35 David Hume, a best-selling historian in his day, lived from 1711 to 1776. He was Scottish, and in 1746, at the age of thirty-five, might have helped Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie to escape from the Redcoats in “The Highlanders” (1966), except that Hume always kept far away from battles. Hume lived in France from 1734 to 1737 and may have vied for the affections of Madame de Pompadour, losing out to David Tennant’s Doctor, who kept appearing in her fireplace in “The Girl in the Fireplace” (2006). If Hume had burst in on them unexpectedly in a fit of jealousy, he and the Doctor could have had a fist fight.
36 Both quotes from Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom, p. 8.
37 John A. Dupré, “Species: Theoretical Contexts,” p. 312.
38 “A Hierarchy of Species Concepts.”
39 Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, pp. 114-19.
40 With thanks to the GENIE CETL at the University of Leicester, for their support of the BioethicsBytes project of which this work forms a part.
41 Churchland, “The Ontological Staus of Observables”; van Fraassen, “To Save the Phenomena” and “Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism.”
42 See Chapters 5 and 7 in this volume.
43 The British may have a quaint form of English, but we have compensated for this by providing the universe with several individuals who have saved it—on one occasion using nothing more than a yellow truck.
44 I’ve always wanted to write that.
45 Thanks to Ian Potter for pointing out that even the Carrionites couldn’t do without numbers, and to Matt Kimpton for the discussion of the Doctor and numbers in general.
46 Quoted in Gary Gillatt, Doctor Who from A to Z, p. 11.
47 Kim Newman, Doctor Who, p. 112.
48 John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado, Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text, p. 137.
49 The significant obstacle to this freedom for the Doctor in his first three incarnations is, of course, his spotty knowledge of how to work the Ship (the knowledge is actively repressed by the Time Lords during his exile on Earth). In “An Unearthly Child,” the Doctor explains to Barbara and Ian why he can’t use the TARDIS to take them back to their own time: “You see, this isn’t working properly. Or rather the code is still a secret.”
50 Okay, the actual quote invokes a “hobgoblin of little minds,” but what’s a chapter on Doctor Who without a mention of Mr. Sin, the crazed, pig-brained dwarf from “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” (1977)?
51 James Chapman, Inside the TARDIS: The Worlds of Doctor Who, p. 7.
52 Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 42, 46.
53 This Greek name has two derivations, both of which are fascinating in comparison to Doctor Who: in its more linguistically certain one, it means “to steal.” But another relates it to the Greek word for “foresight.”
54 Jeremy Bentham, Doctor Who: The Early Years, p. 61.
55 I want to thank Kennedy Stomps for the original idea for this chapter; I appreciate comments and suggestions on earlier drafts from Ethan Decker and the editors and their refereees.
56 Deci and Ryan, “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits,” pp. 227-268.
57 Kim Newman, Doctor Who, pp. 3, 40.
58 Nel Noddings, Caring, p. 8.
59 The Ethics of Care and Empathy.
60 I and Thou, p. 8.
61 “Some Concerns About Nel Noddings’ Caring,” pp. 109-114.
62 “Caring and Exploitation,” p. 116.
63 Upheavals of Thought, p. 55.
64 ‘Wonder’ and Other Essays, p. 141.
65 Purity and Danger p. 36.
66 Critique of Judgment, pp. 80-81.
67 I would like to thank two websites for providing access to transcripts of Doctor Who episodes: Doctor Who (2005+) Transcripts at
68
69
70 Gary Russell, Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia, p. 172.
71 The Fourth Doctor encountered Socrates in the Gareth Roberts short story, “The Brain of Socrates” in Short Trips: The Muses.
72 1998 edition, p. 12.
73 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, pp. 55-56.
74 Mel Thompson, Teach Yourself Ethics, pp. 80-84.
75 George Boas, “Love.”
76 Kant, Groundwork, p. 68.
77 Doctor Who Wiki, “Rose Tyler”
78 “End of an Era” (BBC Wales, July 5th, 2008).
79 Critique of Practical Reason, p. 128.
80 Kim Newman, Doctor Who, pp. 31-32.
81 Peter Haining, Doctor Who: The Key to Time—A Year-by-Year Record, p. 21.
82 “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” p. 365.
83 Howe, Stammers, and Walker, Doctor Who: The Sixties, p. 31.
84
85 Singer, Practical Ethics.
86 Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought.
87 Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 2, line 1104a.
