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circular_timeOriginally posted on Tumblr, this meta post digs up classic Who canon on two surprisingly complicated questions:
- How and when did we first learn the Doctor wasn't human?
- Was he ever called "Doctor Who" in classic Who, or only "Doctor"?
It's tempting to say that the Doctor was explicitly nonhuman from the start of the show (in 1963, you whippersnappers ;)). In fact, his status was ambiguous for several seasons, and yes, I do remember the pilot episode's title!
The pilot's very title, Unearthly Child, implies that Susan and by extension her grandfather aren't from Earth.[1] Susan tells Ian and Barbara:
SUSAN: I was born in another time, another world.
and a little later on...
IAN: You're treating us like children.
DOCTOR: Am I? The children of my civilisation would be insulted.
IAN: Your civilisation?
DOCTOR: Yes, my civilisation. I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it. Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? Have you? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day. One day.
The Doctor's morality and ethics are distinctly inhuman, and he's a right bastard until he picks up human compassion from Ian and Barbara.
But here's the thing. Just because someone's born on another planet in the distant future doesn't rule out the possibility that they're human. In fact, sometimes the first Doctor calls himself a human being. The show maintained the mystery of the character for more than half a decade and two Doctors (yes, really!) before really and truly establishing that he wasn't human.
Don't believe me? Let's look back.
[[MORE]]
The First Doctor: Mystery Man
In the original pitch for Doctor Who [caveat: the characters and concept were much changed by the time the show aired], the point is that we simply don't know who or what the Doctor is. He is a mystery. Writers are encouraged to drop hints about him which are later undermined or retracted to maintain that mystery. The word "alien" doesn't crop up. Nor does "human." Doctor Who was initially part of the Twilight Zone/Outer Limits genre, which explores the themes of mystery and the unknown. [2]
Now I turn gratefully to the Doctor Who Transcripts, which I've scoured for instances of the words "human," "alien," "world" and "planet" in my quest to find the first canonical evidence that the Doctor is not human.
The first Doctor often refers to people on other planets as "human beings." It's not clear to me whether he's really saying that they're human, or he's employing a chauvinistic term like "men," or he's using the term in the sense of beings who are like humans [3]:
SABETHA: His life's work destroyed.
DOCTOR: No, no, I wouldn't say that. His work will go on, only not quite in the same way. But I don't believe that man was made to be controlled by machines. Machines can make laws, but they cannot preserve justice. Only human beings can do that. Now I only hope that you'll carry on his good work, please. Goodbye. Bless you, my child.
We also have to remember that Doctor Who was a low-budget, quickly-written-and-produced TV show which didn't keep a detailed continuity or canon handbook. Shows were broadcast once and never seen again. Fans didn't keep notes; there were no VCRs or DVRs or easy ways to record off TV (I was using an audiocasette recorder to tape Who in the 80s, audio-only). So nitty gritty details weren't as carefully considered. We have to be wary of giving them more weight than the show's designers did.
For that reason, I can't make too much hay out of the fact that the Doctor gets engaged to Cameca, a charismatic human woman in The Aztecs. (But it's quite a change from his sneering at Barbara and Ian two episodes back).
The Sensorites (1964) gives us Susan's famous description of the Doctor's home planet:
SUSAN: Grandfather and I don't come from Earth. Oh, it's ages since we've seen our planet. It's quite like Earth, but at night the sky is a burned orange, and the leaves on the trees are bright silver.
But again, that doesn't explicitly rule out their being human. In fact, in the very same episode:
DOCTOR: It's a fallacy, of course, that cats can see in the dark. They can't. But they can see better than we humans, because the iris of their eyes dilates at night. Yes.
!!!
By The Chase, the Daleks are calling the Doctor both "human" and "humanoid." However, we can't trust anyone but the Doctor and Susan to know what he really is (and they've been known to mislead).
