"...when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well."

November 18, 2023 3:01 AM

Ahead of the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who and the temporary return of David Tennant (pending the arrival of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor) the BBC aired a short skit as part of its annual Children In Need TV fundraiser. Although comedic in tone, it introduced a major retcon for one long-standing - or more specifically, hitherto long-sitting - character.

Davros was introduced in the 1975 Fourth Doctor serial Genesis of the Daleks, widely regarded as one of the show's outstanding stories. Evil genius and creator of the Daleks (themselves synonymous with the show since its second serial in late 1963) Davros was memorably depicted by the late Michael Wisher as disfigured, crippled and confined to a 'travel machine' mobile life-support unit that was the model for the lower half of a Dalek. That appearance was maintained for every subsequent appearance by Davros, including the portrayal by Julian Bleach in the new era Who between 2008 and 2015.

Julian Bleach returned to play Davros in the new skit, but in healthy, unscarred and mobile form. Whilst viewers familiar with the character's backstory might assume that this indicated the scene was set before the incident that crippled him, returning show-runner Russell T Davies has explained otherwise:

"We had long conversations about bringing Davros back, because he's a fantastic character, [but] time and society and culture and taste has moved on. And there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user, who is evil. And I had problems with that. And a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there's a very long tradition of this.

I'm not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well.

So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and without the wheelchair – or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair.

I say, this is how we see Davros now, this is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is our lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they're not in black and white anymore, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by."

posted by Major Clanger (43 comments total)

Oops, typo - should be Ncuti Gatwa. I've asked the mods to correct.
posted by Major Clanger at 3:06 AM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm sure Who fandom will react to this in a calm and level-headed way.
posted by fight or flight at 3:15 AM on November 18, 2023 [29 favorites]

Honestly, given how annoying it is to navigate the world with even mild mobility impairment, I’m a little surprised that every person who uses a wheelchair isn’t building an army of murderous servitors for revenge. Davies was just particularly lucky.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:45 AM on November 18, 2023 [29 favorites]

New Davros looks oddly familiar. (CW power-hungry villain, extreme closeup)
posted by PlusDistance at 4:19 AM on November 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

New Davros looks oddly familiar. (CW power-hungry villain, extreme closeup) _{posted by PlusDistance}
RE-LITIGATE! RE-LITIGATE!
posted by zaixfeep at 4:28 AM on November 18, 2023 [11 favorites]

I would have thought that a severely disabled person in a wheelchair being a supremely threatening supervillain would be, well inclusive. Oh well, it's just a tv show, I really should relax...
posted by zaixfeep at 4:32 AM on November 18, 2023 [12 favorites]

TV tropes: Evil Cripple

An Evil Cripple is a villain or generally morally perturbed character who also suffers a debilitating physical condition, often taking the form of paralysis requiring the use of a wheelchair. The Evil Cripple doubles as the Genius Cripple a lot, providing an intellectual threat to compensate for their physical frailty. Alternatively, the Evil Cripple can become a physical threat if they use futuristic enhancements to overcome their disability, such as replacing missing or defective limbs with super-strong Powered Armor or cybernetic parts.

posted by hydropsyche at 4:49 AM on November 18, 2023 [13 favorites]

RTD's protestations to the contrary, everything else about the skit also suggests this is a set-in-the-past origin story:

* There's an underling character who spends most of the scene trying to come up with a name for the Daleks and goes through a whole lot of bad alternate names.
* The original "Dalek" design includes this super-awesome claw thing that ends up getting replaced with the now-iconic plunger-type attachment because of reasons.
* The Daleks are actually a housing for a greatly deformed and mutated creature inside, and the conversation Davros has with the underling suggests that the mutation is just starting to happen and start spreading.

In RTD's defense, though, this actually isn't the first time the show has gone back in time to show us the origins of the Daleks, and the Davros in that era was indeed the scarred and wheelchair-using Davros. And he's a smart enough guy that he probably figured out this was the best way to thread that needle - depict Davros the way he wants, but add just enough hints that "this is in the past" that it would pacify the more rabid traditionalists.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:51 AM on November 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

I mean, if you have one person in the entire long run of the show using a wheelchair, and he’s a genocide maniac, I can definitely see the point.

