine did. Eleven had a young face, but he was old in every other way. He made it clear that he was an alien - that he was different and ancient - and he was so adamant to remain that way that finding he could cry ‘happy tears’ was a revelation. Eleven was born from loss.

There should be more than one word for love. I’ve seen love that kills and I’ve seen love that redeems. I’ve seen love that… believes in the guilty, and love that saves the bereaved. What we will do for love; die for it, even. 

When I started getting really into the Doctor Who-verse and began looking for Classic Who episodes, I actually did not start with William Hartnell. It was Tom Baker, he was my first glimpse of what Classic Who brought on the screen before New Who came along. But after episodes like An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Dalek Invasion of Earth, even the cheesy The Gunfighters, I felt a different kind of experience while I was watching The First Doctor and his companions in action. It was monochromatic, the props and special effects were not exorbitant, and some are slow-burn episodes.

I loved every minute of it.

Things are not always what they seem

Last time, I talked about what I think are the different elements that make a science fiction and fantasy work. This time, I observed one other element that I feel can describe Doctor Who and the shows that may have influenced it–Fear the unknown, then prod it with a stick.

This is not exactly a new trope, and fear can come from many different things. But conceptually, this is one of the things that connect Doctor Who to shows like The Quatermass Experiment, The Twilight Zone, A for Andromeda, and the H.G. Wells film commentaries.

In the Hartnell era, we see this in action in the first episode already. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright were curious about one of their students — Susan Foreman. She’s very clever in some things, and almost has no knowledge in others. They wanted to know more about why Susan is the way that she is, so they end up in a junkyard which happens to be Susan’s home address.

It was dark, and they were confused. And then they met him — an old eccentric with an equally weird fashion taste. Why did he lie about hearing Susan call out to him? Who is he to Susan? Naturally, the two teachers fear for Susan, but they investigated anyway and found more surprises. Apparently, this man is Susan’s grandfather and calls himself The Doctor, they live in a police box that can travel through space and time, and they are not of Earth.

To make things even worse for them, they were not allowed to leave the TARDIS (what Susan called their ship, Time And Relative Dimension In Space), and was jettisoned with Susan and The Doctor to a new place, a new time. In this scenario, Ian and Barbara are worried for Susan, so they kind of had to meddle with Susan’s life. More so when they saw the Doctor and heard them talking about travelling in the fourth dimension, they thought the Doctor was crazy, and they wanted to get Susan away from him.

The Daleks, I think, showed this being played in a lot of different ways. The Daleks and Thals used to be at war with each other. The Daleks did not know how the Thals survived, and this scared them, because what else can they do, right? So they made a pretense of agreeing to make peace with them, but all they really want to do is to get the anti-radiation drug the Thals made and attempted to wipe them out.

We see a race who was scared of what the other is capable of, so to fight the fear off, they decided to kill the cause, literally. On the other hand, the Thals, who used to be a warrior race, are scared of retaliating because they might not like who they will become. The Doctor and his companions had to explain to the peaceful Thals that sometimes you have to fight back to live, it took a while for them to be truly convinced and a few lives had to be taken, but they fought again for the first time since renouncing violence.

In The Rescue, the first few minutes of the show we saw the monster called Koquillion successfully push Barbara off the cliff, and then trapped the Doctor and Ian. Apparently it has been terrorising Vicki and Bennett, as well. But then the Doctor realised that things may not be what they seem. Instead of leaving Dido, the Doctor and his companions investigate the disappearance of Bennett even if they know there is a monster on the loose, and eventually discovered that Bennett is Koquillion.

We see this throughout all the Doctor Who episodes. Something is wrong, people are scared if it, heck sometimes it is the Doctor who is scared of it. But trying to face the problem head on is more than just curiosity, it is also “destroying” what is causing fear, whether it is an actual monster or an idea.

Doctor Who as a social commentary

One of the questions presented in class was how the concept of the Dalek creatures relate to world affairs and the British psyche in the 1960’s. What does the world of the Dals and the Thals say about our own world during that time and now?

