The Doctor - the titular hero of the long-running BBC series Doctor Who - has had many, many enemies in his sixty years of saving the universe. Everyone from Cybermen to The Master to the Weeping Angels to... well just about anything you can come up with has been a potential threat.
But there is one foe who is above and beyond the rest: Davros. The insane creator of The Doctor's oldest nemesis, the Daleks.
From his first appearance in the 1975 Tom Baker-era story "Genesis Of The Daleks", Davros has gripped viewers as few Who characters did. Bound to a life-support vehicle, only one usable arm, his natural eyes blinded necessitating a cybernetic replacement... Davros is someone who sought to perpetuate himself through his creations. And he never cared who got in the way. That one mechanical hand of his is stained with the blood of trillions of sentient beings across the span of thousands of years. It could be readily argued that Davros is the greatest villain in fictional history, in terms of people killed and civilizations destroyed.
And now, returning Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davis has gone and ruined Davros in the name of leftist insanity.
Davros returned the other night for a Doctor Who "Children in Need" special. And though it was billed as a comedy sketch, Davies has been most forthcoming in declaring that this is the Davros we are going to be seeing from now on (or at least as long as Davies is in the big chair).
Behold "Davros" on the left, compared to classic original Davros on the right:
Yup. Davros is now just a regular Joe Shmoe, without ANY of the accoutrements that obviously inspired him to create the Daleks in his image.
As for WHY Davies is doing this to such a classic and iconic character, his reasons are... well, ridiculous. From the story at the Radio Times website:
Speaking on new BBC Three companion series Doctor Who Unleashed, Davies said: "We had long conversations about bringing Davros back, because he's a fantastic character, [but] time and society and culture and taste has moved on. And there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user, who is evil. And I had problems with that. And a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there's a very long tradition of this.
"I'm not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well.
"So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and without the wheelchair – or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair.
"I say, this is how we see Davros now, this is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is our lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they're not in black and white anymore, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by."
This ranks right up there with how the show fired Colin Baker back in the day. It's even right up there with the reason American network ABC cancelled Police Squad! forty years ago (ostensibly because people actually had to WATCH the show in order to "get" it).
Where does this stop? Will Cybermen now be referred to as "Cyberpeople"?
Hey, I know: Disney is the American distributor of Doctor Who now. Let's go all out and get rid of Darth Vader's trademark breathing, since it's obviously unfair to asthmatics!
I say not for the first time: leftism corrupts and destroys everything that it touches. There is nothing progressive about "progressivism".
Look dammit, that is NOT a "wheelchair". That is a mobile life-support system, that gives Davros a range of movement after he was direly wounded in an attack by the Kaleds' mortal enemies the Thalls. Davros can't live without it. That it gives him lower body mobility is beside the point... or not. After all it did inspire the look of the Daleks.
I honestly cannot believe the BBC is letting Davies eviscerate such a renowned character. It is beyond crazy.
Well, if this is the way they want to go, let 'em. I don't have to watch Doctor Who and neither does anyone else. But the beautiful thing about this series is that there's no real consistency. Perhaps someday a more sane showrunner will bring back Davros as he is most known and feared. Just as I look forward to the "Timeless Child" being retconned out eventually.
Until then, Who has lost me. And I imagine it will have lost a lot of older and more dedicated fans as well.
