{"id":251210,"date":"2025-12-25T19:01:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T19:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/251210\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T19:01:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T19:01:22","slug":"19-years-ago-today-doctor-who-admitted-the-doctors-biggest-problem-its-just-been-proven-right-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/251210\/","title":{"rendered":"19 Years Ago Today, Doctor Who Admitted the Doctor’s Biggest Problem (& It’s Just Been Proven Right Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nineteen years ago, David Tennant made his Doctor Who<\/a> debut in an episode that finally admitted the Doctor\u2019s biggest problem. \u201cThe Christmas Invasion\u201d was the first ever Doctor Who Christmas Special<\/a>, and it also served as the first story starring Tenth Doctor David Tennant. It was a unique episode, because the new Doctor was suffering with post-regeneration trauma, meaning he spent quite a lot of the story napping \u2013 and ended up saving the world in a dressing gown, a nice Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy riff.<\/p>\n

But \u201cThe Christmas Invasion\u201d is also notable because it serves as setup for the first Doctor Who spinoff<\/a>, Torchwood. At the end of the story, Prime Minister Harriet Jones \u2013 a woman whose rise to power the Doctor had celebrated \u2013 ordered Earth\u2019s defenses into action, shooting the fleeing Sycorax ship out of the sky. The Doctor was appalled, because the Sycorax were a defeated foe, but Harriet Jones made a crucial point when she argued what she\u2019d done was necessary. 19 years later, it\u2019s clear she had a point.<\/p>\n

Harriet Jones Understood the Problem with Depending on the Doctor<\/p>\n

\t\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Play\"\/<\/p>\n

The Doctor was happy for the Sycorax to leave, defeated, because they would tell other races that Earth was defended. Instead, Torchwood opened fire on the fleeing alien ship using a weapon deliberately designed to look like the Death Star from Star Wars, obliterating them. Harriet Jones believed the Doctor wasn\u2019t enough; \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Doctor, but you\u2019re not here all the time,\u201d she pointed out. \u201cYou come and go. It happened today. Mister Llewellyn and the Major, they were murdered. They died right in front of me while you were sleeping. In which case we have to defend ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harriet Jones\u2019 point was quite simple; that an entire planet cannot simply depend on a single wandering person for its security and freedom. According to the Doctor, humanity\u2019s faltering steps into space were already being noticed, and she was confident an association with the Doctor would simply make the planet more interesting to would-be conquerors. Given how many enemies the Doctor has, she was right; and she was also surely right that the Doctor is not always there to save the world.<\/p>\n

Ironically, this truth is literally baked into Doctor Who\u2018s history. The show\u2019s first real \u201calien invasion\u201d plot, 1964\u2019s \u201cThe Dalek Invasion of Earth,\u201d saw the TARDIS crew arrive on an Earth that had already been conquered by the Daleks. The Doctor defeated them, but how many people died because some incarnation of the Time Lord hadn\u2019t been on hand to drive them back in the first place? \u201cThe Christmas Invasion\u201d clearly sympathized with the Doctor\u2019s viewpoint, but Harriet Jones\u2019 words were uncomfortably true.<\/p>\n

The War Between the Land and the Sea Has Proved Harriet Jones Right<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The latest Doctor Who spinoff, The War Between the Land and the Sea, has just proved Harriet Jones\u2019 argument right. The end of The War Between the Land and the Sea<\/a> turns \u201cThe Christmas Invasion\u201d on its head, because this time, it\u2019s an act of genocide that happens because of the Doctor\u2019s absence. As UNIT boss Kate Lethbridge-Stewart acknowledges in conversation with members of her team, events would have played out so very differently had the Doctor just been there to help. But he wasn\u2019t, and so a war developed between humanity and the race known as Homo Aqua, one that ended in genocide.<\/p>\n

What makes The War Between the Land and the Sea most troubling, though, is that it also shows the influence the Doctor\u2019s mere presence has had on those who have come to depend on him. Idealizing the Doctor, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart has recreated UNIT in what she perceives as his image; driven by science, separate from geopolitics, imposing its will upon the nations of the world. The Doctor insists he only saves humanity, he doesn\u2019t shape it, but Kate is a human who has been profoundly shaped by him, and she\u2019s breaking.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a sense in which \u201cThe Christmas Invasion\u201d and The War Between the Land and the Sea are companion pieces, each commenting upon the other. Both stories comment on the fact humanity cannot depend on the Doctor, and they end in genocide \u2013 one unwittingly enabled by his actions, the other occurring because of his absence. In one, we see a leader make a brutal call for fear the Doctor will not always be there to save them, while the other shows us a leader falling apart because she\u2019s trying to fill the void left by his absence.<\/p>\n

19 years on, one truth is clear: Harriet Jones had a point.<\/p>\n

What do you think of this new game? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the\u00a0ComicBook Forum<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nineteen years ago, David Tennant made his Doctor Who debut in an episode that finally admitted the Doctor\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[130531,18,117,19,17,85933,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-251210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-doctor-who-tv-show","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-regular-feature","14":"tag-tv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115781756121906032","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}