Is Doctor Who A God?

9 and 10, The Davies Era: A God Who Must Not Know It

last of the time lords It was always essential during the Davies era that the Doctor not behave like a god, that he not know he was a god. In some ways, this was easy. The Doctor is a god who loves humans, who emphasizes with them, who looks at them in awe. From the Doctor€™s perspective, we humans look like giants because we have the ability to live in and love this universe. And when the Doctor had a companion, he could maintain that perspective. Rose was important to the Doctor because she was someone he could believe in. As he said in €œThe Satan Pit,€ in the great game €œof gods and devils,€ out of all the gods the Doctor has seen, he believes in Rose. He believed in her goodness, her humanity, and that she would be there when he came to get her. And Rose loved him for the man he was, not the god or the angel. the doctor in the tardis with rose tyler Madame du Pompador loved him for the angel. And later, River loved him for the god. But that€™s another story, one I€™ll get to later. Donna once told the Doctor that he needed someone to travel with him, because sometimes €œyou need someone to stop you.€ That€™s why he picked Martha up and invited her along: because he knew he needed someone. But after Martha and Donna, he stopped. He couldn€™t take the connections being broken anymore. He loved and believed in people, but they broke his hearts. All through this era, the limits of the Doctor€™s power were important. He couldn€™t save Rose from an alternate dimension. He couldn€™t convince Nurse Redfern to travel with him. He couldn€™t help Jack, or save Donna. There were fixed points in time that he could do nothing about, and even if he tried he may make them happen. In €œVoyage of the Dead,€ when the Doctor ruled over angels, he was told that €œif you could choose who lives and who dies, that would make you a monster.€ And who hasn€™t wondered that, if gods were all powerful, how they could let terrible things happen. The arc of the Tenth Doctor€™s story took him to Mars, to a fixed point in time. And he decided to change all that. He would decide who lived and who died. He would be the Time Lord Victorious. The Master once said that being a Time Lord Victorious must have been like being a god, and the Doctor shied away from the thought. Not anymore. time lord victorious If the Doctor reached for more power, if he reached for godhood, it would make him a monster. That was the story of the Davies era. And it took a human sacrifice, the act of a human woman, to bring him back to himself. Because the fact that the Doctor is a god was, during the Davies era, his greatest secret from himself.
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Rebecca Kulik lives in Iowa, reads an obsence amount, watches way too much television, and occasionally studies for her BA in History. Come by her personal pop culture blog at tyrannyofthepetticoat.wordpress.com and her reading blog at journalofimaginarypeople.wordpress.com.