"Aliens."

The Doctor: Where’d you want to start?
Rose: Um. The inside’s bigger than the outside?
The Doctor: Yes.
Rose: It’s alien.
The Doctor: Yeah.
Rose: Are you alien?
The Doctor: Yes. Is that all right?
Rose: Yeah.

Rose, Doctor Who

I was recently killing some time browsing at the Indigo outlet at Broadway and Granville while waiting to meet my friend Chris at the Storm Crow, and idly picked up a Doctor Who novel.  Although I generally don't buy novelizations and adaptations, in this case, I was literally just looking (which can lead to some interesting discoveries).

 

The cover blurb for this 13th Doctor adventure read as follows:

"A ruthless alien threat."  Sigh...

As fond as I am of Doctor Who, I feel that the show has one problem: it always has to be aliens.  Mayor of Cardiff pushing for a nuclear power station?  Turns out to be a Slitheen who wants to use it to power the Cardiff Rift to create a passage home, destroying Earth in the process.  Random visit to the city of Pompeii just before the eruption that destroys the city? It's being caused by alien Pyroviles trying to make a new home for themselves after the destruction of their planet. Superhero origin story?  Accidentally swallows alien technology.  Time travel to 1938 New York - turns out the Statue of Liberty is a giant alien Weeping Angel.

At some point this can become absurd.  Local supermarket runs out of milk?  Plot by bovinate aliens to rescue cows from servitude and slavery.*  Piece of gum stuck to the Doctor's shoe?  Alien hitch-hiker attempting to take over the TARDIS.

To be fair, there have been a few episodes, such as Season 11's Arachnids in the UK, that have relied on human malfeasance rather than alien malice, but by and large, yep, it's aliens.

It may be surprising, but I'd actually like to see more stories without the alien factor.  The Rosa episode really didn't require a time-travelling conservative trying to stop Rosa Parks, it could have just dealt with being witnesses to history who become participants in order to ensure that events transpire as they are meant to.  Similarly, The Demons of the Punjab doesn't need any demons, the tragedy of families in conflict was all the story they needed.

So, in the unlikely event that anyone at the BBC is reading this, hey, maybe it would be interesting to invest some time in looking at all the reasons that the Doctor decided to spend so much time on this ridiculous little planet on the edge of nowhere - with only the one alien involved.

- Sid

* The part about servitude and slavery is a Jean-Luc Picard quote, which really has no place in a Doctor Who posting - although there was an eight-issue Star Trek-Doctor Who crossover comic book miniseries published in 2012 by IDW.