In the Time Meddler, the Doctor meets the mysterious Meddling Monk who has a time machine [4] that's a different model with a functioning "camouflage unit." However, nothing is actually said about their race, civilization, or the world they come from.
Steven berates the Doctor during The Massacre (1966), "If your researches have so little regard for human life then I want no part of it." After he's left...
DOCTOR: Now they're all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan, or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton. Chesterton. They were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now, Steven. Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet. But I can't. I can't.
It's the first mention in a few years that the Doctor's not from Earth.
However, the Doctor's still including himself under the "human being" sobriquet during The Savages:
DOCTOR: They are men. Human beings, like you and me. Although it appears at the moment that you're behaving in a rather sub-human fashion.
The Second Doctor: Sly Hints & the Big Reveal
The amazing thing is that even when the Doctor first regenerates — although the term wasn't used for it back then [5] — it's still not clear that his biology isn't human. Look closely:
DOCTOR: I've been renewed, have I? That's it. I've been renewed. It's part of the TARDIS. Without it, I couldn't survive.
The implication is that the TARDIS renewed his body, worn out by old age, via by some advanced technological (medical?) process. It is not an innate biological transformation.
In The Highlanders, the Doctor playfully refers to himself as alien for the first time— German, that is!
DOCTOR: Then you are doubtless familiar with Article Seventeen. You cannot hang a citizen of a foreign power, without first informing his ambassador.
PERKINS: Article Seventeen, Aliens Act?
GREY: Who is this extraordinary rogue?
SERGEANT: He says he's a frog doctor, sir.
DOCTOR: German. And I know more about the English law than you do, it seems.
While reviewing these old episodes, I was surprised to discover just how rare the word "alien" is during the first five years of the show. "Human" and "human beings" are frequently used, but the only time "aliens" have been mentioned repeatedly is in The Space Museum, where the "aliens" were Barbara, Ian, Vicki and the Doctor!
The Doctor doesn't mention that he's not from Earth again until Evil of the Daleks (1967):
DOCTOR: Even if I could trust the Daleks, even if they set us free, we still couldn't go back to Earth. I suppose I might try and take you all to another universe. I might even try and take you to my own planet.
VICTORIA: Your own?
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, I live a long, long way away from Earth.
The next episode is the first time we hear about the Doctor's age:
JAMIE: Well, yes. You see, we travel around in here through time and space.
DOCTOR: Oh no, no, no, no. Don't laugh. It's true. Your father and Maxtible were working on the same problem, but I have perfected a rather special model, which enables me to travel through the universe of time.
VICTORIA: How can you? I mean, if what you say is true then you must be, er, well, how old?
DOCTOR: Well, if we count in Earth terms, I suppose I must be about four hundred, yes, about four hundred and fifty years old.
That certainly doesn't sound human, but it's based on a surprising premise: Victoria assumes that a time traveler could be very old, perhaps because he's not bound by the normal progression of time.
There's a significant moment in The Ice Warriors (1967) when the Doctor nearly says that he's not human:
DOCTOR: What do you mean, I'm only human? Well as a matter of fact... [interruption]
However, his "human" status is suggested later in the same story, when he throws a "stink bomb" of ammonium sulfide:
DOCTOR: Harmless to humans, but to aliens very possibly deadly!
...it's demonstrably harmless to him.
See again the show's original brief that anything definitive about the Doctor has to be undercut within the same serial. (This is also about the time when the Doctor and other characters begin to start using the world "alien" in some episodes, usually for the monsters.)
The Seeds of Death (1969) once again drops a hint that the Doctor has inhuman (or at least atypical) biology:
SLAAR: Is he [the Doctor] still alive?
FEWSHAM: Yes, he's still breathing.
SLAAR: That is unusual. Most humans would be dead.
And finally, as I suspected, the Doctor's status as a member of a nonhuman race, the "Time Lords," is first made explicit towards the end of the lengthy serial The War Games. The villain's chief strategist turns out to be a "Time Lord," of the same race as the Doctor. The Doctor has to call in his own people to mop up the mess.
