Doctor Who and Philosophy

by Courtland Lewis

  17

  Why the Daleks Will Never Beat Us

  SARAH HONEYCHURCH and NIALL BARR

  We’re talking about Daleks. The most evil creatures ever invented.

  —SARAH JANE (“Genesis of the Daleks,” 1975)

  What’s wrong with the Daleks? Why do they trundle around the universe shouting “EX-TER-MIN-ATE” whenever they bump into things that don’t live in metal boxes and look like them? The problem is, Daleks will never learn—they’re just not capable of understanding why the Doctor gets on so well with other species.

  The Doctor loves humans, but Daleks haven’t got a clue what love is or why it matters. Poor things—Davros made them to win a war, and fighting is all they can do. When he made them, he left out a whole load of important stuff that humans have. Okay, so humans aren’t perfect—we fight from time to time, but at least some of the time we’re capable of getting on with other people and animals.

  In “The Mutants” (1972) we’re told that the Daleks were philosophers. Well, if they were, they can’t have been very good ones, or they’d have come up with a better catch phrase. It’s not worth bothering to tell the Daleks what’s wrong with their thinking—they wouldn’t listen because they’re too busy shouting—but we’ll tell you.

  So what’s the important stuff missing from Daleks? Why do they think that they’re so superior to other species? It’s because of their belief that superiority is based solely on logical ability and similarity of appearance—and that these are the only two things that are worthy of consideration. According to the Daleks, anybody who doesn’t look or think like them is necessarily inferior and therefore, should be exterminated. They don’t understand that other species might be subjects worthy of moral consideration, too.

  The Doctor understands both Dalek-mentality and human-mentality, and this is why he succeeds where Daleks fail—he appreciates those human traits that Daleks overlook. Humans realize that love and compassion are an important part of our lives, and that these play a part in our everyday lives when we’re working out how we should act. And, unlike Daleks, humans and the Doctor have the capacity to realize that other species might also count. The problem with the Daleks is that they are speciesist—and that’s a really, really bad thing to be.

  What on Earth Is Speciesism?

  Not all ‘isms’ are bad, but some are. Sexism is bad, racism is bad, and Nazism is really, really bad. Terry Nation said that he modelled the Daleks on the Nazis, and you can definitely see the resemblance. 83 Furthermore, the uniforms that the Kaleds wear in “Genesis of the Daleks” (1975) are evocative of those worn by the Nazis, and this is no coincidence.

  Nation spent his childhood in Wales during World War II, and was deeply affected by this experience. He felt the Britain of his youth was an isolated island threatened by a single-minded, unfeeling enemy that threatened to destroy or subjugate everything that didn’t fit with its idea of what was right. So, it’s not surprising that when he creates the ultimate enemy of the Doctor, he models it on the Nazis. And, in so doing, he creates an enemy which suffers from a defect in reasoning.

  Daleks would hate to be told, by mere humans, that we consider ourselves culturally and morally superior to Daleks, but we do think this. The role emotions play in moral reasoning makes us superior to the Daleks. Our capacity for emotions is why we think humans and the Doctor, together, continue to beat those pesky tin machines.

  ‘Speciesism’ is a word that was first coined by Richard Ryder in the context of the philosophy of animal rights.84 Peter Singer, a prolific writer on the subject of animal liberation, also uses the concept of speciesism to argue that we humans aren’t the only species in the world which has interests that matter. In our modern age, he says, we recognize that racism and sexism aren’t acceptable moral attitudes. The next step, Singer writes, is to extend to other species—to non-human animals—the same equality of consideration that we should show to our fellow humans. The relevant moral principle, according to Singer, isn’t whether other animals are intelligent, or rational, as some philosophers have thought, but whether they have the ability to feel pain. Human infants, after all, don’t have the capacity for reason, but we don’t, on these grounds, think that it’s morally acceptable to harm them. On the contrary—we believe that although they can’t think or speak for themselves, we still have a duty to care for them—to ensure that, to the best of our ability, they are nurtured.85

