ANALYTICAL: THE DOCTOR'S COMPLETE AND UTTER LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY

Now that we're done speculating on the Ruth Doctor, we can get back to the entries I had originally planned to write. This is one of those topics that's so big that it spans both the Classic and the New Series. 




THE DOCTOR'S FALLIBILITY

The Doctor is a hero. I'd go so far to say that he/she is one of the greatest heroes in modern fiction. The character frequently embodies all the better qualities of human nature: intelligence, compassion and a desire to settle problems in the most peaceful way possible. That's just a few positive traits that immediately come to mind when I consider the Doctor's strengths. There are many more.

Having said that, the Doctor is also extremely fallible. When we look past all the heroism, we see that the Time Lord can actually be really irresponsible. There is a recklessness to the character that has persisted throughout the entire show. The consequences of that recklessness are demonstrated on a regular basis. In this entry, we're going to examine a few of the more common ones.

Let's start with the biggest weakness of them all:




A LOVE OF QUICK FIXES:

With a few notable exceptions (ie: staying on Trenzalore for several centuries in Time of the Doctor), the Doctor doesn't hang around too long after he's put a problem to rest. He tackles the greatest evil that's causing upheaval in a society and then gets the Hell out. Leaving the supporting characters he's met in the story to clean up the smaller details. He can't be bothered with a whole lot of follow-through on the solutions he presents. He's far too impatient and wants to move on. "I do hate goodbyes." he has claimed on many occasions as he slips away quietly from the people he's saved. But that's just a flimsy excuse. His real motivation is that he lacks persistence to see the changes he's initiated through to their ultimate conclusion.

While this doesn't seem like something too irresponsible, we have seen some nasty fall-out from such an attitude. The Doctor makes many visits to contemporary Earth, of course. We can see that the quick fixes he has made on that particular planet during that era have often gone without much of a hitch. It may even be that the frequent adventures he has there gives him the opportunity to make little clean-ups along the way.

Quite often, when the Doctor makes a return visit to other places he's "fixed" - we see that a new problem was created from his solution. The complications from that first visit are not, necessarily, minor either. In fact, they are frequently quite huge.

Peladon is a great example of this. During his first stop, the Doctor helps the planet get admitted into the Galactic Federation. Hepesh, the High Priest of the Royal Court at the time, believes that this will be a bad move for his people. When the Doctor returns fifty years later in Monster of Peladon, the High Priest is proven right. The miners on Peladon are being pretty badly exploited. If the Doctor had hung around and tried to help negotiate Peladon's admittance into the Federation - this might not have been such a big problem. But, instead, he and Jo run off. Admittedly, it might have proven complicated to stick around after the real delegate from Earth arrived. Since the whole adventure was, technically, a mission for the Time Lords - he might have even been getting pushed out of events on purpose now that he had accomplished what was wanted from him.  But there's still a whole lot of people that ended up suffering because he didn't stay.

While the Doctor is often on contemporary Earth, his less frequent visits to the far-flung future of Humanity illustrate this idea even more thoroughly. Stories like Face Of Evil - a sequel to an unseen adventure that he had in his fourth incarnation  - presents a massive mess that the Doctor created by trying to fix the computer of a colony ship. The computer develops schizophrenia and manipulates the destiny of the colonists aboard the space vessel in the most horrific of ways. How long did the descendants of those colonists live in a wild disarray because he didn't bother to see how his repairs on the computer went?!

There are even stronger examples of this in still other Future Earth Stories. When the Doctor visits a human/Monoid colony ship fleeing their doomed homeworld in The Ark, he accidentally re-introduces the common cold to them. When he returns by accident some centuries later, he sees the long-reaching impact the virus had on the social structure between humans and Monoids.

The Doctor is even more horrified to see what his visit to Satellite Five accomplished in The Long Game. Removing the Jagrafess from his seat of power created a complete breakdown of society that he discovers a century later during Bad Wolf. He openly admits that he is the cause of this huge mess.

In all of these instances regarding Earth in its future, there were no Time Lords pushing him around. He could have, easily, stayed just a little bit longer to see what the impact of his changes might be. But, as usual, his wanderlust got the best of him. The people he was meant to be "saving" endured some heavy consequences because of his hastiness.

The Doctor's love of the Quick Fix might be his greatest downfall. There are so many stories that don't have follow-ups to them that might also illustrate the fact that his inability to stay just a bit longer after a problem is eliminated might be creating far greater negative consequences. Who knows, for sure, how many people have been hurt by his "help"...


HIS GENERAL IMPULSIVENESS

What the Doctor does as a story nears its conclusion isn't the only problem Quite frequently, he makes crucial decisions at the beginning or middle of an adventure that create some pretty serious complications, too. If he had put some legitimate thought into some of these decisions we might almost be able to forgive him. But, quite frequently, these choices are made completely on a whim. This is another great flaw to the character. He can be very impulsive, sometimes. This might be okay in every day situations. Suddenly deciding to go for ice cream after a hearty dinner might not cause a whole lot of trouble. But, when lives are at stake, he really should curb that impulsiveness a little bit more.

