Ch. 3: “The Doctor Falls” Analysis Doctor Who S10.12: Concepts for Understanding the Complex Symbology of the Characters’ Inner Nature Struggles
I apologize for getting the rest of these chapters out after several months have gone by. Life got in the way. If anyone went to the 12th Doctor panel at the Chicago TARDIS in November, that was me speaking up at the Q&A regarding the subtext. I never mentioned this set of documents, though, as I feel very self-conscious about advertising my work. Since I’m writing these documents to help viewers enjoy DW more, I should have mentioned it, and I will at my next opportunity.
Additional Concepts from Analytical Psychology
In the previous chapter, we looked at the characters fighting their inner natures at a superficial level. However, characters can represent many things at once, which DW loves to do, especially in Season 10. Bill, for example, as we saw in “The Pilot” analysis, represented all of the nuWho companions. Also, she symbolized a face of the 12th Doctor, which her guitar necklace at the end of the episode symbolized after integrating with him.
While this overloading of symbols attached to certain characters gives us a very rich subtext, it makes it much more difficult to explain. Therefore, to analyze the characters at a deeper level, we need to look at them through different lenses. One of these lenses is Carl Jung’s model of the psyche, which requires us to look at additional concepts from Jung’s brand of psychology, analytical psychology. (As we’ve seen, DW is heavily relying on the symbols from analytical psychology for the subtext.)
Even though Jung and Freud are considered founders of psychotherapy, Freud is a household name while the general public does not know Jung nearly as well by name. This is probably due to the fact that Jung’s model is much more complex than Freud’s, so it’s much harder to wrap one’s head around.
However, Jung defined many concepts that are very well known and far-reaching. For example, he defined the concepts of the collective unconscious, introversion and extroversion, archetypes, complexes, the shadow, and much more. In fact, we’ve seen how important shadows are in DW, although in a different context. However, they take on additional meaning when we use Jung’s definition. Moffat has a very brilliant but simple example of Bill’s CyberBill Shadow in the finale that perfectly illustrates some aspects of Jung’s model of the psyche. Therefore, her Shadow represents much more than it seems on the surface.
Also, we’ve seen how DW references fairytales, like Cinderella, and fairytale-like stories, such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. However, I named my first document of this series Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who for a reason beyond what we’ve already examined. Through Jung’s interpretations of fairytales (they really are important), he developed many of his ideas, such as archetypes, for his model of the psyche.
Besides the paradigm that we’ve already used to look at the subtext, we also need to look at Doctor Who episodes through the lens of fairytale interpretation. This lens will give us new, additional meanings of the characters. The bottom line is that we need to look at these episodes in multiple ways to get the fullest view of what the multi-symbolic characters really represent.
Before we start looking at the deeper meaning of Bill’s CyberShadow and the other characters, we need to take a look at the main parts of Jung’s model.
Jung’s Model of the Psyche
According to Journal Psyche:
Among Jung’s most important work was his in-depth analysis of the psyche, which he explained as follows: “By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious,” separating the concept from conventional concept of the mind, which is generally limited to the processes of the conscious brain alone.
Jung believed that the psyche is a self-regulating system, rather like the body, one that seeks to maintain a balance between opposing qualities while constantly striving for growth, a process Jung called “individuation”.
Jung saw the psyche as something that could be divided into component parts with complexes and archetypal contents personified, in a metaphorical sense, and functioning rather like secondary selves that contribute to the whole.
Like Freud, Jung believed the psyche is made up of 3 main parts, albeit they are somewhat different: the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.
The Ego
The ego represents everything a person is aware of: thoughts, emotions, and memories. And Simply Psychology says, “The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity.”
The Personal Unconscious
According to Jung, the superficial layer of the unconscious is the personal unconscious, which is basically the same as the Freudian unconscious.
The personal unconscious includes anything which is not presently conscious, but can be. The personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed. The personal unconscious is like most people's understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason. Jung's theory of a personal unconscious is quite similar to Freud’s creation of a region containing a person's repressed, forgotten or ignored experiences. However, Jung considered the personal unconscious to be a "more or less superficial layer of the unconscious." Within the personal unconscious is what he called "feeling-toned complexes." He said that "they constitute the personal and private side of psychic life."
A great example here is the Doctor forgetting Clara. She became part of his personal unconscious.
A complex, according to Simply Psychology is “a collection of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and memories that focus on a single concept” in the personal unconscious.
The more elements attached to the complex, the greater its influence on the individual. Jung also believed that the personal unconscious was much nearer the surface than Freud suggested and Jungian therapy is less concerned with repressed childhood experiences.
A great example of a complex is the Doctor’s feelings toward the Hybrid. He ran away from Gallifrey because, as Ashildr said, he was afraid of himself. Obviously, thoughts of being the Hybrid were extremely distressing and persistent, and they had a great influence on his behavior. Therefore, Jung would say that the Doctor had a complex about believing he was the Hybrid.
The Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious is Jung’s most controversial contribution to his personality theory. BTW, his theory was used to create the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular personality test.
