Ashildr, the law that prevailed

By David Yuratich,

School of Law,

Royal Holloway University of London

I have been struck that much of the iconography associated with Ashildr raises, to my mind at least, comparisons with the idea and practice of the law.  This emphasises the argument I have made previously that the Doctor's adventures can be read as not only taking place in time and space, but also within the law; for the Twelfth Doctor at least, his adventures are shaped by a third force.  In this post I will explain why Ashildr can be said to represent 'the law' and make some brief and incomplete observations about this.

1. The Woman Who Lived.

In The Woman Who Lived, we are shown Ashildr's study.  It is filled with hundreds of her thick and bound diaries containing her vast life story.  This imagery is familiar to lawyers and law students.  For those who have not had the pleasure, the law reports, in which decided cases are published, are thick bound volumes.  Within these we find not just reports of what happened in those cases; we find binding precedent, persuasive statements, notable and notorious historical events, disagreement and dissent over fundamental principles, interpretations of legislation, and the evolution of the common law.  Ashildr's journals are not unlike the law reports.  Coincidentally they contain '800 years of adventure' - the legal database Westlaw contains case reports dating back a similar amount of time, to at least 1219 (albeit the accuracy and quality of many early reports is generally accepted to be poor).  We are told that Ashildr's diaries contain memories too numerous for her to remember, that they tell the story of her life, that some parts have been ripped out because they were too painful.  Similarly, the development of the common law is marked by decisions that have been half-forgotten and re-discovered, and by law that has been developed and re-developed.

The wisdom of the common law:
Ashildr sits in front of her diaries

Of course, these observations may well be a sign that it's been a very long term and that I should take a break from work (some of my students would no doubt agree).  The imagery is important though, because of Ashildr’s role in Series 9.  Steven Moffat has said that her immortality was intended to provide her with a perspective on events shaped by the whole of history.  She is a character 'who will know better than he [the Doctor] does' (see here at around 50 seconds).  The law is also supposed to know better than we do - or at least, it defines the boundaries in which we are required to act. 

2. Face The Raven, face the law.

A criticism that is often (not always) levelled at the law is that it undervalues the human element: law can translate nuanced issues into black-letter doctrine.  A famous example of this is the ‘twitter joke trial', where a joke made on twitter led to a conviction, quashed on appeal, for sending a menacing message via a public electronic communication network.  Of course, for each argument that the law has been a blunt object, there are examples of it being drafted or interpreted widely so individual circumstances may be properly considered; this is most evident in human rights law, where for example Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 requires judges to read statutes widely, in so far as it is possible to do so without acting inconsistently with a fundamental feature of that statute, so that individual rights may be upheld (for more on what the European Convention on Human Rights requires see www.rightsinfo.org).

Ashildr highlights both sides of the law in Face The Raven.  She is the mayor of a trap street that is essentially a refugee camp for aliens.  She uses her position to protect her residents from the outside world and from each other.  Under her watch, they all appear human and are treated as equals in a society governed by law.  Ashildr's haven invites comparisons with the rule of law - when understood as the idea that everyone is entitled to equality and dignity under the law - and human rights law, particularly its role in protecting minorities.

A less positive imagination of the law she represents is also evident in this episode.  The plot revolves

The rule of the common law:
Ashildr governs the trap street

around Rigsy, accused by Ashildr of a murder he says he did not commit.  He has been sentenced to death and will die when a 'chronolock' tattoo on his neck reaches zero, unless the Doctor can prove his innocence.  Clara, essentially acting as Rigsy's lawyer, spots a loophole.  She decides to game things by transferring the chronolock from Rigsy to herself, surmising that this will remove him from harm's way without any negative consequences for her, since she is under Ashildr's protection.  Clara is wrong.  Her idea, borne of an unselfish desire to help Rigsy and a sense of justice for the falsely accused, falls foul of the black-letter of the law.  It turns out that the chronolock can only be passed on or removed once, and Clara is doomed.  It doesn't matter that she is innocent, or that she acted out of good motives.  Here we see how the law can (I stress not always) reduce complex situations to a simple matter of whether your actions fall within a narrowly-defined legal schematic. 