88 Grant Morrison, Doctor Who, Issue 2 (IDW, 2008).
89 Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics.
90 Walter Robinson, “Death and Rebirth of a Vulcan Mind.”
91 I offer many thanks to Paula and Jenny for their help in “upgrading” this chapter.
92 Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III.
93 Peter van Inwagen, “The Possibility of Resurrection.”
94 Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity.
95 He might be thinking of the ectoplasmic snake that the Master became in Doctor Who: The TV Movie (1996); but that wasn’t through regeneration, and the pre-snake Master wasn’t even a Time Lord (“The Keeper of Traken,” 1981).
96 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
97 The term ‘speciesism’ is most associated with Peter Singer. In Animal Liberation, Singer argues that our presumption that human preferences take priority over animal preferences is speciesist.
98 Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons.
99 See the final chapter of Davies’s and Benjamin Cook’s Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale.
100 Adam Sherwin, “Christians Protest as Doctor Who Is Portrayed as ‘Messiah’.”
101 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity.
102 Aldridge and Murray, T Is for Television: The Small Screen Adventures of Russell T Davies, p. 146.
103 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p. 7.
104 While I would encourage people to read as much of Nietzsche’s work as possible, some especially juicy anti-Christian material is in Beyond Good and Evil, the second essay of The Genealogy of Morals, and the appropriately titled, The AntiChrist .
105 Thus Spake Zarathustra, p. 114.
106 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 686.
107 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p. 169.
108 “Terror of the Autons,” “The Mind of Evil,” “The Claws of Axos,” and “Colony in Space” (all 1971); “The Sea Devils” and “The Time Monster” (both 1972); “Frontier in Space” (1973); “The Deadly Assassin” (1976); “Logopolis” (1981); “Castrovalva” and “Time-Flight” (both 1982); “The King’s Demons” (1983); “Planet of Fire” (1984); “Mark of the Rani” (1985); “The Ultimate Foe” (1986); and “Survival,” (1989).
109 The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, p. 136.
110 Ken Curry, in Chapter 23 of this volume.
111 I use ‘reconstituted’ because ‘resurrected’ isn’t quite accurate since it’s not the whole of the Master’s body which returns.
112 We see this in Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor in Episode 1, “The Eleventh Hour” (2010).
113 Hegel
, Phenomenology of Spirit, especially Section IV: “The Truth of Self-Certainty.”
114 This is not a subtle borrowing, though one has to be a fan of the film Manhunter (1986), based on Thomas Harris’s novel, Red Dragon, where Hannibal Lecter makes his debut in the form of Brian Cox.
115 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, paragraph 174, p. 109.
116 Paragraph 171, p. 107.
117 Paragraph 186, p. 113.
118 Paragraph 186, p. 113.
119 Paragraph 184, p. 112 and paragraph 186, p. 113.
120 Paragraph 187, p. 114.
121 Paragraph 189, p. 115.
122 Paragraph 188, p. 114.
123 Gleichschaltung is a term used in Nazi Germany to “bring into line” or “coordinate” aspects of German life, such as business, commerce, and social attitudes, under totalitarian control.
124 Hegel, Reason in History, p. 43.
125 “The Cunning of Reason in Hegel and Marx,” p. 270.
126 This chapter’s title is not so subtly borrowed from The Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil,” Beggars Banquet (Decca, 1968).
127 An excellent outline of this approach can be found in Chapter 1 of Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics.
128 He shows a great deal of compassion next time he meets Cassandra, but only once she accepts her death.
129 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time.
130 See Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness or his “Existentialism Is a Humanism.”
131 A nice reversal of this trend occurs in “Planet of the Ood,” where we discover greedy humans mutilating and enslaving another species for profit.
132 Even if they had already considered the possible wrongness of their actions but failed to take it seriously, it may be wrong to punish them without first offering them a chance to examine their values.
133 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Chapter 9.
134 I’ve already hinted at the possibility that knowledge plays a crucial role in concern. Maintaining concern as a virtue might only be possible for someone who, like a Time Lord, literally sees the outcomes brought about by virtuous choices. This is why compassion can’t blind him to the value of choice.
135 He and Donna explicitly share responsibility for the destruction of Pompeii, but normally this sharing of responsibility is more implicit, which doesn’t make it any less significant.
