Doctor Who Rewatch: “The Eleventh Hour” (S5:E1)

Fairy tales help us leave behind childishness and embrace childlikeness.

What makes Doctor Who particularly unique is the way it can adapt. A different creator and actor can change the entire tone and feel of the show.

While the previous four series with Russel T. Davies as the head writer felt like a sci-fi soap opera, the next portion of the show, helmed by Steven Moffat, evokes a fairy tale. In fact, Moffat often referred to the Eleventh Doctor’s run as a dark fairy tale or a modern fairy tale.

“It's the way we teach our children that there are things in the world that might want to eat them. It just feels like a fairy tale: A man who fights monsters but never becomes one,” Moffat told i09.

“It's not that it's a bit like Red Riding Hood. It isn't. But it occupies the space that fairy tales occupy. Children have nightmares and monsters all the time, so we take that fact and spin yarns out of it, the way fairy tales always have. And just the way that fairy tales of old would use the real world around them of forests and villages, and make them dark and mysterious and reveal dangers in the shadows, so Doctor Who does that at its best. Because a lot of Doctor Who takes the real-life world around you and twists it a bit.”

Think about how monsters, like Weeping Angels, make you look twice at something ordinary in the real world. Not only do they make the episode scarier, but they, like all good fairy tales, also help to re-enchant real life. You never look at a statue the same again after seeing (or not seeing) the angels move in closer to an unsuspecting victim.

We need fairy tales not to help us escape the real world but to better understand the wildness inherent in it. Scientism and materialism can rob life of its mystery and wonder. Explanations or exploration can bring excitement but too often they’re used to minimize the beauty around us. Everything is broken down into its scientific parts as if that was all there was. Your experience of love is not deepened by someone in a lab coat explaining chemical reactions happening in your brain. Those may be explanations but they are no summations.

It’s the Neil deGrasse Tyson effect. The famed astrophysicist seemingly feels the need to suck the joy out of popular events. Even those who share his atheist perspective on the world often tire of him responding to fun moments with “well actually … .“

The Steven Moffat run is an attempt to elevate wonder through the fairy tale story. Series 5 begins with the newly regenerated Eleventh Doctor crashing into young Amelia Pond’s garden as she’s asking Santa Claus for help with the scary crack in her wall. Because it’s so emblematic of the fairy tale ethos that carries the series, we’ll examine the first episode, “The Eleventh Hour,” more fully for paid subscribers below.

During her first series in the TARDIS, all-grown-up Amy Pond goes through quite the journey, taking off with the Doctor the night before her wedding and returning just in time to get married. But before then, she and her soon-to-be husband Rory go through some things. He’s shot and killed, erased from existence and Amy’s memory, returns as an artificial life form, shoots Amy, saves Amy, and protects Amy for 2,000 years. That description doesn’t do the story justice so watch series 5 to appreciate it all.

Some highlights from the series include the Eleventh Doctor taking Amy to a far-flung future in her first off-world adventure where the United Kingdom travels around in space on the back of a giant star whale (sound familiar Ahsoka viewers?). Later, they go back in time to help Winston Churchill fight the Daleks. Both River Song and the Weeping Angels return for a two-part story, so that must be good. Amy and the Doctor visit Vincent van Gogh in a stirring episode about friendship and legacy.

Random guest-star alerts for this season include Olivia Colman, James Corden, Toby Jones, Bill Nighy, and a host of other actors that you would recognize from every other British TV show. Additionally, future showrunner Chris Chibnall writes a two-part story.

Previous rewatch episodes

• “Father’s Day” (S1:E8)

• “The Satan Pit” (S2:E9)

• “Blink” (S3:E10)

• “Midnight” (S4:E10)

Once Upon a Time in a TARDIS

Doctor Who first aired on November 23, 1963, the day after C.S. Lewis died. The creator of a world inside a wardrobe never saw the TARDIS be “bigger on the inside.” So, we have no idea if Lewis would’ve enjoyed the show. He never really seemed too enthralled with TV or movies, but I’d have to say that Lewis would’ve appreciated the combining of sci-fi and fairy tale elements that happen in series 5.

C.S. Lewis recognized the human need for fairy tales, even if he acknowledged our tendency to leave them behind for a period of our lives. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again,” he wrote to his goddaughter Lucy Barfield in his dedication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Lewis recognized there is often a period in life when fairy tales no longer hold the same sway as they once did. During that unfortunate stage we leave behind the childlike while still hanging on to the childish. Eventually, we hope someone can so grow out of their childishness that they’re able to re-embrace childlikeness. Unfortunately, whole societies and cultures can get stuck in the self-absorbed childish phase in which everything is disenchanted and devoid of wonder.