                                                                                                                                                              

More widely than this, when Clara's actions are compared to the Doctor's, two models of being a lawyer become evident.  Unlike Clara, the Doctor helps Rigsy solely by trying to prove his innocence.  His approach seems preferable, since it is motivated by a pursuit of the truth rather than a linguistic game.  But like Clara, the Doctor also faces negative consequences.  In finding out what is really going on, he is trapped.  Rigsy was framed so that the Doctor would visit the trap street, try to prove Rigsy’s innocence, and ultimately be captured by Ashildr to be sent to the Time Lords.  Like Clara, the Doctor’s engagement with the legal process in the trap street is a negative representation of the legal process: damned if you do and damned if you don’t, always at the mercy of legal logic.

3. Hell Bent (on bending the law).

Our final visit to Ashildr comes in Hell Bent. She meets the Doctor at the end of time itself, having outlived everything – a vision of an eternal, natural law.  Throughout Series 9 she has set clear rules within which the Doctor and Clara must act, with Face The Raven just one example.  Hell Bent shows the culmination of this as the Doctor realises he must part from Clara, a realisation he comes to following a dialogue with Ashildr.  She – the law – makes him realise that his travels with Clara are dangerous, universe-threatening in fact, and must cease.  Within this set of rules established by Ashildr, the Doctor seeks the most just solution he can think of: a memory wipe process where either his or Clara’s memories will be destroyed, without either knowing whose.  This is not unlike Dworkin’s approach to how judges decide ‘hard cases’, using principles of justice to seek the best solution within the law when there is no clear or easy answer.  The Doctor loses his memories but achieves his goal: he is separated from Clara and Ashildr’s demands are satisfied.

The justice of the common law:
Ashildr and Clara embark on new adventures

Ashildr’s role does not end here.  Clara, whose memories remain, has an opportunity to seek a solution to her own problems: the fact that she is supposed to return to the trap street where she must ultimately die, and her loss of the Doctor.  This time she identifies a loophole that is acceptable to Ashildr.  Clara realises that although she is ultimately destined to die in the trap street, she can traverse the Universe forever until she chooses to return there.  Unlike in Face The Raven, the Doctor and Clara’s legal arguments are allowed to succeed, albeit Clara gets the ‘best’ result, with her memories intact and an eternity of space and time to explore.  The tables are thereby turned, with the law ultimately benefitting Clara’s black-letter approach rather than the Doctor’s full-blooded pursuit for the just outcome.

All of this is because of Ashildr, who represents how the supposedly timeless social structure of the law determines the boundaries in which we, and the Doctor, live our lives.  She is neither adversary nor friend to the Doctor: she represents a dispassionate law that governs his adventures.

"School Reunion": Are the Krillitanes really the British in disguise?

By Danny Nicol,
University of Westminster

It seems a matter of consensus among Doctor Who scholars that one of Doctor Who’s authorial purposes is to represent and to fashion British national identity.  In this regard “School Reunion” (2006) is the first Doctor Who story in which a black British character, Mickey Smith, becomes a companion of the Doctor, albeit not for long.  Mickey is the on-off boyfriend of the Doctor’s beloved (white British) companion Rose Tyler.  His promotion to the role of companion is encouraged by the well-loved companion of yore Sarah Jane Smith, who quips that there should always be a Smith in the Tardis.   Sarah Jane thereby creates a sense of shared identity and continuity, tempering and easing the welcome transition from the long series of all-white companions.  Mickey’s inclusion, swiftly followed by Martha Jones’ longer period as companion, helped to emphasise Doctor Who’s commitment to racial diversity as a fundamental characteristic of Britishness.

Perhaps it is no coincidence, too, that the Doctor’s enemies in this adventure are the Krillitanes, a composite race.   Significantly they are led by an apparently human headteacher played by Anthony Stewart Head, an actor who represented Britishness par excellence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  However, the Krillitanes turn out to be shape-shifting, horrifying bat-like creatures.  They are, we are told, an amalgam of the races they have conquered.  But they take on physical aspects as well, cherry-picking the best qualities of their colonised. 

