The Savages

Dear Gary—

“You are known to us as the Traveler From Beyond Time.” The Doctor’s reputation is beginning to precede him.

The Doctor takes this to heart: “I can’t just sit here in all these grand clothes without asking a few questions. After all, there’s my reputation to think of.”

And in The Savages there are a few questions to be asked by our travelers from beyond time. The Elders of the planet seem to have created paradise. Through one simple discovery, they claim, their people now have “greater energy; greater intellect; and greater talent.” The Doctor has come across this before—the seeming perfect society that in reality has its dark underbelly.

“Well, if I accept your gifts,” he tells the Elders, “I must endorse your life.” Therefore, he must first dig deeper into this idyllic civilization.

However, it is Dodo who is the first to stumble into the secret lab and to learn the ugly truth. The Elders have discovered a means to drain the life force from an individual and transfer it to themselves. While the Elders and their people live at ease in their enclosed and guarded city, the Savages on the outside are hunted down and captured, their life force sapped, and then dumped back into the wild stunned and drained.

The Doctor cannot let this go. He is going to stop them, “just in the same way that I oppose the Daleks or any other menace to common humanity.”

Now Gary, I have to pause here to again mention the evolution of the Doctor from the mere vagabond adventurer of early Doctor Who stories to this newly roused Doctor for justice. It has been a long journey for the Doctor, and I think it no coincidence that he mentions the Daleks when citing his resolve. We don’t know what life was like in the TARDIS with just the Doctor and Susan, but we have seen the progression since the arrival of Barbara and Ian and all subsequent companions and escapades. And we have seen the impact the Daleks have made upon the psyche of the Doctor. The Doctor of The Savages would not have been willing to leave the Thals to their own fate back on Skaro only to later take advantage of them when he needed their help to recover his fluid link. But the Doctor back then had never before run across the Daleks, and he did not yet have the subtle influence of Barbara and Ian working on him through all time and space.

The Doctor of The Savages has truly come a long way. He now has the Daleks as relentless enemies, and just as the Daleks had tracked him down through The Chase, our Elders in The Savages have also kept track of him, charting his journeys on their star charts. Unlike the Daleks, however, the Elders have nothing but admiration for the Doctor.

The Elders have a rude awakening. “The sacrifice of even one soul is far too great,” the Doctor states when he learns the truth behind the Elders’ Eden. “I don’t intend to leave these people in this oppressed state.”

The Elders have their own ideas and subject the Doctor to the energy transfer process. Little do they know that when the Elder Jano takes on the Doctor’s energy, he not only receives the Doctor’s intelligence but his personality as well. Jano can no longer countenance the treatment of the Savages. “Jano is now saddled with the sense of right and wrong which makes him an explosive element in a civilization such as his.”

The Savages, in the meantime, have had a little help from Steven and Dodo. Another aside, here, Gary, on Steven and Dodo. The Doctor has now had several companion pairings throughout this early going of Doctor Who, each providing a unique influence on the Doctor. The Doctor says of this pair: “They’re both very pleasant . . . apart from their juvenile exuberance.” Barbara and Ian had been more on a par with the Doctor. Both mature and intelligent, they had a mutual respect and understanding with the Doctor and developed a true and deep friendship. Susan and Vicki were both young teens under the protection and guidance of the Doctor. Steven and Dodo are somewhere in between, and I believe that the Doctor is enjoying this “juvenile exuberance” that has entered the TARDIS.

Unfortunately, this is the end of the road for Steven. With the Savages rising up against the Elders, and Jano undermining them from within, Steven remains behind to act as a mediator to sort out some kind of new civilization where the two sides can live together in peace.

Another sad goodbye. Yet these goodbyes are getting easier. The first two partings were the hardest. The loss of Susan followed by the loss of Barbara and Ian left an indelible mark on the Doctor. While these latest departures are sad, they are not quite as meaningful as when he lost his granddaughter and then his two good friends. It helps that Steven and he part on a good footing. When Steven and the Doctor quarreled at the end of The Massacre and Steven had stormed off, the Doctor was deeply affected, not to mention he was left completely alone. But now, at the end of The Savages, the Doctor is leaving Steven behind to do good work, and he still has the exuberant Dodo by his side.

Still, goodbyes are never easy, and so Gary . . .