Are the Regular People of Earth in Doctor Who Used to Aliens by Now?

This question recently came up in the Doctor Who Watch group, and my immediate first answer to it was: “Well of course they are!”

But then I stopped to think about it for a minute. I mean, it seems obvious that they should be used to aliens by now, doesn’t it? While Doctor Who is a wibbly wobbly, timey wimey show, it seems to loosely follow real time … kind of sort of. At the very least, there are Christmas Specials right around our very own real life Christmas-time.

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Which means the good people of London have been subjected to almost nine years of consistent alien attacks since New Who began! Sure, they had a good long break between the end of Classic Who and the start of New Who, but that’s still a lot of years to be fighting off visitors from outer space.

So maybe not all of these attacks were very public … there was the freaky absorbent alien from that episode we all try to forget, ‘Love and Monsters.’ No one save a handful of people ever knew that one existed. And most citizens of Cardiff didn’t even realize when their own Mayor was actually an alien.

But then again … several of these attacks were very large, and very obvious. There was the whole ATMOS debacle, the giant flying Titanic spaceship almost smashing right into Buckingham Palace, the much smaller ship that flew right into Big Ben, and all those mysterious black cubes that ended up being big trouble.

And it does seem that over the course of all these years and all these attacks, the regular people of London — the regular people of the world, in fact — are used to the idea these days that we are not alone in the universe. More than used to it. Now, it seems they almost expect it. Plan for it, even.

For example, during the episode “Aliens of London”, the Slitheen ship crashing into the River Thames triggers a worldwide state of alert. But by the time we get to “Voyage of the Damned”, the revived show’s third Christmas Special, in 2007, Londoners seem quite well-adjusted to their extraterrestrial neighbors, and the idea that an attack is ever-imminent. As is evidenced very clearly in the conversation Ten has with a street-side newspaper vendor:

The Doctor: Hello there. Obvious question. But, where’s everybody gone?
Newspaper Seller: Oooh! Scared.
The Doctor: Right. Yes. Scared of what?
Newspaper Seller: Where’ve you been living? London. At Christmas. Not safe, is it.
The Doctor: Why?
Newspaper Seller: Well it’s them up above. Look, Christmas before last we had that big bloody spaceship, everyone standing on the roof. And then last year that Christmas star, electrocutin’ all over the place, drainin’ the Thames.
The Doctor: This place is amazing.
Newspaper Seller: This year, Lord knows what. So everybody scarpered. Gone to the country. All except me. And Her Majesty.

But that makes sense, doesn’t it? Of course the regular people of Earth would be used to these invasions and aliens by now. And unless they were very stupid (and we know they aren’t), they would of course learn from each of these invasions and take steps to prevent them in the future. Or, if such attacks could not be prevented, take steps to protect themselves during future invasions. The Doctor Who showrunners and writers have all done a bang-up job in keeping this continuity going throughout each season, by the way. Gradually upping the normality of an alien invasion, just as would happen should any of those events actually occur in the real world.

And installing preventative and cautionary organizations such as UNIT would be something we’d do, too.

On Doctor Who, just as in the real world, we Earthlings learn, and adjust. We adapt. Which is, as The Doctor might say, one of our greatest abilities.

After all, we humans make it to the far ends of the galaxy. To the end of the world. All the way to year 5.5/apple/26.

And that’s not too shabby!

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