According to Simply Psychology:
This is a level of unconscious shared with other members of the human species comprising latent memories from our ancestral and evolutionary past. ‘The form of the world into which [a person] is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image’ (Jung, 1953, p. 188).
One thing to keep in mind is that Jung believed we shouldn’t take the entire model literally. It’s metaphorical. For example, if one takes the idea of a collective unconscious literally at first glance, that can conjure erroneous ideas, at least it did in me before I started studying Jung’s work. Initially, I didn’t think much of his collective unconscious at a literal level, but as I learned more and about how he came up with the idea of this collective, I could see his points. Also, once I realized that he never meant it literally, I could see how brilliant this was.
Jung believed that personality was both a function of the environment and heredity, which, although very controversial at the time, has been borne out, like many parts of his theory, by research, especially on twins.
A great example of how the collective unconscious works is to look at CyberBill. Instinctively, when CyberBill got angry, she destroyed part of the barn by zapping her energy beam because that was part of her so-called “genetics” of how Cybermen work. This instinctive behavior is part of the collective unconscious of Cybermen and what Jung called an archetype.
Regarding archetype, according to Ann Hopwood, Jung wrote
‘the term archetype is not meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited mode of functioning, corresponding to the inborn way in which the chick emerges from the egg, the bird builds its nest, a certain kind of wasp stings the motor ganglion of the caterpillar, and eels find their way to the Bermudas. In other words, it is a “pattern of behaviour”. This aspect of the archetype, the purely biological one, is the proper concern of scientific psychology’. (CW18, para 1228).
Hopwood, herself, goes on to say
The archetypes predispose us to approach life and to experience it in certain ways, according to patterns laid down in the psyche. There are archetypal figures, such as mother, father, child, archetypal events, such as birth, death, separation, and archetypal objects such as water, the sun, the moon, snakes, and so on. These images find expression in the psyche, in behaviour and in myths.
We’ve certainly looked at some of these archetypal figures, such as the sun and the moon, even though I didn’t describe them as archetypes at the time. They are an extremely important part of storytelling because these patterns come with certain specified characteristics that enrich characters.
The Self Archetype
We’ve examined the concept of the Self before. It’s the unification of the conscious with the unconscious, which represents the psyche as a whole, making all that is unknown about oneself known. We saw how Self (capitalized) represented the individuation of a person, in other words self-actualization, integrating one’s personality: the person has achieved their highest potential. This is a goal of the Great Work, which we’ve seen.
The Self symbol is a circle with a dot in the middle, shown below, which is the same ancient symbol used for sun. The centered dot is the Ego while the Self is both the whole and the centered dot.
As we saw, the Doctor would not be healed and achieve who he was born to be until he achieved Self, coming to terms with whom he actually was, which meant confronting his dark side and accepting it to move past it. “Hell Bent” happened the way it did because it had to happen that way for the subtext story. The Doctor had to confront his dark, psychopathic side of not caring about destroying the universe for someone he loved.
In fact, check out the deleted scenes for Season 10, especially the one from “Knock Knock” at 2:40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bupTCmouOnI He confirms this.
The Shadow Archetype
Finally, we get to the Shadow archetype. I’ve seen a lot of psychology sites define this in terms of the Jungian model, but none reflect it the way Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung’s protégé, does in Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales. She said Jung would get angry with students who took his concepts too literally and say, “The shadow is simply the whole unconscious.”
In general, it’s everything that isn’t known about oneself, including repressed memories. The Shadow generally represents the darker side of oneself, things we don’t want to know or think about. However, there may be good things about oneself that are unknown or repressed, too.
Nevertheless, von Franz said that we have to “bear in mind the personal situation and even specific stage of consciousness and inner awareness of the person in question” when we speak of the Shadow. It’s contextual and changes as the person becomes enlightened. And she goes on, “Thus at the beginning stage we can say that the shadow is all that is within you which you do not know about.”
Missy’s discovery of her good side is a great example of the brighter side of her Shadow. Did Missy repress her good side? It sounds like it since she and the Doctor used to be friends. Perhaps it was the Time Lords’ earworm of the drumbeat that changed everything. It certainly changed a lot and instilled hatred and revenge in the Master toward the Time Lords.
Missy could not become aware of her Shadow without moral effort, just as the Doctor couldn’t become aware of his Shadow without moral effort.
However, as von Franz said, “But this is no achievement, for then comes the much more difficult problem where most people have great trouble: they know what their shadow is, but they cannot express it much or integrate it into their lives.”
Near the end of the finale, Missy does try to integrate the Shadow into her life when she decided to symbolically and literally kill her dark side in favor of doing the right thing – standing with the Doctor to help save the colonists. Interestingly, the integration of her Shadow does go wrong, though, as her dark side makes a stand too, and decides to kill the good side. It’s a fascinating externalization of the battle of the inner nature one goes through to achieve higher levels of consciousness. One cannot advance without the conflicts and possible setbacks.
The Anima and Animus Archetypes
We’ve looked at these archetypes before, especially in regards to “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” and the brain room. We examined how the unconscious of a man is expressed as a feminine inner personality called the anima while the unconscious of a woman is expressed as the masculine inner personality called the animus.
