The Sublime Doctor

The Ninth Doctor, Zizek, Baudrillard, and the Irresitable Attraction of the Unknown

By Kim De Vries
April 1, 2007

The first season of the new series devotes a substantial amount of time in most episodes defining who the Doctor is, what he does, how he sees things and how he is like humans or not. In the very last episode, we are offered a glimpse of how the doctor actually experiences reality when Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS, the time Vortex. This scene alone reveals not just something of the Doctor's nature, but also offers a new take on an established problem: how do we deal with the "real."

In the first episode of the new Doctor Who, the Doctor tries to explain to Rose what's going on and a little about who he is. In that conversation, we learn that the Doctor experiences reality differently than we do, that he can actually feel the Earth turning, for example. At the same time, we learn that as we all go about our daily lives, eating, sleeping, watching telly, "all the time, underneath, there's a war going on." So right from the start, the series questions what is real, suggesting that the world we perceive is merely one possible understanding, and a deluded one at that.

Of course this is not new in the sense that the whole series has always included the idea that the Doctor's companions learn about things hidden from the rest of us; alien threats and wonders, parts of our own history that no one else knows. But in the new series, Rose's reaction to this revelation becomes a focus. In numerous episodes she wrestles with how to handle knowing so much she can never share and the way it is changing her. Now that can just be read as run-of-the-mill angst from the cute girl, designed to make viewers sympathize and to disarm our skepticism. On the other hand, this tactic only works if we share Rose's anxiety about this other reality and about how encountering it might affect us.

***If you haven't seen the 2005 episodes and don't want to be spoiled, stop now! ***

Most of the rest of the series presents the Doctor's reality as a mix of danger and excitement, so that we usually can understand why Rose consistently chooses to stay in that world, rather than returning to her mother and boyfriend who are in counterpoint shown as rather small-minded and dull. In the last two episodes though, the Doctor, Rose and Jack learn that in the near future, the Daleks have taken control of our development and have been harvesting humans for genetic material and building a new army with which to conquer ... everything. They have been hiding in the "dark places," rebuilding, recovering from their apparent destruction in the Timewar that exterminated the Doctor's own people and destroyed so many others as well. The Doctor is confronted with the terrible knowledge that this multiple genocide from which he still suffers crippling guilt was for nought.

So here we are in the last episode; a huge army of Daleks is poised over the future Earth, they have Rose captive and the Doctor has said he's going to find her, rescue her, and then Get Them. Which he does in a way that made me feel like cheering, especially since the Dalek "emperor" is so fucking full of itself. But then it becomes clear that while he saved Rose, the Doctor still faces overwhelming odds when it comes to saving everyone else from the invasion. So he sends Rose back in time to her mum, to our reality.

Now this episode was cool in all kinds of ways, but one of the things I liked best was what Rose did to save the Doctor and how he saved her in turn.

Rose has spoken in several episodes about how what she's seen has changed her, how she can't share it with others, how she can't go back to her old life in our "reality." When the Doctor sends her back in the TARDIS, which she can't operate herself, she seems doomed to resume this life after all. A life working a low-skill, low-wage job, doing the same thing day in and day out. Predictably, Rose refuses to accept this, but instead of focusing on how she can't give up the wonder of her travels, as in earlier arguments with Mickey, she instead is more concerned that she can't go back to doing nothing, to letting things happen instead of acting, taking a stand.

Ok, so by now I'm sure you're all getting impatient and thinking, but what about the theory, that's the fun part! Here it is then. Slavoj Zizek is a pretty well-known and popular theorist who specializes in jamming psychoanalytic criticism and pop culture together in an entertaining and interesting way. (The actual scholarly value isn't quite so certain, but that's my point.) He says, among other things, that "there is no sexual relationship." This the title of an essay and could easily be the subtitle for the entire Doctor Who series, whichever regeneration you care to mention, until the Ninth Doctor hit the scene. But Zizek was speaking generally and what the hell does he mean by that anyway?

He seems to mean (and I'm not going to claim any more surety than that, but if you can, feel free) that there is some basic antagonism between men and women, between what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, such that while love tries to bridge this gap, we can never really achieve a union. Instead we get distracted by what we might call superficial things or appearances, like genitals, faces, etc. — And I note with interest the implied division between bodies and whatever Zizek imagines the "real" object of love to be. (If he imagines one at all!) In his explanation of this idea, he claims that to realize love, either the self or the lover must be sacrificed. And this is what caught my attention, because throughout the first season of the new Who, we on the one hand see the growing sexual and romantic tension between the Doctor and Rose, and at the same time witness the repeated choices he has to make between her and some greater good.

At first glance, we might think, well, the Doctor sacrifices himself at the end and that fits right in. But what about Rose's choice? She refuses to accept the sacrifice and finds a way to go back and save the Doctor by prying open the TARDIS and looking into its heart. Now this is where I felt we moved beyond a simple parallel with one of Zizek's ideas that I don't much like anyway. — I mean, do you want to think that sexual relationships don't really exist and that love can only be realized through loss of the beloved? I don't!