Which they do with terrifying demonstrations of power and a tediously lengthy trial that occupies the final half hour episode. A few tidbits from the legal transcript:
TIME LORD 3: In every one of these time zones, thousands of human beings fought and died in the belief that they were on their own planet. The survivors have now all been returned to their own times on the planet Earth, but the death roll is beyond counting. These lives were squandered in the course of a vicious and diabolical scheme to gain control of the entire galaxy. A scheme originated and devised by a race of which the accused is the leader. It was a was a highly organised scheme with an utterly callous disregard for the lives of the humans involved and for the liberties of all the other species in the galaxy which the accused would have dominated with his tyranny[...] I will now call upon a member of our own race to sort this evil matter out. There will commence a reading of the witness' report. The witness is called. Will you step forward, please?
DOCTOR: The Time Lords holding a trial is a very rare event.
ZOE: Why?
DOCTOR: Well, normally they don't interfere with the affairs of other planets, but they had to when I called for help.
While "race" is used in everyday English to refer to different groups of humans, in an SF context, it tends to mean "alien race." The latter seems to be the meaning here, since the Time Lords keep referring to "the humans" as another species during the trial.
TIME LORD: Have you anything to say in your defence?
WAR LORD: The humans who died in our war games would have killed each other anyway.
TIME LORD 2: Is your plea that that ends justifies the means?
WAR LORD: Yes, it is. And members of your own race agreed with me. My War Chief was himself was a Time Lord, and the knowledge he brought me made the whole scheme possible. And another of your Time Lords gave me his support!
DOCTOR: I never supported your scheme for one moment.
At the end of all this, the Doctor is exiled to Earth by the Time Lords as a slap-on-the-wrist punishment for having "broken our most important law of non-interference in the affairs of other planets." He argues that he fought evil while other Time Lords merely observed it. The tribunal says the Time Lords need time to consider the issue he's raised. In the meantime, he can cool his heels fighting evil on Earth, a planet on which he seemed to be an expert. :)
The Third Doctor: An Alien Exile on Earth
In the Third Doctor's first episode, Spearhead from Space, his "two hearts" are introduced (or implied):
NURSE: Ready, sir.
HENDERSON: Thank you, nurse. Is this somebody's idea of a joke?
NURSE: Sir?
HENDERSON: Look at that.
NURSE: His heart, sir.
HENDERSON: If that is his heart, nurse, what is this?
NURSE: I, I don't know, sir.
HENDERSON: Someone in the x-ray department having a game. You stay with the patient. I'll find out who the fool is.
From then on, scriptwriters begin to play with, embellish and invent the Doctor's non-human aspects, from telepathy to a secondary circulatory system, just as they had been toying with and inventing new functions of the TARDIS for the previous two Doctors.
The Time Lords make a hilariously stuffy cameo at the beginning of Terror of the Autons (1971) which also introduces Jo and the Master.
TIME LORD: Oh, dear. Don't go away, Doctor. My co-ordinates seem to have slipped a little. Still, not bad after twenty nine thousand light years.
(He glides to the gantry.)
TIME LORD: I do hope you can spare a moment or two, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Sarcasm always was a weak point with you, wasn't it. May I say that I think you look quite ridiculous in those clothes.
TIME LORD: I am travelling incognito.
DOCTOR: Oh? Why?
TIME LORD: We Time Lords don't care to be conspicuous. Some of us, that is.
DOCTOR: Look, if you've come down merely to be rude
TIME LORD: I came to warn you. An old acquaintance has arrived on this planet.
DOCTOR: Oh? One of our people?
TIME LORD: The Master.
DOCTOR: That jackanapes! All he ever does is cause trouble.
TIME LORD: He'll certainly try to kill you, Doctor. The tribunal thought that you ought to be made aware of your danger.
DOCTOR: How very kind of them.
TIME LORD: You are incorrigibly meddlesome, Doctor, but we've always felt that your hearts are in the right places. But be careful. The Master has learnt a great deal since you last met him.
