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| The War Lord (Philip Madoc) faces trial by the Time Lords |
Is this the first time a university Law School has watched Doctor Who collectively? Perhaps! Under the aegis of its Centre for Law Society and Popular Culture, Westminster Law School held a viewing of the seminal episode 10 of "The War Games" last week, with an introduction by Professor Danny Nicol. The episode centres on two trials held by the Doctor's people, the Time Lords. They try an alien called the War Lord, for having gathered together human soldiers from different eras in time, in order to wage war on each other with a view to creating a super-army out of survivors to conquer the galaxy. They then try the Doctor, one of their own species, for having interfered in the affairs of other planets.
"The War Games" is the high water mark of Time Lord gravitas. Yet Westminster's legal scholars were not overly impressed by the Time Lords' idea of a fair trial and there was considerable questioning of their legitimacy to act as guardians of the Universe. The academics observed how the Time Lords' black-letter law diverged from the far more flexible view of law put forward by the Doctor, and yet there was a lack of reasoning for the Time Lords' decisions. Cold war and anti-colonialist themes were readily identified, and it was noted how heavily the episode would have been influenced by the war crimes trials of the era such as Nuremberg and Eichmann.
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| The Doctor (Patrick Troughton) presents his defence |
The event was a precursor to a symposium which the Centre is holding in September on "The Politics and Law of Doctor Who".
