Doctor Who: Meglos (1980) vs Science and Religion
This is not a review of the entire production of Meglos, rather it’s just me spending too long complaining about the one aspect of the story that annoyed me the most on my recent viewing.
Science vs religion/superstition/magic is a topic that Doctor Who has returned to time and time again. Some serials use this as a theme running through the whole story (see The Daemons or The Masque of Mandragora) while in other places it’s used as little character moments (“I too used to believe in magic, but the Doctor has taught me about science. It is better to believe in science.” — Leela, The Horror Of Fang Rock). But big or small has the debate ever been staged as superficially as it is in Meglos?
Let’s set the parameters of the discussion. On one hand we have the science-based caste called the Savants. They speak about the Dodecahedron in physical terms. It has a width and a height. They estimate its mass and weight. They know it can produce energy (in some unmentioned form) though are unable to calculate how much.
On the other hand we have the religious-based Deons. They revere the Dodecahedron as a holy object. They believe in human sacrifice. They worship… well, the dialog isn’t quite clear what they worship. Sometimes the Dodecahedron is referred to as a god. Other times it is an object controlled by the god. Or gods. (The dialog switches between a singular god and plural gods.) At one point the phrase “Oh great gods of Ti” is used suggesting Ti refers to a home of the gods such as Mount Olympus. In the same line of dialog we get the phrase “Thanks be to Ti” alternatively suggesting Ti is the name of (one of) the god(s), which is at least consistent with the earlier plot-point (which goes nowhere) about the Doctor/Meglos needing to swear an oath to Ti. (The name of the planet is Tigella suggesting that “-gella” may be a suffix denoting their world as a creation or protectorate of “Ti”, which may also imply that their religion predates the arrival of the Dodecahedron.)
As much of a mess as the religion of Tigella is, their science isn’t terribly well-established either. The story doesn’t engage with science as science, it simply has the trappings of science; it’s character actors shouting numbers into microphones and then complaining about the religious folks. If we’re getting into a debate where you have each side portraying a fundamentally different approach to life, it would make more sense to show them doing actual science. There’s plenty of stuff that could be cut to make room for this (the unending chronic hysteretic scenes for instance). The story could have had the scientists form an actual theory about the failing Dodecahedron and then testing that theory to see if it holds up, i.e. the scientific method. Instead there’s just a lot of dialog about the lights going off.
It’s hard to imagine this group of scientists actually engaging with the Dodecahedron in scientific terms and yet their ancestors must surely have done so. Some inhabitants must have figured out that there was a form of power (electricity?) coming from this newly arrived object and how they could use that power to run machinery. But that presumed backstory just doesn’t come across. The current day scientists seem as inflexible as the religious types.
Going back to the origins of a Dodecahedron as a power source also begs the question of why a religion formed around it. Religions don’t just spring out of nothing. In our world, we didn’t have anyone in the 18th century worshiping the steam engine as a religious expression. There’s usually a charismatic religious leader involved. Or a new event that happens to fulfill an object or action prophesied in a pre-existing religious text. Or perhaps an unlikely coincidence at some point in the past which explains why on earth Lexa assumed a human sacrifice would possibly have any effect in the real world. None of this is even hinted at in the script. The religious people are religious just because the story insists that they are.
We the audience are presumably supposed to be on the side of the scientists in this debate. After all, this is a science fiction show. The Doctor has always been portrayed as a scientist. Script editor Christopher H. Bidmead is definitely a science guy who wanted this season’s stories to be more grounded in hardscience that previous seasons had. And yet the pro-science portion of the debate is massively undercut by the story itself where escaping from a time loop is done basically by engaging in a magical incantation which gets a gobbledygook, technobabble name.
Perhaps the most maddening thing about the debate over the Dodecahedron is how the story never resolves what actual function the Dodecahedron performs in their society. Although there’s a lot of breathless dialog about the city collapsing within two hours without the Dodecahedron running at full power, when that time limit passes, nothing terrible seems to happen. It’s hard to imagine what the actual threat is. The planet’s atmosphere is breathable. The temperature is moderate (despite a line about them needed to preserve the heat, the temperature inside isn’t portrayed as being much different that what’s outside). Is there some convoluted supply chain for their food that’s getting messed up? Whatever the issue is, when the story ends and the Dodecahedron is destroyed, nobody seems to particularly mind that it’s gone.
Nor is there a religious aspect that’s given much thought. What was the role of the Dodecahedron in their religious life? Was it forgiving their sins? Did it have healing powers like Lourdes? Did it provide a spiritual guide to the afterlife? Was it protecting the city from some evil gods? Killing Lexa removes the only voice of the religious side but again once the Dodecahedron is removed from their society there doesn’t seem to have been any great upheaval as one would imagine if, say, the Daleks kidnapped the Pope and left the Catholic church leaderless.
In all the scientific vs religious rebates we’ve seen in Doctor Who, one side is usually given short shrift. But perhaps Meglos is the most fair of these debates by giving short shrift to both sides. It’s a pity given how underrunning the four episodes are and how much padding had to be added in the script editing phase in order to even get them up to that short length that some of the extra scenes couldn’t have had some relevance to the actual theme at hand.
