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On the Importance of the Loss of Gallifrey
Dec. 1st, 2013 02:36 pmJust before the 50th anniversary special last week, I re-watched a few of Clara's episodes to remind myself of the recent plot arcs, and I also watched "School Reunion" from S2 because it's among my favorite Ten and Rose episodes and because of the theme of connecting this show's past and future. In "School Reunion," there's an exchange that I found relevant to "The Day of the Doctor." This is from when Mr. Finch, the Krillitane leader, is trying to tempt the Doctor to share the power they hope to gain with the magical equation thing.
THE DOCTOR: I could save everyone...
MR FINCH: Yes.
THE DOCTOR: I could stop the war...
SARAH JANE: No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss -- they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship... everything has its time. And everything ends.
The pain of the Time War and the loss of his people have defined the post-2005 Doctor as much as his (still vast) happiness at traveling the universe and love for those who travel with him. Now, "The Day of the Doctor" tells us that Gallifrey was never destroyed (or irretrievably time locked, or whatever) at all, just temporarily hidden. I'd like to explain why I think this huge change to the Doctor's past and future is a mistake.
Obviously other people will have different perspectives on this. I've read some great meta by people who loved this way of resolving the Time War. I can see the appeal of that view (especially from those who are originally Classic Who fans who see this as a return to the proper order of the universe), but these are my feelings.
A brief note: "The End of Time" already established that Gallifrey wasn't actually blown up but time-locked. However, because the Doctor referred to himself as the last of his kind and considered Gallifrey beyond retrieval, it was effectively destroyed. So sometimes I refer to the pre-DotD continuity as featuring the destruction of Gallifrey, even if TEoT tells us that destruction wasn't technically what happened.
-The Day of the Doctor's version of the Time War actually undermines Doctor Who' anti-violence message. This point is a little counterintuitive (isn't less genocide better?), but hear me out. With the previous understanding of the Time War, the message was that the biggest war imaginable could only end in mutual annihilation. War corrupts whole societies. It is a force of pure destruction, and EVERYONE inevitably loses. War has no real winners, only damaged survivors. In "The Day of the Doctor," the Daleks were still destroyed but the Time Lords were saved: a victory. Am I the only one thinking of a previous instance where the Doctor decided to save certain people whose deaths should have been fixed and declared himself victorious?
-Related to that, I have a problem with the fact that "The Day of the Doctor" didn't even pause to suggest that the annihilation of the Daleks might not be something to unequivocally celebrate. Of course the Daleks are evil, and there wasn't exactly much room for reasoning or negotiation in this scenario, nor an obvious way to contain them short of killing. But still, the Doctor has refused to destroy the Dalek race before. I would expect at least a hint of regret that billions of thinking beings were wiped away. I find it troubling that now genocide (even of Daleks) is portrayed as a handy and potentially glorious path to victory.
-Doctor Who is a fundamentally hopeful show, where time and time again the Doctor is faced with a choice between tragic alternatives but instead comes up with a third way to save everyone. It's one of the things I love about the show. However, I think the show's formula works better with the destruction of Gallifrey as part of the backstory as a time when hope died. It raises the stakes for every other story if the audience knows that the Doctor can fail, that there came a day in the past when the only choice was between unfathomable violence and certain doom for the entire universe and even the Doctor could not find a third way. Of course the Doctor has other failures, but I think the loss of Gallifrey is especially important. The Time War is the dark cloud that accentuates all the show's other silver linings. "Everybody lives" is not quite so enormous if it's not qualified by "just this once."
-The Doctor has the potential to be really, really scary. He is the thing that frightens the monsters, the Oncoming Storm. Part of why armies back away from him is that the smart monsters know exactly what he is capable of when pushed. The Doctor is deeply moral, but it is a choice that he must make and re-make every time. By saying that he never could or would do something as drastic as destroying Gallifrey, you take away some of the weight from all the other times he chooses to reign in his power. I think the Doctor's potential for darkness is fascinating. It certainly shouldn't be emphasized too deeply, because again, this is a hopeful show about someone who is truly good, but it is an important that the Doctor and everyone around him know what he can do.