DOCTOR: I refuse to be worried by a renegade like the Master. He's a, he's an unimaginative plodder.
TIME LORD: His degree in cosmic science was of a higher class than yours.
DOCTOR: Yes, well, er, yes, well, I, I was a late developer.
The name "Gallifrey" first appears in The Time Warrior (1973), ten years after the show began.
LINX: I'll overlook that insult for the moment. What is your native planet?
DOCTOR: Gallifrey. I am a Time Lord.
The Fourth Doctor: A Time Lord Who Walks in Eternity (and puts on airs about it...)
We don't see Gallifrey until The Deadly Assassin (1976), which takes place entirely inside the Citadel. The Invasion of Time (1978) finally gives us a few glimpses of the planet's natural landscape [Video around 8.00]. [6]
So, to recap:
- The first Doctor was introduced as a complete mystery, an enigmatic old man with a time machine, born on another planet, in another time.
- The TARDIS "renewed" him when his body wore out, but this still didn't establish him as non-human.
- The second Doctor hinted once or twice that he wasn't human, but
- the Doctor was not explicitly declared to be a member of a non-human race, the "Time Lords," until the finale of The War Games, nearly six years after the show began.
- Gallifrey was not named until 1973, ten years after Unearthly Child aired. Which was a lot longer than most TV shows lasted, back in those days!
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NOTES:
[1] As I understand it, Susan was really meant to be the Doctor's biological granddaughter. The reason for making her his "granddaughter" was to avoid the "dirty old man and young lady" connotation which the show's creators feared would outrage early-1960s audiences. Making her adopted wouldn't have alleviated that concern, especially since adoption itself was a fairly hush-hush topic in those days.
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[2] I hate to wade into the heated "the Doctor" vs. "Doctor Who" debate, because it's not really that important, but as someone who grew up watching classic Who, I find the name "Doctor Who" being used in character just as jarring as if Sirius Black thought of and introduced himself as "The Prisoner of Azkaban." Doctor Who is the show's name, typical of a time when TV shows had poetic names like Star Trek, Lost in Space and The Avengers. It's true that the scriptwriters of Doctor Who occasionally broke the fourth wall by having another character reference the TV show's name, asking "Doctor who?"
IAN: Just open the doors, Doctor Foreman.
DOCTOR: Eh? Doctor who? [i.e. who the heck is Doctor Foreman?] What's he talking about?
MASTERSON: Doctor who?
DOCTOR: Yes, quite right. I've just been satisfying the Sheriff here that we are a humble troupe of travelling players. Unfortunately, sir, at the moment between engagements.
And since classic Who had no fixed canon or "Bible," there is one single line in the show's 27-year-history in which which he is actually called "Doctor Who":
WOTAN: Doctor Who is required. Bring him here.
—The War Machines
Nevertheless, the Doctor never refers to himself as "Doctor Who," only "the Doctor." At best, he occasionally lets the "Doctor... who?" question stand in order to avoid answering it (as in the second example), and perhaps to imply, playfully, "Quite right, you have no idea who I am." Even so, this in-joke doesn't crop up very often. As someone who followed classic Who avidly from the late 70s until its cancellation, the only example I can recall occurred in the somewhat meta Five Doctors anniversary special:
CRICHTON: What the blazes is going on? Who was that strange little man?
SERGEANT: The Doctor.
CRICHTON: Who?
On the other hand, it's perfectly fine for us to refer to the character as "Doctor Who" when discussing the show, just as it's perfectly fine to talk about Star Trek "Redshirts" even though the term was never used in character. The name does show up in the show's titles and credits:
(Title of Part 5 of The Chase written by Terry Nation, inventor of the Daleks).
Anyone who jumps on a fan for calling him "Doctor Who" is being a gatekeeper — which is rude — and is also misinformed. But again, he's never called that in character, within the dialogue of an episode.