  Singer calls humans ‘speciesist’ if they don’t think that the interests of animals should be considered when we act. If humans are speciesist, then the Daleks are super-speciesist. Daleks consider themselves to be at the top of the logical and intellectual heap, and humans, as well as other species, are simply inferior. We just think there’s more to life than Dalek-logic. Our cat’s not very good at logic, but we don’t (often) feel like exterminating her—she can feel pain so we shouldn’t starve her or pull her tail; instead, we should feed her and stroke her; we’re responsible for her well-being. If animals can feel pain and we know this, then that means that we might have a moral responsibility towards them. This allows us to start thinking about ethics in the right way.

  Now, of course, we’re not saying that cats are exactly like humans and should have exactly the same rights; just that, when we’re thinking about how to treat them, we should realize that they also have interests that matter. Surely survival and avoiding pain would count as interests that animals have. Though we might conclude in some situations, that our human interests outweigh the interests of the animals in question, we ought not to simply write them off as mere objects having no interests of their own. Humans are the beings with moral agency; and as moral agents, we should recognize that this means that we shouldn’t intentionally harm beings that feel pain, if we can avoid doing so. Thus, we have a moral duty to care for them, or at least an obligation not to interfere with them if they pose no threat to us as individuals or as a species.

  Why the Daleks Are Speciesist

  Daleks don’t get this bit. They think it’s fine to bully us, scare us, and kill us. Being bullied, scared, and killed, hurts us, and that’s bad—morally bad. Of course, it’s really not their fault—they were created by Davros specifically to be killing machines.

  Davros thought that Skaro was the only planet in the universe that contained sentient life. So he never anticipated the problems Daleks would cause once they started to travel throughout space and time (“Genesis of the Daleks,” 1975)—becoming the ultimate enemy. But we should reflect upon Davros’s design flaw in creating the Daleks with such limited moral reasoning, so that we don’t make similar mistakes. What Singer suggests, and what the Daleks exemplify, is that an ethics based merely on similarity of body, similarity of beliefs, or level of intelligence isn’t suitable for the world in which we live. In today’s world, with the level of information we have, and the amount of interaction with other cultures and species, we should take care that we don’t assume that we necessarily know best. Just because we may disagree with other cultures, species, or non-human aliens, it doesn’t warrant or justify imposing our own personal human standards on everybody else. But that’s what Daleks and Cybermen do.

  Cybermen don’t always exterminate other species, but what they do to humans is just as bad. In assimilating humans, they kill everything about them that makes them human—they turn them into machines with no identifying features. Both the Cybermen and the Daleks were originally created for similar reasons. Just as Davros saw the Daleks as the ultimate evolution of the Kaleds, John Lumic created the Cybermen as the next level of humankind—as Human-Point-2.

  As explained in the episode “The Age of Steel” (2006), John Lumic selected those character traits that he believed would allow the Cybermen to best survive, and used an emotional inhibitor, fitted into their chest units, to suppress their ability to feel emotions. John Lumic did this because of the painfulness of the conversion process and the likelihood that a human would become insane upon awakening in a metal body.
However, the result is the same as the Daleks. John Lumic envisioned his Cybermen as the ultimate upgrade that would allow humanity to achieve its full potential. But without emotions the Cybermen, like the Daleks, are unable to share the universe with other intelligent beings.

  Without the capacity to feel pain and pleasure and without the capacity to empathize with, or feel compassion for, other species, Daleks and Cybermen can only see other species as threats to exterminate or inferiors to assimilate. And because of this inability, neither Daleks nor Cybermen are able to envisage sharing a world with species that are unlike themselves. Both species assume that the human ability to feel emotions is a character flaw, but it’s not. It’s the capacity to feel, coupled with the ability to think logically, that enables at least some humans, often with the help of the Doctor, to understand that the universe is big enough to share, despite differences and conflicts.

