Pro-Life Themes in Doctor Who [Clinton Wilcox]

I am very much a Whovian. I'm actually a fan of many science fiction shows, especially Star Trek. And as a side note, I don't consider Doctor Who to be science fiction. I consider it science fantasy. I have seen many articles written about the latest Doctor Who episode, "Kill the Moon," which seems to have a pro-life theme running through the episode. I am skeptical about this theme, as I'll outline below. However, as is the abortion issue, this episode has clearly been polarizing. I've seen reviews by people who hated it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. I've seen reviews by people who loved it. And even pro-choice reviewers have found a pro-life theme in this episode, such as this reviewer. This will contain obvious spoilers, so continue reading at your own peril.

Let's be clear: I love when science fiction shows present moral dilemmas. That makes for compelling television. I love it when they have philosophical discussions. That's why this episode (and others) have appealed to me. Doctor Who doesn't always present moral dilemmas or philosophical problems, but when it does, it makes for a great hour of television.

But here's the problem: Doctor Who has been a show that has always been about animal rights. There are many scenes from prior episodes that show that animals should be treated just like humans. A more recent example was when the Tyrannosaurus Rex was threatening modern London, and The Doctor condemned the British for killing the Dinosaur because it was scared and didn't know what it was doing.

In "Kill the Moon," The Doctor takes Clara and a student at Clara's school, Courtney, to the Moon in the year 2049. They discover that the Moon had put on weight, affecting its gravity, and was threatening the life of everyone on Earth. They later discover that the Moon is actually an egg and a space creature is about to hatch from it. They encounter a team of astronauts, led by Lundvik, who have been sent by Earth to plant nukes and destroy the Moon before it destroys them. But now with the discovery of the creature, they face a moral dilemma: Destroy the Moon, and the creature with it, or let the animal survive and hope that it doesn't destroy the Earth. Lundvik votes to kill the creature, while Clara and Courtney want to save the creature's life. As this doesn't involve him, The Doctor leaves in the TARDIS (which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space) to allow the Terrans to make the decision for themselves.

It's not hard to draw a pro-life allegory from the tale, especially when you consider the ten points that Matt Bowman of Catholic Vote outlined in his article here. So I will at least concede that there is good reason to draw those parallels. But now I wish to talk about why I'm skeptical that it was a pro-life episode instead of merely an episode of protecting life in general.

First, I have no idea what the political views of Steven Moffat are. Gene Roddenberry would allow writers on Star Trek to explore themes that he didn't agree with. I don't know if Moffat has the same philosophy for his writers, or if Moffat considers himself to be pro-life. Until I do, I'm hesitant to call this a pro-life episode.

Second, this may not be a sentient creature that we are dealing with here. If this is not a sentient creature, then I think Lundvik's idea of killing the creature to save the earth would be morally permissible. Only if this was a child of a sentient species would this actually present a moral dilemma at all. As we know, there have been many instances in Doctor Who in which we are treated to the idea that "animals are people, too." So I'm not so sure this was actually about the wrongness of killing an unborn human child, specifically (or perhaps it was about abortion, but they would condemn all abortions, even of animals). But we also shouldn't look past the fact that The Doctor allowed them the choice, so even if we understand that saving the child's life was the right thing to do, it doesn't necessarily follow from that that abortion should be made illegal.

So at worst, this wasn't about abortion at all. At best, it was but it went about it in a very confused way that didn't really address the moral underpinnings of the issue. It would have been better if they simply would have encountered a pregnant woman and had this discussion. The objection might be raised, "but that wouldn't be science fiction-y." True. But let's consider an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that did this better.

Star Trek: The Next Generation had an episode called "The Child," in which Deanna Troi was impregnated by an alien against her will. She wasn't raped, the child growing in her womb was the alien. The alien belonged to a non-corporeal species (that is, the species is an immaterial species) and wanted to understand life as a humanoid. So the way he went about it was to start life right from the beginning, as an embryo, and live out an accelerated life in just a few days that culminated in dying of natural causes. During a briefing after discovering Counselor Troi's pregnancy, Commander Riker suggested the child be aborted (even referring to the child as "it"), but Troi was insistent that the child was hers, and she was going to keep him.

