What does Doctor Who teach us about life and love? In ‘Knock Knock’, we definitely heard a lot.
In this week’s episode of Doctor Who, “Knock Knock”, it centered around Bill and five students moving into a house that contained a few problems – a lack of washing machine, outdated electrical wiring, and alien bugs that want to eat them. Typical fare for a Whovian to expect from the show. The resolution, however, raises some serious questions concerning the quality of life.
All Life is Sacred
We’ve heard from people on all ends of the spectrum that life is important. To keep existing is the hope of many. The Doctor had even given a rousing speech about humanity in the previous episode “Thin Ice”. This episode goes into how far some people are willing to go to keep their loved ones with them.
Outside of the Who-verse, this is a familiar situation. Do you keep someone alive, knowing they live but a half-life, never being able to fully appreciate the parts of life that make it worth living? Or do you let them go, knowing you could have kept them with you just a little longer?
The Line Between
There is a thin line between life and death. People die every day. So why should preventing death be important? In truth, many people are kept alive longer than they want to be, from ventilators to suicide prevention. The question is this: when does the line become blurred?
When does death become more lively than life? Generally, it is thought that preventing suicide is a good thing, while extending life for someone dying of a natural cause can be more blurred. Why is this?
Quality of Life
The difference lies in what comes after. If a person’s suicide is prevented, they may go on to enjoy life, see the sights, fall in love, enjoy the day-to-day monotony that is life. When someone is dying, they live simply to prevent death. As someone who has lost her father to illness, I would give anything to have him back with me. However, I wouldn’t do it just to keep him in the pain he was in.
In the episode, a son kept his mother preserved. To him, she was alive. But, in doing this, he cursed both of them to a half-life. Eliza (the mother) had not even seen the outside world in 70 years. Her son gave his own life in service to taking care of her. To him, her existence was more important than his own life. In the end, when she realized what they had been cursed to, she wanted to end it, allowing her son to either enjoy life for the first time since childhood, or end it with her, embracing in their love. In the end, the quality of their lives was no longer worth existing.
Credit: BBC
Knowing When to Say Goodbye
All life ends. A simple statement with a load of baggage and meanings behind it. The question is not a matter of how, but when. Doctor Who tends to focus quite a bit on life, death, and the quality of life. This episode is not the only one to do so. It is, however, one of the more recent and one of the more overt concerning the subject. It is about a little boy who never had to learn when to say goodbye. In an average person’s life, they have to learn to say goodbye over and over, learning through experience when is the right time.
Shows like Doctor Who help to give an example of knowing when in a way that is different from most. When you can go back to the moment of a person’s death (such as Rose with her father) or be unable to save a person no matter what you do (such as Amy and Rory), it can be tempting to write it off as fiction. However, I think it illustrates just how precious and finite life truly is. How best to see it than through the eyes of an infinite man?
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