Oddly enough, some of the "umbrella-themed" seasons during the Classic Series illustrate this point best. How the Doctor behaves at the beginning of The Androids of Tara during the Key to Time saga borders on the outrageous. Here he is, tasked with the saving of all of Time and Space, and he decides to take a day off to do some fishing! Yes, in some ways, the White Guardian forced him into the job. But that's still a pretty damned irresponsible thing to do when the whole Universe is at stake! Could he not have stopped and thought for a moment about this and delayed the fishing trip til after the segments have been recovered?

There's a very succinct moment during Trial of a Time Lord where we see that notorious arrogance that the Sixth Doctor relishes get in the way of a crucial decision. Deep into the Mysterious Planet story, we start seeing evidence of the Matrix being censored. Both the Doctor and the Inquisitor express great alarm over this. The Valeyard tries to fluff it off. The Inquisitor actually suggests that the Doctor lodge a formal protest over this so that the "bleeped"sections of the Matrix can be seen by everyone. Had the Doctor taken the offer, his whole trial would have been brought to a quicker and more successful close. He does appear to think the offer over for a moment. But his air of pensiveness is clearly a facade. He turns the offer down as a means of baiting the Valeyard. So confident is he that he will win his case that he doesn't feel the need to investigate this strange corruption of the evidence any further. It is a crucial decision that he makes simply because he's in a cocky mood.

Other things happen in the umbrella seasons that show us more aspects of the Doctor's fallibility. Trial of a Time Lord, in fact, explores quite deeply the idea that the Doctor's very presence in events can set forward all sorts of disasters that might not have happened had the TARDIS never brought him there. And the Doctor makes, perhaps, the biggest most impulsive decision of his lives at the conclusion of the Key to Time. He has been clearly told by the White Guardian that the Key will be needed to set the Universe right. And yet, as he realizes the Black Guardian is trying to get the artifact from him, he re-scatters all six segments and installs a randomiser into the console so that he can't be followed. He could have just as easily fled the Black Guardian and delivered the Key to the White one, but he decides to take this much more radical option. It all seems very spur-of-the-moment too. It's entirely possible that this rash decision had the most drastic of  consequences (see what I speculate about the ending of the season here: https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2016/06/fixing-continuity-glitches-what-hell_19.html.)

There are other instances in the Classic Series that also show off this penchant for impulsive decisions that lead to something bad (ie: lying about a fluid link so that he can investigate a city full of Daleks or turning the power back on to his lab during Inferno and getting sent to a parallel universe during a crucial moment). But, as I said, the umbrella seasons seem to display this best in Old Who.

As we enter New Who, the Doctor doesn't seem to have learnt his lesson. Important choices continue to get made based purely on the mood he was in at the time. How much easier might it have been for the Doctor to deal with the Daleks during the Series Four finale if he had followed the instructions of the Shadow Proclamation? But he decides, purely on a whim, that he should handle the problem on his own and leaves his back-up behind. Or how about the way he avoids the summons made by the Ood at the end of Waters of Mars for as long as possible? Another situation where the entire Universe is at stake but the Doctor decides he wants to party instead!

Since we're talking about the Ood, let's move on to the Third Greatest Trait of the Doctor's Irresponsibility. His involvement with this race of telepaths exemplifies it clearly.



NOT BOTHERING TO PURSUE CERTAIN INJUSTICES ANY FURTHER BECAUSE HE JUST DOESN'T FEEL LIKE IT

This idea relates to the famous quote that may or may not have been made by Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

The Doctor loves his Quick Fixes, yes. But, sometimes, after he's finished one, he definitely sees that there are further injustices that need to be investigated. But he doesn't bother because it would get in the way of him having fun and exploring the more pleasant corners of the Universe. This is, perhaps, his greatest measure of irresponsibility: He allows certain evils to continue to flourish purely because he doesn't feel motivated to fight them anymore.

As I just mentioned, his encounters with the Ood are an excellent model of this. When he first meets them in Impossible Planet/Satan Pit, it's clear they are being exploited in some way. The humans using them claim the Ood enjoy being enslaved but it's pretty obvious this is probably a myth. More than likely, a company that is profiting from the sale of Ood slaves is the one propagating this "fake news". One would think the Doctor, a hater of injustice who brings fair play to the Universe, would be investigating something like this more deeply the moment he's finished defeating Satan.

But he doesn't. He arrives, quite by accident, on the Ood Sphere nearly two seasons later and sees how horribly they've been mistreated. It's a bit like the return visits he makes to Peladon or those future Earth colonies. In those instances, however, he sees the far-reaching effects of his actions. This time, he's seeing what his inaction has caused. How many Oods were lobotomized because the Doctor just didn't feel like checking into them more thoroughly?

We see far broader examples of this in the way he handles his greatest enemies. The Daleks and Cybermen are both species who are truly beyond redemption. No matter where you find them, they're up to no good. To allow them to flourish is, in many ways, a crime against the Universe. And yet, just like the Ood, the Doctor tends to only deal with them in the most haphazard of manners. Should he run into them accidentally, he'll fight them. Rarely does he seek them out to consciously defeat them.

