Is the Doctor a Vampire

This may not be quite as odd as it sounds. Russell T. Davie’s relaunch of the Doctor, with David Tennant, has just completed on television, with the third episode released over the weekend. I have also been enjoying the revisioning of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire over the last few weeks. So, I guess both experiences have got themselves a little confused in my mind.

I love the Dr Who series (all of them, without preference) and over the last however many months that I was at Swansea I watched the whole of the new cycle through on catch up, one a night for however long it took. It was great to see how the various themes and motifs played out over time. Having recently watched the last episode of the latest series, live as it were, then Dr Who is certainly a firm fixture in my head.

Likewise with vampires. As part of my work on myth I am reading what I can of histories (mostly popular and polularist) of vampire literature, films, and other forms. In the first version I ever gave of my thinking on myth, a series of lectures to first year students on the Introduction to Religion module at Birmingham University, one of the lectures was on the ‘natural history of the vampire’ and that model has stayed with me and should have a place in book that I am currently writing.

What this section would consist of, effectively, is a brief (and unscholarly) outline of the development of popular narratives on vampires from the mid-eighteenth century to the current day. This begins with the vampire as a local person who has died in unusual, often violent, circumstances, a person who is known to the victims and whose existence only really lasts a matter of months till the corpse is dug up, mutilated or burnt.

The story then transforms, through romanticism, into the aristocratic loner and immortal figure seen in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, followed by many copies, especially in sensational theatre productions and the early films. In the mid-twentieth century the vampire moves from its lonely, isolated existence with the growth of communities, or even whole societies of vampires, and what might be described as ‘vampire culture’. Ann Rice, and the first film of the Interview is important here.

Finally, towards the end of the century, the vampire gets a makeover, often becoming vegetarian, but essentially emerging as the love interest and the romantic hero. Of course, the ‘history’ is far more complex than this, and others have set this out in much more detail, and with much more sophistication. It is not the details of the history itself that concerns me, however, rather the way in which a narrative theme can transform over time, driven both by social circumstances and by the natural selection of what appeals to the popular imagination at each transformation of the subject.

The other interest of the vampire narrative is the way in which key themes or motifs remain central and keep recurring despite the transformation of the plot. There is a code associated with vampires, their habits and the factors that help to control them. These do change over time, and it appears, across space, but the fact of a code is one of the constants that drives the narrative itself. It is the knowledge about the habits of the vampire, and knowledge of how to destroy a vampire, that is often central to the plot.

A final question, however, comes with the definition of a vampire. What distinguishes vampires from other forms of horror? The vampire is essentially a dead human person. That rules out some other forms of monsters, or transformations of live humans, such as werewolves etc. The vampire is physical, the body of the vampire is the body of the dead human, and so clearly not a ghost or a spirit. The vampire also retains something of the personality and intellect of the human person, so distinguishing it from zombies and other related creatures. Finally, the vampire preys on living humans, most commonly by drinking blood, but sometimes by sucking out their soul, and slowly draining them of life. This allows a sub-set of vampire narratives in which a living person acts in a vampiric way, preying on another living person and draining them of their life, reducing them to a shadow of their former self.

It is at this point, I would suggest, that we come back to Dr Who. We could talk about the loner, aristocratic element of the Doctor, something that relates directly to the classic narrative of the vampire (as does the dress sense in many cases). The Doctor is also, like the vampire, eternal and becomes the Doctor through transformation following death. There are already hints, therefore, that make an association of the two somewhat plausible. Many episodes, or story lines, also work on the principle of life, or energy, that is sapped and misappropriated, usually by the villain, in a very vampiric fashion.

However, there is also a constant sub-narrative in the Dr Who series, which sees the enemies of the Doctor accusing him of being a destructive force for evil in the universe, leading to the deaths and destruction of many lives and many civilisations. This is often taken very personally by the Doctor, leading him/her to challenge their very identity and purpose in the world.

One element of this, less often stated, but highlighted specifically in the most recent episode, is the relationship between the Doctor and their companions (an essential part of the Dr Who narrative as any code is for vampire narratives). In this relationship the Doctor gains vitality almost at the expense of the companion. This is not often seen within specific episodes, or even over complete series, but the very fact that the companion is ultimately disposable, being left at the end of each manifestation of the Doctor (and often returning having an ambiguous relationship with newer versions of the Doctor), can be seen as the Doctor using up the life force, the enthusiasm, even the life of the companions in an essentially vampiric relationship.

Perhaps that is pushing things a little too far. The Doctor for me will always be an ambiguous being, that is part of the joy of the series, and something that is well understood by the writers, but would I go as far as to see the Doctor as a ‘vampire’ in absolute terms? Perhaps not. It is just as a rather interesting exercise in narrative topology, and I like the idea of playing with the possibilities. That, and asking what the hell was really going on in that dream?