By the way, the Davies in my previous comment was supposed to be Davros. Autocorrect was making a little joke….
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:54 AM on November 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

if you have one person in the entire long run of the show using a wheelchair, and he’s a genocide maniac

Davros was far from alone:

The Collector, from The Sun Makers
John Lumic, from 'Rise of the Cybermen' / 'The Age of Steel'
Max Capricorn, from 'Voyage of the Damned'
posted by Major Clanger at 6:02 AM on November 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

OK, so all the people who need mobility assistance are evil? That’s not better….
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:05 AM on November 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Okay, but if they give the Daleks legs then I'm done.
posted by jabah at 6:06 AM on November 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

In slightly lighter news, I read an interview with one of the actors who played Davros. He said the worst part was not being strapped into the costume with only one arm free for every shooting day. It was not wearing heavy makeup and prostheses that obscured his vision. It was, rather, when filming, they stopped every 10 minutes to repaint his tongue….
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:09 AM on November 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

OK, so all the people who need mobility assistance are evil? That’s not better….

Well, there was Dr. Judson from The Curse of Fenric. He wasn't evil.
But then he became possessed by the Great Evil. And then he could walk. So, yeah, not much better.
posted by dannyboybell at 6:29 AM on November 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

Mod note: Oops, typo - should be Ncuti Gatwa. I've asked the mods to correct.


Fixed!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:03 AM on November 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

So all the new villains are gonna be fat instead? That seems to be Davies's favorite move, and it's why I no longer watch DW when he's in charge of it.
posted by humbug at 7:51 AM on November 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Arguing about Dr Who continuity is like punching the ocean but the pedant in me must point out that this is not the first time we have seen Davros before his accident - The Doctor met him briefly as a child in The Magicians Apprentice.

I always assumed that old Davros saw his life-support machine as a big improvement over regular bipeds and designed the daleks to be (in his view) even better.
posted by AndrewStephens at 7:56 AM on November 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

Yes, as a wheelchair user, I am very tired of 99% of wheelchair users in films and TV shows being villains... :(
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:49 AM on November 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

Speaking of good words, I like that in the closed captioning of the skit, the arrival of the Tardis is captioned: "Tardis vworping."
posted by Well I never at 8:50 AM on November 18, 2023 [16 favorites]

So all the new villains are gonna be fat instead? That seems to be Davies's favorite move

Yes, but after Moffat's "women are villains" and Chibnall's "parents who do not fully appreciate the genius of their child are villains", one is almost nostalgic for Davies' prejudices. Almost.
posted by dannyboybell at 8:58 AM on November 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

AndrewStephens, this is why I think there is some nuance here and it's not necessarily as simple as 'stereotypical depiction of baddie in a wheelchair'. You could see Davros as a man so embittered about his disability and dependence on mechanical life support (it was made clear in Genesis of the Daleks that without the equipment in his 'travel unit' sustaining him, he would die in seconds) that he could perfectly well rationalise that it was entirely reasonable for the Kaleds of the future to be equally confined and dependent. But, whereas Davros was just kept barely alive, his creations could be powerful, controlling and unconfined by petty morality. The depiction of Davros when we first saw him could be seen as emphasising not so much that he was disabled, but rather that both physically and psychologically he was more than half-way to being a Dalek himself.

Arguably, the problematic aspect arose when the writers of Dr Who brought Davros back, again and again. He died at the end of Genesis of the Daleks - killed in that wonderfully tropey way, by his own creations - but within a few years his death was retconned away, and not for the last time. I've seen criticism of Dr Who that, once Davros became a recurring character, the Daleks were never again a strong menace in their own right. I think there's also an argument that by making Davros a recurring character, his condition, separated from the context of its original presentation, became much more stereotypical and problematic.
posted by Major Clanger at 8:59 AM on November 18, 2023 [6 favorites]

Davros by Lance Parkin remains the definitive take. In which space hypercapitalists who think the Daleks had some good ideas are the main antagonists.
posted by StarkRoads at 9:19 AM on November 18, 2023

Oops, typo - should be Ncuti Gatwa. I've asked the mods to correct.

You were just using an anagram. I would have gone with Cutting Awa.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:44 AM on November 18, 2023

A real missed opportunity for a Fast Show shout-out with "You aint seen me, right?"

Also, nice to see David again. I do find his breathless delivery exhausting though. I wonder if he hyperventilates before every line?
posted by phigmov at 12:09 PM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

With Mawaan Rizwan mostly known to me through Taskmaster, part of me felt like "come up with a name for your evil robot' was a great task. And then his teammate had to improvise a weapon.
posted by ewan at 12:52 PM on November 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Arguing about Dr Who continuity is like punching the ocean

I just wanted to quote this because it is incredibly apt. I'm not sure if the Doctor Who show bible is hundreds of pages long or a leaflet, because both feel simultaneously true all the time.
posted by JHarris at 12:59 PM on November 18, 2023 [16 favorites]

I don't know if it's still the case but DW policy used to be that everything is canon. TV, movies, books, comics, cereal boxes - all canon. You can do whatever you want in a universe where time travel is possible and DW continuity has always leaned into that hard.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:30 PM on November 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm not sure if the Doctor Who show bible is hundreds of pages long or a leaflet