As we saw back in “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” analysis, the Animus was also the character out of the 1st Doctor story “The Web Planet.” Its use and context in the story is a clear indication that Jung’s definition of Animus was intended. The story, therefore, deals with the unconscious, even though it mostly doesn’t seem that way on the surface. The unconscious is a very common subtext subject in DW, going all the way back to the beginning of DW. Therefore, DW is beating us over the head again, especially by naming a character “Animus,” telling us we should use Carl Jung’s model of the psyche to analyze DW.
Jung believed that the Anima and Animus development had 4 distinct levels for each.
In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a man is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality, by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.
The 12th Doctor’s character arc beautifully illustrates this process.
The 4 levels of Anima development are
Eve, named after the Genesis account of Adam and Eve.
Helen, an allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology.
Mary, named after the Christian theological understanding of the Virgin Mary
Sophia, named after the Greek word for wisdom.
Of these 4, we’ve seen references to the first 3. (Helen is connected to the Trojan Horse, which shows up as a toy Trojan Horse in the finale.) Therefore, it seems very likely that there would be a character or some reference to Sophia or wisdom in the upcoming Christmas Special.
Wikipedia goes on to say of a woman’s Animus:
Jung focused more on the man's anima and wrote less about the woman's animus. Jung believed that every woman has an analogous animus within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials. He viewed the animus as being more complex than the anima, postulating that women have a host of animus images whereas the male anima consists only of one dominant image.
The 4 parallel levels of Animus development are
Man of mere physical power
Man as a professor, clergyman, orator
The really interesting thing here about the levels of Animus development is that they correspond with the 12th Doctor. He:
Went hell bent through the universe with a terrible destructive power
Became the professor and was an orator, giving TED Talks-type lectures
Became like Clarence the Angel 2nd Class in It’s a Wonderful Life; the Doctor got his wings by becoming Missy’s spiritual guide and redeeming her
That makes the Doctor the Animus, and we’ll talk about what this means in a bit.
Other Archetypes
It’s impossible to list all the archetypes because there are so many variants, and they end up blending. However, Wikipedia does have an interesting, basic list of archetypal events, figures, and motifs, most of which we’ve talked about in some form as they’ve arisen in the subtext:
Jung described archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the union of opposites; archetypal figures: great mother, father, child, devil, god, wise old man, wise old woman, the trickster, the hero; and archetypal motifs: the apocalypse, the deluge, the creation. Although the number of archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images, "the chief among them being" (according to Jung) "the shadow, the wise old man, the child, the mother ... and her counterpart, the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman". Alternatively he would speak of "the emergence of certain definite archetypes ... the shadow, the animal, the wise old man, the anima, the animus, the mother, the child".
So as you can see, DW is drawing heavily on Jung’s archetypes to tell the stories. Since Jung’s work with fairytale interpretations is how he came up with the archetypes, DW is begging us to look at the episodes as fairytales, including how to interpret them – in part.
There is one archetype that we do need to look at further to help explain the characters in the finale.
The Child Archetype & Some Variants
While I don’t want to get into most of the archetypes in depth other than what we already covered, the Child archetype is one that we haven’t discussed much, especially since there are several variants to look at that are important for the finale.
We all have an inner child, which is what the Child archetype refers to. Jung saw the Child as representing the developing personality. If we had one word to describe a quality of a child, many of us would say innocence. There is a playfulness and naivety that corresponds to children in general. However, there is the darker side where, for example, children throw tantrums and hide from responsibility. They are dependent, but as they grow they should become more responsible. The healthy Child balances playfulness and the fun side with the increasing responsibilities of the adult.
Carolyn Myss, internationally renowned author and speaker of human consciousness and spirituality, states:
The Child also establishes our perceptions of life, safety, nurture, loyalty, and family. Its many aspects include the Wounded Child, Abandoned or Orphan Child, Dependent, Innocent, Nature, and Divine Child. These energies may emerge in response to different situations in which you find yourself, yet the core issue of all the Child archetypes is dependency vs. responsibility: when to take responsibility, when to have a healthy dependency, when to stand up to the group, and when to embrace communal life. Each of the variants of the Child archetype is characterized by certain tendencies, including shadow tendencies.
When adults tap into the inner Child, these qualities and more come forth. For example, we saw the 12th Doctor’s playfulness of his Child come out with Clara in Season 9. However, the 11th Doctor best represents playfulness, impulsiveness, and spontaneity of the Child archetype, as well as hiding from the responsibility of dealing with his PTSD from the Time War. His anger and power made him a huge threat to the universe, which terrified his enemies. He was dependent, too, on people to admire him, which was partially what his episode “The God Complex” was about.
In nuWho, the long 10-season arc is about dealing with the damage of the Time War.
