It’s been more than a decade since I last watched Doctor Who, but Russell T. Davies’ triumphant return as show-runner tempted me back for one last hurrah. At a time when far-right politics is preying on the shortcomings of the neo-liberal political consensus, his first episode, The Star Beast, presented a story which I and many other jaded activists needed right now. Spoilers ahead.
Through the increasingly atomised lens of the last four decades, we have been taught to see politics as optional. While once collective institutions and organised struggle were seen as the way to improve our own lives, alongside everyone else’s, the neo-liberal consensus that has retained control of mainstream discourse insists that actually it we don’t need any of that.
Just keep your head down, keep plugging away, and eventually your hard graft will be rewarded. Don’t rock the boat, hold down a steady job, and you could own your house, raise a family, send your kids to university, and maybe retire somewhere sunny when the time comes. The NHS, social security and working rights might have been purposefully eroded to the point of collapse, but if you make the right choices as an individual – save your money, get an education, eat well, don’t drink or smoke – you won’t need to rely on any of that anyway.
Within that private sphere, you can be whoever you want. Just try not to have opinions that might inconvenience that market you are assured will set you free. Don’t join a union. Don’t protest. Don’t try to shape party manifestos. Don’t do politics.
But while that fable might have manifested as reality for a small number of people, in a very narrow window of time, for the rest of us, politics inevitably comes calling.
While the first episode under Russell T. Davies’ new-old era as show-runner for Doctor Who had many pointed references to the world as it has changed, it feels like that theme is running right through its centre. In the 14 years since his exit from the show, the financial system which underwrote the individualist promises of the Thatcherite / Blairite era folded, but it hasn’t been replaced by anything else. The economic and political establishment has clung to the idea that the system is fine, and as more and more of us realise its promises – affordable home-ownership, or obtaining a higher-paid job by way of university, or staying healthy without socialised medicine in a polluted world – are a fantasy in their lived experience, that establishment has moved to blame us for the shortcomings of late-capitalism.
The conclusion is that politics and the state have been too tolerant of our whims, leaving us undisciplined and irrational as market-actors. In this situation, ideas like gender self-identification, or free access to birth-control, or accommodating neuro-diversity, or creating open borders allowing (some) people to decide where they live and work, are increasingly painted as luxury choices that have spoiled us. “Of course, none of the unwashed masses are participating in the market in ways that will see them succeed financially then, they’re not hungry enough for it when they are coddled with all these other ways to realise their individuality.”
Davies’ new Who finds Donna Noble at the centre of this – surrounded by a universe folding in on itself, as the illusions of escape into the private sphere break down. Donna (played by the formidable Catherine Tate) was – spoilers – written off the show toward during the conclusion of Davies’ first tenure as showrunner. Having saved The Doctor, and the universe, she was left in a condition in which she would only survive if her memories of her adventures were wiped. Those adventures had not only seen her help David Tennant’s Doctor become a better, more empathetic figure, but had enriched her own life – by engaging with the world, and worlds beyond, and fighting to make them better places, Donna transformed her tedious life in ways she could have never imagined.
In his actions to save her life, The Doctor over-rode Donna’s own pleas not to sever that engagement. He also wildly misjudged what would be best for her, according to the norms of the world she was returning to – manufacturing a lottery win to ensure she would be well set-up for a return back to atomised life as an individual market actor. For a while, it is suggested in The Star Beast – the episode which sees both Tate and Tennant return for Davies’ grand re-set – that this worked. Donna found a loving relationship, raised a brilliant child, and lives in a warm and happy home. But, marooned in this isolated, narrow definition of individual success, she tells the audience she felt that something was missing – a yearning which led her to give away all of her lottery winnings. At the same time, the world around her has continued to change – and inevitably, animosity from outside Donna’s individual sphere is creeping into her life. Politics has caught up with her.
This is embodied in two ways. First, Donna’s teenage daughter, Rose (Yasmin Finney) is being tormented by bullies at school, who are targeting her for her non-binary gender identity. While Donna and her family have, sometimes fumblingly, accommodated Rose, falling back on the ideological norms of choice in the individual sphere will not work here – it is a social, systemic and political issue that requires reaching out to collectives, re-engaging with the universe, to battle.
