The morals of famous, non-human "Doctor Who" villains

A doctor of ethics explains the reasoning behind Daleks and Cybermen

Dr. Basil Smith

A Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Philosophy and Humanities at Saddleback College, Dr. Basil Smith calls himself a “Doctor Who purist.” He finished his Ph.D at Cardiff University and enjoys non-commercial British 80’s music. As a science fiction fan, he watched the old “Doctor Who” TV series and can help explain the mentality of classic villains that appear in the old and new series. Though he has seen little of the new series, he sheds light on the morality behind famous Doctor Who villains such as the Daleks and the Cybermen. These villains interest him due to their simple, if nonexistent morality that influences their behavior and role in the show.

From what you have seen of Doctor Who, how would you describe the structure of the show? And are there a certain ethical dilemmas that you see repeated each show there's certain structure that's repeated or has there been variation.

The thing is that I just really remember the third and fourth doctor and all the kind of ethical stuff that I remember being really interesting and important were the villains which were the Cybermen and Daleks and there was the master. Do they still have the master?

They still have the master. They turned the master into a female as well.

That was always a dumb character and the reason why is the master was always curiously unmotivated and if you ever see a villain in a show like someone like Lex Luthor in Superman and they're curiously evil they have no specific reason to have all the feeling of malice and trying to harm others that they do. And yet this is their defining characteristic. They just do bad just to be bad.

The Cybermen don't actually communicate like we communicate; they communicate as a group. If you were a Cybermen, this means that you all would have the same experiences. And not only is it good for communication, but it allows you to to work as a unit and have no sense of self at all because none of them have a sense of self. And to me that was really great because it showed that it was at least conceptually possible that you could have beings who are just as intelligent as us with no sense of self at all and who had a kind of unity that was not based upon empathy or anything like that. It was simply based upon being part of a web and they all had the same experiences.

And so yeah I really liked that because it showed a different kind of existence. And that was great. And the Daleks of course because they were kind of evil but not in a weirdly unmotivated way. It was part of the character that they were conquerors. There’s this whole idea of why they existed to go out and conquer planets. And so the writers even in those early episodes had them be devoid of all the kinds of sloppy emotions that a bad script would give them.

And that was the great thing there. Since they were devoid of them and they were consistently devoid of them and they were they were never malicious either. They didn't kill people just because they were angry, because they didn't get angry, they didn't conquer plants because of some ego, they didn't have ego, it was simply built into who they were as a species. And that was really great. And even though their voices were stupid, you know, “Exterminate” and all that, the idea that you could have people being equally motivated to do the same actions but for these kinds of non emotional reasons and you didn't compromise that at all ever. And you didn't have the kind of inconsistency you'd have with the bad plot. And that was really really great because it showed how our ethics is based upon something quite different. Yeah. The absence of empathy or to feel a fellow feeling proves the fact we know we have a lot in common. We know that we have the same interests as a species, which we privilege each other as a species. That we privilege ourselves as a species, but yeah, this is all based upon emotions. Yeah. So I like those two particular villains: the Cybermen and the Daleks.

Does that mean that they have a morality system? I mean obviously it's very different from our own but do they see any right and wrong in killing or sparing people?

 No they’re just completely amoral beings. They kill people when the mission requires it. You ever notice though they never appeal on the moral considerations? They’re not immoral but amoral, somehow below morality. I always like the idea of seeing well worked-out conceptual possibility, because when you see that it allows you not to have these sort of blinders on, that our way of thinking about things like moral categories and precepts and theories is so natural that its the only way.

But since both those villains both have like a group mentality, would you say that they don't have empathy for each other?

Not really.

How are they not? How would they still stay together then?

I would say it's automated in both cases because imagine that someone were to shoot one Cyberman, and, you know, you being a psychopath you wouldn't go "boo hoo" and, like, crouch around his body and say “Awh I’ll take care of your cyber-children.” No. You would go on and they would stay together simply because this is part of who they are. And then you go and hang out with the other cyber-people, but you wouldn't play hacky sack together, and you wouldn't sit around and watch "Friends." Your basis of doing these things is all governed by an automated desire to achieve this general mission of conquest. It’s the same with the Daleks. But I liked that just for that reason that it is possible it could actually be the case. So they don't need our emotions to stay together. It's a very human reaction that suggests that maybe they would have less cohesion. I don't think that. I don't think they do. I don't know if that's really possible. But when you look at worker bees and things like that you see with less intelligent creatures it's possible. It’s definitely possible with other species and maybe the only thing is surprising about it since those species are as intelligent as us, we would expect them to have group identity for the same reasons but they don't.

Yeah, of course. You've said that Daleks specifically have no morals. They are a group mind and they don’t have a morality. But there have been, in the new series of Doctor Who, instances where Daleks would gain emotions from becoming too much part human. One of the most recent ones with the 12th Doctor, they found in a Gallifreyan library, live individuals, and one of them was a Dalek and the Dalek was saying “Exterminate me.”  Would a Dalek have the concept of suicide, of suicidal thought? 

No

Even if they were locked up for years, in their enemy’s library?

Never. The Dalek would just sit there and wait, and kind of shut down beyond idle and that would be it. Just like Marvin from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy;” he was an ironically depressed robot but he just waited for something for thousands of years rather than killing himself. The Dalek would never have the thought to kill itself, it doesn’t even make sense, but I have a feeling [the writers] could’ve done one or two things: they are either violating the whole idea behind the Daleks or they are changing it and contextualizing why that happened and sell us on the changes. But if somehow inexplicably the Daleks have become more human, it could make sense. What I’m saying is, as a purist, the appeal of these characters is that they act the way they do when they have a character and to inexplicably change the character is usually a bad idea unless they contextualize it.

Alright I believe that’s all I have. Thank you.