It
would be possible simply to point at documentary evidence to show that Doctor Who has always been labelled
“science fiction”. Take a look at the opening sentence in the show’s Wikipedia
entry. Look at quotes from acetic acid aficionado Sydney Newman, a confirmed
sci-fi fan who wanted to create a sci-fi series. How about the TV announcement
in Remembrance of the Daleks:
“Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new science fiction series…”
But
we can do better than that. Never mind what the creators thought they were
making – did they succeed? Various writers have tried to dispute its claims to
the genre: no less a writer than Sir Terry Pratchett (quite my favourite
novelist, incidentally) used his guest editing of SFX Magazine in 2010 to
declare that “people who don’t know what science fiction is, say that Doctor
Who is science fiction” which is patronising in the extreme. The same
article berates Russell T Davies for his cop-out writing, while lazily never
bothering to provide support for its points (the sonic screwdriver is sniffily
dismissed with a brief “I don’t think so”). Sir Pterry also says Star Trek only “approaches science
fiction”, leaving one to wonder why he accepted guest editorship of a science
fiction magazine in the first place!
Let’s get this clear then: what is science fiction?
Back to Wikipedia: apparently, it is a genre dealing with “imaginative content
such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel,
time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life…it is similar to,
but differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its
imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or
scientifically postulated physical laws”. That’s quite good, and we can all
reel off examples of each of the above from Doctor
Who. Meanwhile, fantasy “commonly uses magic and other supernatural
phenomena” in its stories.
It is mandatory at this point to refer to The Daemons, specifically the Doctor’s
assertion that “all the magical traditions are just remnants of … advanced
science”. The script doggedly keeps coming back to this well-worn notion, as famously
stated by noted science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke in his third law: any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The 20th
century episodes, by and large, follow this maxim so that everything from ghosts
to the abominable snowmen gets a scientific explanation – or, at least,
something that sounds like one!
(From time to time, the show slips “sideways in time”
and gives us a story that can’t be easily explained away. Morgaine seems to use
magic, Omega can control the universe beyond the black hole with his will and
the White Guardian seems to have godlike powers. Nonetheless, to dub the whole
of Doctor Who “fantasy” on the basis
of The Celestial Toymaker and The Mind Robber seems an odd decision as
these stories are very much in the minority. Whenever a fantasy story is
attempted, we’re usually told that we’re in “another dimension” where anything
might be possible. A fig leaf, perhaps, but the fact that it seems necessary is
indicative.)
Let’s get back to how it all started. Ian and Barbara
meet a strange old man in a junkyard, but he’s no wizard with a magic cabinet:
he’s instantly established as an alien from “another time, another world”. His
TARDIS is a technological marvel, firmly scientific. He operates controls and
they go back in time, spending the next three episodes trying to survive in a
past era. Essentially, this takes a premise from Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court)
and gets there via H.G.Wells (The Time
Machine). The shift in emphasis is important. Twain’s time traveller goes
back about 13 centuries by accident, without much in the way of explanation,
whereas in the Wells novel an actual machine has to be built first. Both novels
would have an influence on Doctor Who
– given its ongoing motif of technological artefacts being taken for magic, The Time Warrior is almost a free
adaptation of Twain’s plot – but there can be no doubt that it was Wells who
was taken as the show’s spiritual father. Otherwise, Mark Twain might have
taken a trip to Karfel.
Having left 100,000BC behind, the Doctor and his
companions next fetch up on the planet Skaro, where very understandable
circumstances (nuclear war) have led to very understandable mutations. There’s
nothing supernatural or fantastical about the Daleks – or, for that matter, the
Cybermen, Sontarans, Silurians or Zygons. Even creatures as obviously
ridiculous as the Nimon or the Kandy Man are given a scientific basis. By and
large, this trend continues into the twenty first century, with technological
upsets at the heart of everything from The
Empty Child to A Town Called Mercy.
Even the Weeping Angels, as originally conceived, have a sci-fi basis.
As I began to research this article, by coincidence, DWM writer Cavan Scott began a
discussion on this very subject on Twitter. The resulting comments were very
revealing, with a near-majority preferring to avoid the question entirely:
“it’s drama”; “Doctor Who is its own
genre” and the like. Others liked to differentiate between “hard” and “soft”
science fiction, which I’ve always found to be an odd distinction. Presumably,
because the show is populist and showbizzy, it can’t be in the same league as
Alfred Bester and William Gibson – although given that the genre’s fathers were
responsible for War of the Worlds and
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I’m not
sure where the pretension to high art comes from.
A third, significant debate can be summed up by the
tweeter who opined: “It’s just fantasy now. The TARDIS is regarded as a magic
box. The sonic screwdriver is used as a wand.” Is there any substance to the
idea that modern Doctor Who is more
akin to fantasy than its 20th century antecedent was? Perhaps –
without doing tedious number-crunching to check, it does seem that the
proportion of fantasy-tinged stories (from Turn
Left to Night Terrors) has gone
up. The sonic screwdriver can indeed do virtually anything these days, from
blowing up Daleks to re-attaching barbed wire. The Time Lords – once a bunch of
old men on a planet who have council meetings – are now a legendary race hidden
in a scar in time/space who can send magic energy to the Doctor. The Doctor
even adopted “Fantastic!” as a catchphrase. The influences of popular fantasy
writers such as Philip Pullman and C.S.Lewis have been seen clearly.
Mention of Lewis reminds me of The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe, surely the most
conspicuously fantastic episode of all. Trees grow baubles, a Christmas present
contains a portal to a Narnia-esque world, wooden statues guard the souls of
trees and a woman steers a vessel using emotion and willpower. Nonetheless,
Steven Moffat puts all this in the context of miners from Androzani Major,
weather control (a staple of some of the most SF-heavy stories of the sixties)
and, in the pre-titles sequence, an exploding spaceship. I’m not saying it’s
good science fiction, but the effort is made to ground it.
The
thing is, they really don’t need to make all that effort. If they want to do
fantasy, we’re happy to go along with it. The whole of Amy’s Choice centres around a piece of psychic pollen, which is
unrelated to any kind of science I know. Kinda
and Snakedance only make sense if we
ignore science altogether and take our cues from philosophy. Yet we don’t go
around decrying these stories as “oddballs” or “not proper Doctor Who”. In fact, those stories which try hardest to look and
feel like “proper sci-fi” – such as, for example, last year’s The Rings of Akhaten and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS –
seem to do badly in the court of public opinion. So the showrunners (across the
years) have clearly ensured Doctor Who
remains science fiction out of personal choice – not just to mollify some
fictional fantasy-phobic demographic.
If
Who is closer to fantasy now than
once it was, perhaps it’s because science fiction, popularly speaking, is also
closer to fantasy now. I picked up an edition of SciFiNow magazine recently, whose title is fairly unambiguous in
signalling its intentions. I was struck by quite how much of it was full of
superheroes. You really have to look very closely at superhero films to decide
that they are examples of science fiction. Furthermore, much of the rest of the
magazine is filled with articles on shows like True Blood, and if vampires are sci-fi now then all bets are off.
One
final piece of evidence, which will surely be the clincher. I was a pre-school Star Wars nut until the winter of 1980,
when two things happened. One, I went to school. Two, Metal Mickey started. But it was because of that second event that
I watched Tom, Lalla and Matthew blunder around E-Space. I was interested in Doctor Who because it was science
fiction. Later, I became interested in other science fiction – John Wyndham, Blake’s Seven, Douglas Adams, Star Trek – because it shared a genre
with Doctor Who. Exactly as Sydney
Newman intended.
