So I’m about half way through watching the 8th season of Dr Who, and a one of the subplots seems to be the budding romance between the Dr.'s companion and a former soldier. The Dr seems to despise soldiers on principal, and even his companion louses up her relationship with him by making comments and jokes that suggesting that soldiers enjoy killing people.
The general impression I get is that the show is trying to show that soldiers are people too and that we shouldn’t automatically think ill of them. Which makes me believe that the writers feel that this is a problem that the needs to be addressed.
This is in sharp contrast to the near worship of our men and women in uniform. Here the only place you hear of such anti-soldier sentiments is in 60’s retrospectives, and by unidentified Muslims in emails by outraged conservatives.
So I’m curious as to what extent if any there is a sentiment against soldiers in the UK or if its just an artificial plot point that is being used by the show even though nobody actually feels that way.
ETA: As I said, I’m only half way through the season so please avoid any major open spoilers
Absolutely no antipathy at all that I’ve ever been aware of.
There is no hero-worship but nor is there any of the reverse. Absolutely neutral unless a specific incident pushes emotions one way or t’other (e.g. remembrance day or the recent VE day celebrations)
I don’t watch Dr. Who but it is quite possible that, being the product of a small number of writers, this element may merely be the writer’s pacifist tendencies coming to the surface.
My impression is that The Doctor thinks less of soldiers than the UK in general does, especially since his attitudes towards the military were established in the 1960s.
Light spoiler:
His attitude towards soldiers improves over the course of the season, culminating in a speech from Danny about “the promise of a soldier”.
I wouldn’t say there is significant anti-soldier sentiment in the mainstream, though equally there isn’t the same sort of worship. There is gratitude, as evidenced by things like the Help for Heroes campaign.
There is anti-soldier sentiment in the radical Muslim community, but that’s a tiny fraction of the Muslim population.
There is definitely more of a disconnect between the military and the public than in the US. I’m not sure if that’s because the UK hasn’t had a conscript army in more than 50 years; the last UK conscripts left service in 1963. Since then, the British Army has generally declined in strength, and ISTM that it’s become a club (certainly the officer corps) for the upper classes again. Having said that, I never served in anything other than the CCF, and I haven’t had much contact with anyone in the UK military services since 1996.
If you join because ‘you love your country’ then you are obviously a huge bell end.
If you joined to get out of your lousy hometown and develop a skill other than killing - so like medic or mechanic - then okay, I guess. Though you are helping others do that nasty thing.
If you joined up because you got conditioned by institutions as a child then I wish you well.
etc.
It just depends.
On a societal level, I’m not sure it’s much different though this Help For Heroes movement seems to gave galvanised a portion of the population. Plenty don’t see them as heroes there’s just no movement that says ‘You volunteered for the shit so deal with it’.
I’m not sure why you’d think this is a reflection on the UK, and not the Doctor’s characterization.
The Doctor is a man with severe PTSD thanks to the Time War. Due to the things he saw, and the things he did (or thinks he did), he’s developed a deep antipathy toward not only war but the people who wage it. (And, yes, this includes self-loathing. There’s a reason the last several incarnations have counted themselves as the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, and not the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th.) This is significant to his character arc, as well as the Doctor-Clara-Danny arc.
Yes, making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep.
Is cheaper than them uniforms, and they are starving cheap.
An hustlin drunken soldiers when they’re going large a bit.
Is five times better than parading in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, and “Tommy, own your soul”?
But it’s "thin red line of heroes, when the drums begin to roll.
The drums begin to roll, by boys, the drums begin to roll.
O it’s “thin red line of heroes” when the drums begin to roll.
Yes, this is how I viewed it too: it is The Doctor who has a problem with war and warriors in this incarnation, and who has become cynical about “patriotic” motives, knowing that his own supposedly enlightened people were willing to allow a “horde of abominations” to be unleashed on the universe, and never mind what HE was at one point willing to do.
The Dr’s sentiment wasn’t what surprised me. He represents his own alien view point. It was some of Clara Oswald’s comments that took me off guard, since she represents a more or less average British citizen.
This in particular
Clara: Was it you that I saw outside doing the soldiery thing?
Danny: Oh yeah, probably the Coal Hill cadets. Just a bit of fun.
Clara: What, teaching them how to shoot people?
.
Bullshit. (Not your post, Orwell’s writings). Trafalger Square is choke full of military and naval commanders and their representations. The most striking thing about the interior of St Paul’s is the sheer number of memorials made for British officers killed in the Peninsular War. Writings of that era are filed to the brim of “Soldier worship”, admittedly the hero is typically an officer.
We’ve had a particular suspicion of the military since Cromwell’s Commonwealth soured us on soldiers in charge. The 18th century was not especially glorious for prowess, unlike the rest of Europe ( although this side of competent ) , and by the time the early 19th century rolled a mistrust of militarism joined with a general mistrust/hatred in some radical cases of the upper classes who ran the military — not at all well.
The acquiring of colonial possessions, which owed rather more to other circumstances, such as the Navy and commercial adventurism, gave pride in having them but did not foster love for those who were there to run it ( as during the Second Anglo-African, when protests such as Emily Hobhouse’s and Lloyd George against military policy reflected deep divisions in society [ ironic in the latter’s case since he became one of the top five war-leaders since Pitt the Elder — ahead of his acolyte Churchill ] which doesn’t even take into account those strong haters of having any empire *at all *such as Wilfrid Scawen Blunt ).
The two World Wars changed this, and added our glorious dead to the mix, by being mainly newspaper stunts, which later added crusadism and a better tomorrow to entice the nascent democracy.
Just now our glorious leaders seem very adoring of the military: the rest of us… it’s just a job, and some people do that.
IME that didn’t feel all that far off the reality in the US even with our attitudes People who’ve never been in uniform say and ask really ignorant stuff because they actually are ignorant about it.
Although in the plot the War Doctor came before Eccelston, in the show he was invented during Smith. The current Doctor’s attitude seemed to me to have a direct correlation with his experience as the War Doctor.
The current worship of the Army did not exist on 9/10/2001. It started from scratch the next day. And has been ginned up by the marketing machines ever since. It sure as hell didn’t exist when I served through most of the 1980s.
The fact we *still *badly underfund our veterans’ care clearly indicates this worship is rah rah feel good stuff, not a characteristic of the US citizenry’s deep-seated ideas about their society and their military.
Maybe its just me, but none of the incarnations of the doctor, since Eccelston have had any moral quandries with Sontarans, Cyberman or Daleks. Each in its own way, a militaristic society, only they are either Clones, or Mechanicals. But human soldiers, in this present time, seemed to have hit the doc’s moral switch.
It was kind of jarring, as to how that arc ended , with some of the attitudes like Clara’s at the beginning.