-It was the wrong time to undo the loss of Gallifrey. If the 75th (or even possibly the 60th) anniversary wanted to make a big change, I might feel like enough time had passed to make it a little more appropriate. If the Bad Wolf had brought back Gallifrey in "Parting of the Ways," it might have felt like a natural culmination of S1's storyline. But not now. Not only eight years after the Time War became a thing, but after three series of Moffat largely ignoring it.
-While watching "The Day of the Doctor," I was briefly terrified that the show was about to banish all of New Who from the continuity. It avoided that pitfall by having the Doctor still believe that he destroyed Gallifrey, so series 1-7 still work. However, I feel like having the Doctor mourn and agonize over something that didn't actually happen makes all of those deep emotions feel a little cheapened. I hate that whenever I go back to watch Nine and Ten (or the very few episodes of Eleven that mention it), the fact that the Doctor didn't actually push the button will always be in the back of my mind. It means that the Doctors I care most about have built much of their life around a lie.
-My Doctor is Nine, and my second favorite is Ten. I very much like Classic Who, but for me it always feels like a prequel to the real story. The Time War is a vital part of the origin story of my Doctor. Undoing the loss of Gallifrey is not quite as drastic as if Batman were to discover that his parents were actually alive and in witness protection, but it's certainly along those lines. I also feel like much (not all) of Classic Who is a children's show that many adults also enjoyed, while most of New Who is a grownup show that also appeals to children. The Time War is part of what made that important distinction.
-I haven't seen that many of the Classic Who stories set on Gallifrey, but the few I have were frankly dull. Ditching Gallifrey freed New Who from all that tedium and potentially confusing continuity. While I would be excited to see Romana, the Master, and the Rani again, honestly I think bringing back the other Time Lords is a bad idea from a storytelling perspective.
-If the Doctor can retroactively remove the single worst thing in his past, it makes him less of a real person. We humans almost all have something in our past from which we struggle to move on: someone we've lost, something we're guilty about, a miserable time or terrible experience we'd like to forget. We get better slowly, and sometimes things happen that bring it all back and force us to confront the pain again. We find joy in time, and we don't think about the bad thing so often, but it is always part of us. The Doctor has been making that journey of recovery, but it wasn't done. There isn't a done for anyone except Steven Moffat's Doctor. Removing the loss of Gallifrey in an instant is a far less interesting and relatable story than watching the Doctor deal with it over many years and never quite completely.
Criticizing a piece of writing is easier than creating it. I also wanted to share two ideas for what could have been done with a 50th anniversary special that I would have found more satisfying than what actually happened.
1) As a potential fundamentally different premise for the special, I would have loved to have seen something like a less hopeless version of The Boy Who Killed Time, wherein the TARDIS or Time as a whole is damaged and different times start bleeding together, allowing Clara and Eleven to see and interact with anyone who has ever been on the TARDIS. This would be an excuse for appearances by lots of previous Doctors and companions, especially if you inserted some technobabble about time fields leading to rapid aging or something to excuse the fact that the classic actors look older. There is even recent precedent for people seeing past and future versions of themselves inside the TARDIS in "Journey to the Heart of the TARDIS." It could have been resolved with working together by all the versions of the Doctor, potentially with the TARDIS taking the form of Bad Wolf Rose or even Idris to participate in her own rescue. It would have been fantastic and a more honest tribute to the whole 50-year history of the show.
2) As a minor change to the existing special that would still leave Gallifrey destroyed but inject a bit of hope into the wreckage of the Time War, instead of having all the Doctors work together to freeze and remove Gallifrey, I would have preferred if they had each landed a TARDIS somewhere on Gallifrey and rescued some of the people before the button got pushed to destroy it. As Donna insisted to the Doctor in "The Fires of Pompeii," even if you can't say everyone, at least save someone. There would probably be a time limit, so they couldn't save anywhere close to everyone. They could land inside the Academy and other schools, major population centers, refugee camps, or wherever a lot of Gallifreyans who weren't the High Council were gathered, and just take in as many people as could be persuaded into the TARDIS doors in ten minutes or something. If the War Doctor stayed out of it so he could push the button but every other incarnation who appeared in TDotD rescued 100 people, that would be 1,200, enough genetic diversity to make the long-term continuation of the species plausible. Even if they averaged just 10 rescues, that would be 120, which is 118 more than there have been at any other time in New Who.
