Surprisingly, we find this oft used horror staple- dualism- woven throughout the fundamental's of Doctor Who. The dual nature and/or multiple personality syndrome affects The Doctor, Time Lord Regeneration, The TARDIS and the production in general.
"Doctor Who as science fiction must be understood in terms of both: (1) its drive toward the coherent, signified as a verifiable empirical world (the world of Pertwee's Doctor with its quest of scientism--the universe as balanced, organic, understood); and (2) its recognition of incoherence in the functionality of 'naming' the ego (the world of Baker's Doctor and its mark of Romanticism-- the constantly regenerated selves, the dopplegangers). " 1 Within the whole of the program there is continued tension and often pulls in opposite directions. Yet, these opposing concepts are part of the same continuity.
The dual nature of the program can also be displayed in how it can be considered a children's program by a large percentage of viewers, yet many adults would claim it to be meant for an older audience. The show is also considered a comedy by some and high drama by others.
Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about a man divided against himself . Within the respectable Jekyll lurks the evil Hyde, both struggling to be free. "Stevenson's allegorical techniques reveal and reinforce this melancholy view of life. For example, the front of Jekyll's house is fair, part of 'ancient, handsome houses,' but Hyde uses the rear entrance whose facade is part of a sinister block of buildings which'...showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead discolored wall on the upper; and bore in every feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence.'...the house's two facades are symbolically the faces of the two opposed side of the same man.' 2
The TARDIS (The Doctor's "house") falls victim to the concept of dualism. It is bigger on the inside than the outside. Inside it is scientific, spacious, a synbol of Gallifreyan technology. On the outside it is a simple police box (of Earth), an absurd idiosyncrasy.
When working properly it has the ability to change its appearance by use of a chameleon circuit. Jekyll used Hyde as a means to disguise himself when he desired to partake in an activity that was unbecoming of his place in the community. Hyde used Jekyll as his shelter from discovery.
Obviously, the Doctor is probably where the comparison can be most closely drawn. When Jekyll took the formula, his personality and nature not only changed, but his entire physical appearance changed also. The Doctor has altered his appearance and character 10 times. Though each Doctor brings his own persona to the character with some traits of those who have come earlier, it appears each regeneration is a reaction to the previous incarnation. "Central to the Doctor's definition, and constant throughout all his different forms, has been science fiction's definition of the 'human' as powerful but fragile, rational but irrational, material but spiritual too." 1
A key theme in Doctor Who points toward humanity's choice to choose between good and evil. The Doctor has entertained these same choices and though he most often chooses good, he has also been tempted to do otherwise. The Doctor has the capacity to do evil.
"Near the end of the "Key To Time" season (1978-9) the Doctor for a moment, plays with the 'mad scientist' persona of human pride and ambition:
'We have the power to do anything we like, absolute power over every particle in the
universe, everything that has ever existed or will ever exist-- as from this moment. Are you listening to me Romana... because if you're not listening I can make you listen, because I can do anything. As from this moment there's no such thing as free will in the entire universe.
There's only my will, because I possess the Key to Time.'
In response to Romana's anxious, "Are you all right?", the Doctor drops his rolling eyed spoof of madness for his conventionally idiosynctratic matter of fact, neat nonsense persona:
'Well of course I'm all right... this thing makes me feel in such a way that I'd be very
worried if I felt like that about somebody else feeling like this about
that. Do you understand?'" 1
In the classical tale, events are generated by a motivated villainy, and the hero is affected by the villainy. Often the Doctor arrives where nothing untoward is happening but upon his arrival events are initiated. One could reason this casts the Doctor in the role of villain as well as hero.
Of all the Docor's incarnations, it is the sixth who demonstrates the conflict of the two natures most openly. A near bipolar personality is displayed in The Twin Dilemma when the Doctor nearly strangles Peri, only to be driven off by the reflection of his fuirous-mad expression in the mirror Peri produces, and then the Doctor despondently opts to become a hermit on the desolate world of Titan Three. Later he shows genuine sorrow at the death of Azmael. In The Two Doctors, the Doctor is seen relaxing, fishing on the bank of a river, reflecting on the joys of angling. But later, this very same Doctor is complicit in Shockeye's demise and has the nerve to joke about it. This Doctor was brash, arrogant and violent. His personality hearkened back to the earliest glimpses of the first Doctor but taken to the extreme.
It was during the Trial of a Time Lord when the evil side of the Doctor was truly revealed in the person of the Valeyard. This accuser of the Doctor is in actuality a possible future incarnation of the Doctor who is an amalgram of the darkest parts of the Doctor-- a true Mr. Hyde-- The Doctor's Ultimate Foe.
1. John Tulloch and Mauel Alvaredo, Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text St. Martin's Press, 1983, pp.141, 76, 78
2. Abraham Rothberg, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (the introduction), Bantam Books, 1967, pp.xiv-xv
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