Zizek also writes about the "real." He takes a fairly standard psychoanalytic line on this, that in fact we all do what we can to avoid confronting the real, because it's chaotic and awful in a variety of ways. But I think Rose challenges this notion in two ways. First of all, because she consistently chooses to continue her adventures confronting the "reality" of a universe filled with alien life in spite of the risk, the violence, the loneliness, and the basic alien-ness of the creatures she encounters.

But maybe she just enjoys a thrill and is still living in some kind of delusion, safe in her belief that the Doctor will always save her. But in the last episode she enters an even deeper level of reality, seeing the whole of space and time by connecting with the heart of the TARDIS. This allows her to save the Doctor, and the world, and rather than being horrified or traumatized, she asks how can she give that knowledge up? Here we learn that the Doctor has this knowledge all the time, and it doesn't make him so happy. But Rose's reaction at least suggests an alternative.

Of course she has to give it up; for one thing her human body can't support the energy coursing through it. Further, where would our story be if a character became truly omniscient and omnipotent? And so the Doctor kisses Rose, and in doing so absorbs the energy of the time vortex. Apparently he is not meant to carry it either, because it triggers a regeneration; the closest Timelords usually come to death. But if the Doctor is not sacrificing his life, than what is he sacrificing? And where does that leave Zizek?

I think it at least calls his ideas into question; so let's look at another theorist, just for fun. Jean Baudrillard died this month and many of us academic types (and plenty of others too) have been thinking a lot about the ideas he's offered. For example, he coined the term hyperreality and where would we be without that? Any of you who have seen The Matrix encountered another one of his phrases, "the desert of the real."

Baudrillard had been more notorious in the '90s for comments he made about the first Gulf War. Essentially he said that it didn't exist, meaning that something happened, but it wasn't a war. Rather, it was an atrocity masquerading as a war. And of course, this was the idea explored in the The Matrix, that a horrid reality would disguise itself as a "normal" or at least recognizable life. He has other things to say about other cultural items or historical events, but I remembered this when watching the last episode of Who, because the Dalek emperor claims that he has been controlling human history, guiding it for his own end, and harvesting people. (Very like the The Matrix, really.)

And this claim echoes earlier moments of revelation — that underneath the reality Rose knows, there's a war going on; that what appear to be politicians are foul-smelling aliens disguised in their skins; that in the future, all news broadcasts are being controlled by a monstrous creature for it's own ends. At first it seems that the series reinforces this grim view by enacting them without question; though in each case the Doctor saves us, a few episodes later our safety is undermined by an even worse truth being uncovered, until finally, it seems all of history has been invaded by alien forces.

However, I think that ultimately the series offers a far more hopeful take on both love and on the nature of reality. First of all, Rose shows us an alternative response to both the challenge of loving across the divide of gender, race, even species. Second, she and the Doctor both represent two different responses to encounters with the "real." And thinking about these responses, they remind me of one more philosopher, whom I simply have to mention, because his approach is, I think, a breath of fresh air after the pessimistic and even nihilistic views of Zizek and Baudrillard.

Alphonso Lingis is not quite so well known, but is getting more attention lately for taking a more "hands on" approach to philosophy. He criticizes both Zizek and Baudrillard, and I think his ideas are perhaps closest to what Doctor Who seems to suggest is the best response to terrible revelations, to encounters with a reality that differs vastly from what we always believed was true. Lingis argues that simply saying nothing is real or that the real is too awful to comprehend is cowardly. Instead, he claims that "the unlived life is not worth examining," and pushes us to live in the world, to act, rather than sit around discussing how nothing we do matters. Lingis embodies this himself, traveling to country after country and rather than spending time in the hallowed halls of the academy, instead meeting prisoners, refugees, migrant workers, and others living on the margins. From these encounters he develops his ideas and from these people he imbibes stories, then pours them out for the rest of us to experience. How like the Doctor he is, in his endless fascination with people.

Both the Doctor and Rose refuse to back down from dealing with reality. Rather they revel in it and when necessary, struggle with it. In the last episode, Rose batters her way through all barriers to escape the bounds of our world/reality and access that which she learned about with the Doctor and in so doing, regains the ability to act, and to save the man she loves. Though the Doctor asks if seeing "everything" all the time doesn't drive her mad, obviously neither of them reacts negatively. They both glory in this ultimate knowledge, though it also brings pain and frustration. That shared experience, however brief, unites them more than any physical union. (— Much as I would have like to see that as well!)

Now having said all of this and made what are arguably pointless connections between a TV show and several philosophers, do I think Russell Davies or the writers intended the series as a critique of contemporary philosophy? Of course not. They may or may not have read any of these thinkers; I don't know. But, we have all been touched by their ideas which nowadays permeate our culture and shape the way we think about reality and how one ought to act or be in the world.

When current events seem to suggest that we have reached an extreme of simulated reality, when people actually starve from spending too much time playing computer games and we can be at war for four years and yet be advised that what we really need to do is act as if nothing has changed, then I think we need to go beyond just describing the collective delusion. We could do worse than following the Doctor's example.

Slavoj Zizek — Online articles by Zizek at the European Graduate School
Jean Baudrillard — Online articles by Baudrillard at the European Graduate School
Alphonso Lingis — Wikipedia Entry
2004 Article on Lingis — From the Baltimore City Paper online