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[3] In early SF, writers didn't always make clear (or consider) whether "human" and "human being" really meant "humanoid," i.e. a sentient being who looked human. SF was often more fantasy than science. Looking back at classic Trek and other old series, we wonder why alien worlds seem to have institutions like ours, people who look human and speak English and dress in western (or retro) garb, and may have political situations or even continents that mirror Earth's. But really, even today, SF shows often depict aliens as humanlike (albeit with nonhuman colors and/or prosthetic embellishments), partly due to budget, but largely because most audience members still have an unconscious tendency to identify people who look like themselves as "people" and beings who look other than human as "monsters." Recall the fight that Gene Roddenberry had with studio execs to allow Spock — an alien with pointed ears! — as a regular.
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[4] The name of the TARDIS: The Meddling Monk refers to his ship as a "time machine" (a "Mark 4," the first time a model / make is mentioned). He calls the Doctor's ship a "TARDIS," but may have overheard the Doctor or his companions talking about it. By the the Third Doctor's era, when the Time Lords had been established in canon, Susan's coinage of the acronym "TARDIS" had been forgotten, and the Doctor and the Master comfortably refer to each others' TARDISes.
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[5] I've always loved the inconsistency of regeneration in classic Who, typical of the way the old show is more like folklore and mythology than a systematic and artificial constructed fictional universe.
The first Doctor wears out, and his body is "renewed" by the TARDIS, with no hint that his innate biology has anything to do with the process. The second Doctor is forced to "change his appearance" by the Time Lords. Only with the third Doctor do we get him dying of some external cause (radiation), and his body regenerating itself. When the fourth Doctor dies, we not only have the never-explained Watcher lurking about for an entire story arc before learing it's actually his next regeneration appearing as a sort of ghost, but also, we get the "life flashing before his eyes" extended regeneration scene with flashback-memories of his past enemies and companions calling his name. The fifth Doctor's death "feels different," and the visions of his past companions and arch-enemy are not clips from past episodes, but seem to be real telepathic communication, with each of them reacting to his death ("You can't die, you're needed!" "Die, Doctor, die!") The sixth Doctor doesn't get a farewell episode thanks to a hiatus, so there's no companion-montage. The seventh Doctor was kind enough to cameo his death at the start of the controversial Doctor Who Movie (which old fans looked at askance back in the day as canon-breaking and not-really-Who— "Half human? Do these scriptwriters know ANYTHING about Doctor Who?!!" — Paul McGann was embraced by classic fans only after we realized he was a great Doctor with a lousy first script). The odd thing about the Seven-Eight changeover is that it was the first regeneration to take place entirely outside the TARDIS: both death and rebirth, without the TARDIS ferrying or renewing the Doctor while he's dying.
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[6] It's true that in classic Who, we don't often see outside the Panopticon (remember that?), and the ruling elites seem to be afraid of the "barbaric" lands and Gallifreyans living outside. It's a typical SF scenario: effete, technologically advanced elites living inside their bubble city, with nonconformists or lower classes forced to live outside coddled comfort in exploited and somewhat depleted wastelands. However, during the run of classic Who, the supposed Gallifreyan phobia of plants never appears (nor do the Ceruleans; they were invented in the New Adventure Lungbarrow novel, nearly a decade after classic Who had been cancelled and seemed doomed never to be resurrected.) In classic Who, we hear about the Doctor as a "little boy" living with his family halfway up a mountain with rocks, trees, weeds, snow, and flowers. Susan mentions trees in Unearthly Child, and there's a garden in the heart of the capitol during The Five Doctors. I see nothing wrong with the post-classic-Who era bringing in new ideas and even retconning what came before— I'm a big fan of Star Trek: TNG, and I'm absolutely thrilled that the Eighth Doctor has become such a great Doctor. I just think fans miss out on the spirit of classic Who, as it was originally experienced by fans when it was on TV, if we view those episodes only through the retroactive lens of canon that was added later.
