Logopolis

Death in Doctor Who. Sometimes there is none, which seems inappropriate ("Fury from the Deep", "Terminus"). Sometimes there is lots, which feels equally crass (just pick an Eric Saward script and allow me to save on inverted commas). It seems that death works best when the casualty toll is somewhere in between, almost as if we expect the Doctor's involvement to require a certain number of body bags, but not so many as we have to confront the issue. So some death is okay?

It goes without saying that it's not how many people die that matters. It's not even specifically how the death is handled; it's that the death itself is seen as important. Clearly, fictional Doctor Who death is not the same as death in the "real world". The encroaching walls of the television screen, which always remind us that the show is not real, prevent us having to stop the tape when Commander Stewart croaks it in "Death to the Daleks" to silently reflect on his life, what he gave to society and who's going to put his orphaned children through Space University. And yet had Sarah Jane been fatally spiked by an Exillon spear at the end of Part 3 (and many of us have wished during that particular story that she had been) we would undoubtedly have been shocked, gasped, and the more girly of us may even have shed a tear. Yet both are fictional creations of the same standing, and equally "real". What makes us care more about one than the other?

Obviously, when we watch Doctor Who we care in a fictional context. If Sarah were to die, it would affect the way we would view the program from that point on; our real lives would actually be affected in that we wouldn't be able to watch Liz Sladen acting any more. When Commander Stewart dies, the most we have to worry about is whether scheming Galloway is going to be able to load up the Perrinium on time, and let's face it the Doctor usually finds a way. But more than that, the show has to make us care in the first place. I have a real problem with "Logopolis"; a real problem.

You can't simply have a Doctor Who story that wipes out half the Universe, because then you are forced to deal with a character that has actually murdered about a billion people. From that point on, the Master has no just place in Doctor Who, because whatever justice the Doctor doles out to his arch nemesis has to be considered rightful punishment for murdering all those people. And so when, as inevitably will happen, the Doctor spares the Masters life out of compassion (in, for example, "The Kings Demons") he is arguably condoning that crime. I'm not suggesting that for the Master to murder one person is okay, or that it's right to punish murder with murder, but people die amid conflict. The Doctor's foe coldly wiping out half the Universe is something the show just isn't big enough to deal with, not only in terms of how it treats the instigator of the crime but also in the way it grieves for the loss.

There's always a slight problem when the Doctor has to confront the tragic consequences of his adventures or, even more seriously, his own actions, because in four-part stories there isn't really time to spend two weeks contemplating the losses. This problem is usually countered by sensibly making the Doctor a fighter against the violance. He has to learn to live with it in order to win; like a soldier, he can't stop to mourn one fallen man if fighting on will save the lives of ten others. In "Time Flight" the death is brought closer to home as a result of it being one of the Doctor's closest friends and companions, which results in a very odd and uncomfortable scene where perhaps it would have been best advised to jump a few months in time after the end of "Earthshock". Shockingly, the Doctor breezily announces they need cheering up, as if he's simply forgotton to set the video for "Emmerdale" that day. True, if the travellers had spent twenty minutes mourning Adric, we'd only end up with three and a half episodes of "Time Flight". But as already noted, there are narrative tricks you can employ to avoid suggesting that the death just doesn't matter.

But "Logopolis" creates a problem that the series can only appear not only heartless but utterly morally WRONG by manhandling. Billions of souls are lost literally as we watch. Nyssa sheds a tear for Metulaorionsis but why isn't the Doctor sent into a spiral of depression and guilt at knowing he let this happen? It makes his perspective in almost every other story seem skewed as well; why is he so worried about saving the Earth each week if here half the Universe goes up in smoke and he has forgotten about it by the next story? Is the Earth a somehow more worthwhile planet than all the others because we live there? "Logopolis" gives the Doctor a very warped set of priorities.

Death in Doctor Who should clearly be handled on a totally personal level. The Doctor should be responsible for as few deaths as possible, and when a crisis occurs, for example the loss of a planet full of people, he should be seen to mourn - between adventures if required. Above all, the show should always steer away from major losses at the hands (even indirectly) of its hero, or be prepared to show the significant weight of regret such an occurrence demands. We have to believe in the Doctor, and for that he must care. Death as a narrative device only has the required clout if both us and him care about it as much as we should. In presenting a scenario that is simply too monumental to express sufficient lament for, "Logopolis" takes on rather more than it or Doctor Who could handle.