carmen_lj | Other Times When The Doctor Acted As Judge, Jury and Executioner (Reply)

Cause that's how I justify things in my head that are a bit awful: precedent!

Anyway, here's a list that makes me feel a bit better:

The big one: five time genocial maniac. Who would be: the Vervoids, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Daleks (again), the Time Lords. That's a lot of genocide. Now, to be fair, two of those were apparently a choice between double-genocide or everything ever. So looking at the other three, we have two where the Doctor is not directly responsible, but can neatly wash his hands of responsibility by saying, "Well, I warned them, they did it to themselves." But that's a cop-out. A cop-out he uses All The Fecking Time. That one where the bad dudes think they're winning and he's like, "Oh, please, villains, do not do your villianous thing what you are about to do that will give you awesome powers and there is nothing to stop you from doing it and you have put a feck of a lot of effort into it and I've probably bumped off a lot of your cronies by this time. Please no do it." And completely failing to mention his trump card. Dude. Of course they're going to refuse. And he might be a formerly eternally optimistic dude, but, yeah, he's not doing that for their benefit, he's doing it for his so he can Assuage Guilt.

Now, given what he does now - that is, cheerfully bloody his own hands rather than tricking teh villians into it - this is, morally, an improvement. Arguably.

And fifth genocide was the one where he actually did proper premeditated genocide, providing the means through Skience and then totally joining in with The Actual Killing. (Excuse being, Vervoids and humans could not coexist - one species had to die, and he was for protecting the established one.)
He was ready to sacrifice The Whole Freakin' Universe, because he couldn't bring himself to be directly responsible for killing a woman he loved (or The Big Version of WWIII). Everything, because he did not want the blood of one on his hands. And he tried, but he couldn't. And in the end she was the one who had to do it, knowing that she was about to kill them both but, heh, she's not quite the coward the Doctor was at that moment.
While the particular Ironic Justice of Human Nature mirrors Rassilon's punishment for those who would seek immortality (and, yeah, he uses the same I Give You A Chance To Turn Back Now, But Not Really Cause You've Come This Far And Obviously You Won't Back Down, But Please Salve My Awesome Guilt) it's not the first time the Doctor's gone for Ironic Punishments. The Axons wanted him to give them time travel, so he did, and trapped them in an eternal time loop.
The difference there is that it was not cold, nor calculated, but the only way he had to save the Earth. He had to act right then and there was no time to find an alternative solution. Human Nature clearly suggests he had time, and his vengence was cold and calculated.

Which would follow onto the big Do I Have The Right (that is, his choice not to commit genocide in Genesis of the Daleks), for there, he has time, he still believes there could be other options, could be a better way (but when he has No Time Left, he does go back and blow up the incubation chambers, though since by that time there are a lot of active Daleks, it's not quite so catastrophic to the race.) And the attempted murder of Davros in Resurrection, he feels that he should do it, but cannot bring himself to follow through. (So, possibly, he took to the less direct methods of Seven, so he could do the following through, as it felt like he was less responsible. "There's something wrong here, and they can't bring themselves to touch it with their lily-white hands," to borrow a line from Brain of Morbius, but it does seem that the Doctor had that problem too, cause he has always been more Time Lord-y than he cares to admit.)
He tried to kill a dude way back in Unearthly Child, just cause he thought an injured man would slow down his mistake.
He sacrifices a lot of lives on his own planet in The Invasion of Time in order to draw out an enemy, acting unilaterally and not even bothering to tell Leela what's going on.

Oh, *flails* the thing is the Doctor knows how awful immortality is. He knows that it is, like, the worst possible thing ever. Brain of Morbius, The Five Doctors and very, most especially, Mawdryn Undead, he says, is told, and is shown: Worst Possible Thing? Living Forever. For him to inflict it in a time of crisis, I can just about accept, but for him to coldly, calmly decide that it's the right thing to do? *flails*

And, right, so it's the punishments of Prometheus and Sisyphus this reminds me off. It's casting the Doctor in the role of a god, a Greek god. But the Greek pantheon are a bunch of self-serving, jealous, petty, whiny sods. They might have the power, but in Greek legends, it's the humans that possess the most virtuous characteristics. In other words, the Doctor's supplying the magic, but it's Martha who's the hero, and the Doctor's no longer there to open his companion's eyes to the wonders and terrors of the universe, but is there to provide the means by which the companion, the human, can complete heroic deeds.

And that's all the thoughts I have proper sentences for.