Doctor Who Opinion: Are the Monks evil?
Credit: BBC
I was reading a quote from episode eight, The Land of Lies from Doctor Who TV, and whether or not you like it, Doctor Who is getting ready to tackle some big opinions this week, believe it or not, using the Monks.
First, a bit about the episode.
Episode 8: The Land of Lies
It looks like, from this view of the Monks, that once they capture the Earth, they’re not evil. They’re…the Doctor. They’ve taken all of his success, all of his stories and all of his fights and won them from watching him as a simulation.
But they aren’t taking away from human’s success easier. The lightbulb, the telephone, the internet. It seems just like any other species on Earth, we’ve learned to live with them. If they’ve been around as long as they have been, they must have restarted the Earth, starting from scratch with the Monks to watch over the human race.
The quote and what it all means
"BILL: “What about free will? You believe in free will. Your whole thing is –! You made me write a 3,000-word essay on free will.”THE DOCTOR: “You had free will, and look at what you did with it! Worse than that, you had history. History was saying, ‘Hello? I’ve got some examples here of fascism you might want to look at. No? Fundamentalism? No? Okay, you carry on.’ I had to stop you. Or at least not stand in the way of someone else stopping you. Because the guns were getting bigger, the stakes were getting higher, and any minute now it was going to be ‘goodnight, Vienna’.”"
In this particular quote, it’s almost a little scary how true this is. People are going to dislike that Doctor Who is getting political, but I wrote this in an article awhile ago, and I stand by it.
At the beginning of the season, the episodes were tackling race, sexuality, money issues in their episodes, and people did not have a good reaction to this. Even in the article that I’m talking about, I was wavering on whether or not an hour-long show meant to be a break from reality should be tackling such sensitive measures.
In the trailers for this episode, we hear Steven Moffat say that the Doctor has already “lost”, and that it’s too late for him. Although, is it? It seems like he’s in full control of what he’s thinking. This is exactly what the Doctor would never want. He would never want the world where guns are an everyday occurrence.
I’m not speaking as a particular political party, or as a citizen of a specific country. I’m talking as a fan of this character. The Doctor has always been for peace and finding peace through talking and that’s not what you see in the world today. I’m fully aware that in most countries and cities it’s not possible, but that’s the problem.
Is it possible that the Doctor hasn’t lost? Is it possible that the Monks aren’t really evil, just going about things the wrong way? We don’t know the consequences of letting the Monks come inherit the world. We don’t know the issues. But the world today would not be what the Doctor wants for Earth.
Many people around the world might look at this episode, or even just this quote see the eery parallelism that’s happening. If anything, while it’s not necessarily “calling out” political controversy, it’s there, if you’re willing to dig deep enough. The truth is, the monks could be just as horrible and evil as any other villain.
Next: Has the Doctor Already Lost?
I know many people are going to hate this article and the fact that I dug this out, but Moffat or Whithouse wrote this episode and felt the need to put that quote in there. And I felt the need to expand on it.