Doctor Who (Enemy Within)

Controversy

Enemy Within has caused controversy within Doctor Who fandom, with some fans charging that it violates canon in several areas. Some Doctor Who fans have even gone so far as to disavow it from "official" continuity, while other fans insist that all of these points can be easily explained or interpreted in the context of the series. Plot elements that some fans consider objectionable include:

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• The Doctor is revealed as being half-human.
• The Doctor and Grace enter into a romantic relationship (a taboo in the series)
• The nature of Time Lord regeneration as explained in the movie does not match the television series version.
• The Eye of Harmony is on Gallifrey in the television series, not in the TARDIS as shown here.
• The interior of the TARDIS does not coincide with the television series version
• The Doctor refers to a "cloaking device" as the reason why the TARDIS looks like a police box, while the traditional term used during the series had always been the "chameleon circuit".

Script writer Matthew Jacobs claims that all of these elements were added at the insistence of network executives of the Fox Network. The writers of numerous original Doctor Who novels that followed the movie, such as Terrance Dicks and Lance Parkin, have attempted to reconcile these and other points with continuity, with varying degrees of success.

Related Topics:
Matthew Jacobs - Fox Network - Terrance Dicks - Lance Parkin

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Several rebuttals have been made by other fans, starting with the argument that continuity in the original series was never strong anyway. Specific rebuttals include:

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• Although the Doctor has stated that he is not from Earth, nothing in the television series explicitly states that the Doctor does not have any human heritage. The Daleks have identified him as "more than human" (The Evil of the Daleks), and when the TARDIS returns the dying Third Doctor to Earth in Planet of the Spiders, the Doctor says that it brought him "home". These and other hints are vague enough for some fans to argue that the Doctor may have some human elements in his makeup, and that Earth is his real home, or at the very least he considers it to be his real home. (Considering that in the film the Doctor claims that he can change species when he regenerates, some fans speculate that only his eighth regeneration may be half-human; and the other Doctors may not be at all.) In addition, the Doctor's family background has never been explored in the series beyond the fact that he travelled for a time with his granddaughter, and occasional reference to other relatives.
• The Doctor had a romantic relationship in The Aztecs, and as he also had a granddaughter, presumably he had sexual relations at some point. In the 2005 series, the Doctor's relationship with his companion, Rose Tyler, seems to verge on actual romance, as did the Fourth Doctor's relationship with the second incarnation of Romana.
• The concept of regeneration has never been consistent and nothing in the telemovie directly contradicts the television series.
• The Eye of Harmony shown in the telemovie was a power-tap; a dimensional link to the actual Eye of Harmony. This explanation has been used in further spin-off media.
• The interior of the TARDIS can be reconfigured, and indeed was changed several times in the series. The console room was also radically redesigned for the 2005 series, while the version seen in the movie actually recalls the wood-panelled console room used in the series during 1976-1977.
• Different incarnations use different terminology. In 1965's The Time Meddler it was called a "camouflage unit". The term "chameleon circuit" was introduced in the Target Books novelisations and was only first used in the series in 1981's Logopolis. "Cloaking device" is a common term in late 20th Century English and would be instantly understandable where "chameleon circuit" would not be. In the 2005 series episode Boom Town, when Rose refers to the TARDIS's cloaking device, the Doctor clarifies that it is called the chameleon circuit.

The film also produced controversy amongst several people associated with Doctor Who; including former script-editor Terrance Dicks (who famously said, "It's incoherent crap!"), writers Pip and Jane Baker (who were particularly critical of the apparant abundance of plot holes, and how McGann spends most of his screen-time "in a daze"), and even Sylvester McCoy (who mentioned that the script, in particular the regeneration, robbed the Doctor of his dignity, and has recently said, in an episode of Doctor Who Confidential, "The film would probably have done better if they had begun the film with Paul ; and once the series had got going, I should then have come in to show how it had happened)".

Related Topics:
Terrance Dicks - Pip and Jane Baker - Sylvester McCoy - Doctor Who Confidential

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