“Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches, and practices the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster . . . the science of the age, in short, is physical, chemical, physiological; in all shapes mechanical.”
—Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times (1829)
Doctor Who writers often tell tales featuring futuristic machines. Sometimes, there are stories of entire societies based around a weird machine technology, such as Daleks and Cybermen. Back on planet Earth, it’s more than three million years since the start of the Stone Age. But only three hundred years or so since the start of this machine age, and the invention of the first truly modern machine: the steam engine. Also known as the philosophical engine, as it was based on Isaac Newton’s system of the world, the steam engine reshaped the planet. Through the force of fire, the engine allowed our first uncertain steps into a machine future. Machines drove locomotives along their metal tracks, and propelled steamships across the Atlantic. Machines enabled the building of better bridges and roads, triggered the telegraphs that ticked intelligence from station to station, and lit up the iron foundries and coal mines, which powered the first industrial revolution.
As all the machinery began to mesh, and science advanced upon all aspects of life, progress and technology seemed inseparable. For every factual gadget, science fiction like Doctor Who spawned a thousand visions. Early optimism about the machine evaporated as the mood of the ages changed. Long before Doctor Who dawned, sci-fi was already divided into designs of light and shade, as writers began to come to terms with the double-edged sword of technology and change. And, as the Doctor has discovered, the creation of a new technology can spell danger and trouble. Such a sci-fi tradition goes as far back as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where a strange fruit of science arose from the scarred landscapes and dark satanic mills of industrial England. Meanwhile, in the United States, Henry Adams summed up one of the main lessons of the American Civil War (the first modern industrial war) when he said, “I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.”
Shelley’s book was an early warning about the primal urges of power and control in all creations of technology. Frankenstein became a potent metaphor for the powerlessness of the inventor. As with the sci-fi to come, Shelley’s field of interest was the conflict between the human and the nonhuman. It is unsurprising that she was part of the Romantic movement in literature. Most fiction since the Renaissance has been unconcerned with the cosmos revealed by science. Poetry had little to do with the laws of physics, was the mantra. But for the Romantics, and for Doctor Who, the dialogue between the human and the nonhuman is the main concern. Way back in 1798 in his Lyrical Ballads, English Romantic poet William Wordsworth had written about his interest in science, which hints at the sci-fi of the future. “If the labors of men of science should ever create any material revolution . . . in our condition . . . the poet will sleep then no more than at present, but he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself.”
These lines could have been spoken by the Doctor herself. Trying to best express, “the taste, the feel, the human meaning of scientific discoveries,” as Wordsworth put it, is exactly how Doctor Who works. Doctor Who has given us more than half a century of a mode of thinking that reduces the gap between the new worlds uncovered by science, and the fantastic strange worlds of the imagination. It’s a tradition that has been with us since the very start of the machine age. When Doctor Who presents the likes of Daleks and Cybermen, it poses questions such as: How do we create devices without sacrificing some of what it means to be human? When do humans and machines achieve a symbiosis so that they become a new form of life? Is technology neutral, or can some machines truly be described as evil?
We are still wary of machines and machine intelligence, perhaps for good reason. And one of the main reasons for our machine skepticism is because of the way they are portrayed in science fiction like Doctor Who. The gadgets we see fluttering across the TV screen are rarely designed to tuck us safely into our beds at night. Or, if a rare benevolent machine is seen, it’s usually the preserve of the rich and powerful. Instead, a legion of Cybermen, Daleks, and droids advance across our darkest imaginings. The Cybermen seem hell-bent on disemboweling humans and using their entrails as a hat, if Cybermen actually wore hats, of course. So, when we jack into the many virtual worlds depicted in Doctor Who, we meet psychotic machines like Daleks, single-minded about mechanical mayhem, and determined to take over the Whoniverse.
One of sci-fi’s most famous machine inventions is the robot. A mad inventor like Davros or John Lumic manufactures a machine, Dalek or humanoid automatons, only to see them rise up against their masters and deliver the clearest of messages: the creation of new technology has a dark side for everyone. Doctor Who sees light in the machine, as well as shade. The past fifty years or so are littered with creative attempts to imagine a future in which machines are our friends, utopian dreams of gleaming metal spires housing legions of labor-saving droids, toiling industrially to serve our every whim. We find gadgets galore in Doctor Who. Perhaps the greatest labor-saving device is the Sonic Screwdriver. It’s the Whoniverse version of a humble grip-exhausting tool found in every toolbox. And there are droves of other devices designed to shave time and help cut your workload.
Yet it is the dark side of the machine, the Cybermen and the Daleks, that wins out in fictional tech tales of the Doctor. Perhaps we have become too mistrustful of the machine, too reliant. In this world where we depend on them for communication, transport, medicine, and almost every other walk of life, maybe we realize how much we would miss that reliance.
Then there’s that other ubiquitous machine in the Whoniverse—the spaceship. No other machine in sci-fi history has been as enthusiastically embraced as the spaceship. Perhaps more than any other device, the spaceship reminds us that humans are, at heart, inventors and explorers. And what greater spaceship invention than the TARDIS, a craft for time, as well as space.
Within this Machine section, you will find examples of some of the ideas, principles, technologies, and machines that have appeared in Doctor Who over the years. Mashed up with “big picture” concepts such as spaceships and robots, and machine-state dystopias, you’ll find the world of entertainment represented by cyberspace and virtual reality. All these and more have contributed to Doctor Who’s influence on our contemporary culture. From the way we almost instantly communicate with the world, to the prospect of living a life without having to talk to anyone at all, Doctor Who has been busy influencing science and culture and, as you shall see, a future in which the machine abides, if not masters.