The Silver Dream

As a liberal-verging-on-the-out-and-out-socialist, it only makes sense that I should be drawn to things that chime with my own attitudes, and the more deeply-embedded the connection, the stronger my own affection. So it’s hardly a surprise that I can detect a rich vein of distinctly British, distinctly left-of-centre material running through my favourite TV series like lettering through a stick of rock. Doctor Who is obviously a TV show made by and for lefties.

Unfortunately, others disagree with this self-evident truth: the political activist and former parliamentary candidate Alex Wilcock has previously written about the series’ role in making him a member of the Liberal Democrats (or Satan’s Meat-shields as I believe the party is considering retitling itself), while ex-Tory MP Tim Collins once made a disconcerting habit of popping up on DVD extras extolling his love for the series.

So things are not as obviously clear-cut as they seem. What is one to do? What are the politics of Doctor Who? What are the Doctor’s own politics, come to that? I hope to shed some light on this topic, usually by coming at it from odd angles.

One such approach begins with a look at some of the criticism directed at the finale of David Tennant’s first season, Doomsday. I don’t like Doomsday a very great deal. I think it marks the first moment where Rusty Davies’ efforts to invest the series with an emotional resonance got out of control and the tail started wagging the dog. Other people have produced closely-argued critiques of the storytelling, and they seem to me to be accurate. However, one brand of Doomsday-criticism never fails to make me laugh in its sheer missing-the-pointness and that’s the line going something like this:

The Cybermen get done over by the Daleks much too easily in Doomsday.

More precisely: throughout this episode, ever-increasing numbers of Cybermen hurl themselves against four (that’s four) Daleks in mortal combat, and are effortlessly slaughtered, while the Daleks suffer no real casualties whatsoever. The Cybermen, runs the argument, are the Numero Dos Doctor Who monster and should put up a better showing than this, right?

Well, hoo hoo, ha ha, which series have you been watching? Doomsday manages to get this much right at least: the Cybermen have always been presented as a bit rubbish throughout their time on the show.

I am breaking no new ground when I suggest that if ever a Doctor Who monster needed to be wrapped in a scarf by its mum and careful where it went upon leaving the house, it is a Cyberman, as their list of allergies and impediments is remarkable. Dauntless cyborg warriors they may be, but they are variously (and extremely) vulnerable to radiation, gravity, induced emotional states, and (most famously) gold. There’s a bit in Attack of the Cybermen (another lousy story, of course) where the Doctor declares ‘The Cybermen have only one weakness…!’ which would have been funny enough even had he not gone on to describe a brand new one – emotionless they may be, but apparently they can’t resist going to help each other out whenever they get into trouble.

And, prior to their encounter with the Daleks at Canary Wharf, the Cybermen are on the receiving end of an astounding number of beatings. Their basic tactic upon coming under fire seems to be to march forward into it regardless. This one-in, all-in approach shows admirable solidarity and esprit d’corps, and is not out of character as we shall see, but it does result in a number of spectacular Cyber-massacres. They even get handed a bloody good hiding by the old ‘ooh sarge bullets don’t stop them aaargh’-style cuddly UNIT, the only really big-name monster to do so.

When they're not being massacred the Cybermen enjoy clubbing as much as anyone else.

As time goes by, the Cybermen do appear to make some tactical progress, in The Five Doctors abandoning their ‘let’s all keep walking anyway and see how it turns out’ approach in favour of ‘let’s all stand around looking at each other in bemusement’ upon encountering the Raston Robot. The result of this is, unfortunately, yet another massacre. Cheeringly, by the time of Silver Nemesis the Cybermen seem to have learned their lesson and actually choose to run away when confronted by a seemingly-invincible force. We should not let our view of the boys from Telos be coloured too much by the fact that the seemingly-invincible force in question is one man with a bow and arrow.

In the wider universe, the Cybermen are also presented as very much the poorer relations of the monster set. The Daleks forge galactic alliances, master time-travel and destroy the oldest and most powerful civilisation in the universe! The Sontarans engage in an epic war lasting for millennia, and, while they don’t actually conquer the oldest and most powerful civilisation in the universe, they give it a damn good try and leave the Time Lords with a big cleaning bill when they fail. Meanwhile, the Cybermen are hanging around space stations and moonbases trying to sneak in, and when that fails they all go and hide in a big fridge. And when the monster alliance builds the Pandorica prior to The Pandorica Opens, guess who gets stiffed with hanging around on guard duty? Even then the Cyberman in question manages to get himself mugged by Bronze Age tribesmen. Nice work, trooper!

We hear a lot about Galactic Cyberwars and the Cybermen being barred from the Death Zone, but I just suspect the former is the result of the Cybermen employing a good PR consultant, while the latter – well, you can’t blame the Time Lords for wanting to keep things credible – it’s called the Game of Rassilon, not Really Easy Target Practice for Everyone Else.

What, you may be asking, has any of this to do with the politics of Doctor Who? A fair question, and to answer it let us consider the political ideology of the Cybermen. What clues can we derive from their behaviour? They famously don’t seem to get on with those notoriously right-wing Daleks – who rightly suss the Cybermen out to be lightweights – and are famously egalitarian. Beyond occasional declarations of ‘You belong to us’, made to lesser races, they don’t seem to go a bundle on personal property, either (excepting black paint, which is the exclusive preserve of Cyberleaders). We have already discussed their touching solidarity and unwillingness to let each other suffer alone. It’s obvious, really: the Cybermen are socialists.

Not in your monolithic, Stalinist way, of course (this is the preserve of those Cybermen knock-offs spiritual cousins of the Cybermen, the Borg), but in the vaguely-embarrassing, hanging-around-on-street-corners style of Socialist Worker activists. They have a strong set of core beliefs but no clue whatsoever about how to put them into practice. It’s touchingly pathetic, really – no wonder they have those little tear-drop things drilled into their eye sockets.

So there we have it: our first clue that the politics of Doctor Who are not as clear-cut as one might think. The series is not as wholly uncritical of left-of-centre ideologies as one might have expected – even if, through the very ineptness of the Cybermen, it seems to be suggesting that the true dangers lie elsewhere. The Cybermen are there not really to be hated but pitied. And then blown up.