The 9th Doctor was left angry after the Time War and tortured a Dalek in “Dalek”
The 10th Doctor wasn’t giving 2nd chances, no mercy; he said that he had been full of mercy before the war
The 11th Doctor was hiding from responsibility
The 12th had to come face to face with reality and deal with the damage from the Time War to heal
Reacting to situations unconsciously through fear or anger, for example, can stifle the learning and growth of the inner Child. Since the Doctor had this problem, it was up to the companions to help make him better, healing him throughout nuWho. Clara even goes back to the Doctor as a child to help heal him, which is symbolic of helping the inner Child. It’s important for the Doctor to be conscious of his archetypal patterns and how they affect his behaviors in order to move beyond harmful issues. This is exactly what we’ve been watching with the 12th Doctor. He, like any soldier, is going through all the pain and torture of reliving memories and nightmares (the Veil is a metaphor for them), as well as tapping into that inner Child to finally heal.
Therefore, the Child archetype is extremely important, and it’s not surprising at all, in fact, it was expected that children would figure prominently in the finale. I even named Chapter 18 of my Fairytales document “Rescuing Children & Missy/Master.” I meant “children” in both the literal and archetypal (metaphorical) sense.
Nardole
Nardole has taken on several roles which we’ve examined, but there is one that we haven’t looked at. In “The Husbands of River Song,” it took me awhile to figure out what metaphorical part he was playing. Once he lost his head and took off flying with Hydroflax, I realized that he represented the Doctor’s inner Child and the cowardly part of the Doctor.
In fact, Ramone and King Hydroflax also represented the Doctor. River wasn’t being unfaithful as it appears on the surface. These 3 faces are all different externalized representations of the Doctor. That’s why the sheriff’s shield from “Robot of Sherwood” was in King Hydroflax’s ship. Ramone was the romantic side while we’ll talk more about King Hydroflax in a bit. River was trying to symbolically kill King Hydroflax to help heal the Doctor of his psychopathic tendencies.
It’s all part of the rescue.
In the finale, the Doctor’s strength of destruction was symbolized, as we saw in the finale, by his longer hair, which we’ll also examine more in the next chapter with additional symbolism. As River said in the 11th Doctor story “The Angels Take Manhattan,” she and the Doctor couldn’t be together in the TARDIS for extended periods of time because they were both psychopaths. Therefore, killing Hydroflax (the psychopathic part of the Doctor) and being together on Darillium helped heal them both.
BTW, at the end of THORS, Ramone was the only face we saw in Hydroflax’s body while we only heard Nardole’s voice from inside. That implied that the Doctor’s cowardly side disappeared when he was with River, while his romantic side took over. In fact, there is a lovely deleted scene in “Thin Ice” at the link above with him talking with Bill about River, the Ice Fair, and setting a romantic mood for his wife.
Alit
Alit was meant to be the physical representation of the Child archetype. She mirrored the child Doctor in “Listen.” (She also mirrored Bill, which we’ll get to in the next chapter.) Alit, like the young Doctor, felt different and apart from the other children. For example, while the other children in “The Doctor Falls” were happy to see Hazran, Alit looked around like it was her first time at the farmhouse. Then, she was lying on her bed while all the other children were playing. It’s similar to how the young Doctor separated himself and stayed in the barn-like structure.
Also, she had a problem listening to authority just like the Doctor. For example, Hazran told her to get under the bed and stay there. However, not only did Alit complain, but also she didn’t stay there long. She alone got up and looked out the window.
We’ll examine her and the other main characters more below because they fit at least one of the variants of the Child archetype. Please keep in mind there are other variants that I’m not listing below because, while they are used in DW, they are not essential for the finale.
The Wounded Child archetype holds the memories of abuse, neglect, and other traumas that we have endured during childhood. This is the Child pattern most people relate to, particularly since it has become the focus of therapy since the 1960s. Many people blame the relationship with their parents that created their Wounded Child, for instance, for all their subsequent dysfunctional relationships. On the positive side, the painful experiences of the Wounded Child often awaken a deep sense of compassion and a desire to help other Wounded Children. From a spiritual perspective, a wounded childhood cracks open the learning path of forgiveness.
The shadow aspect may manifest as an abiding sense of self-pity, a tendency to blame our parents for any current shortcomings and to resist moving on through forgiveness. It may also lead us to seek out parental figures in all difficult situations rather than relying on our own resourcefulness.
A great example of the Wounded Child is the Master. The Time Lords drove him crazy by installing a drumbeat earworm in his head, and he wanted revenge in “The End of Time.” He blamed them for the abuse and other traumas for making him the way he was. He is the Shadow aspect of this archetype.
The Doctor fits the Wounded Child archetype too, but at a different stage. We saw his forgiveness of Bonnie after his war speech in “The Zygon Inversion.” Then, we saw that his own painful experiences awakened his deep sense of compassion and desire to help others, like Missy.
The Abandoned/Orphan Child
From Little Orphan Annie to Cinderella, the Orphan Child in most well known children’s stories reflects the lives of people who feel from birth as if they are not a part of their family, including the family psyche or tribal spirit. But because orphans are not allowed into the family circle, they have to develop independence early on. The absence of family influences, attitudes, and traditions inspires or compels the Orphan Child to construct an inner reality based on personal judgment and experience.
The shadow aspect manifests when Orphans never recover from feelings of abandonment, and the scar tissue from family rejection stifles their maturation, often causing them to seek surrogate family structures to experience tribal union. Therapeutic support groups become shadow tribes or families for an Orphan Child who knows deep down that healing these wounds requires moving on to adulthood. For that reason, establishing mature relationships remains a challenge.
