[Spoilers] Premises can be disturbing because, if true, they’re scary, or they can be disturbing because they don’t make sense. Previously, I laid out what I found scary, odd and/or incomprehensible, broken down by episode. Here I’ll rank them. Ultimately, I decided that things that don’t make sense are worse than things that are merely conceptually scary. And then there’s the “ring of truth” aspect that makes some things qualitatively more scary. Here’s my list of what bothered me the most:
10. Colonialism–as perhaps an extension of Capitalism–is alive and well in the universe.
From Episode 0: “The Christmas Invasion” (Russell T. Davies). We addressed Capitalism in Series 1, but whereas the Slitheen wanted to irradiate and sell off pieces of Earth (killing everybody), the Sycorax want the land, minerals, precious stones, AND to sell half the population into slavery–so which one’s worse? Caveat emptor my friends. It’s a nice bit of dramatic irony to have the British PM have to negotiate with the colonizers.
9. What did the “Pilot Fish” have to do with the Sycorax?
Also in Episode 0: “The Christmas Invasion” (Russell T. Davies), there are creatures called “pilot fish” that sense energy emissions, either from Time Lord regeneration or from the Time Vortex, [it’s unclear], and travel through space to harvest the power. However, they’re supposed to be precursors to the Sycorax, but the Sycorax aren’t here to harvest the energy, so why the pilot fish?
“Well, there isn’t a literal connection, Dude.”
“No, face it Walter, there isn’t any connection.”
It seems like they just wanted to use creatures/droids disguised as Father Christmas and Christmas trees to terrify.
8. Droids can time travel, but they don’t choose to go to the shops.
In Episode 4: “The Girl in the Fireplace” (Steven Moffat) repair droids are attempting to fix their ship, but they can’t find some basic parts so they “repurpose” the crew. However, these droids CAN build a device to punch a hole in time and space, but in a storm of myopia, they choose to go to 18th-century France to obtain the brain of Madame de Pompadour–which is just supposed to be a substitute for their central computer. Honestly, if they can do that, why not punch a whole in time and space to a spaceport? Or a parts warehouse? How about a dry-dock?
7. The Earth is now a Death Star.
At the end of Episode 0: “The Christmas Invasion” (Russell T. Davies), as the Sycorax are leaving, defeated by Doctor #10, Harriet Jones’ orders Torchwood to fire. Five green beams come off of the earth, meet in space and destroy the Sycorax ship. Where have we seen that before? And when will we see it again? True, we can’t pilot the Earth through hyperspace to destroy Jedha, Alderaan or even a forest moon of Endor, but it’s not good.
6. What we eat can make us exponentially smarter.
In Episode 3: “School Reunion” (Toby Whithouse), humans, after ingesting Killitane oil, become much smarter, and thus have the capacity to do lots of mental work. That, plus their childish imagination allows them to decode the “Skasis Paradigm”–a theory of everything. But apparently, the Krillitanes keep eating the promising students, thus slowing down their plans for world domination.
While yes, good nutrition leads to good health and improved brain function, the idea that something we eat will yield Lucy-like results is one of the drivers of the diet industry.
5. You can mind-control/hypnotize people through their blood.
In Episode 0: “The Christmas Invasion” (Russell T. Davies), the Sycorax place a third of the human population in danger. We come to find out, these people are all blood Type A, and the Sycorax are using “blood control,” a type of hypnotism, to make them climb tall buildings and stand on the ledge. Blood is powerful in this show, but the idea that it could be used in mind-control is preposterous. True, it wasn’t powerful enough to make people jump, but still.
4. Consciousness can be transferred, even without technology.
This idea is actually fairly common in fantasy/sci fi, but that doesn’t make it right. In Episode 1: “New Earth” (Russell T. Davies), Lady Cassandra O’Brien uses a device called a “psychograft” to transfer her consciousness into Rose Tyler. Apparently, it’s banned tech that compresses the consciousness of the original host. At first the device requires a lot of energy (they trip the breakers). However, then Lady Cassandra transfers her consciousness just by exhaling on the Doctor. So how did that happen? Later, the transitions don’t even rely on breathing, but just seem to happen on a Lady Cassandra’s whim, and neither the Doctor nor Rose have a say in the matter. Huh?!
3. Our entertainment technology will be used to take us over.
We saw this premise in Series 1 with Satellite 5 in Episodes 12 and 13. There, reality TV was turned into a death sentence, as the Dalek mined individual human cells for candidates for the creation of new Daleks.
Here, in Episodes 5 & 6: “Rise of the Cybermen”/”The Age of Steel” (Tom MacRae), in a parallel universe, tech designer John Lumic sells everyone EarPods, an ear-gear device that gives people neural access to the internet, but also allows for their mind control, and later conversion into Cybermen.
Also, in Episode 7: “The Idiot’s Lantern” (Mark Gatiss), it’s “The Wire,” a being that has converted itself to electricity to escape punishment on its homeworld and is using televisions to consume minds (and faces) and hopefully to reconstruct it’s body (although how that’s supposed to happen is unclear).
Then again in Episodes 12 & 13: “Army of Ghosts”/”Doomsday” (Russell T. Davies), the mind controlling earpieces are back, as are the Cybermen.
2. You have an implacable enemy, do you A) Destroy zir? B) Let zir free? C) Create a near-[but not quite]-inescapable prison, that *may* destroy zir if ze tries to escape?
In Episodes 8 & 9: “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit” (Matt Jones), Jones takes the position that Satan was an historical fact in the universe; he’s eternal. Setting aside the Doctor’s hang-up [That the devil would have had to exist before matter and time. And when was that exactly?], so this eternal, evil being has to be kept on an asteroid, orbiting a black hole–because?!? Why the, “You’ll stay here, and if you try to escape, we’ll chuck you in!” Why not just chuck him in and have done with it?
1. A species that likes to be enslaved.
Apropos of our current moment. I’ve already discussed how Wizards of the Coast (WotC) are moving to address the problem in Fantasy Role Playing Games like Dungeons & Dragons of casting an entire species or race as “evil.” The problem is, if we pretend that some creatures are just evil, then we can go genocidal on them without guilt. Further, if these creatures (orcs, drow, etc.) are evil, then there must be others, and we might go looking to confirm our biased suspicions.
In a similar vein, Episodes 8 & 9: “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit” (Matt Jones), Jones depicts the Ood as a species that likes to be enslaved. That’s also a bit racist in its conception, as Rose points out. If these creatures like slavery, then perhaps others do as well….
As usual, I’ll take comments and suggestions. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments.