I'm gonna guess hundreds, with a "Fans Will Bitch About Changing This" rating for every page. Like, if the Doctor stopped being a Galifreyan, that's five screaming fans out of five. If you bring back the Kroll nobody's going to care about how you change it, what with it being a giant monster from a ham-handed attempt to talk about British colonialism.
posted by egypturnash at 2:09 PM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure if the Doctor Who show bible is hundreds of pages long or a leaflet, because both feel simultaneously true all the time

It looks like a leaflet but then when you open it up it's a much, much bigger book on the inside.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:59 PM on November 18, 2023 [45 favorites]

This narrative about an omnipotent, supposedly omnibenevolent figure is wildly internally inconsistent, due to having been written by many authors over a long period of time.

But enough about the Bible, we're talking about Doctor Who. ITS inconsistencies can also be explained within the fiction as the results of rampant time travel.

Almost as if the Doctor were unintentionally remaking things...

...in their own image.
posted by BiggerJ at 3:10 PM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure if the Doctor Who show bible is hundreds of pages long or a leaflet, because both feel simultaneously true all the time

It looks like a leaflet but then when you open it up it's a much, much bigger book on the inside.

Clara: It's smaller on the outside!
posted by indexy at 3:51 PM on November 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I posted about this on Twitter and it brought out some of the most hateful fanboys. Doctor Who is back, baby!

At least this makes a change for years of them complaining that the Doctor was a woman.

What I love about this short and RTD's statements (and even the reference to canon within the short itself) is that canon is malleable. I mean, it sort of has to be after 60 years. But sometimes the showrunners have gone to great lengths to bend the history to make it fit with what they want to do next. I'm glad he's not going to be so beholden to the actual onscreen history of the show, which is great - especially if Neil Patrick Harris is playing the Celestial Toymaker, who was originally portrayed as a "Fu Manchu" stereotype in the 60s.

People complained about RTD1 being "too gay". Looks like RTD2 is going to be intersectional and woke as hell. Bring it on.
posted by crossoverman at 4:40 PM on November 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Nabil Shaban agrees with this, and due to my age/fandom, that’s enough for me.

“Seems right to me. I was reluctant to play Sil as a disabled character as that would be reinforcing that traditional stereotype of deformity, disability, ugly, scarred, infirmity with EVIL. Happily, I was able to portray him without being disabled in a human sense or guise, because his appearance was that of an amphibious creature of an alien planet or world. There were millions looking similar but their defining feature was not one of evil.”

And

“Whenever I see Davros I cringe because I know the BBC were talking about people like me in wheelchairs, or had deformities or infirmities or knew that most TV viewers prefer not to see us on their prime time telly. Many disabled actor friends got hate mail from ignorant viewers, moaning that such people offend them or put them of their evening dinner, especially if they are watching their favourite Soap. However, just banning us disabled people from television isn't the answer to salving producers and directors bad conscience for past imbalances. They don't need to get rid of existing characters, just create new diverse characters of all shades, disabled and non-disabled. Unfortunately , Body Fascism still rules film and television which says body beautiful and perfection is desirable and anything less than that is undesirable, must be avoided and is evil.”
posted by Hartster at 4:57 PM on November 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

“Whenever I see Davros I cringe because I know the BBC were talking about people like me in wheelchairs, or had deformities or infirmities or knew that most TV viewers prefer not to see us on their prime time telly."

This is known because the BBC/author said this was the case?

Or, could it be, in 1963 the Dalek was shown as having wheels and so in the 1970's a decision was made to lean into what happened with the 1960's use of wheels for a prop?

Perhaps the sickly nature of Davros was due to a brittle bone condition if one is looking for a personal reason for the way a thing is shown on a TV show.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:23 PM on November 18, 2023

I can see the following happening:

CLASSIC COMPANION: "...Davros is walking."
FIFTEENTH DOCTOR: "Sure looks like it."
CLASSIC COMPANION: "...Something's wrong. He should be in that wheelchair thing by now!"
FIFTEENTH DOCTOR (shrugging): "History can change. Does change. There a junkyard I know that's had three different names. Minimum."
CLASSIC COMPANION: "No, I... I can't accept this."
FIFTEENTH DOCTOR (holding up a TARDIS key): "Go back to the TARDIS then. I think there's a crowbar in the control room somewhere. Facts are facts, right?"
CLASSIC COMPANION: "Wh... what?"
FIFTEENTH DOCTOR: "Right answer."
posted by BiggerJ at 9:29 PM on November 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

OK so villain in wheelchair is lazy trope/offensive stereotype, good to know.

