DW Musings: Help
So, I’ve been thinking about it ever since I had a bit of a discussion defending “The Day of the Doctor,” and it occurred to me that some of the themes of the episode have been in place since at least “The Parting of the Ways.”
I mean, in “The Parting of the Ways,” we see the Doctor facing off against a vast army of Daleks. All he has is a Delta Wave, which will fry the brains of everything within range—including billions on Earth. Upon being challenged by the Dalek emperor, he realizes that he cannot and will not do it, perhaps because of his previous experiences in the Time War, and the fact that he has had to make that sort of horrible decision before.
Since countless trillions are at risk from the Dalek forces, and they would almost certainly destroy (or use) Earth anyway, this is, by the numbers, very much the wrong decision. But such moral arithmetic has a weakness: it assumes that the Doctor is the only one who can meaningfully do anything. No hope, no help coming, just a sadistic choice.
Meanwhile, in the twenty-first century (I know, that’s a lousy way to put it, but we lack decent time travel vocabulary) Rose is exploring the many virtues of getting help. With the help of Jackie, Mickey, and a big yellow truck, Rose is about to demand assistance from the biggest dea ex machina that she knows. She creates the Bad Wolf entity—all the temporal power of a TARDIS, but with a human’s ability to be proactive—and the rest is history.
And throughout the ensuing series, the show seems to have a distinct opinion on the notion that the Doctor is the only moral actor on the scene; it’s generally against it. True, there are times when he’s the only one in a position to save the day, but when he makes a crucial moral choice by himself, there’s usually a distinct unease around the whole thing. In “The Runaway Bride,” the destruction of the Racnoss is revealed to be something that would have literally destroyed the Doctor if Donna hadn’t intervened; “The Waters of Mars” represents part of a frightening downward spiral. Ten, in particular, yo-yos semi-predictably between admitting that he’d be a very bad god, believing he has no choice but to act as one, and—in his darker moments—seeing no problem with wielding ultimate power over people. The Doctor, we are reminded many times, should not travel alone, and at least a part of that is because the Doctor shouldn’t be the only person to choose.
And then comes “The Day of the Doctor.” Alone is exactly how we see the War Doctor, alone in a desolate landscape, alone in brilliant light that gives little comfort—alone with a box. We learn that it is the end of the Time War, and the Time Lords have used up almost all the cosmic horror class weapons in the Omega Arsenal (which really might as well be called Pandora’s Box). The Doctor has the last of the weapons, one so sophisticated that it can think. The Doctor has the sole responsibility to decide whether Gallifrey lives—which would give Rassilon a chance to execute his frankly omnicidal plan to exalt the Time Lords—or whether he will slaughter every living thing on Gallifrey. Billions versus all the trillions who lived. The arithmetic is plain.
Except that the Doctor is alone, in a room, with a box. And the Doctor in a room with a box is never really alone at all.
The Moment—not just a weapon, but a being—identifies herself as Bad Wolf. And the more we see of her, the more the parallels are apparent. The Moment thinks like a TARDIS—she perceives time in a manner distinctly different from our past-present-future system—but she has the proactive nature of a human or a Time Lord.* But it isn’t until the end, after the Moment has meticulously gathered the Doctors, the TARDISes, and Clara in the same spot, that we see how much she really is Bad Wolf. The Moment is hope. The Moment means that the Doctor doesn’t have to make the moral decision alone. He has help.
Help makes it better. Help allows people to find a better way.
*In fact, you could make a decent headcanon that TARDISes run on an intentionally downgraded version of the Moment’s OS, capable of perceiving the web of time as a unified entity, but deliberately designed not to act on it as powerfully as she does. There is also a popular headcanon that I saw shortly after “Day of the Doctor” aired, to the effect that the Bad Wolf entity actually sparked sapience in the Moment, which, combined with the first headcanon, has the entertainingly loopy effect of making the TARDIS her own grandmother. Make of that what you will.