Discursive Essay: Doctor Who S8.01 – Deep Breath

The Time:           The Victorian Era, 1800s

The Place:           London Town.

The Situation:    Dinosaur Misplacement.

This is the first episode in which we get to see The Doctor in his 12^th incarnation. This is important because the Doctor’s personality subtly (or at least superficially) changes when he regenerates. The Doctor does of course experience true changes to his personality (see the pilot episode from 1963 for an idea of this), but these changes are more gradual, and more important. Particularly, we are at a time when The Doctor has stopped running from The Time War. He has realized that he wishes to find Gallifrey and return it to the temporal flow.

”I am alone. The world which shook at my feet, the trees, the sky, have gone. And I am alone now. Alone. The wind bites now, and the world is grey and I am alone. Can’t see it… I can’t see…”

~ A Dinosaur

The primary theme of this episode is Change. The Doctor’s Companion Clara feels that she has lost her old friend when the Doctor regenerates. More than this, she has lost a man who she felt comfortable falling in love with. In the guise of a young man, The Doctor was ‘flirtatious’, even desirable. But by changing his face, becoming someone far older, he is at once different: no longer flirtatious, no longer ‘fun’. But perhaps the most unnerving is that his outward body more keenly reflects the man inside, making the former, 11^th Doctor, seem like a lie, a passing illusion. The implication is that the Doctor feels safe enough with Clara to be more like himself around her, and still be accepted.

The dinosaur in London is a metaphor for the Doctor: a comparatively ancient, wild and powerful being lost in a new world [body] it does not understand.

The Paternoster Gang (Strax, Jenny and Vastra) are in this episode to highlight the importance of accepting change, and the superficiality of an outer appearance. Strax is Soltaran, a warrior species more commonly associated with causing conflicts than solving them, and yet Strax is allied with Vastra, a reptilian Silurian who uses her detective skills to solve crimes. Jenny is by no means an ordinary figure among them, an outspoken and radical adventuress in the body of a woman of the Victorian Underclass, perhaps one of the most oppressed species in Earth history. Vastra and Jenny’s romantic relationship is about much more than showmanship here – it is a reminder that Love, a concept, is more important than its material composite; more than race, or sex, or face. This is something Clara has yet to learn, though she denies it.

“I wear a veil as he wore a face, and for the same reason. To be accepted.[…] I wear a veil to keep from view what many are pleased to call my disfigurement. I do not wear it as a courtesy to such people, but as a judgment on the quality of their hearts.”

~ Madame Vastra

Vastra responds to Clara’s discomfort with the metamorphosed Doctor with a prejudice of her own: that Clara, as a person who has difficulty dealing with perspective change (facing the truth), will reject it. Vastra is used to being judged herself, and sees the smallest show of discomfort as a slight against her differences. Her automatic hostility and dismissal of those who are not immediately accepting is a sort of prejudice, too. This is a deliberate hypocrisy, as she is a detective: detectives who accept what is immediate without further investigation are ‘bad’ detectives.

Her response (in wearing a veil) stems from the judgment that she will never be accepted for what she is, and that society will never be able to overcome its own prejudice – so much so that she hides behind privacy, and does not give people a chance to recognize her for what she really is: and this is the source of Clara’s discomfort, and anger. The Doctor lied to her about his true nature out of the belief that she and others would only accept a pretty young man, rather than an ancient, scarred and terrifying dinosaur. He prejudged her along with humanity as superficial.

Fruitless anger, ultimately. Everyone wears a veil, by being bigger on the inside. Being angry at something for not being obvious is screaming at the wind for blowing.

“You can’t see me, can you? You look at me and you can’t see me. Do you have any idea what that’s like? I’m right here, standing in front of you. Please just… just see me.”

The enemy in this episode is a group struggling against their own Actual change. Crash-landing on Earth in the Jurassic Era, the ship’s automated crew found themselves running short on the supplies necessary to keep them functioning for long enough to achieve their mission – reaching ‘The Promised Land’. This mission is an important question – is it part of what the droids were originally programmed for, or was it one that came along with the flesh they consumed, just a part of the veil? Either way, the droids are programmed to follow a fundamental doctrine and are willing to sacrifice everything they are to uphold that doctrine. Unlike the doctor, who has removed a veil from his character, the Droid Pilgrims add veils of flesh to keep themselves in working condition and access the resources to repair their ship. But as they do so, they find themselves becoming less machine and more human; less their original selves, and more alike to the parts they have used to repair themselves across the ages, until they lose their original purpose entirely.

Clearly this is designed to draw a parallel with The Doctor who, by his 12^th incarnation, is in a body without a scrap of the original in it. At least physically – the question is, what about the doctrine? Has that too been replaced, or is it the same as it ever was? Is the change superficial, or actual?

The clever climax of this encounter puts The Doctor up against the Droids’ captain, and the Doctor diagnoses the Droids with losing their basic programming. He suggests that they have become hollow and lost any purpose other than to survive and that this this purpose alone is worthless. He prescribes the Droids with suicide, which the Droid captain refuses, saying that that is against its basic programming.

The Droid counters that the Doctor will need to kill him, which is seemingly against The Doctor’s basic programming. In order to end the conflict, one of them must abandon their doctrine and prove that they have lost their original self entirely.

