The Doctor’s “Relatability”, Break-Ups and the The Green Death

Feature article by guest contributor Paul Mosque.

Reader, we broke up.

I hadn’t expected it. Maybe I should have seen the signs. I certainly understood her reasoning. We’re off to different universities. She’s been through a lot recently. She’s going to be very busy and, well, go out on a high. Still, it hurts a bit. Oh well, these things happen. It can only be expected. You might hope it’ll keep going on and on, but that’s foolish. Most relationships end, after all.

So one feels a temptation to go out and watch something, to read something, to see someone else go through it and know they turned out okay. But whereas others might be tempted by “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (or, if they’re a bit screwed up, “Kill Bill”), I chose an entirely different cultural touchstone. Reader, I chose The Green Death.

Now, you might be wondering why I’m telling you all this. “Paul,” I hear your voice’s cry, “Why are you telling us about your break up, you self-centred drama queen, and how in God’s name are you going to link that to The Green Death?” To be honest, with questions as specific as that, I think those voices are actually inside my head. Nonetheless, the point still stands. You may think I’m writing this merely as a way of getting over breaking up (and you’re right – I’m very shallow), but believe me, there’s a relevant point here. A very relevant one, in fact.

You see, recently the current BBC Drama Controller, Piers Wenger, told us that Doctor 13 will be, unlike her predecessors, relatable. No “daffiness” or “idiosyncrasies” for Doc Jodie. Out are frilly shirts, bow ties and questionable question mark jumpers. In is a Doctor Who who gets you. A Who who understands you. A Who you can relate to.

I know, according to how Doctor Who is supposed to work, I should find this different. The traditional set up is that, along with the ancient unknowable alien, we have an “audience identification” character. A plucky young girl, a sensible-shoed schoolmarm or a brave young bloke. An archetype to cling onto whilst confronted with a central character utterly unlike anyone we can ever know. So the introduction of a “relatable” Doctor should be revolutionary – for the first time, in 55 years, here’s a Doctor you don’t need an interpreter to understand. A hero, as Stan Lee originally said of Spider-Man, who could be you.

Reader, I think that’s guff.

Not that I don’t think the Doctor can be relatable. Quite the opposite, in fact. Indeed, underneath the frills, scarfs and sandshoes, I think the Doctor is one of the most relatable characters on television. Just because we haven’t be menaced by cybernetic slugs, threatened by insane computers or got engaged after making some cocoa for an Aztec woman*, it doesn’t mean we can’t empathise with our intrepid Time Lord. Instead, it is the breadth of the Doctor’s experiences, and their tone, their essence – if not their actual events (slugs etc) – that make her someone we can all identify with. And this is where we come to my break up, my weird grieving process, and The Green Death.

At the end of this classic six-parter, Jo Grant – the Doctor’s plucky assistant of three years standing – leaves him to get engaged to the young, Welsh and not-at-all Doctorish Professor Clifford Jones. It’s a fantastically melancholy little scene (which you can watch here), and highly moving, with the Doctor’s lonely drive off into the night emphasising just how upset he feels. But, being the Doctor (or, more specifically, English*) he puts a brave face on it, giving Jo his total support to go off and do what she wants to do. That, dear reader, is how I felt when she said she wanted to break up. And that’s why, when I got home, I watched that scene. At that moment, the Doctor, no matter his “daffiness”, his idiosyncrasies and his spirited taste in velvet, was me.

Which mirrors Doctor 11’s finally exhortation – “I will always remember when the Doctor was me”. I think that that wasn’t only meant for the Doctor, or, in a fourth-wall-breaking sense, Matt Smith. I think that was meant for all of us. We can all remember saying goodbye to someone we love as they go off to start a new life, just like at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. We’ve all wished we could change our appearance, our personality and, most importantly, our wardrobe. So we all feel a bit of joy at seeing the new Doctor picking out his look in The Christmas Invasion, as it reminds us of the last time we made ourselves over. And when the Doctor, in that magnificent speech in The Rings of Akhaten, tells the false God that he has “lost things that you will never understand”, he is speaking for all of us. It might be a break-up, but it might also be a childhood toy taken by an unsuspecting parent to a jumble sale. It might be an heirloom lost in a fire. Or it might be a sacrifice you have made for something, or someone, far more important.  Whatever it is, it is yours. And whatever others might say, they really will never understand.

In that respect, we can all relate to the Doctor. Strip away the outward weirdness (hell, we’re all a bit odd at first glance), and focus on what she says. What she’s experienced. What she’s felt. It doesn’t matter that none of us has ever wiped out our own people to save the Universe, or died of Spectrox Toxemia in order to save a friend. We’ve all made sacrifices, and we’ve all been upset. It’s all part of the human – and Time Lord – experience.

So, Piers Wenger, I utterly reject the idea that the new Doctor is rendered unique by her “relatability”. No matter the Doctor’s alienness, she still has feelings. And if she has feelings, we can relate to her perfectly well. Instead, what Piers should have highlighted, is the Doctor – not just Doc Jodie, but all of them- is rendered unique by her heroism. Not the slug-fighting or universe saving; that’s the icing on the cake. No, the Doctor’s true heroism comes in her ability to overcome those hard feelings, and go on smiling. That’s the lesson I took from The Green Death. Before I’d watched that scene, I was upset, obviously. Angry, even. But not now. Because, like the Doctor, I realised what one has to do is put another first, let her go off and be brilliant, and get on with my life with a smile on my face.

Though for me that just means starting at Uni, rather than going to fight a Sontaran in Medieval England, as it did with Pertwee. More’s the pity.

*I have, to be honest. It was a very interesting party.
*He’s half-human, and his Mum’s obviously English. HaTerZ gONna HaTe.