The Men from the Ministry
To suggest that Pertwee's Doctor was analogous to Chaucer's Wife of Bath might at first seem strange, not to say a little perverted. Nonetheless, in their attitude to authority, they have a lot in common. The Wife argues that experience is better than blindly obeying the precepts of written/spiritual authority, but at the same time she'll quote authority if there's any likelihood of it justifying, however obliquely, her sexual escapades. For the Doctor, reliance on Earth's figures of authority during his exile was a necessary evil, but like the Wife, he too could use it when it suited him :
It was more convenient, of course, for the Doctor to rage at those bureaucrats who blocked his freedom, although it was still a pointless exercise. As much as anything, it was a verbal trial of strength, and an opportunity for the production team to indicate that the Doctor retained his disestablishmentarianistic tendencies. This is apparent from Terror of the Autons, because there is no other reason for the argument. Brownrose has simply come to UNIT to point out a series of deaths that eventually turns out to be linked to the Autons. There is no question of him challenging the Doctor's free hand at UNIT. Brownrose from the Ministry is simply an Aunt Sally for the Doctor to knock down. Pertwee was inheriting from his predecessor a noble tradition of cutting through red tape. For Troughton, this had largely been on the Earth of the future, but when the Tardis and its occupant were exiled to the twentieth century, it was at the right time for the expression of concerns at the power of anonymous civil servants. In the first flush of British demands for a Bill of Rights, the civil service had become the symbol of hidden excesses of power, uncontrolled and unanswerable to Ministers. In Doctor Who, the most interesting example of this was to be Chinn, the head of a Ministry of Defence investigation of UNIT's British activities. Chinn is the typical buffoon we expect of a senior civil servant, his incompetence matched only by his obsession with detail :
What the Doctor fails to do, however, is to distinguish between the politicians and the bureaucrats. Brownrose and Chinn are two of the three administrators that he encounters. The rest that he rages at are the political masters. Chinn again provides the most interesting example since he is the only one whoe Minister we meet. This particular Minister, however, is an astonishingly conniving figure, and as such redresses the image of civil servants out of control. After the resignation of Sir Thomas Dugdale, Minister of Agriculture, over the Crichel Down affair (when civil servants acted beyond their powers without their Minister's permission), this wholly underhand Minister is a joy. He uses Chinn as a fall guy to arrange the British control of Axonite without dirtying his own name with the ploys to prevent other nations finding out about this wonder food developer. As a consequence, he has Chinn's resignation ready should the man fail, as well as warning him with the occasional display of wit : "After all, you are our man on the spot, Chinn. In more ways than one." The Brigadier's attitude as head of the British section of UNIT is to urge caution when the Doctor launches into one of his frequent tirades. Although he himself is not averse to challenging those in authority (as in The Invasion), he is also aware that UNIT's autonomy from the host nation's government is limited. The Brigadier is curtly reminded of that fact by the Minister of Ecology :
The Brigadier was well aware of the delicacy of the situation, particularly because as a politician and not a bureaucrat, the Minister was motivated by the political value of Global Chemicals' research into alternative energy sources. The difficulties of being subject to the vagaries of the government of the day were also indicated in The Claws of Axos by the ease with which Chinn could get the regular army to lock up the UNIT men. Ministerial motivations have varied from story to story, from political needs - as in Sir James Quinlan in The Ambassadors of Death - to the moral concerns underlying Charles Grover's behaviour in Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Quinlan was misled into believing that the Martian ambassadors were carrying a contagious form of radiation (Pertwee-science strikes again!), while Grover had been seduced by the simplicity of a mystical 'golden age' that has obsessed both pastoral playwrights and the early nineteenth century socialists like Fourier. In both cases, the Doctor was a good deal less aggressive towards them. The most balanced portrayal in the era - bearing in mind the liberal ethics underlying Letts and Dicks' work - is that of Edward Masters in The Silurians. As Permanent Under-Secretary (we may assume at the Department of Energy), Masters is an extremely senior civil servant. Unlike Chinn, he embodies the classic Weberian view of the anonymous and impartial servant obedient to his Minister. His impartiality is indicated by his refusal to be swayed by the arguments of his old friend Doctor Lawrence until he has heard the full facts, whilst his loyalty to the political authorities is indicated when he replies to the Doctor's demands for action :
As for anonymity - important for preventing decisions from becoming too personalised and arbitrary - Masters indicates it by not going for the high profile actions that Chinn would indulge in. Asked to flood the caves with troops, he refuses until he has seen a report from the Brigadier who's actually been down there. Yet in seeking to be the model servant of the Crown, he doesn't forget personal loyalties :
Masters is the product of a Malcolm Hulke script determined to make clear that no one is black or white. He is the consumate and intelligent professional. By contrast, Hulke's next creation was an amateur, a politican called Walker, sent down to deal with the sinking of ships in The Sea Devils. As a Parliamentary Private Secretary, he is the lowest of the low within his government, and clearly too old now to expect that he will ever become a minister. Walker arrives one morning underlining the contrast with the bureaucrat Masters in a very obvious way. Whereas Masters travelled through the night to reach Wenley Moor and asked only for a cup of coffee as he set to work, Walker immediately demanded breakfast ("Nothing very elaborate, my dear. Just eggs, bacon, toast, coffee. Oh, and a little rough-cut marmalade if they've got it") and acted as if he were on a tour of inspection. Not surprisingly, Walker is an instant source of irritation to the Doctor, whilst his obsession with food is continually emphasised by the close-ups of his mouth and by the dialogue - "Well this is war, my dear, and war calls for sacrifice. Any chance of any more toast?" The Doctor is shrewd enough to play on Walker's ego in order to win his way ("Wouldn't you like to be the man behind a peaceful settlement? Walker the peacemaker, they'd call you"). Indeed, the Doctor's usual righteous invective has a field day when faced by the obfuscating Walker :
It isn't difficult to fathom why the Doctor developed such a hostile attitude without any good reason towards Brownrose because it reflects the dichotomous position that he finds himself in. On the one hand, he is used to the challenge of a verbal joust as he convinces those doubters around him that he is right, but on the other hand, as scientific adviser to UNIT, he is as much a part of the establishment as any of the men from the ministries. Aware of this fact, his raging vocal fury against these symbols of the system remained his only defence. The Doctor was trapped in the system whether he liked it or not :
The Doctor's duty, of course, would continue to be to the universe. |