Is the Doctor a Person, Or An Idea?
Guest contributor Abraham Mireles investigates.
It has been argued before that the Doctor is some kind of superhero
It can be said that there are two kinds of characters: those that are symbols and those that are people.
A character that is an idea is one that has no definitive true identity therefore you can have as much variations of it and still be the same character. A classic example would be Batman, as long as there is a man called “Bruce Wayne” that dons the mantle of the bat to fight injustice we will recognize the character as “Batman.” From the old school campy Adam West Batman to the more realistic Nolan interpretation.
On the other hand we have characters that we usually identify as a real person and, beyond parody, there is little room for variation. Take for instance an historical figure like Winston Churchill, president Barack Obama or a fictional character like Jack Sparrow or House M.D. If we tried to “reinvent” either of those we would immediately consider this new version as fake or “in name only”.
Returning to our initial question, is the Doctor a character or an idea? The laconic answer is that he is both.
The Doctor is an idea in the sense that he can be reinterpreted “ad infinitum”– as long as the basic premise of the character is left intact. We have had 13 incarnations of the Doctor and all of them have been the Doctor.
This leads to the question, what makes the Doctor the Doctor? The answer to the question is the core of the character. We usually think of the Doctor as eccentric, intelligent and mysterious alien that travels in a police box through time and space, fights evil, makes people better, and of course runs a lot. If you change any of the Doctor’s core traits, rather than a variation you will have someone that will not be recognized as the Doctor by the audience.
However, this being more an art than a science means that not everyone will agree on what is and what isn’t the core of the character. For instance is it essential for the Doctor to be male, interpreted by a British actor or even his odd fashion sense? As you might have noticed opinions vary a lot between Whovians.
Humorously the Doctor himself hasn’t been sure about what is true his core, take for instance this sixth Doctor quote about his predecessor:
“It had a sort of feckless “charm” which simply wasn’t me”.
It’s truly telling that as much as that as much as each of the Doctor’s incarnations have disliked each other, like the famous bickering the second and third Doctors usually had, he only disgraced the incarnation that betrayed what it meant to be the Doctor or “the promise”. It’s also important to take notice that certain actions are beyond the scope of interpretation and rather betray what the Doctor truly represents. When presented with the choice of harming an innocent whale or killing the innocent people on a ship, the Eleventh Doctor said that he would have to change his name, as he wouldn’t be consider himself the Doctor anymore; we as an audience would feel the same if the Doctor wasn’t what he strives to be.
Now what truly makes the Doctor unique from many other characters is that he is also a person. In other words we identify each individual incarnation of the Doctor as an unique individual as much as we don’t think our friends or family can be “reinvented” even if they do change an grow as people.
We tend to associate so much each Doctors with their actor’s portrayals to the point that whenever someone has had to play, for instance, the first Doctor, they try to imitate William Hartnell’s portrayal of the role rather than just “reinvent him”. Richard Hurndall in “The Five Doctors, David Bradley in “An Adventure in Space and Time or even Steven Moffat reusing old footage of Hartnell’s portrayal confirms that we see the actor as the mould of each incarnation of the Doctor.
Truthfully, to quote the Tenth Doctor, the Doctor can be many things:
“…I’m the Doctor, but beyond that, I… I just don’t know. I literally do not know who I am. It’s all untested. Am I… funny? Am I sarcastic? Sexy? Right old misery? Life and soul? Right-handed, left-handed, a gambler, a fighter, a coward, a traitor, a liar, a nervous wreck – I mean, judging by the evidence, I’ve certainly got a gob”
But one thing is certain, he will always be the Doctor; a hero to some but definitely a mad man with a box.
To conclude, it can be said that the Doctor is truly one of a kind. Thanks to the concept of regeneration, the Doctor is an idea that can be reinterpreted in many ways as every actor has. But each Doctor is a unique person that serves as a mould. The brilliance of the character of the Doctor is that the man of the many faces has only one.