This is a much better episode that discusses the abortion issue and doesn't leave any ambiguity about it. I would love to know that Moffat is pro-life (and the writer of the episode, Peter Harness). After researching a lot of reviews of this episode, I can say that there is a good chance this was meant to respond to the abortion debate. But considering how they went about it, I don't think the episode delivered in the way they may have intended it to.

Who is the Subject of Our Experiences? [Clinton Wilcox]

Allons-y!* Yes, it's high time I out myself as a huge nerd. Last night I attended a screening of the two-part Doctor Who adventure, "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel," seamlessly combined to make a feature film. It was glorious. Now, I know that science fiction is not what the "cool kids" watch, but it really does offer a great medium for exploring philosophical questions, especially in areas like personal identity and the philosophy of mind. Even many analogies surrounding the abortion issue are science fiction scenario (e.g. Thomson's violinist and Warren's captured astronaut).

This episode is one that should seem familiar to veterans of science fiction: The Doctor and his two companions, Rose and Mickey, find themselves trapped in a parallel universe, on an Earth that is very much like their own but with minor variations. On this parallel earth, a man by the name of John Lumic and his staff have created a race of cybernetic creatures as a way to transplant his own brain (and the brains of everyone on Earth) into an immortal body. Of course this makes the President of England (parallel Earth, remember?) uncomfortable, and he denies allowing the project to go forward. In a fit of rage, Lumic unleashes the Cybermen on the people of London, forcing them to surrender for "upgrade" or be exterminated.

Personal identity and personhood tend to be a favorite subject for science fiction franchises. Like the Borg of Star Trek fame, human beings are turned into cybernetic beings. But unlike the Borg, in which the organic parts of the person assimilated remain largely intact, to upload someone's brain into a Cyberman, the organic body must be destroyed and the brain is transplanted into the cybernetic body. Supposedly their identity remains intact, though there is a chip that suppresses their emotions so that they can kill without remorse and not be troubled by the new body they find themselves in.

The question of personal identity is an important one, because it has far-reaching implications. If a person commits a crime and becomes literally a different person later, we can't justly hold the new person responsible for the crime. Thankfully, we have very strong intuitions that we retain our identity throughout our entire lives -- when I think back to when I was a kid, I can be confident that those really were my parents and it really was my school that I attended, not a similar person whose memories I now have and thinks myself to be the original. So it seems that whatever view of personal identity we hold, it has to account for the fact that we retain our identity throughout our entire lives.

Many people (including philosophers) tend to believe that a person is the sum total of all of one's memories and personal experiences. But this doesn't seem correct, since it doesn't account for who, exactly, is the subject of our experiences. Plus, I was still "me" even at the points in my life that I can't remember, or before I was able to form memories. As philosopher Peter Kreeft wrote in his book Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing, Expanded Edition (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA, 1989, p. 176), "The only thing whose presence can make an all-encompassing difference, a difference to everything in my life, to something not contained by but containing my life. That's me. I am the constant amid millions of variables that make up my life. All my experiences are not X or Y or Z, but all my experiences are mine. Each experience is 'I experiencing X and Y in way Z'. X, Y, and Z are the variables: I am the constant."

There are many drastic changes we go through from the time that we are conceived until now, but all of these changes are identity-preserving changes. My five-year-old self and my present-day self are drastically different: I am several feet taller, I have gone through puberty, I have gained many more and new experiences, my skin cells have died and been replaced, I am now able to engage in higher thought, etc. Yet that was still "me."

But the problem with science fiction scenarios is that we can only speculate regarding them -- we cannot test them, empirically. There may come a time when it becomes scientifically possible to transfer someone's brain into a machine and have them continue to live, or it may never happen because it's simply not possible to do. You could transplant the brain but the person may not survive the transplant. In fact, if all we are is a sum total of our memories and experiences, then if our brain is transplanted, how do we know the original person hasn't died? What we may be left with is a similar (but different) entity, with all of the original person's thoughts, experiences, and memories, believing himself to be the original.

As a Christian, I believe that what accounts for my continuity of existence through all points in my life is the soul, and I believe that our continuity of existence is evidence for the soul. I think that trying to adopt an alternate view regarding personal identity and personhood leads to many absurdities. I can't remember what it was like to be an embryo, but that was certainly "me" in my mother's womb. I can look back and say there was a time in which my mother was pregnant with me, and "I" was born.

*Allons-y is a French phrase which means "let's go!" It's a phrase that the Tenth Doctor repeated often.