  Emotions Matter

  So how is the capacity to feel emotions relevant to moral reasoning? Okay, you might say, “having emotions such as love and compassion make us nicer people, but surely emotions are just irrational impulses that should be disregarded when we’re working out our moral theory.” Many philosophers have thought so. However, both ancient and contemporary philosophers have plausibly argued that the emotions can, and should, play a role when we’re thinking about how to treat other people. One such philosopher is Martha Nussbaum. She argues that the emotions aren’t just unthinking impulses, but that they also include an element of belief and interpretation—they’re a type of judgment.86

  An emotion such as fear, for example, isn’t just a mindless response to the environment; it involves a belief that something scary looms, and that action should be taken to remove oneself from danger. This doesn’t mean that we should always trust our emotions—they can be wrong, just as other types of belief can be. But it does allow for the possibility of training our emotions to become appropriate responses to the world around us. As Aristotle wrote, the enlightened person is one who’ll respond in the appropriate manner to each situation.87 This is what’s missing from Daleks and Cybermen—the ability to adapt their behavior according to the situations in which they find themselves.

  Is There Any Hope for the Daleks?

  In fact, there’re some examples of Daleks learning from humans. In “Dalek” (2005) the Doctor is horrified to find that one of the artifacts in van Statten’s museum is a Dalek. Van Statten acquired the Dalek at an auction and had been trying, unsuccessfully, to make it talk. It’s only when the Dalek sees the Doctor and recognizes the enemy of the Daleks that it begins to talk. Although the Doctor urges van Statten to destroy the Dalek, van Statten refuses to do so and captures the Doctor instead. The Dalek then tricks Rose Tyler into touching it, and by so doing, is able to use her DNA to regenerate and escape from its cage. Immediately, it proceeds with typical Dalek behavior, exterminating all of the humans it encounters. However, the Dalek then begins to change as a result of having absorbed Rose’s human DNA. For the first time it experiences emotions—pain, loneliness, and, most importantly, empathy with Rose. No longer is it a pure Dalek ready to follow the Dalek master plan; now that the Dalek can feel emotions, it longs only for its own destruction—it can no longer cope with being part of the Dalek order.

  And likewise in “Daleks in Manhattan” (2007), we encounter a Dalek who can feel. In this story, the Daleks in the Cult of Skaro find themselves stranded in 1930s New York, on the apparent brink of extinction, with only four Daleks left. Their leader, Dalek Sec, forms a plan by which to make the Daleks supreme again. They construct a huge genetics laboratory and attempt to breed new Dalek mutants.

  When this project fails, they contact a human called Diagoras and recruit him to find human specimens for their final experiment. They separate these captives into two groups according to their level of intelligence. They experiment with those of lower intellectual ability by fusing their DNA with pig DNA, creating Pig Slaves that can walk on two legs but have limited powers of speech. The humans of higher intellect are held in suspended animation, awaiting the Final Experiment—infusion with Dalek DNA, in order to create a new race: a Dalek-human army that’ll be faithful to the Dalek project of total domination. Before harnessing the power necessary to implement this plan, Dalek Sec absorbs Diagoras and forms a Dalek-human hybrid.

  However, in absorbing human DNA, Dalek Sec gets far more than he anticipated. Now, the Dalek can feel emotions—including compassion. As with the Dalek touched by Rose, Dalek Sec changes his beliefs once he’s able to feel emotions. He now realizes that the original Dalek plan was flawed, and that Daleks can actually learn from human emotions. He therefore works with the Doctor on a plan to revise the Final Experiment, in order that a new race of thinking, feeling Daleks can be created. However, the rest of the Cult of Skaro reject Dalek Sec’s plan and decide, in typical Dalek fashion, that such a race will be inferior to pure Daleks. They therefore intervene in order to thwart this plan, and the events which follow end with the death of Dalek Sec and two other Cult members, Jast and Thang. Yet again, the failure of the Daleks to recognize the importance of empathy leads to their downfall.