Graham Sleight has argued that Doctor Who’s portrayal of monsters is a kind of moral parable: the Doctor opposes not merely the monsters but the values that they represent. (The Doctor’s Monsters (London: IB Tauris, 2012), 2).  But in the case of the Krillitanes they embody a favourable British trait – their mixed heritage is their source of strength.  They mingled, just as the British have mingled in terms of heredity and culture alike.  Hybridisation is a recurring theme in Doctor Who, not least in the 2015 series.  But being a hybrid is usually depicted as a good thing.  The value which the Doctor opposes in “School Reunion” is that the Krillitanes have deployed their hybrid strength to conquer rather than for living peacefully.  But are the British so different?  Doctor Who storylines often echo the British Empire, not always favourably (“The Mutants” (1972), “Kinda” (1982)).  More recently the show has satirised the country’s somewhat endless interventions in the Middle East, not least poking fun at Tony Blair’s notorious “45 minutes” claim in “Aliens of London”/“World War Three” (2005), and the Doctor’s trenchant criticism of bombing campaigns in “The Zygon Invasion”/“The Zygon Inversion” (2015).   It is one of Doctor Who’s strengths that sometimes the monstrous turn out to be ourselves. 

Wilson, WOTAN and the white heat of technocracy

By Danny Nicol
University of Westminster

 

The period during which Doctor Who has been broadcast has been characterised by a “rise of the unelected” – the growth of appointed commissions, banks and courts which decide political policy without the worry of having to stand for re-election.  In this context politics is seen as a technocratic “fix”.   It has little to do with class interests: rather, it’s all a complicated matter of detailed, technical policy.  With their special knowledge the experts can be trusted to solve the country’s problems.

Technocracy came to the fore modestly in the early days of Doctor Who when Harold Wilson’s Labour government eschewed socialism in favour of managing “the white heat of technology” through a National Economic Development Council.  Since then, unelected bodies have been doing a roaring trade: the European Commission, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, the Office of Budget Responsibility, the little-known panels of the World Trade Organisation, the Eurozone troika with its preference for technocratic national governments…   For some, technocracy is a matter of pride, with Tony Blair in 1997 promising a “government without ideology”.

The Doctor (William Hartnell) encounters WOTAN

The rise of the unelected is presaged by two early Doctor Who adventures which imagine computers running the world.  In “The War Machines” (1966) the government builds a powerful computer called WOTAN (Will Operating Thought ANalogue) in what is now the British Telecom Tower.  A senior civil servant Sir Charles Summer asserts that “no one operates WOTAN…the computer is merely a brain which thinks logically without any political ends.  It is pure thought…it is our servant.”  In the end, WOTAN hypnotises the staff operating it, and goes about trying to eliminate humans from the planet. 

“The Ice Warriors” (1967) introduces a species of Martians whom we meet several times in subsequent adventures.  But the beauty of the story is that the monsters are not the real enemy: the world is run by a Great World Computer.  The humans in the story are led by Leader Clent who says “you know how efficient our civilisation is, thanks to the direction of the Great World Computer.”  Yet we’re told that the Computer’s guidance has reduced the number of plants on the planet so that land can be used for house-building.  No plants, no carbon dioxide, no spring.  A new Ice Age has established itself.  Clent’s robotic deference towards the Computer is startling in its disconnect and denial: the World Computer has destroyed the Earth’s climate, yet is praised as the font of an efficient civilisation! 

 



Leader Clent and his assistant Miss Garrett
 defer to the Great Computer

We’re told that the Computer’s principle is that all decisions, all actions must be impartial and must conform to the common good – again, familiar technocratic rhetoric.  Opponents of the Computer’s rule are regarded as “scavengers” and are deported.  One critical voice is the rebel scientist Penley, who argues that the Computer isn’t designed to take risks, but that risk-taking is the basis of man’s progress.  The humans eventually come to realise that the World Computer’s top priority it is own survival.

