The Doctor’s Saviour Complex
Guest contributor Paddy Brennan explores the Doctor’s determination to save lives, and the consequences.
“I’m the Doctor, and I save people!”
With those rousing words, the Doctor set about resurrecting Ashildr at the end of last week’s episode ‘The Girl Who Died’. However, this act of kindness was not without consequences, and Ashildr now carries the onus of immortality, so the question is, was the Doctor right to bring her back? This isn’t the first time that the Doctor’s determination to save the lives of innocents (as well as some characters who are not innocent in the slightest) has had negative repercussions, an idea which has been explored mainly in the revival era of the show. Does he suffer from a ‘Saviour Complex’? In the following article I will look back over the last ten years of Doctor Who, examining when the Doctor carrying out his perceived moral duties has only worsened the situation.
From the beginning Series One, the fallout from the Time War hangs heavy on the Ninth Doctor’s conscience reinforcing his will to protect the peoples of the universe at all costs, even the cost of his own life, such is the extent of his survivor’s guilt. Indeed, the Doctor’s utter jubilation in ‘The Doctor Dances’ when, from out of the blue, a solution is found whereby “everybody lives”, only emphasises the fact that this incarnation has grown tired of seeing death and destruction wherever he goes. This character arc of the Ninth Doctor reaches its conclusion in ‘The Parting of the Ways’ in which he is faced with a terrible dilemma. The new Dalek empire poses a threat to the entire universe, particularly so if the population of Earth is added to their ranks. The Doctor has the opportunity to destroy the Daleks using the delta wave, but in doing so he would also wipe out all life on the planet below. It’s the very same scenario that came about on the final day of the Time War, yet this time the Doctor cannot persuade himself that the ends justify the means and he opts to be a coward over a killer, choosing the path of idealism, rather than that of pragmatism. Luckily Rose comes to the rescue, imbued with the power of the time vortex and with the ability to reduce the Dalek fleet to dust in an instant, so in this case the Doctor’s reluctance to act pays off.
Fortunately the Doctor’s character development was not forgotten with the advent of his tenth incarnation, this Doctor’s oft-repeated saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry,” giving an insight to his frustration when someone is beyond his power to save. This is especially evident in Series Two when the Doctor causes thousands of Cybermen to die in agonising pain, horrified by what they have become, as well as in ‘The Satan Pit’ when he is able to rescue the crew of Sanctuary Base Six at the cost of their Ood servants who are left to perish being sucked into a black hole.
At times this Doctor’s compassion extends even to those who are not deserving of it. In ‘Human Nature’ he endures psychical agony purely for the sake of kindness, so that the Family of Blood may die naturally of old age. Unfortunately this plan backfires horribly, resulting in an unspecified, but no doubt large, amount of civilian deaths. As Joan Redfern so aptly puts it, when she challenges the Doctor at the end of the story, “If the Doctor had never visited us, if he’d never chosen this place… on a whim… would anybody here have died?” So too, in The End of Time the Doctor is reluctant to murder the Master, although this may be less down to the Doctor’s morals as it is because of a personal attachment to his fellow Time Lord. Wilf rightfully calls the Doctor out on his selfishness on this occasion, given that the future of the human race can only come about via the Master’s death.
‘The Fires of Pompeii’ marks a watershed in the Doctor’s attitude to rescuing people wherever possible. Having made the decision to let Pompeii burn for so that the future of the Earth may remain intact the Doctor is wary of altering a fixed point in time, yet Donna’s plea to “save someone, Not the whole town. Just someone,” dialogue which retained its original potency in last Saturday’s episode, weakens his resolve, and he agrees to rescue Caecilius’ family from the ashes. However, this alteration of the timeline may have brought about more consequences than it appeared at first. At the tragic climax of ‘Torchwood: Children of Earth’, John Frobisher, a man who shares the face of Caecilius (and much further down the line, the Doctor) takes is own life, along with that of his wife and his two daughters amid the 456 crisis. Could it be that the Doctor merely exchanged four lives in ancient Pompeii in place of four lives in contemporary London?