To put this in clearer terms: imagine a convicted serial killer escapes prison. All kinds of tests were done on him while he was in jail. He is clearly psychotic and will go on killing if he achieves freedom. Sure enough, the serial killer breaks into a home in the middle of the night and starts torturing and killing various family members living there. A police officer on a routine patrol notices something unusual going on in the home and investigates. He hears cries of help from the family as he approaches the front door and forces entry. He pulls a gun on the serial killer and scares him off. The murderer flees into the woods behind the home.

"Go after him!" his surviving victims plead, "We'll call for emergency services ourselves!"

"Nah. It's okay." the officer answers, "If I run into him again, sometime, I'll deal with him then."

That's, roughly, how the Doctor is acting with Daleks and Cybermen. He just lets them go when he really should be taking a more active stance against them.

The same can be said for the Master. Part of what first gave me the idea for this essay was that moment near the beginning of Fugitive of the Judoon where the Doctor admits that she is actively searching for the Master. I thought to myself: "Why is she only doing this, now? The Master is always up to no good! She should have been seeking him out ages ago rather than letting him rampage through the Universe causing God-knows-what kind of damage to it!" 

Admittedly, it was difficult for him to do much about the Mater during a good chunk of his third incarnation. They clashed several times but the Doctor could do little to pursue him since he was stranded on Earth serving an exile. But he does know that the Master will strike at Earth on a regular basis. And yet, he doesn't set up his "TARDIS sniffer-outer" (as Jo so eloquently put it) until quite some time after their first battle during Terror of the Autons. If we count seasons of the show as representing about a year in the Doctor's life (unless otherwise specified), then he doesn't set up a proper way of detecting the Master's arrival on Earth til about two years later!

When he does, eventually, earn his freedom, he treats the Master the same way he handles Daleks and Cybermen. If he runs into him by chance like he did in, say, Frontier In Space, he'll do something about it. Otherwise, he can't be bothered.

The only time he actually starts taking some responsibility with his arch nemesis is during Series 10. Sure enough, he actually manages to get Missy to seriously consider "going straight". How many centuries did the renegade Time Lord cause untold damage before finally being properly captured and taken into the Doctor's care? How much could have been prevented if the Doctor had decided to do this sooner? 


IS HE ALWAYS SO IRRESPONSIBLE?

There are periods of the Doctor's life where he does seem to take better responsibility. Interestingly enough, the Sixth and Seventh Doctors both seem to grow up quite a bit. Look at what prompts the Doctor to visit Thoros Beta during Mindwarp. A warlord from a nearby planet admits he's receiving advanced technology from the Mentors to assist him in battle. The Doctor takes it upon himself to pursue this and put it to an end.

The Seventh Doctor goes even further as he springs into existence. I just said how irresponsible it was of him to not actively pursue the Daleks and Cybermen through the Universe and try to stop their plans. During stories like Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis, he does exactly that. In both of those tales, he purposely sets traps for his greatest foes and comes pretty close to wiping them out completely.

There are still other stories like Happiness Patrol. In this tale, the Seventh Doctor purposely visits the planet Terra Alpha to take down a corrupt regime that is being run by the villainous Helen A. He doesn't stumble onto this troubled society by accident. He is already aware of the tyranny that exists on that world and goes to it with the intention of bringing it to an end. And he manages to pull it all off in one night!


DOES HE NEED TO BE SO RESPONSIBLE?

Am I actually putting too much on the Doctor's shoulders with these claims? Does he need to be so responsible? Shouldn't he just be allowed to travel the Universe and have fun?

He's from one of the most advanced races in the Universe using one of the most sophisticated of vehicles. That has granted him certain privileges. One might even say, it's given him great power. And, as the old slogan goes: "With great power comes great responsibility". So, yes, I do feel he should be a bit more reliable and consistent than he usually is. He's been granted gifts that most of us don't have. He should be using those gifts for a greater good than he does.

A lot of it, I feel, has to do with how all his adventures first began. He stole a TARDIS to explore the Universe. A pretty big act of irresponsibility in itself, really. He could have stayed on Gallifrey and lobbied for it to become more involved in the affairs of the Universe or even joined the CIA. Or similar actions of that nature. But, instead, he robbed from  his own people and just, sort of, accidentally became a hero as he developed a stronger sense of morals and decided he should do something about the people who violate them. Can we expect much consistency from someone who really has led the most haphazard of existences?!


DO I ACTUALLY HATE THE DOCTOR?

I'll admit, I have been saying some pretty negative stuff about this guy. One might almost think I'm just trying to shoot down everything he does. I'm not, of course. But I am trying to play Devil's Advocate a bit and point out that he is, in many ways, a very flawed hero.

The truth of the matter is: I love the Doctor for his flaws. He does many great things and there is much to admire him for. But, because he also makes mistakes, he becomes more accessible. If we want to get really sappy, his fallibility makes me believe that someone as wildly inconsistent as I am might also be capable of doing great good. In many ways, this might be the most important message of the whole show: Regardless of our frailties, we can make a difference. 





And ... there we go: the entry I meant to write before this whole Ruth Doctor business came along. Hope you didn't mind me casting so much aspersions on the Doctor's character!!