Daleks think of themselves as the master race, they are aggressive, xenophobic, and will do anything to wipe out the lesser races. The 1960’s was a time when the world was still recovering from the aftermath of World War II, the similarities between the Daleks and the Nazis can be clearly seen, and it is a relevant reminder of what was and what might come.

The Daleks represent how dangerous it is for a group of people to think of themselves as better than everyone else, and how too much of that vanity, that ideology that no one lesser than us should exist is more than just detrimental to society, it is lethal.

The 1960’s was also the time when the Cold War was in its ripest. The tension between the United States and Soviet Union is palpable, and while they never fully engaged in combat, this fight for dominance can be observed in proxy wars, prepared nuclear arsenal, and technological advancements like the space race. If it were not for the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine the US and the USSR have, a nuclear war was a terrifying possibility.

The Thals were a warrior race who renounced violence after the war with the Dals, and became pacifist farmers who only wanted to ask for food from the Dals. Alydon expressed his worry that the Dals might not take their survival well, but Temmosus insists that his worries come from fear, and that bad things can stem from fear like hate and war.

Alydon, unfortunately was right, and the Dals attempted to wipe them all out. But if you think about it, if the Thals and the Dals kept being passive-aggressive, it mirrors a Cold War situation where they are both aware of the capabilities of the other, but they are not engaging each other head on. One of them had to reach out, in this case, the Thals offered peace, the Dals, however, were not too keen.

Doctor Who was able to put on the screen the uncertainties felt by the people in the post-war era through the conflict between the Dals and the Thals. Everyone was on the look out for anything that can happen, and are scared of how it can affect them. I guess that same uncertainty is still true today. We are biting our nails, waiting for the players to make a move, hoping that we are not pawns that are killed off so that they can advance on each other.

I could say that this, too, resemble a Cold War a little bit, but nothing about what is happening now is passive-aggressive. There are whole civilisations in danger of being wiped off (native tribes driven off of their own land, kidnapped, and killed), extremists who think they are fulfilling the words in the doctrine but have never really understood it in the first place, people who use social constructs to judge other people and belittle them, and so on.

I have come to realise that the Daleks are basically what fear looks like. There is nothing human about them, there is no trace of compassion or understanding, they devalue others they deem unworthy of respect, and we live among them right now.

William Hartnell defining the role of Doctor Who

One of the reasons why I enjoyed William Hartnell’s portrayal of the Doctor is because he simply is the Doctor. I know there are talks that Patrick Troughton is “The Doctor’s ‘Doctor'”, but Troughton had to work with what Hartnell had laid for him.

I mean, the character would not have worked if Hartnell had not made it work. I love how he is both a complete mystery capable of very dangerous things (even lying to Ian and Barbara just so he could explore a city, risking their lives to quell his curiosity), and an affable man who cares about the safety of his companions and other races that he meets.

I took note of how his companions are highlighted in the episodes. A couple of times, it was the companions who were pro-active, they were able to find resolutions to the problems, and the Doctor followed their lead. I know the show is about a renegade Time Lord who travels space and time with companions and saves the day, but I have always felt that the show is about the companions as much as it is about him.

His companions affect him, they are his sound board, his conscience, his “other perspective”. The Doctor changed their lives, I mean, exploring the Universe, seeing different planets and civilisations in different points in time — whose life will not change, right? But them not being other-worldly is what makes them important. They are the questions we ask, the fear, the worries, the anger, and the Doctor values that. He has been travelling for a very long time, his companions keep him grounded. And although he is the one making the decisions, he is the one who steps in to save the day, it is his companions who sees it through, they are the ones who ensure that everyone is truly saved, or at least some can be saved.

William Hartnell laid the foundation for the show, and it was an experience being able to watch him as this mischievous yet avuncular Doctor.

*All gifs are from Cleo’s Tumblr

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