From Jelly Babies to Time Displacement Energy

Who Eats What or Whom on Who: Food as a Sign of Character

By Kim De Vries
July 2, 2007

Compared to other science fiction TV programs, Doctor Who has taken a rather odd approach to food over the years. Most SF programs draw our attention to the food being eaten because it's an easy way to demonstrate that we are seeing the future, or another planet, or aliens on a fairly low budget; plus eating is something to which anyone can relate (obviously). But Doctor Who rarely uses this by now rather time-worn gambit. (And yes, that was intentional.)

Instead, food represents a sign of personality and often is a primary reason for evil species being marked as such; they want to eat us. But before we get to the aliens, let's talk about the Doctor and his companions. From regeneration to regeneration, the writers have been pretty inconsistent about what the Doctor eats. The First Doctor had a "food machine" in the Tardis that dispensed water and presumably food, but we didn't see him eat. His grand-daughter must have eaten since she was enrolled in a school and would have drawn suspicion is she was never seen taking in some sustenance. But in any case, we know they ate something, and so did the companions, since they were human.

But other Doctors seemed not to eat at all, or almost never. Tom Baker, for example, never ate anything but Jelly Babies and his marked consumption of these became almost part of his costume. The Doctor's eating or not became an index of how alien he was or wasn't, and what he ate illustrated his personality. The earliest incarnations of the Doctor were never shown actually eating, as far as I can determine, and at first so little was known about the Doctor that this could easily be encompassed in his general air of mystery.

But we learn from the Third Doctor that he is from Gallifrey, which puts him firmly in the category of an alien about whom we can learn, as opposed to an undefinable mystery. The Third Doctor was also a more physical character, as I discussed in an earlier column, so his appreciation for a good drink did not jar. The Fourth Doctor was eating and sharing Jelly Babies in nearly every episode, and by the time we reach the new series, it is accepted that the Doctor consumes normal human food and drink. The Ninth Doctor accepts an offer of coffee from Rose in the first episode, and sits down to a roast beef dinner in "The Empty Child." In fact, him now talking about and eating food reinforces the decision to make the doctor more human in certain ways, while focusing the mystery on specific parts of his past.

If food made the Doctor more human, perhaps more sympathetic, it made the aliens anything but. Though the Doctor often talks about all the dangerous and wonderful things to see in the universe, Earth seems to usually be visited by the dangerous type who would like to enslave or eat us, or both. The enslaving part is, of course, objectionable under our own international law; I know you are all thinking that certainly eating people should mean an automatic entry on the list of villains and monsters as well.

Certainly the new series writers use it that way lately.

So we have the Nestene Consciousness; they want to eat our pollution, and want us out of the way — I guess they don't need us to keep adding toxicity. In the first season of the new series there wasn't so much direct consumption of people; more often someone wanted the planet, or wanted us as slaves, or to occupy our bodies. But with the Tenth Doctor we got a lot more visits from people who wanted to just actually eat us (or drink our blood or absorb our energy). Let's see, we saw the Absorbaloff, The Wire, the Krillitanes, the Racnoss, Plasmavores, and Weeping Angels. On top of these, the Daleks decided to absorb us, the Family of Blood, and the degenerate humans at the end of the universe want to hunt us just for fun.

The important disctinction is this: some aliens see us as prey, some, like the Krillitanes, eat us just because they are mean and hateful. Humans eat chimpanzees, elephants and whales, all of which are pretty highly intelligent, even if not at our level, which I think leaves aliens that are merely predatory off the hook (morally). But when aliens recognize us as in some way equal, but still eat us, that marks them as really extra bad. I've been rather surprised at how often both these scenarios have been plot bases in the new Who, especially for the Tenth Doctor. All the regenerations have faced monsters out to eat us, but it seems to be happening much more often lately, and is strangely coincidental with the increased emphasis on the Doctor's "humanity" and embodiment in every sense.

Or maybe it isn't. Around the globe we grow ever more obsessed with our bodies — our weight, the texture of our skin, the whiteness of our teeth, shininess of our hair, the quality of our sex-lives. These qualities are overwhelmingly tied both to our moral character and to our diets. So nowadays in the developed world, what you eat reflects your identity along many spectra. Is it organic? Fair trade or locally grown? Or are you a diet rebel, gleefully downing burgers and full-fat ice cream?

What about your skin-care regimen? Is it organic? Is it cruelty-free? And are you having enough sex? Regardless of how hard you work, who you take care of, or anything else in your life, if you are not beautiful, consuming the right products, and enjoying sex that would put a porn star to shame, you are a moral failure. You just aren't trying.

Against this context, the writers of Doctor Who are merely speaking our language. But we may want to watch carefully not only what the Doctor eats, but who is trying to eat us, or consume our resources before simply labeling them as "bad guys." Are we sure we are not acting just as bad?

Ok, I thought it would be a light-hearted romp, and it all just got so heavy, but hey, I don't write the shows, I just call 'em like I see 'em. Next month "Who On Earth" will take a break because I'll instead be reporting on my trip to the Netherlands. Until then, tot ziens!

(See you later)

BBC Doctor Who site — do I ever not reference this?
Wikipedia DW list of monsters — Alphabetical list that covers the whole series.