There are several characters that symbolize the Abandoned/Orphan Child archetype: Bill, the Doctor, Nardole, and Alit.
Bill
While Bill was a real orphan, symbolizing this archetype, she also felt abandoned by the Doctor. Initially, she developed an inner reality of her mother, which helped her gain an independence that saved her from failing victim to the Monks. Then, she even developed an inner reality as CyberBill.
The Doctor
The child Doctor is a great example of not feeling part of a family in the orphanage of sorts. He separated himself from the rest of the children in a self-imposed manner. Then, he was only 8 when the Time Lords put him into a life of service, as the Master said happened to Time Lord children. He had to develop independence in the absence of family. He saw Missy as the only person who was like himself, so he felt a great sense of aloneness.
Nardole
In “The Doctor Falls,” Nardole and Hazran had an interesting conversation:
HAZRAN: I've never met anyone like you. So where are you from?
NARDOLE: I don't know. I was sort of found.
Because Nardole didn’t know where he was from being sort of found, these imply that he also was the Abandoned/Orphan Child archetype. That fits with being a face of the Doctor and the Doctor’s inner Child.
Alit
As we’ve seen, Alit very much mirrors the child Doctor, so it’s not surprising that she would be the Abandoned/Orphan Child archetype.
The Needy or Dependent Child carries a heavy feeling inside that nothing is ever enough, and is always seeking to replace something lost in childhood – although exactly what is never clear. As with the Wounded Child, this leads to bouts of depression, only more severe. The Dependent Child tends to be focused on his own needs, often unable to see the needs of others. As with all apparently negative archetypes, you can learn to recognize its emergence and use it as a guide to alert you when you are in danger of falling into needy, self-absorbed attitudes and behavior.
The Master/Missy
The Master is a great example of the Needy Child, as he’s always looking to control things and people since he had no control of his childhood, as we saw.
Also, Missy needed the Doctor to be like her, so she hooked him up with Clara to control him. However, Missy and the Master aren’t the only needy ones.
The Doctor
While we saw above that the 11th Doctor needed admiration, making him dependent, he wasn’t alone. The 12th Doctor showed his neediness in the first part of the finale when he needed Missy to be good, disregarding Bill’s safety. He got Bill killed because of it.
The Magical Child sees the potential for sacred beauty in all things, and embodies qualities of wisdom and courage in the face of difficult circumstances. One example is Anne Frank, who wrote in her diary that in spite of all the horror surrounding her family while hiding from Nazis in an attic, she still believed that humanity was basically good. This archetype is also gifted with the power of imagination and the belief that everything is possible.
The shadow energy of the Magical Child manifests as the absence of the possibility of miracles and of the transformation of evil to good. Attitudes of pessimism and depression, particularly when exploring dreams, often emerge from an injured Magical Child whose dreams were “once upon a time” thought foolish by cynical adults. The shadow may also manifest as a belief that energy and action are not required, allowing one to retreat into fantasy.
We’ve examined this archetype before, although in a different way: as part of the Sacred Marriage of the Great Work back in the Fairytales document Chapter 13: "Clara Has to Come Back: The Love Story and The Ghost."
The Doctor, Merlin, and The Ghost are all part of the Magical Child archetype. Certainly, we’ve seen how the Doctor and Grant as the Ghost thought all things were possible. After all, it was Grant’s wishes that got him to where he was as an adult. Therefore, Grant symbolizes the externalization of the Magical Child in a magical type of episode.
In “The Doctor Falls,” the Doctor did do something magical. When he was running through the forest shooting Cyberman, at one point he lifted his hand to the sky without his sonic, shown below. However, Cybermen were still exploding. DW shows the Doctor in many magical moments but they are very subtle.
The Divine Child is closely related to both the Innocent and Magical Child, but is distinguished from them by its redemptive mission. It is associated with innocence, purity, and redemption, god-like qualities that suggest that the Child enjoys a special union with the Divine itself. Few people are inclined to choose the Divine Child as their dominant Child archetype, however, because they have difficulty acknowledging that they could live continually in divine innocence. And yet, divinity is also a reference point of your inner spirit that you can turn to when you are in a conscious process of choice. You may also assume that anything divine cannot have a shadow aspect, but that’s not realistic.
The shadow of this archetype manifests as an inability to defend itself against negative forces. Even the mythic gods and most spiritual masters — including Jesus, who is the template of the Divine Child for the Christian tradition — simultaneously expressed anger and divine strength when confronting those who claimed to represent heaven while manifesting injustice, arrogance, or other negative qualities (think of Jesus’ wrath at the money-changers in the Temple). Assess your involvement with this archetype by asking whether you see life through the eyes of a benevolent, trusting God/Goddess, or whether you tend to respond initially with fear of being hurt or with a desire to hurt others first.
We’ve seen over and over how the Doctor is on a rescue/redemptive mission for himself, Missy, and other children, who represent other Child archetypes. He certainly has god-like qualities, for example, being able to create the universe by rebooting it and destroying it. And DW is using religious symbolism to show us, in part, the Divine Child.
