Exterminate ... all those politically correct censors who say we can't be horrible to Daleks
- Publication: Daily Mail
- Date: 2005-05-17
- Author: Michael Hanlon
- Page: 13
- Language: English
GLOBAL domination was just for starters. The most evil beings in Creation had far bigger fish to fry. Entire star systems, the galaxy and the majesty of the universe itself was their ultimate goal.
All were to be enslaved under a tyranny which would make the jackbooted hegemony of Nazi Germany look like a week at Pontins.
The tyrants in question were, of course, the Daleks — faintly ridiculous with their pepperpot exteriors, dodgy, easily avoidable weaponry and all that bother with the stairs, but deeply sinister and scary nonetheless.
The Daleks are not nice. They do not have 'unresolved issues'. They have no feminine side or psychological angst. That is the whole point of them.
The Daleks are the caber-fascists of Doctor Who's universe, a creation of pure evil implanted in an impregnable, emotionless machine carcass.
They are psychopaths, beings whose raison d'etre is to kill, or be killed. They do not hesitate to inflict as much pain and misery as is necessary to get the job done, and to make the extermination balance-sheet add up.
Which is why it is so gibberingly silly that Britain's children have been told they cannot watch a Dalek getting a taste of its own medicine.
That's right. Politically correct censors of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) have decided, in their infinite witlessness, to give the current series of Doctor Who a '12' classification when it is released on DVD.
The reason? Scenes of depraved and exploitative sex? No. The good Doctor doesn't really 'do' sex, we are told, and quite right, too — with that nice Billie Piper as his assistant Rose, he could get into all sorts of trouble. Drug-taking? Nope. The new Doctor Who might have been brought right up to date with its depictions of an edgy, urban, 21st-century Britain, but the real world of dope and crack, foul language, promiscuity and racial tension is absent.
NO, the reason is that the series depicts the 'use of violence to resolve problems'.
Britain's nanny-censors have taken against one particular episode in which an American boffin has somehow got hold of a Dalek (the 'last of its race' — ha! Not likely), kept it in chains and tortured the metal beast with drills.
The Doctor, a rather amoral and nihilistic alien incarnation as played by Christopher Eccleston, is also shown taunting and tormenting the Dalek — not unreasonably, since the Daleks not only wiped out the Doctor's family but also his race and planet.
This won't do at all, says the BBFC. 'However cross one might be with a Dalek,' a spokesman for the board said, 'being cruel is not the way to deal with the issue.
'Some children might take it into the playground... a good role model should not use torture to satisfy his desire for revenge. It is not an acceptable way to deal with problems of power.'
This statement is ridiculous in so many ways that it is hard to know where to start.
But to make just one point: how likely is it that, faced with a scene in which a fictional Doctor Who torments another fictional Dalek for the crime of destroying an equally fictional planet, Britain's schoolchildren will start torturing each other in the playground?
Of course, we should not condone torture. Most people would agree the deliberate infliction of pain, be it to acquire information or to terrorise, is beyond the moral pale.
But that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, nor that it shouldn't be discussed or shown in a popular fiction aimed at children.
Doctor Who, like most fantasy fiction, involves a Manichaean struggle between good and evil. But if it were simply left at that, it would be dull and unwatchable.
Good fiction also involves dollops of grey between the moral absolutes of black and white. The Doctor is not a comic-book hero — like all of us, he has shades of darkness in his character and that is what makes him so compelling.
We cannot sanitise our children from the dark side' —particularly if we want to fire their imagination.
And besides, if we are going to stop the under-12s from watching Doctor Who, we are going to have to stop them watching (and reading) a whole lot else.
Most fairy stories contain deeply disturbing imagery and plenty of violence. Think of Little Red Riding Hood, for example, or Cinderella — a story in which (in the original version) the Ugly Sisters are tortured by the King for their deceit over the glass slipper by being forced to dance to their death wearing red-hot iron shoes.
Pretty well all World War II films would be off the children's menu, too. For what was the struggle against the Nazis if not the 'use of violence to solve problems'? Do we want our children to be unaware of the horrors of 1939-45?
SOMETIMES evil will triumph if good men stand by and do nothing. The moral dilemma is that doing something sometimes, and regrettably, involves the necessary use of force.
The key to Doctor Who's success is surely, at least in part, its clever scripting (it was never the special effects, which were always amateur, although much better in the new series).
Yes, the plots are unbelievable, yes, the aliens are ridiculous creations and the dialogue is sometimes execrable. But when on form, the Doctor's writers are capable of devising plots that explore some of the deepest moral dilemmas known to man — and furthermore in a way that is grippingly accessible to the under-12s.
The greatest Doctor Who story to date was The Genesis Of The Daleks, a late-1970s six-parter in which we were told the story of how the Doctor (then played by Tom Baker) had his chance to exterminate the Daleks at their point of creation by the evil genius Davros.
It was all silly in some ways, yet there was a strangely deep moral dilemma exposed here. The Doctor had his chance, but chose to let the Daleks live.
He realised that without absolute evil in the universe, it would be hard for good to exist as well.
This highlighted a vexatious moral issue, probably lost on most of the pre-pubescent audience; but nonetheless it can be boiled down to a question even the average ten-year-old can understand: 'Should we really get rid of all the bad guys, because if we do, will we know rho are the good guys any more?'
Children are deeply moral beings. When shown a Dalek being 'tortured', there is every chance that this might spark a debate in young minds as to whether it can ever be right to inflict pain on even the most evil being.
All the best children's fiction contains profound, often disturbing moral imagery, full of murder, torture, betrayal and pain. Presumably the starched nannies of the BBFC would ban the Brothers Grimm, C.S. Lewis and Aesop as well.
If so, perhaps we should invite any surviving Daleks to deal with them in the time-honoured fashion.
Caption: Good and evil: Billie Piper, as Rose, confronts a captive Dalek in Doctor Who
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.: Hanlon, Michael (2005-05-17). Exterminate ... all those politically correct censors who say we can't be horrible to Daleks. Daily Mail p. 13.
- MLA 7th ed.: Hanlon, Michael. "Exterminate ... all those politically correct censors who say we can't be horrible to Daleks." Daily Mail [add city] 2005-05-17, 13. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Hanlon, Michael. "Exterminate ... all those politically correct censors who say we can't be horrible to Daleks." Daily Mail, edition, sec., 2005-05-17
- Turabian: Hanlon, Michael. "Exterminate ... all those politically correct censors who say we can't be horrible to Daleks." Daily Mail, 2005-05-17, section, 13 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Exterminate ... all those politically correct censors who say we can't be horrible to Daleks | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Exterminate_..._all_those_politically_correct_censors_who_say_we_can%27t_be_horrible_to_Daleks | work=Daily Mail | pages=13 | date=2005-05-17 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=9 May 2026 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Exterminate ... all those politically correct censors who say we can't be horrible to Daleks | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Exterminate_..._all_those_politically_correct_censors_who_say_we_can%27t_be_horrible_to_Daleks | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=9 May 2026}}</ref>