In today’s world technocracy is alive and well, as shown by the likelihood that the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) will enable corporations to challenge the policies of democratically-elected governments in secret courts.   Doctor Who deserves credit for using the computer metaphor to challenge uncritical claims that technocracy is an impartial form of governance dedicated to the common good.

 

Satire ahead of the curve: "Night Terrors" and council house ownership

By Danny Nicol
University of Westminster

In “Night Terrors” (2011) the Doctor and companions Amy and Rory encounter landlord Purcell who, to Rory’s astonishment, owns the council block in which this adventure takes place.  Purcell proves no model landlord.  The accommodation is run-down and he menaces tenants for rent with the help of his large dog Bernard.  Purcell’s smug and solitary self-centredness contrasts with the troubled but less selfish family life of the story’s sympathetic characters – Alex, Claire and their troubled little boy George.  At one point, Purcell sinks agreeably into his own floor - although this come-uppance proves temporary.

 

Not as nice as he looks: Landlord Purcell and Bernard

In Britain, accommodation through council houses and flats (apartments) is a means of sheltering the less-well-off from the harshness of the free market.  In the 1980s, however, the Thatcher government started to sell off these properties to tenants at subsidised prices.  This policy was presented as liberating the individual.   Tenants could enjoy the dream of home ownership and bequeath their properties to their children.  Many years later a study by Inside Housing (14 August 2015) has made some astonishing revelations about the long-term effects of this policy.  There has been a concentration of ownership in favour of the well-to-do.  Some 40 per cent of homes originally sold under the scheme are now let out by private landlords.  Furthermore these landlords charge up to seven times the average social rent for the properties.  As a result there has been a huge rise in evictions for rent arrears. 

 

Yet Doctor Who was satirising this state of affairs several years before this study appeared: Purcell’s ownership of the entire block gave the lie to the idea that the council house sell-off would benefit the individual tenant.  It is admirable how Doctor Who transmitted the sense of unease about the “liberation” of council accommodation well before the impact of the policy had been formally documented and the facts had fully come to light.

A sinking property market: Purcell gets sucked in

Does supranationalism bring out the best in us? “The Daleks’ Master Plan”

By Danny Nicol
University of Westminster

“The Daleks’ Master Plan” (1965) is one of the most ambitious Doctor Who sagas of the show’s history.  It is a twelve-episode space odyssey which (despite a measure of padding) builds to a thrilling climax.  The plot involves a group of alien leaders who form a Universal Council in which they are allied to the Daleks.  This Council plans to unleash a weapon of mass destruction, the Time Destructor, with which it can conquer the Universe.   It has recruited the Guardian of the Solar System, Mavic Chen, as one of its members.  Doctor Who’s script editor at the time, Donald Tosh, has suggested that the Universal Council is a satire on the United Nations. 




Plotting with the Daleks:
 the Universal Council plan the conquest of the Universe



The plot of “The Daleks’ Master Plan” raises a vital political and constitutional question.  Throughout the period in which Doctor Who has been broadcast, supranational organisations have become more and more prominent in our country’s politics.  To what extent can these organisations be reformed in a progressive direction?  In the recent UK general election Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales argued for reform in the European Union, reflecting “the need for Europe to support its population, not international neoliberal corporations who have no responsibility to people”.  The Green Manifesto also sought EU reform, criticising “the EU’s unsustainable economics of free trade and growth”.

 

A bit green?  Plaid Cymru leader
Leanne Wood wants an EU for
the people not the corporations

But how realistic is this?  The policies which Plaid Cymru and the Greens don’t like are, for the most part, enshrined in the EU Treaties.  These can only be amended by common accord of the leaders of all the EU member states, with each state ratifying the changes in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.  The idea that every leader of every member state would wish to change the Treaties in an anti-corporate, anti-free trade direction requires an excessive dose of wishful thinking.  Yet this obstacle is studiously ignored by Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

 

Such excessive optimism regarding the progressive potential of the supranational regimes stems from the deeply-held assumption that international cooperation is a noble endeavour.  “The Daleks’ Master Plan” puts forward an altogether less favourable view.  It points to international governance as an escape from accountability.  Mavic Chen’s adoring public assume that the great leader is going off on holiday; in fact he’s off to plot with the Daleks in the expectation of becoming supreme ruler of the universe.  (In this regard it is easy to see the solar system as a metaphor for Britain: we’re told that “the solar system is exceptional. In its power lies influences far outside its own sphere”.  It’s the usual image of Britain punching above its weight.)    Other alien leaders have also kept their participation in the Universal Council a closely-guarded secret.