The whole idea of going back to the Child archetype and fixing whatever wounds the Doctor had takes him back to a sort of innocence, which is a redemption.
The 13th Doctor will have no need to have the St John Ambulance symbol – which, as we’ve seen, is both a symbol of torture and healing – on the door of the TARDIS. She can begin anew, unburdened by the events of the Time War that plagued her nuWho predecessors.
The Rocking Horse Metaphor
It’s seems very appropriate that in the finale where the Child archetype loomed large that we also saw 3 rocking horses in the episode. Rocking horses are symbols of early childhood in addition to DW’s Horse metaphor so part of the rescue.
There is a large rocking horse (white arrow) in the schoolroom with the Master and Missy. The horse is easier to see in the episode. The schoolroom, too, is symbolic of childhood, adding to the whole Child archetype.
Also, there are 2 small rocking horses (yellow arrows) in the scene with the Doctor and Alit in the farmhouse. The interesting thing here is that the Doctor wiped them and the other toys (toy soldiers, Trojan Horse, caboose, etc.) away to symbolize a reboot. Because he wiped the rocking horses away, they symbolized negative aspects that the Doctor wanted to get rid of, just like the other toys.
Given that we are dealing with the Wounded Child archetype, I believe the rocking horses also are a reference to a classic D.H. Lawrence short story “The Rocking-Horse Winner.” The rocking horse took on multiple negative symbols in the story and led to the death of Paul, a child. The only meaning that we need to be concerned about, as it pertains to the finale, is that it was a symbol of the fatal obsessions of a Wounded Child.
Certainly, the 12th Doctor had been fatally obsessed with certain things. For example, in “Listen” he had to find out what was at the end of the universe, and it nearly killed him. Clara had to intervene and go back to his childhood, a symbol of saving the inner Child. He was also obsessed with redeeming Missy, which was fatal to Bill.
Anyway, in the image above, when the Doctor wiped the horses away, he was wiping away the wounds. His inner Child was symbolically healed.
Before we get to a deeper understanding of the characters using the archetypes, we need to look at the Great Work again.
Reviewing a Few Concepts of the Great Work
I believe it’s worthwhile in a chapter on Jung’s model of the psyche to review a few points of the Great Work, as it defines the process someone goes through to achieve Self.
Transformational Personal and Spiritual Process
In Chapter 9 in the pre-viewing analysis of Doctor Mysterio, I said of this process:
The Great Work can be used to describe the psychological process of personal and spiritual transmutation to achieve individuation, meaning wholeness of Self, by integrating one’s unconscious with one’s conscious. Individuation has the effect of holistic healing, both mentally and physically. This process, if carried out through the 4th stage, brings out the person’s purest nature.
A little later, I explained the basics:
While alchemists of old tried to transmute lead and mercury into gold, gold became a metaphor for the soul being freed from a dead or leaden state of mind (why we’ve seen all the dream-like episodes), as a way to move toward consciousness, an understanding of self, and spiritual enlightenment.
The standard definition involves a four-step process of transmutation:
nigredo (blackening) is the Shadow (negative, fearful aspects of the unconscious)
albedo (whitening) refers to the anima or animus, a reflected light appears in the darkness
citrinitas (yellowing) is the wise old man (or woman) archetype, solar light from within – Sun stage
rubedo (reddening) is the Self archetype, which has achieved wholeness
Each level does several things: it burns off impurities, such as fears and other negative aspects; creates a union (alchemical marriage); and generates a rebirth of one’s sense of self. In order to get to the next level, there has to be a death of that sense of self. A fiery love at each stage opens the heart to greater depths and purifies the alchemist to awaken them to a greater sense of self. Eventually, the person would show their purest nature. However, few people reach the highest level (rubedo – red), for example, becoming Christ-like. In another example, we would talk about Buddha-nature in kung fu and taiji.
Elixir of Life & Philospher’s Stone
The Great Work is the process that creates the philosopher’s stone. It’s also called the elixir of life, which is interesting because DW uses that term for the substance that the Sisterhood of Karn drank to achieve immortality, one of the real-world goals of the philosopher’s stone, along with rejuvenation. The Sisterhood also used it to create the War Doctor. The stone represents the goal of the individuation process, finding a wholeness of Self.
In similar Christian terms, this is the process one’s soul takes on the journey home to reconcile with God through Christ's sacrificial suffering and death. Wikipedia says of the philosopher’s stone (lapis philosophorum a.k.a lapis), “Many of the medieval allegories for a Christ were adopted for the lapis, and the Christ and the Stone were indeed taken as identical in a mystical sense.”
I’m not suggesting we should look at this in a mystical sense. The Great Work, like religion, is meant to be a transformative, spiritual experience to make one a better person. Uniting aspects of the conscious and unconscious brings enlightenment, which can seem mystical in the similar sense as undergoing religious revelations.
As for the Doctor, he symbolically achieved his pure nature at the end of the finale, which his kindness speech signified. He got redemption after he sacrificed his life for the good of others and sent Heather to Bill. His 2 angel wings represented not only his ascension to Heaven, but also his completion of the 4th stage of the Great Work. Through this sacrifice, he became Christ-like, Buddha-like.
