Doctor Who New Series 1.10 - 'The Doctor Dances'

Plot - The Doctor, Rose and Jack attempt to uncover the mystery of the capsule which is believed to be the perpetrator for the recent uprising of gas mask creatures. If they are to ever find out where the origins of the empty child and it's transformative powers came from they must uncover the secret before a German bomb destroys the capsule once and for all. 

The second half of Steven Moffat’s two part story serves primarily to do two things. First of all, it will shed light on all the mysteries which the plot generated during the preceding forty-five minute story; helping to bring together a multifaceted and cerebral story in all its glory. The second achievement which it will carry out is that it will act as one big metaphor to Doctor Who and the show’s stance on sex and sexuality.

One of the most interesting elements surrounding Doctor Who is the show’s attitude toward sex, or lack of it should I say. Because during the classic era’s 26 year run, sex and sexuality were pretty much kept well out of the program. Whilst shows such as Star Trek frequently showed the protagonist locking his arms around a beautiful damsel, the Doctor simply refused get involved with any of that whole hanky panky malarky. He was strictly an adventure man; appearing to have zero interest in physical relations.

Even his companions, who were most frequently sexually active humans, seldom expressed any sexual desires on screen. Sure, companions would fall in love, go off to marry others or develop closer-than-usual relationships with other men and women who collided with their world, but nothing more than a hug or a peck on the cheek would ever be shown on screen. The business of people getting their swagger on was strictly left out of Doctor Who and during the 1980s, show runner John Nathan-Turner even famously coined the rule “no hanky panky in the TARDIS”.

The reasons for the show’s hero not possessing sexual desires was quite a straight forward one. Doctor Who is a family show which caters for people of all ages; children in particular. The show was a Saturday night prime time program which focused mainly on the adventures of the Doctor and his companions. It wasn’t simply a case that the Doctor wasn’t interested in hanky panky, it was more a case of producers not wanting to have the show taking off the air because of outraged mothers and fathers (or more realistically, outraged Daily Mail writers). The show may have gotten away with being scary (minus the time when super-bigot Mary Whitehouse managed to influence the sacking of a head writer during the 1970s) , but it wasn’t going even bother trying to get away with anything more sensitive than that.

Fans on the other hand were not satisfied with this fact, so they started to read into the Doctor’s asexual attitude a little more closely. Due to the fact that the show's first ever series had a companion who happened to be the Doctor’s granddaughter, it would seem that the Doctor has indeed indulged in what many other humans obsess about so frequently (if his species reproduce in a similar fashion that is). Based on this information, it would seem that the Doctor was either able to suppress his sexual urges, or was a member of a race who's desires are not as frequent as other life forms.

As time went on, the Doctor’s sexuality began to fall under further scrutiny, as fans started to question whether there was a possibility that he may have played from more than one team. Seeing as he never expressed a particular sexuality, there was nothing to suggest that he was strictly a fan of the ladies. On top of this, some of those individuals who read into the show’s text in this way decided that the fact that the Doctor had so many platonic female friends suggested that he had homosexual tendencies. I assume that this concept stemmed from the stereotypical idea that all homosexual men have girl mates, whilst heterosexual guys simply can’t ever be just friends with a girl…

This is where Doctor Who stood for pretty much its entire run. It was a show which never dealt with hanky panky themes, ironically making people question the shows relation to sex more so than any other program on the box.

But then The Doctor Dances happens and all of a sudden, Steven Moffat brings this very subject right into the forefront of Doctor Who. Firstly, there’s the introduction of Jack from the previous episode. Now we had a fairly unambiguous moment in the first episode where Jack flirted with both Rose and one of his male officers, yet it isn’t until this episode that we are officially informed (in a metaphor, that is) of where Jack stands when it comes to getting his swagger on. Yet not only does Moffat use this episode as an opportunity to clarify to audiences what Jack's sexuality is, but it also briefly flirts with the idea of the Doctor’s.

Regardless of times having changed rapidly since the early days of this program, Doctor Who is still a kid friendly show and the BBC still have to be very careful about how they go about dealing with such issues, plus as I mentioned above, such a side plot is delivered through the useful metaphor of ‘Dancing’. Yes, that’s right, Episode ten decides to refer to sex by calling it ‘dancing’. This is how Moffat gets away with informing viewers that Jack is multisexual (or whatever it is he’s suppose to be) and that the Doctor is hanky-panky active. In the case of Jack, the Doctor delivers a line which is very difficult to read in more than one way, explaining Jack’s nature to Rose:

DOCTOR: Relax, he's a fifty first century guy. He's just a bit more flexible when it comes to dancing.
ROSE: How flexible?
DOCTOR: Well, by his time, you lot have spread out across half the galaxy.
ROSE: Meaning?
DOCTOR: So many species, so little time.
ROSE: What, that's what we do when we get out there? That's our mission? We seek new life, and, and
DOCTOR: Dance.