 

Unaccountable power: Mavic Chen
in league with the Daleks

 

It is well established that leaders increase their power through supranational forums since these serve to insulate them from pressure back home.  In this regard they come to resemble the very corporations “who have no responsibility to people” with which progressive critics of the EU are rightly concerned.

 

Tasha Lem and Libby Lane: the politics and law of the Church

 By Danny Nicol, University of Westminster 





In “The Time of the Doctor” (2013) we meet the Church of the Papal Mainframe, a security church dedicated to protecting you in this world and the next.  Its leader is the Mother Superius, Tasha Lem.  In our own reality, in the largest part of the United Kingdom, we have the Church of England, whose supreme governor is Queen Elizabeth II, albeit power lies with her (male) Archbishops and the Church's legislature, the General Synod.  The Church of England is an established church, connected to the State.  As such it enjoys a special position in national life and identity, even for agnostics, atheists (like me) and those of other faiths.  The notion of an established religion was so repellent to the American founding fathers that they disabled the US Congress from being able to create one.  It may, indeed, be difficult for some Americans to grasp fully the Church’s special significance in England’s national life.  


Be that as it may, the Church has recently appointed its first woman bishop, Libby Lane, as Bishop of Stockport.  This blog post considers the differences between Tasha Lem and Libby Lane.  It argues that these may be used to criticise both the Church of England and Doctor Who’s stance on women under Steven Moffat as show runner.

"There will now be an unscheduled faith change!"
Tasha lays down the law.

First, Tasha is leader of her Church, Libby isn’t.  It is good that Doctor Who imagines a religion led by a woman: the religious world is characterised by male domination.  In this regard it is to be hoped that Libby Lane’s appointment will kick-start a powerful impetus towards gender equality in the established Church, and that the time will come when the Church’s leadership posts, Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop of York, are held by women.  The omens are not all bad: women priests were introduced in 1994 and by 2010 more women were being ordained than men. On the other hand it is often easier to change the gender balance at rank-and-file level than at the top.

Secondly, Tasha is authoritarian, Libby isn’t.  Seemingly without consulting her Church, Tasha changes its aims and objectives.  Declaring an “unscheduled faith change” Tasha dictates that the Church will devote itself entirely to the cause of intergalactic peace.  This sounds laudable, but it is a pity that the decision is Tasha’s alone.  By contrast the Church of England’s rules diffuse power more widely.  During Libby Lane’s consecration ceremony a male congregant objected that woman bishops were “not in the Bible”.  The presiding archbishop was able to retort that women Bishops are now lawful under Church canon, and that, being the established Church, this canon is now the law of the land, approved by all three houses of the Church’s General Synod and both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament.  Against this backdrop of consensus, the Queen had commanded Libby Lane’s appointment – a command which the Archbishop declared himself compelled to obey by dint of his oath of allegiance to the Sovereign.  This explanation is imbued with the effect on our previously-Catholic church of the Protestant Reformation and the marriage of Church and State of the 16th century Tudor era.

Sonic crozier?  Libby Lane
with her new symbol of office

Thirdly, Tasha’s dictatorial approach to Church governance goes hand-in-hand with a public show of sexual desire for the Doctor.  In conformity with Steven Moffat’s favoured stereotype, the woman is powerful except…she makes the man the centre of attention.  Thus Tasha beckons him provocatively, flirts with him, and even suffers a sexual assault from him – as Alyssa Franke has observed in her excellent Whovian Feminism blog.  By contrast Libby Lane has expressed the hope that her appointment leads young women to realise that society need not dictate the limits of what is possible for them.