The personal consequences of ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ for the Doctor are explored in ‘The Waters of Mars’ in which his well-meaning attempt to bend the rules in the former episode has boiled-over into hubris and a blatant disregard for the fragility of time in the latter. Outwardly the Doctor’s aims are honourable- he cannot stand to see good people killed in such appalling circumstances. With the foreknowledge that his “song is ending”, he believes that he has nothing to loose and he rails against the inevitability of the crew’s fate. Despite this, when it comes to carrying out the deed, the Tenth Doctor seems more so motivated by a desire to exert his power over the universe than by any genuine compassion for the crew. It takes Adelaide’s subsequent suicide and the appearance of Ood Sigma in the snow to knock him from his pedestal and bring about his anagnorisis.
It is perhaps his harrowing experiences from ‘The Waters of Mars, that makes the Tenth Doctor’s successor less prone to this apparent saviour complex. In ‘The Beast Below’ the Eleventh Doctor opts for the pragmatic choice, euthanizing the Star Whale to ensure the safety of the human population who ride on its back. On this occasion it is Amy to takes the idealist, and somewhat irresponsible, viewpoint and decides to free the Star Whale, convinced that the creature will take mercy on the inhabitants of Starship UK. Likewise, in ‘A Town Called Mercy’ this Doctor shuns his predecessor’s tendency to spare the lives of his enemies, as he contemplates murdering Kahler Jex in cold blood, explicitly bringing up the Master as a justification for this: “today I honour the victims first. The Master’s… all the people who have died because of my mercy!” Once again it falls to Amy to make her friend see the error of his ways, easing him back on to the path of pacifism. The saviour complex eventually makes a comeback in the Eleventh Doctor’s swansong ‘The Time of the Doctor’ when he takes up the mantle of self-appointed sheriff to the town of Christmas, standing guard over the small community for centuries, knowing that should he ever leave, slaughter would ensue.
Once again the experience at the end of one Doctor’s life has a profound influence on the personality of the following incarnation. Having seen generation upon generation age and die on Trenzalore as he keeps on living, the Twelfth Doctor is at first desensitised to human death. He believes that, in extremis, the ends justify the means and he allows, nay catalyses, the deaths of the Half-Faced Man in ‘Deep Breath’ and Ross in ‘Into the Dalek’ as well as several passengers in ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’ so that their sacrifice may aid the chances of survival for a greater number of people.
In spite of himself, it isn’t long before the Doctor’s sympathetic side comes to the fore once again, with Series Nine having so far placed great emphasis on the consequences of the Doctor’s savour complex. Starting with The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar, an interesting dynamic is created between the Doctor and Davros whereby the former believes he has a moral obligation to the latter for abandoning him on a battlefield as a child. Conversely, Davros, a man of cold logic, mocks the Doctor for taking mercy on his greatest foe and saving him from the hand mines, even when allowing the child Davros to die would have undone lifetimes of woe inflicted on the Doctor by the Daleks. Next, in ‘Under the Lake/Before the Flood’ the Doctor attempts (unsuccessfully) “changing history to save Clara”, his disregard for the paradoxes this will cause harking back to the Time Lord Victorious. However, it is evident from the story that the Doctor’s cold and calculating side has not completely gone away, as he allows O’Donnell to die simply to test his hypothesis regarding the ghost Doctor’s list of names.
Most recently in ‘The Girl Who Died’ the Doctor faced the intractable problem of how to help the village people to defeat the Mire, without simultaneously making the Earth a target for future attacks- a problem which he made a resilient effort to solve, when the easier option would be to leave the Vikings to their cruel fate with history unaltered. The Doctor may have achieved victory in the battle but victory was bittersweet as it came at the cost of Ashildr’s life and, worse still, her death was the fault of the Doctor himself. In a fit of passion, and having recollected his experiences in Pompeii from which he ‘chose’ his current face the Doctor took rash action and brought Ashildr back to life as a “functionally immortal” hybrid. While these actions also recall the Doctor’s Time Lord Victorious persona, in this case it is clear that his motives are far from selfish. It isn’t long before the Doctor is brooding over the potential consequences of this move and the episode’s final lingering shot of Ashildr, as hope and joy evaporates from her face over the course of the years, to be replaced by weariness and sorrow, certainly doesn’t bode well for the Doctor’s reunion with her in ‘The Woman who Lived’.
In any case, and despite the many complications it has brought about in the past nine series, it certainly says something about the Doctor when sometimes his greatest weakness can be his own compassion.