136 In one way, they don’t kill you, given that your physical body is left unharmed, but in another sense, they do.
137 EDITORS’ NOTE: The Weeping Angels do kill people in Series 5, Episode 5, “Flesh and Stone” (2010),written by Steven Moffat. We found this a bit puzzling, but the dire need of the Angels to survive and their need to communicate (through the soldier Bob) seem to be the motives.
138 Often, those who claim the Weeping Angels aren’t the most frightening will cite the Vashta Nerada from “The Silence in the Library” (2008). Very, very rarely, does one see the suggestion that the Daleks or Cybermen should claim the title of Most Frightening Monster over the Weeping Angels.
139 The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart, p. 12.
140 For an argument why one might actively wish for the fate the Cybermen promise, see Chapter 18 in this volume.
141 The Importance of What We Care About.
142 “Persons, Character. and Morality,” p. 209.
143 Frankfurt, p. 83.
144 After Virtue, p. 201.
145 Suppose a historian who dedicated his entire life to the study of a particular era in the past were to become a victim of the Weeping Angels, discovering himself transported to that same era he studies. It’s at least possible that this historian wouldn’t suffer the same loss of self that any other victim would, given that all that he cares about is contained in that era. It’s possible. What matters, for our purposes, is that this historian likely wouldn’t see the Weeping Angels as threatening and frightening as the rest of us, with more current interests, do.
146 See Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” in The Importance of What We Care About, Chapter 2.
147 See Peter A. French, War and Moral Dissonance, Chapter 7.
148 Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley, “Disgust,” p. 650.
149 Haidt, “Elevation and The Positive Psychology of Morality,” p. 2.
150 Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley, “Disgust,” p. 641.
151 Aesthetics: Lectures in Fine Art.
152 Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art, p. 56.
153 Only a Promise of Happiness.
154 Phaedrus, lines 251a-252a.
155 On Beauty, pp. 131-33.
156 Alexander of Hales, Summa Halesiana, quoted in Eco, On Beauty, p. 149.
157 Quoted in Eco, On Beauty, p. 136.
158 “The Aesthetic Hypothesis,” p. 115.
159 Krutikov’s ville volante design can be found at
160 Gottfried Leibniz, Philosophical Writings, pp. 133-35. Leibniz may have had a difficult time explaining this to Scaroth in “City of Death” (1979), whose identity was splintered across time, dividing him into twelve selves according to purely external features.
161 This comes from contemporary French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of Leibniz in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, pp. 63-64.
162 Theodicy, pp. 365-373.
163 Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones, p. 100.
164 Leibniz, Selections, pp. 585-594.
165 Terry Nation, Doctor Who, the Scripts: The Daleks, p. 81.
166 Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3, p. 169.
167 Nation, p. 48.
168 Rorty, p. 176.
169 R.J. McMahon, The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction, p. 84.
170 G.J. DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life, p. ix.
171 Nation, pp. 22, 42.
172 P.D. Smith, Doomsday Men, pp. 366-67.
173 Nation, p. 111.
174 I.W. Russell, “Among the New Words,” p. 146.
175 US News and World Report (May 1960), p. 34.
176 News (November 2nd, 1962), p. 1.
177 The Times, (June 26th, 1961), p 8.
178 Nation, p. 22.
179 Howe, Stammers, and Walker, Doctor Who: The Sixties, p. 31; J.K. Muir, A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television, p. 80; Bignell and O’Day, Terry Nation, p. 71.
180 H.G. Wells, The Time Machine and Other Stories, p. 71.
181 H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, pp. 12-15.
182 Nation, p. 124.
183 G. Rogoff, “The Juggernaut of Production,” p. 132; B.B. Seligman, “On Work, Alienation, and Leisure,” p. 353.
184 Rorty, p. 176.
185 Nation, p. 117.
186 Many thanks to the following Doctor Who fans: Roger Bunce (pictured below), my Dad, who worked as a cameraman on many of the Doctor Who stories of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s; Mark Anstead, Nick Potamis, Jamie Hailstone, and Andy Diamond; and my daughter India who’s living proof that the Daleks are still terrifying. I must also thank Dr. Peggy Watson of Homerton College, Cambridge, for inviting me to present the essay which became this chapter to the College’s students, and the undergraduates who came, for their stimulating questions. Finally, thank you to Barry Hart for commenting on a draft of this chapter.
187 John Fiske, “Popularity and Ideology: A Structuralist Reading of ‘Dr. Who’,” p. 180.
188 Piers D.G. Britton, “Dress and the Fabric of the Television Series,” p. 353.
Doctor Who and Philosophy Page 49