Here's the thing -- out of the wheelchair travel unit, Davros is just another generic oily Who baddie-of-the-week; in the 2023 clip I immediately felt the actor was channelling Dan Aykroyd as his 70's post-resignation Nixon parody (see SNL S03E15 Christopher Lee host).

When I look at Davros I see techno-Gollum. His obsession and hate are so overwhelming, twisting himself into some kind of grotesque echo of his creation was inevitable. So I guess the show is damned if they keep him and damned if they change him.

One can also make the case that Cybermen are bad because, villain/hench with prosthetics trope (see Tee Hee from Live And Let Die.) Are we going to also see completely human Cybermen? Oh yeah, Movellans, we already did.

As someone who is myself wheelchair-dependent, I say generally let the artists make their art without interference. If RTD wants to reinvent Davros, that's his call. I just hope it doesn't dilute the power of the Davros character. (And I hope he's not doing it to Disney-fy Davros either, ick...)
posted by zaixfeep at 6:25 AM on November 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

This is all a digression, but.... one of the sad things that's stuck about contemporary Who is that The Doctor remains the last Timelord other than The Master. In the classic era there were multiple others gadding about, sometimes allies sometimes enemies. The Monk, the Rani, once in a while others. But if there were still other Timelords rummaging around the cosmos, there should be one kind of dim Timelord bouncing around, who never actually looked into the time-space whatchamacallit, that only got into Timelord School because they were a legacy admission, and only passed because they were on the Timeball team or whatever. Maybe their Timelord name could be "The Athlete" or something.

It's a lot of fun speculating about such a character, maybe as being a kind of Bizarro version of a Timelord. "They TARDIS bigger on outside than in! It office building that hold one room!" Although of course they'd be just as well-spoken as all the other Timelords, you'd have to talk to them for a few minutes to realize they're like the venture capitalist version of a Timelord, following buzzwords without understanding their meaning. I'd imagine them as not too brilliant but still well-meaning, and The Doctor would have to set them on the right path sometimes. Probably they'd have a really smart TARDIS that kept them safe most of the time. The Bertie Wooster of Gallifrey.
posted by JHarris at 7:19 AM on November 19, 2023 [8 favorites]

JHarris, how about I take your riff and spin it into a Party Lord like, say The Koogler (from Community, yes that's Arrested Development and Lady Dynamite's Hurwitz as "Koogler".
posted by zaixfeep at 7:41 AM on November 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

Maybe their Timelord name could be "The Athlete" or something.

“The Clubman”

Or, if he came up with rationalizations after the fact, “The Spin Doctor.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:33 AM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Friends, we have overlooked the obvious pre-existing prototype for JHarris' idea...

Zaphod Beeblebrox

(AKA 'The Doctor' as filtered through Douglas Adams.)
posted by zaixfeep at 9:51 PM on November 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Actually Adams specifically created Ford Prefect as kind of an anti-Doctor. He said something to the effect that when the Doctor is confronted with an apocalyptic situation he always charges in to help, while Ford just goes off to a party instead.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:59 PM on November 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

But if there were still other Timelords rummaging around the cosmos, there should be one kind of dim Timelord bouncing around, who never actually looked into the time-space whatchamacallit, that only got into Timelord School because they were a legacy admission, and only passed because they were on the Timeball team or whatever.

Aren't you describing The Doctor?

Wasn't running away after looking into the time rift implied to be something unique and maybe even undignified? After gazing into the rift, The Doctor wasn't inspired and he didn't have the decency to go mad. He ran away.

It's always been kind of implied that The Doctor is kind of a joke amongst his fellow Time Lords and that he's repeatedly singled out and punished for being different. It was after all The Doctor who was exiled to Earth. The Master, despite his numerous attempts at genocide was never stripped of his freedom to travel in time and space. The Master, for all his evil, maintains some sort of status that The Doctor lacks in Gallifreyan society. This can be demonstrated by how many times the Time Lords enlisted an exiled Doctor to stop The Master--they would rather the weirdo who looked into the time vortex and ran away take care of things than raise their own hands against one of their own.

I agree that the lack of other Time Lords running about the Universe is disappointing and negatively impacts the character. I think part of the fun that is The Doctor is that they are a bit of a failboat who stole borrowed a broken antique TARDIS to go see the Universe with their grandchild. They're a veritable god who should be off doing detached, unemotional godlike things with all the other Time Lords but instead they find purpose slumming around with humans.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:08 PM on November 22, 2023

I really like he Davros change. It's the right thing to do. Doctor Who should always have a healthy disrespect for continuity, especially where there's an opportunity to correct it's more problematic aspects.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:11 PM on November 22, 2023 [1 favorite]