This is not the only time that the word “Dance” pops up in the context of sexual relations, and does so throughout the entirety of the episode. At the very end of the story, the Doctor excitedly declares to Rose that he too can dance. Now of course, this scene can indeed be read in more than one way, because the Doctor is quite literally dancing to Glen Miller at this point. But that’s where the use of this metaphor changes in comparison to that of Jack. When the Doctor talks about Jack and dancing, he’s quite unambiguously referring to the sort of people he likes spending his leisure time with, where as when the Doctor refers to himself and Dancing, there's always a double ended meaning to it. So Moffat plays it safe when it comes to the Doc, but nonetheless, he’s still flirting with the idea and the use of the dancing metaphor adds a playful euphemism to the title of this story; which can pretty much be read as; “The Doctor likes to Screws things as well”.

Why do I mention all this? Well because this is where all those ideas of new who and sex pretty much come into play. People often accused Russell T Davies of being the orchestrator of sexuality playing a part in the new era of the show, but in actual fact, it all started here. Just think for a few minutes about this fact. If Davies was the man who started to introduce sexual liberation and alternative sexualities into Doctor Who, then at when did he do it prior to this? Was it in Rose? I mean the “he’s gay and she’s an alien” line was just a random throw away line with absolutely no extra layers attached to it. Was it in The End of the World? Well, apart from Cassandra casually mentioning that she was born male (again, no extra meanings behind this line, only a sement of dialogue which suggested that sex changes are pretty much effortless procedures in the year five billion), I can honestly not think of any LGBT agendas in the story. What about Aliens of London/World War Three? Again, nothing springs to mind. As for the long game, well again, nothing at all from memory. The celebration of liberal sexualities as well as the embracement of sex in general within the Who universe was pretty much pushed into existence right here, in Moffat’s two parter. Heck, it’s even here were we get our first proper on screen gay character; a man who's revealed by Nancy to have been sleeping with the local butcher in order to get extra food supplies during the rationing months of the war.

I understand that Russell T Davies created the character of Captain Jack Harkness, but just remember, Davies wasn't the one who introduced this character into the show. Moffat was brought on to help establish his presence within this universe. Davies may have wanted a fluent and flirtatious hero from the 51^st century, but it was Moffat who made him the omnisexal love god that he became. Furthermore, this is the most sexually diverse that Jack will ever get in both this and Torchwood’s history. I mean sure, he will have liaisons with both men and women, but it will be much more binary than him skipping effortlessly between one or the other. They will also be far less frequent and will carry far more gravitas than they do here. In The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Jack skips from life form to life form; merrily flirting with them as if there's no tomorrow. Yet after this, Jack will flirt and charm others, but on a far less frequent basis. Whenever he does get into relationships with others, he will often crash and burn; either losing his lovers in death or having them turn against him. With Russell, Jack’s flings will often have consequences, whilst with Moffat, they were celebrated and frequent segments of fun for this character. Also, Jack's gender change amongst relationships in Torchwood always seem to be decades between one another; seemingly favoring men over women.

But enough of all that. Moffat is obsessed with writing screenplays that are filled with sexual themes and subtext, mainly because that’s what he loves doing the most. It’s how he became known for his writing and it’s a style that is pretty much second nature to him. But what about that other thing he appears to have gotten good at? You know, the whole complex story telling business.

Well like in the previous episode, The Doctor Dances simply does not seem to want to run out of steam when it comes to jigsaw style story telling. The Doctor, Rose and Jack are now reunited after a long episode apart, where together, they attempt to uncover mystery behind the gas mask zombies. It is here where we begin to learn that the pod from the start of the last episode has more to do with what’s going on that was initially thought. It turns out that Jack orchestrated the crash of the time capsule and intended for the Doctor and Rose to find it. It was a piece of space junk (or so Jack assumes) that was pre-programmed to crash in a spot which would eventually be the target of a German bomb. Jack was planning to sell the useless space junk to a naïve time agent, only for that time agent to never discover that it was useless due to the German bomb which was destined to fall on it. As Jack calls it, the “perfect self cleaning con”.

It would appear that the troubles revolving around the gas mask child began during the same time that Jack’s space pod landed; meaning that both events are connected. From this moment on, things start to slide into place.

Finally, after much waiting, everything becomes clear. The pod was not a useless piece of space junk, but is a 51^st century war ambulance; filled with microscopic nanobots who are programmed to fix up any wounded soldiers. It turns out that the gas mask child was in fact a little boy called Jamie who was killed during the night of the crash. Because Jamie was wearing a gas mask at the time, the nanobots assumed that the mask was a part of the human biological make-up structure. The nanobots have never seen human beings before, meaning that they were confused; resulting in them patching up any human which came into contact with them in the same way that they patched up the dead child.