The planet of Gallifrey with all its infrastructure and tradition would still be gone, and the Doctor would still carry the guilt for the deaths of billions, so most of what made the Time War such an important thing for the story would remain. That pain and loss would still define the Doctor. However, he would no longer be the last of the Time Lords, so it would still be a joyous and enormous thing to do for the anniversary. You could have an excuse for the return of Romana or any other specific Time Lords you wanted. I would be much more interested in the Time Lords if they were having to reinvent themselves as a diaspora without a homeworld. Previous regenerations would have to drop off their cargo of Gallifreyans wherever they landed and immediately forget, so S8 could still have an element of searching for the lost people of Gallifrey scattered across time and space. It could have been great.
But it is not to be. Everything has its time, and everything ends. That apparently includes the version of Doctor Who that I have thus far found the most fascinating. I'm disappointed about that. Still, the show goes on, and I am sure there will still be worthwhile stories going forward.
THE DOCTOR: I could save everyone...
MR FINCH: Yes.
THE DOCTOR: I could stop the war...
SARAH JANE: No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss -- they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship... everything has its time. And everything ends.
Obviously other people will have different perspectives on this. I've read some great meta by people who loved this way of resolving the Time War. I can see the appeal of that view (especially from those who are originally Classic Who fans who see this as a return to the proper order of the universe), but these are my feelings.
A brief note: "The End of Time" already established that Gallifrey wasn't actually blown up but time-locked. However, because the Doctor referred to himself as the last of his kind and considered Gallifrey beyond retrieval, it was effectively destroyed. So sometimes I refer to the pre-DotD continuity as featuring the destruction of Gallifrey, even if TEoT tells us that destruction wasn't technically what happened.
-The Day of the Doctor's version of the Time War actually undermines Doctor Who' anti-violence message. This point is a little counterintuitive (isn't less genocide better?), but hear me out. With the previous understanding of the Time War, the message was that the biggest war imaginable could only end in mutual annihilation. War corrupts whole societies. It is a force of pure destruction, and EVERYONE inevitably loses. War has no real winners, only damaged survivors. In "The Day of the Doctor," the Daleks were still destroyed but the Time Lords were saved: a victory. Am I the only one thinking of a previous instance where the Doctor decided to save certain people whose deaths should have been fixed and declared himself victorious?
-Related to that, I have a problem with the fact that "The Day of the Doctor" didn't even pause to suggest that the annihilation of the Daleks might not be something to unequivocally celebrate. Of course the Daleks are evil, and there wasn't exactly much room for reasoning or negotiation in this scenario, nor an obvious way to contain them short of killing. But still, the Doctor has refused to destroy the Dalek race before. I would expect at least a hint of regret that billions of thinking beings were wiped away. I find it troubling that now genocide (even of Daleks) is portrayed as a handy and potentially glorious path to victory.
-Doctor Who is a fundamentally hopeful show, where time and time again the Doctor is faced with a choice between tragic alternatives but instead comes up with a third way to save everyone. It's one of the things I love about the show. However, I think the show's formula works better with the destruction of Gallifrey as part of the backstory as a time when hope died. It raises the stakes for every other story if the audience knows that the Doctor can fail, that there came a day in the past when the only choice was between unfathomable violence and certain doom for the entire universe and even the Doctor could not find a third way. Of course the Doctor has other failures, but I think the loss of Gallifrey is especially important. The Time War is the dark cloud that accentuates all the show's other silver linings. "Everybody lives" is not quite so enormous if it's not qualified by "just this once."
-The Doctor has the potential to be really, really scary. He is the thing that frightens the monsters, the Oncoming Storm. Part of why armies back away from him is that the smart monsters know exactly what he is capable of when pushed. The Doctor is deeply moral, but it is a choice that he must make and re-make every time. By saying that he never could or would do something as drastic as destroying Gallifrey, you take away some of the weight from all the other times he chooses to reign in his power. I think the Doctor's potential for darkness is fascinating. It certainly shouldn't be emphasized too deeply, because again, this is a hopeful show about someone who is truly good, but it is an important that the Doctor and everyone around him know what he can do.
-It was the wrong time to undo the loss of Gallifrey. If the 75th (or even possibly the 60th) anniversary wanted to make a big change, I might feel like enough time had passed to make it a little more appropriate. If the Bad Wolf had brought back Gallifrey in "Parting of the Ways," it might have felt like a natural culmination of S1's storyline. But not now. Not only eight years after the Time War became a thing, but after three series of Moffat largely ignoring it.