Finally, there is one point of symmetry between the two Churches.  Faced with war the Church of the Papal Mainframe becomes a political church.  Faced with rising inequality the Church of England has done the same thing.  In recent times pay-day loans, the need for food banks and the gap between rich and poor have all earned its vocal disapproval.  Like its Doctor Who counterpart the Church of England rightly cannot isolate itself from politics.

Missy and the Doctor: isn't Doctor Who political?

By Danny Nicol
University of Westminster

First woman Doctor?  Clara Oswald tries to
 convince a Cyberman that she is the Time Lord.

In a celebrated article published in 2004 entitled “Is Doctor Who political?” Professor Alan McKee argued that Doctor Who’s “old show” (1963-89) was not political because fans whom he surveyed did not see it as political – at least, not in the sense of traditional, state-level politics.  ((2004) 7 European Journal of Cultural Studies 201).  McKee’s argument seemed to contain the suggestion that scholars should deprioritise interpreting the politics of Doctor Who themselves, and should instead focus their attentions more on soliciting the opinions of fans on the matter.   

Say something nice

This blog post will resist the temptation of critiquing McKee’s stance.  But it will observe that – a decade on - McKee does not seem to have carried the day.  In the last four years in particular, a significant scholarly literature has emerged interpreting Doctor Who, including political aspects.  Academics have declined to “shut up, shut up, shut uppity up”.

Moreover Doctor Who’s recent series finale “Dark Water”/“Death in Heaven” (2014), suggests that Doctor Who is indeed political.  No fewer than three political themes pervade it.

"Missy.  Short for Mistress.  Well...I couldn't very well
keep calling myself the Master, could I?"

First, feminism.  The series as a whole repeatedly reflected – or perhaps satirised - the growing clamour that the Doctor be played by a woman.  In the series finale, therefore, the mysterious Missy turns out to be the newly regenerated, regendered Master, a long-time opponent of the Doctor; and companion Clara Oswald identifies herself to the Cybermen as the Doctor, with the opening titles being changed to give Jenna Coleman, who plays Clara, the billing usually reserved for the man who plays the Doctor.  For good measure, at the end of the adventure, the Doctor and Clara joke about the Doctor becoming Queen of Gallifrey.  In his article, McKee contends that “gender politics” is different from “traditional state-level politics”, but such a sharp demarcation is pernicious.  It serves to marginalise feminism.  The question of why women – the majority of the population – do not form majorities in Parliaments and Cabinets, is both a matter of gender politics and a matter of state-level politics.  And the Doctor is a political figure – not least in this adventure, where he fleetingly becomes President of Earth.

 

Missy implores the Doctor to accept her gift:
 a Cyberman army

Secondly, the question of whether the Doctor is a “good man”.  It is arguable indeed that the series offered us a de-legalised version of the “Trial of a Time Lord” story arc of 1986, when the Time Lords place the Doctor on trial for his incorrigible meddling with other peoples and planets.  Throughout the series the Doctor has been expressing his misgivings about whether he is a good man.  This theme has been part and parcel of the new show since it began in 2005 and has shadowed Britain's controversial interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The series finale culminates with Missy offering the Doctor “an indestructible army to range across the Universe” so that he can enforce his version of what is “right”.  The Doctor rejects the offer.  Human companions are army enough for him.  But does this make him a good man?  Doesn't the Doctor, like Britain, merely “punch above his weight” in foreign interventions?



Thirdly, the power of corporations.  In “Dark Water”/“Death in Heaven”, a mighty company called 3W is using the bodies of dead people to create Cybermen.  It does so under the guise of giving "more life" to the dead.  The Doctor detects the stench of profiteering: “fakery, all of it; it’s a con, it’s a racket!”  The corporate domination of Britain is certainly an important element of the country’s politics.  The show’s repeated onslaughts on corporate power have already been considered in this blog; the series finale continues the tradition in feisty fashion.