Suddenly, everything makes perfect sense. Jack’s, Jamie’s, Nancy’s and The Doctor & Rose’s stories all come together. We spent two episodes watching what seemed like a collection of separate subplots dancing alongside each other, yet here we see them all mesh into one master story. Suddenly, everything makes perfect sense, and the feeling of enlightenment upon clarification is an absolutely riveting experience.

The revelation of this plot also reveals the impressive complexity of this story in comparison to all those which came before it. The idea of an intergalactic war ambulance mistakenly patching up a damaged human life form into a soldier during the 1941 Blitz is a difficult yet beautiful idea to pull off.

What works the most about this story is the fact that both the before and after effects of such a jigsaw puzzle narrative produce entertaining results in seemingly different ways. The pleasures derived from such a structure during the before moments are the viewer’s attempts to try and figure out what is going on. When an audience bare witness to any form of story telling, their minds work effortlessly at attempting to decode the information playing out before them. The more difficult it is to understand and process the information playing out before you, the more strenuously the brain will work in order to crack the code. This usually sends the imagination into overdrive. We start to fastidiously dissect every scene in intense detail. Everything is pulled to pieces in order to try and find the one true answer to all that is going on in the story which retains information from us. This is why films such Donnie Darko resulted in viewers producing so many essays surrounding the narrative. The information contained within the story was not fed directly to its audiences, meaning that more effort was required to figure out what was meant to be taking place on screen. As a result, all kinds of weird and wonderful ideas sprang into existence. This is what narratives such as The Empty Child result in; fans coming up with all kinds of lovely ideas to try and make sense of what is really going on. Despite being 'wrong' most of the time, coming up with your own theories can be hugely entertaining and is what makes the early parts of this story work so well.

The pleasures that can be experienced during the after moment of the plots revelation can be just as pleasurable also. Instead of your brain working tirelessly to decode the story's data, suddenly it becomes submissive toward the narrative. The release of tension and confusion dies away as everything slides into place. Suddenly, all that ‘nonsense’ makes perfect sense. Your mind transcends from a state of cluelessness to a state of pure understanding. You grasp all the answers and start to piece together all mysteries which took place during preceding scenes. The jump from cluelessness to awareness is euphoric, relieving and makes you feel bloody clever (particularly if any of your previously conceptualised guesses turned out to be bang on the nail; as mine was during the series five story arc surrounding the crack and the Pandorica).

The joys of such narratives prevent such stories from becoming boring and subject to distraction. They keep you watching from start to finish. Viewers are far too keen to figure out the mystery behind such screenplays. But how does one write such a story? How does someone like Steven Moffat execute ideas like this one? Is it written from back to front? Or do they just come up with an enigmatic mystery and then figure it all out as they go along? I’m not asking this question in search of an answer, I’m simply marvelling at such story telling styles. After all, it’s one thing drafting out a three act screenplay, but creating a story of such complexity has always been something which staggers my mind. The jigsaw narrative may very well be the most entertaining type of story in my eyes, but it is also one which I find incredibly difficult to write myself.

But then should such stories be prevalent in Doctor Who? I guess not. In fact, I think it’s good that such stories only pop up several times a year. The brilliance of this story structure is a novelty which I use to look forward to each year during a new series of Doctor Who. As the weeks would draw closer to a Steven Moffat episode, I would bite my nails in anticipation of what he had in store for me this time round. But as Moffat became the head writer and other writers tried to copy his style, some of the magic was lost in such stories. I’m not saying that Doctor Who gets bad when complex story telling becomes more prevalent (on the contrary, series five to seven have been my three favourite series of New Who), but what I'm saying is that it should not be the standard for this show. Doctor Who works best when it is experimenting and trying out new ideas/structures/styles/etc. Jigsaw narratives are brilliant in Doctor Who, but they should not become the be all and end all of this show.

The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances was originally planned to be a comical romp of a two part story, yet Moffat managed to pull something new, exciting and huge in scale out of his trick bag. Both this writer’s talents for writing brainy puzzle structures, merged with his dear obsession with the show makes episodes nine and ten the finest two episodes of this series.

The following episode is universes apart from this story; venturing right back to Davies’ classic soap/sci-fi hybrid. This is not necessarily a bad thing as an actual fact, but it does serve to remind us of just how dissimilar and experimental this show has become over the past few weeks. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t help but feel that Father’s Day, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances were the moments where this revived series really started to push the envelope. Who knows, but it sure does feel that way.