-While watching "The Day of the Doctor," I was briefly terrified that the show was about to banish all of New Who from the continuity. It avoided that pitfall by having the Doctor still believe that he destroyed Gallifrey, so series 1-7 still work. However, I feel like having the Doctor mourn and agonize over something that didn't actually happen makes all of those deep emotions feel a little cheapened. I hate that whenever I go back to watch Nine and Ten (or the very few episodes of Eleven that mention it), the fact that the Doctor didn't actually push the button will always be in the back of my mind. It means that the Doctors I care most about have built much of their life around a lie.
-My Doctor is Nine, and my second favorite is Ten. I very much like Classic Who, but for me it always feels like a prequel to the real story. The Time War is a vital part of the origin story of my Doctor. Undoing the loss of Gallifrey is not quite as drastic as if Batman were to discover that his parents were actually alive and in witness protection, but it's certainly along those lines. I also feel like much (not all) of Classic Who is a children's show that many adults also enjoyed, while most of New Who is a grownup show that also appeals to children. The Time War is part of what made that important distinction.
-I haven't seen that many of the Classic Who stories set on Gallifrey, but the few I have were frankly dull. Ditching Gallifrey freed New Who from all that tedium and potentially confusing continuity. While I would be excited to see Romana, the Master, and the Rani again, honestly I think bringing back the other Time Lords is a bad idea from a storytelling perspective.
-If the Doctor can retroactively remove the single worst thing in his past, it makes him less of a real person. We humans almost all have something in our past from which we struggle to move on: someone we've lost, something we're guilty about, a miserable time or terrible experience we'd like to forget. We get better slowly, and sometimes things happen that bring it all back and force us to confront the pain again. We find joy in time, and we don't think about the bad thing so often, but it is always part of us. The Doctor has been making that journey of recovery, but it wasn't done. There isn't a done for anyone except Steven Moffat's Doctor. Removing the loss of Gallifrey in an instant is a far less interesting and relatable story than watching the Doctor deal with it over many years and never quite completely.
Criticizing a piece of writing is easier than creating it. I also wanted to share two ideas for what could have been done with a 50th anniversary special that I would have found more satisfying than what actually happened.
2) As a minor change to the existing special that would still leave Gallifrey destroyed but inject a bit of hope into the wreckage of the Time War, instead of having all the Doctors work together to freeze and remove Gallifrey, I would have preferred if they had each landed a TARDIS somewhere on Gallifrey and rescued some of the people before the button got pushed to destroy it. As Donna insisted to the Doctor in "The Fires of Pompeii," even if you can't say everyone, at least save someone. There would probably be a time limit, so they couldn't save anywhere close to everyone. They could land inside the Academy and other schools, major population centers, refugee camps, or wherever a lot of Gallifreyans who weren't the High Council were gathered, and just take in as many people as could be persuaded into the TARDIS doors in ten minutes or something. If the War Doctor stayed out of it so he could push the button but every other incarnation who appeared in TDotD rescued 100 people, that would be 1,200, enough genetic diversity to make the long-term continuation of the species plausible. Even if they averaged just 10 rescues, that would be 120, which is 118 more than there have been at any other time in New Who.
The planet of Gallifrey with all its infrastructure and tradition would still be gone, and the Doctor would still carry the guilt for the deaths of billions, so most of what made the Time War such an important thing for the story would remain. That pain and loss would still define the Doctor. However, he would no longer be the last of the Time Lords, so it would still be a joyous and enormous thing to do for the anniversary. You could have an excuse for the return of Romana or any other specific Time Lords you wanted. I would be much more interested in the Time Lords if they were having to reinvent themselves as a diaspora without a homeworld. Previous regenerations would have to drop off their cargo of Gallifreyans wherever they landed and immediately forget, so S8 could still have an element of searching for the lost people of Gallifrey scattered across time and space. It could have been great.
But it is not to be. Everything has its time, and everything ends. That apparently includes the version of Doctor Who that I have thus far found the most fascinating. I'm disappointed about that. Still, the show goes on, and I am sure there will still be worthwhile stories going forward.