The why of Dr Who
- Publication: The Scotsman
- Date: 1976-12-30
- Author: Albert Morris
- Page: 6
- Language: English
WHILE I DO not always agree with the outbursts of Mrs Mary Whitehouse against alleged sins of omission or commission on television and radio, I realise with some gratitude that a constant watchdog on the morals of these powerfully-influential media is of inestimable value in discouraging or diluting material that could offend or corrupt from infiltrating into our screens.
On the other hand, the lady protests too much, often rumbling like a threatening volcano. making moral mountains out of a mere offensive pimple or blackhead in a programme and therefore, losing. I believe. much credibility as a deliverer of balanced judgments on what is offensive to a viewing population that is probably a good deal less sensitive and less open to moral pollution than she appears to think.
The other day she criticised alleged bad language in the Stanley Baxter Christmas Show on ITV last Sunday night, and while I agree that she has a certain justification for her complaint. I would place more credence in her comments if she had actually seen the show herself, had been spontaneously if predictably scandalised, and had not apparently relied on other people to give her value judgments on the alleged lack of moral line-hold in the programme.
It is in her complaints about a recent Dr Who programme. however, that I feel she betrays again her flaws in gauging the moral pulse, and entertainment appetites of the nation. hardened to a diet of horror and terror, both fictional and in reality, unequalled by any generation since man dropped I like leaves from the trees of prehistory into the unknown and dangerous world of predator and prey.
She criticised a sequence in the third episode of the Deadly Assassins series which she claimed was sadistic" and in which a character, earlier seen in flames, strangled Dr Who, holding his head under water until he drowned." The last shot was of the face of the apparently dead doctor still under water.
As an occasional watcher of that extraordinary doctor-did he get his degree in medicine, philosophy or science? and who feels that he has sometimes to be by his side when galactic danger threatens his curl head and serpentine scarf, I feel that such an episode would not have shocked unduly if at all-the majority of aficionados of this science-fiction fantasy where disbelief is suspended with all the hilarious tension of a hanging by his slipping false teeth to a flying trapeze.
This, in fact, is not the first time that Mrs Whitehouse has leapt at Dr Who with all the alacrity of a malevolent Dalek. In January last year, she described the series as "the most horrific material ever seen on children's television," a comment I believe to be insupportable on a visual, verbal and moral level.
The series is, in fact, highly moral and is one in which power-crazed space conquerors aiming to be dictators of the universe or to take over some freedom-loving, democratically-inclined planet are invariably defeated and in which the odds on evil triumphing over good are about 30,000 to one.
In any case, most children like a diet of horror followed by a mental swig of terror as a chaser in books, the cinema and on radio and television. The need to have the hackles raised, the eyes started from the head and chilblains on the spine is, I believe if one is basically secure in the warm fortress of one's home or in a school or other social group - as necessary to the human psyche as iron is to the constitution.
Children, in any case, are from an early age conditioned to the grand guignol aspect of life as depicted in fairy stories, which in the old traditional meat, blood and brisket-bone ones at any rate and not in the bland, pasteurised and deodorised modern tales, are filled with incidents where witches pluck out the eyes of princes, blue birds have their feet cut off, a wicked queen is condemned to death by dancing in red-hot metal shoes until she dies, giants are smelling the blood of Englishmen with, presumably, a saliva flow of pleasant gustatory anticipation and princesses have to go to bed with a toad. Think of that.
Some of the happiest moments of my childhood were spent in cinemas where, when not chewing the peak of my school cap: to stop my teeth from chattering, I joined the swelling chorus of juvenile fear as Dracula rose, pale as the moon, from his coffin and Frankenstein lurched off into the mists to get a grip on himself before ripping someone apart, presumably for spares.
Children who watch Dr Who will presumably be exposed to television newsreels where they will no doubt have seen the daily bloody agony of Ulster, Vietnamese children running on fire from napalm bombs, and dead Rhodesian guerrillas stretched out in the sun for a confirmatory head count.
The nation is now seasoned to blood and horror and has, I think, largely become anaethetised to it. That does not, of course, excuse the planting of deliberate sadism before the eyes of the innocent but in this case the temporary and spectacular demise of Dr Who would hardly seem to come into that category.
I know, and the little lads in my street know, that the extraordinary doctor will arise perpetually like John Barleycorn, to battle with brute and boisterous force of the wicked and keep the universe safe for humans, hominoids and friendly monsters.
We need people like Mrs Whitehouse but as a watchdog she is, I submit, barking this time at the wrong end of the cosmic ray diffuser.
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
- APA 6th ed.: Morris, Albert (1976-12-30). The why of Dr Who. The Scotsman p. 6.
- MLA 7th ed.: Morris, Albert. "The why of Dr Who." The Scotsman [add city] 1976-12-30, 6. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Morris, Albert. "The why of Dr Who." The Scotsman, edition, sec., 1976-12-30
- Turabian: Morris, Albert. "The why of Dr Who." The Scotsman, 1976-12-30, section, 6 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=The why of Dr Who | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_why_of_Dr_Who | work=The Scotsman | pages=6 | date=1976-12-30 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=16 April 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=The why of Dr Who | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_why_of_Dr_Who | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=16 April 2025}}</ref>