Same Characters Can Represent Different Stages of the Great Work
While we’ve looked at the standard, 4-step Great Work process, which was highlighted through the 4 representative colors (black, white, gold, and red) in “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” we’ve also seen how the 12th Doctor represents the 12-step Great Work with the Fish metaphor. For our purposes in this chapter, we’re going to stick with the 4-step process.
Missy and the Master are great examples of the same character at different stages. Missy was much more enlightened at the beginning of “World Enough and Time” than the Master. She was doing the moral work of making her Shadow part of her conscious. However, the Master represented the nigredo or black stage, the first stage of the Great Work, while Missy was a later stage. Just before the end of her life, she made the choice to become fully enlightened by actualizing the goodness within as part of her character.
In fact, the image, shown below, of her lying dead on the ground tells us a lot. The photo is harder to see than the actual episode, so I’ve marked her 2 arms (white arrows), which are held out in a crucified position. The subtext is telling us she achieved the Christ-like, final stage of the Great Work (for a woman that would be the Mother of God, a.k.a Virgin Mary, symbol) and was crucified for it. It is significant that she rebuffed the Master’s sexual advances, which supports the Mother of God symbol.
Fairytales, Spirituality & the Shadow
Doing fairytale interpretations using Jung’s model adds a whole new spiritual dimension to fairytales, including DW as a whole. After all, Jung believed that spirituality was a huge part of actualizing Self to become whole through the process of the Great Work. This is exactly what, as we’ve seen, the Doctor has been going through, borne out by all the spiritual symbolism in the finale and elsewhere.
Furthermore, it’s not lost on me that the 2017 Christmas Special is titled “Twice Upon a Time.” The reference to fairytales is unmistakable. River even said they were all fairytales.
Therefore, DW is beating us over the head with the idea of fairytales, and we need to take notice in more than just a superficial way.
Just like our other lenses, the fairytale lens is like viewing an onion. I’ll pull back a few layers to give you an idea of how this works and what the characters represent, but by no means will this character analysis be complete. It could never be. Each time we revisit an episode, we could do additional interpretations with possibly deeper meaning, especially after watching other episodes. Also, as our knowledge of Classic Who episodes grows, they help refine our understanding of nuWho symbolism.
Spirituality & the Ship’s Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights)
While in Western culture, we don’t typically associate spirituality with fairytales, many don’t make much sense unless we do. Or they can take on a more important spiritual meaning than a traditional surface reading affords. We can look at Grimm’s fairytales, as an example, since the Doctor mentioned the Grimm brothers. But the finale makes reference to another set of fairytales, which I want to point out.
The clock on the ship had a differential of 1001 years on the day counter at one point, shown below. My daughter reminded me that 1001 was a reference to Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights, better known in English as Arabian Nights. According to Wikipedia, they are “a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.”
The frame story is that Scheherazade agreed to marry the king, who killed his previous wives, believing that all women were unfaithful, like his first. Scheherazade didn’t want to suffer the same fate, so she cunningly used stories. Wikipedia says
On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins (and only begins) a new one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion of this tale, postpones her execution once again. So it goes on for 1,001 nights.
These fairytales are not merely stories. They are meant to be used for spiritual enlightenment. Reading the spiritual symbolism, they show the trials the soul has to go through to reach full enlightenment.
They have a connection to our DW characters, as well. Interestingly, Missy was the one whom the Doctor was supposed to execute. Then, he was supposed to watch over her dead-ish body in the Vault for at least 1000 years. Being on the ship for over 1000 years, as far as the ship’s differential was concerned, he fulfilled his obligation of watching over her.
At the same time, the implication is that Missy’s execution was delayed by more than 1001 years, so in a way they mirrored the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights.
DW, itself, is reminiscent of Christian parables or passages from the Dao De Jing where just as one’s spiritual development grows, so does one’s understanding of the profoundness of the parables and passages. As we peel away layers of the onion, the beautiful spiritual treasure inside is revealed.
Characters Can Represent Aspects of Each Other’s Psyche
While using other characters to represent some aspect of a main character is a classic storytelling technique designed to make stories much more engaging, characters can represent aspects of each other. In this way, the story can add to the main characters’ characterizations without bogging them down in the text. This technique also adds a lot of dimension and extends what can be done. It’s much more interesting in a show like DW to watch different characters deal with problems than to have to trudge over a mountain of problems for one character.
Above, we saw how the Doctor ended up mirroring the stages of the Animus development, which may seem quite odd because he becomes the unconscious of a woman, expressed as the masculine inner personality: the animus. Therefore, the implication is that in addition to how we already view the Doctor, we should, in one sense, consider him an externalization of a woman’s inner personality for the fairytale interpretation. It sounds strange, but is it really?
The Doctor and Missy
The Doctor and Missy are like 2 sides of the same coin. We saw him become like her in “Hell Bent,” where he didn’t care if he destroyed the universe to save Clara. The psychopath in him came forth. He had to confront the Hybrid in his Shadow, as part of his healing. He couldn’t move past it until he accepted that side of himself to move beyond it.