Second, there is the arrival of The Meep – a literal invasion of the outside socio-political environment into Donna’s private sphere. The last of Meep-kind is a waddling, extraterrestrial bush-baby, decked out in an immaculate coat of long fur. After landing a spacecraft in London, and chancing upon Rose in the alley outside the Noble house, The Meep (whose pronouns are always the definite article), says that Meep were once persecuted for their glorious coat. According to The Meep, poachers are inbound, intent on one final harvest.
One of the things which saw me very quickly turn away from Doctor Who after Davies left was how saccharine it felt – especially in the Christmas episodes – and The Meep’s early scenes gave me a bad feeling to that end. Presenting as a helpless, simpering being, The Meep starts mewling at some of Rose’s stuffed animals, begging the lifeless toys to become The Meep’s friend. There is something infuriating about a creature so innocent that it can master the finer details of intergalactic travel, while being apparently incapable of understanding the difference between cotton-stuffing and entrails.
After further sequences making reference to ET, including one where The Meep attempts to hide among the stuffed-animals, it seems we are being heavy-handedly invited to care about the cute alien as a means of constructing peril in an otherwise pedestrian plot. The family eventually decide to help The Meep, putting them on a collision course with The Doctor – and Donna’s potentially-fatal repressed memories. But everyone continues to dance around Donna’s genuine re-engagement with the universe, hoping that she can simply go back to her atomised life of safety after – and perhaps that is as good a clue as any that a twist is coming.
Indeed, one of the most enjoyable things about Davies’ return, is that it is so happy to play to my adult cynicism. In a pleasing twist (which you might have seen coming the moment you realised the fantastically twisted Miriam Margolyes was the voice behind the creature) The Meep is actually a needle-toothed mass-murderer, intent on destroying the city of London for resources, and eating the family who were duped into helping. In the course of foiling its plot, The Doctor is forced to re-instate Donna’s memories, and allow her to re-engage with the universe – becoming a fully actualised version of herself, and enabling Rose to do the same, in the process.
The intense irritation The Meep invites – which also seems to be a pointed dig at other grating sci-fi animals whose weaponised cuteness might anger adults, but is ultimately a means of exploiting children as consumers (from the Ewoks, to Jar-Jar Binks and the Porgs) – is a brilliant narrative ploy, rooted in many people’s everyday lives. How many of us, for example, are the voluntary guardians of a furry animal which purrs and nuzzles us, while mewling in a way that imitates a baby’s cry to guilt us into feeding it – but which also trashes your clothes, plants and furniture on a momentary whim.
Beyond this, however, there is also something which speaks to the political tides turning around the world. Wallowing in self-pity while masquerading as a victimised outsider, decked out in a distinctive hairstyle, there is something of the far-right ‘populist’ about The Meep – burrowing into the unfulfilled private sphere of people around the world, promising them everything can go back to how it was, just as long as they lend their support in this moment.
What inevitably manifests is the violent persecution of human lives in the pursuit of that ‘normality’ – and the purging of anyone who inconveniences that ideologically loaded status-quo, or the political programme enforcing it. Living in the Netherlands, after a decade of far-right apologism came home to roost in last week’s elections, The Meep bears a striking political resemblance to Geert Wilders. Elsewhere, that could be Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, or any number of other floppy-haired totalitarian ‘outsiders’, presenting themselves as the antidote to a failing way of life, while actually providing a means of brutally maintaining it. Their rise to power (and they will not be the last) is a rude awakening for many of us who have previously withdrawn from the public realm, and from collective action, to build try and build ourselves a cosy niche, where at least we can be happy in ourselves.
In a triumphant return for Davies, Tennant and Tate, The Star Beast presents both a diagnosis and a prescription for how we move beyond this potentially incendiary moment in history. As exemplified by Donna’s arc, people being happy in private spaces is contingent on the public, political sphere not taking an interest in them – which it inevitably will. In that case, the only means of defending ourselves and those around us – and our rights to individual happiness – is to re-engage with the world, and worlds, beyond.