Doctor Five Abuse

[lesbiassparrow]

Whenever I watch Peter Davison's Doctor it does seem as if he got the most physical abuse of any of the Doctors: they whack him good.  And they whack him often. I assume this was a way to toughen up his mild image and general aura of niceness, but sometimes it just really freaks me out.

The most disturbing thing was watching The Caves of Androzani where Five is actually stumbling around the place bleeding. I can't tell you very terrifying that was as a child because I don't recall ever seeing blood on Who before - and certainly not on the Doctor, whom I think I probably thought of as pretty much made of wood and steel. Obviously given that this is Who, I'd seen people (plenty of them) hurt and dead, yes, but actual blood, no.  I wonder how they got that past the censors? (I know that ITV used to have a rule for Robin of Sherwood where they could kill as many people as they liked but they couldn't show blood or wounds and I think that was a general rule for deaths on children's TV at the time).

 

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Warriors of the Deep would have traumatised me if I'd seen it as a kid, just for that last scene where Five's beaten up and almost crying and for once he hasn't won. Everybody's dead. He's the hero! He's supposed to win these things!

[cassiphone.livejournal.com]

I think the late 5th Doctor and all of the 6th Doctor was the period when, in England, the timeslot changed from teatime Saturday (6pm) to Tuesday evenings? So it was pushed into a more adult timeslot and they consequently added more violence & adult-ish themes. Complaints of it being too violent when still perceived as a kids show was part of the reason why the show got pulled off air for an 18 month hiatus before Trial of a Time Lord.

All of which made no difference to us in Australia, where they happily showed any and all Doctor Who stories at 6pm on weekdays, often paired with The Goodies (I only discoverd later that this was not considered a kids show in the UK, and that at least 3-4 dirty jokes and the occasional boob shot were cut out of every episode before we saw it. Makes revisiting them on DVD a bizarre experience. :)

[cryptile.livejournal.com]

Every time that RTD starts to piss me off, I remember Eric Saward and feel better. That man would have blown up nuns and poodles if the censors weren't watching.

Five doesn't get a break in any of his episodes, though beyond Saward's splatterpunk sensiblities I suspect it might have had a cynical motivation, i.e. getting Mum and Sis (and the cousin who's not like the other boys) to fantasize about tenderly ministering to the noble good-looking young hero who suffers in silence.

Not that I'd know anything about that. I loved Six.

[pontisbright.livejournal.com]

(Here from who_daily...)

Yup. He is the most unconscious Doctor of them all, without doubt. Especially in his last season, where everything erupts into crazed death, violence and doom-mongering - whereas the earlier stories are a bit more fluffy and daft and filled with space frogs. Caves still reduces me to a little pile of rubble every time: it's that bit where he says 'Why don't you just leave me here to die?' and actually means it that you realise quite how stuffed he is. Usually he's all stoic and 'just a flesh wound', no matter how thumped about he is.

It's not just physical abuse, either: he gets the whole psychological fun of Dead Companion Angst too (although since it's Adric, possibly he was dancing in a quiet corner of the TARDIS without us knowing). AND he has to put up with Tegan. Truly he was the most tormented of them all...

(Psst: it's Davison, not Davidson. /anal spelling thing.)