Of course, Season 10 dealt with Missy’s psychopathic side. Once the Doctor became enlightened, he could then help Missy do the same. In the end, she mirrored his goodness.
Coming back to something I mentioned in a previous chapter and delayed the explanation until now is the dialogue between the Doctor and Missy on the rooftop where Missy talks about being in 2 minds. First, the Doctor said
DOCTOR: Knock yourself out.
(Missy pirouettes and KO's the Master with her parasol.)
MISSY: Your wish is my command.
(She unties the Doctor.)
MISSY: I was secretly on your side all along, you silly sausage.
DOCTOR: Is that true?
MISSY: Don't spoil the moment.
DOCTOR: Seriously, I need to know. Is that true?
(He holds Missy's hand.)
MISSY: It's hard to say. I, I'm in two minds. Fortunately, the other one's unconscious.
How can she be in 2 minds unless there is a telepathic link, for example? OR is she an externalization of, for one thing, the Master’s psyche? The answer is that both are possible.
“Last Christmas” beats us over the head with the concept that characters can be externalizations of an aspect of the psyche. Also, the episode made it quite clear that the characters were connected in a shared mental state, a multi-consciousnness gestalt that formed telepathically. As we know, things aren’t really happening the way they seem, as we are viewing constructs from the unconscious, supporting the whole fairytale theme. Santa is a great example:
SANTA: Hey. You want to take the reins, Doctor?
DOCTOR: You're a dream construct, currently representing either my recovering or expiring mind.
Missy is no different, functioning like the Santa dream construct. How else could she survive in the locked Vault (a metaphor for the unconscious) without any food for 6 months, since no one came to visit her while the Doctor was on the prison ship? Since we know that Clara is Missy’s familiar from the title “The Witch’s Familiar,” Clara is Missy’s proxy. And we know that Clara was in the Doctor’s personal unconscious. By extension of the proxy relationship, Missy was in the Doctor’s mind.
This makes sense, too, as the Doctor and Missy are 2 sides of the same coin and Shadows of each other. This brings to mind the image from “Tooth and Claw” where the 10th Doctor’s and the werewolf’s faces are pressed against the wall on opposite sides of it, shown below. The subtext unmistakably shows us that the Doctor had a dark side. He and the wolf were 2 sides of the same coin.
Season 10 showed us many times that Missy was mimicking the Doctor, as she was becoming like him. Therefore, through this lens, Missy’s struggle for redemption represents the Doctor’s inner fight of his nature. And he, hers. Missy’s struggle allows us to see how he had to come to terms internally with killing a lot of people. While he represents her Animus, she represents his Anima.
Another interesting point to note is that gender roles are vital to the Anima and Animus. Therefore, as far as the subtext story is concerned, the Doctor had to be male externally until he reconciled his feminine inner personality with his outer masculine personality, shown by the reconciliation of Missy and the Doctor.
Since the 12th Doctor achieved that, it was inevitable that the Doctor would be able to become a woman externally. It’s clear to me from the subtext all the way back into Classic Who with the 7th Doctor that DW was marching down the road toward reconciling the Doctor’s male/female split problem: the female personality was always internal and always hiding. In fact, the 10th Doctor’s Time Lord consciousness in the watch, when he turned himself human, had a female voice among the men’s, as we saw many analyses ago. She said she was hiding among men.
I don’t want to suggest that this reconciliation wasn’t there from the start. It’s obvious that Classic Who is using Carl Jung’s symbolism of integrating opposites (male/female) from the very 1st Doctor. However, the 7th Doctor’s stories really show where the Doctor’s arc was heading, at least in a broad sense.
The Doctor and the Master
By extension of Missy being a Shadow of the Doctor, the Master, too, is a Shadow of the Doctor, so they are 2 sides of the same coin. The Master mirrors King Hydroflax in cruelty, destruction, and death. In the finale, the Doctor said to the Master:
DOCTOR: Well, let's see how I do. Your Tardis got stuck. You killed a lot of people, took over the city, lived like a king until they rebelled against your cruelty. And ever since then you've been hiding out, probably in disguise, because everybody knows your stupid round face.
The Doctor even says the Master lived like a king, a reference to King Hydroflax. Also, the Master mirrors the Monks in many ways, some of which we looked at in “The Lie of the Land” analysis. In fact, the Monks were in disguise, just like the Master. Also, we saw in that analysis that the Master was possessing the Doctor, which explains the maniacal laughter and other oddities. Therefore, the Master was in disguise there, too, so Razor’s mask in the first part of the finale is a clever externalization of the other disguises.
Since the Doctor and Master are 2 sides of the same coin, the Master represents the Doctor’s psychopathic side. This actually gels with the notion that the Master is the War Doctor, which we looked at in Chapter 19: “The Rescue Plan.”
Because DW wouldn’t want to show us that the Doctor stabbed the Master, Missy took on that role. However, she symbolized not just trying to kill her past, but also the Doctor trying to kill it.
Next, we’ll continue our examination of the characters and what they tell us about the Doctor.