  Why the Doctor Is So Special

  So, why’s the Doctor so different from Daleks and Cybermen? Is it because he’s a Time Lord, and Time Lords recognize the importance of the emotions and of not being speciesist? It seems not. The other Time Lords that we meet seem quite different from the Doctor, often seeming to have more in common with Davros or the Cybermen. Why should this be?

  Other Time Lords who’ve left their home planet are far from admirable people. One of the first ones that we meet is the War Master from “The War Games” (1969), and he has ambitions to build a human army by selecting the best soldiers from across human history and using that army to conquer the Galaxy. Next, the Master, who we meet many times and who, like the Doctor, survived the Time War, also has ambitions to be a ruler. So, too, does the Rani. All of these Time Lords, like Daleks and Cybermen, fail to recognize the importance of other species, treating them only as play things for their own amusement. However, these Time Lords, like the Doctor, are rebels operating outside the laws of their people, and so shouldn’t be taken as typical.

  The remainder of the Time Lords seem to be highly insular people, who take little interest in the universe outside Gallifrey, and oppose the Doctor’s tendency to become involved. We learn in “The War Games” (1969) that the Time Lords have a strict law of non-interference in the affairs of other species, and it’s for breaking this law that the Doctor gets exiled to earth. However, in “The Five Doctors” (1983) we’re also given hints of a dark past, when the Time Lords saw themselves as being superior to other races, and operated war games of their own, kidnapping other beings from across space and time to fight for the Time Lords’ entertainment inside the Death Zone on Gallifrey. These games were ended by Rassilon, the first Lord President of the Time Lords, who also developed the technology used for time travel. As the “players” in the games were collected using a device called the “Time Scoop,” which was able to collect beings from other times, we must assume that Rassilon’s technology was also required to start them. It may be that it’s the guilt they feel about such past crimes of their race that make the Time Lords so reluctant to become involved with the rest of the universe.

  Time Lords, other than the Doctor, seem to fall into one of two extremes: either cutting themselves off from the universe beyond Gallifrey, or rebelling against that life and trying to become an absolute ruler, invariably arguing that under their ultimate dictatorship the universe would be a peaceful and happy place. The Doctor is more involved, he’s seen and lived with other races and observes the impact of these events on the individual people as well as on whole planets and races. He has an empathy that the other Time Lords have never permitted themselves to develop, and so, is able to resist most temptations from either extremes. “The Waters of Mars” (2009) is a good example of one occasion when he couldn’t resist.<
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  We never understand fully why the Doctor is different than the other Time Lords, but perhaps it’s because when he left the Time Lords, his interests were that of a scientist or a philosopher, whose ultimate goal was to learn and understand the worlds around him—rather than that of a person hungry for success in the form of wealth or power. Whatever it was that initially made him different, we think that it’s his continued involvement with humans—in particular with his companions in the TARDIS—that enables him to emotionally develop as he does. As time goes on, he develops into an individual with a totally different point of view from the rest of his race. Once he realizes the importance of the emotions, he becomes the champion of the underdog, and on many occasions, a savior of the human race. And, unlike other Time Lords, the Doctor doesn’t see helping other species as mere meddling, for sometimes it’s morally required.

  At the end of “The War Games,” the Doctor is forced to allow himself to be caught by the Time Lords, as only they can restore the thousands of soldiers to their correct times on Earth. The Doctor is formally charged with interfering in the affairs of other planets, which is a violation of Gallifrey’s most important law of non-interference. He defends himself by arguing that there’s sometimes a real need to interfere, to fight evil and prevent races such as the Daleks and Cybermen from succeeding. The Time Lords ultimately accept this argument, and subsequently use the Doctor as their tool to interfere when they see that intervention is called for.