We never find out who did. The Droid’s body is shown impaled on St. Paul’s Cathedral, and it is unclear if he jumped or was pushed. But perhaps more importantly, we have a new question:

The Doctor is a killer. He conducts the act through diplomacy, command, and neglect – but he does kill, albeit coldly. Are diplomacy, command, and necessity part of his doctrine, or a veil he has developed because killing people outright would be too horrific even for himself to accept? Has he continued to distance himself from the act, or is he willing to accept responsibility for the fact that he is a murderer? The Doctor’s nature is to run, even from himself. But we are told he isn’t running away any longer…

“What do you think of the view?”

“It is beautiful.”

“No it isn’t. It’s just far away, everything looks too small. I prefer it down there – everything is huge. Everything is so important, every detail, every moment, every life clung to.”

The Doctor kills the droids because they lose sight of what their hollow ideal is doing to those around them – their doctrine has become a conflict between reaching The Promised Land, and survival. They profess to want to reach The Promised Land, but do not seek it out. As The Promised Land is culturally seen as a place where murderers do not go, they are distancing themselves from it by surviving through murder. Their doctrine is a paradox. It is by solving the paradox, the prime conflict of their existence, that they at last enter Paradise.

This brings about the question of whether the Droids changed or not; was their goal to reach The Promised Land caused by their imbibing organic parts, and their original Doctrine ‘Survival’? Or were they always pilgrims, whose doctrine changed to ‘Survival’? Did they legitimately change by suicide, or did they revert to their original doctrine by committing it?

The Kiss

There was a lot of talk about the kiss shared by Jenny and Vastra in this episode, and the regular nutters saw it as something problematic and ‘immoral’. They were right, but for the wrong reasons. It is, of course, entirely natural for homosexuals to kiss on a public forum, and for xenosexuals to kiss on a public forum, and technically as Vastra is from Earth and what we term an animal, for bestials to kiss on a public forum.

But it is not okay, after spending an episode talking about how veils separate us from our true natures – and how putting up a veil in contempt of humanity in general is prejudiced – –  AND how we can accept changes while holding on to doctrine – – – to go an pass off a kiss as essential, strictly necessary CPR. That’s a veil. And it isn’t in keeping with the message of the episode to have it there.

For shame, BBC. For shame. Give us proper kisses.

Aesthetics vs. Concept

First Sight

Love at first sight is compared to spontaneous combustion by Jenny. In a way this is a mention of the dangers of prejudice; ‘love at first sight’ is to reach an immediate conclusion about a person’s nature without grounding it on firmly investigated premises. Declaring an act as “spontaneous combustion” is likewise observing a conclusion without investigating or acknowledging its premises. There is no spontaneous combustion, only fires with an unidentified propellant. Just as there is no love at first sight, only another sort of fire with a different unidentified propellant.

This is a second reason why the Paternosters are in this episode: to press the importance of investigation and detection above platitude and generalization. Change is in a conceptual sense a flux in information. But this flux comes in different forms.

For an example of these, look at the androids. They are a mechanical species that change metallic parts for organic ones. They remain mechanical, because both metal and flesh are a mechanical medium. This is what is called a superficial or aesthetic change.

They are also programmed service robots. This is their Doctrine. At first sight, we only see them as robotic killers. But after consideration, we learn that they kill in service of a ‘higher’ cause. This is a perceptive change, which happens in the observer, not the observed.

Lastly, they are pilgrims. Part of their original Doctrine was to travel the universe, but this Doctrine was abandoned in favour of a second doctrinal aspect, survival. The androids reached a point where the one part of their Doctrine completely displaced the other. This is an Actual change.

These three changes are clearest in different characters of the episode. The Doctor has undergone Aesthetic change. Clara undergoes Perceptive change. The Droid Captain undergoes Actual Change.

All of these are a sort of flux out of an original state, be it morality, ignorance, or material.

Aesthetic change is seen as positive so long as it removes the veils between it and Doctrine, essentially an affirmation of the principles of materialism – finding a physical expression of an internal concept.

Perspective change is seen as a positive when it roves towards an understanding of concept, not blindness to it, and not putting up veils of censorship around it.

Actual change is pictured as less positive, as something that must only happen when it is put in conflict with its parts. It is also the most climactic, destructive sort of change, and thus the focal point of the episode.

What’s with the heavy Breathing?

Aside from the fact that Moffat likes to turn children’s games into adult ‘do or die’ situations (Perhaps harkening to man’s greatest fear as a loss of innocence, imagination, and youth), breathing is a metaphor for the inevitability of change. Holding your breath is depicted as a way to ‘pause’ and hide from an imminent event (doom), keeping things in an anticipant state. But just as we cannot survive without breathing, we cannot exist without an exhale of change. What is achieved in the moment when breathing has stopped? It can only be taken to prepare, to acclimatize, to gather the resources necessary to cope. In this way, Episode 8.01 is itself a Deep Breath, a moment where we see the familiar face of Eleven for one last time, surrounded by the faces of the Paternosters and Clara. Change is inevitable. It’s here.

But there’s time for one last gasp before it arrives.