Unwilling Adventurer

Favourite One era quotes/speeches/dialogue

6. “You treat everybody and everything as something less important than yourself!?” Barbara.

 ”You’re trying to say that everything you do is reasonable and everything I do is inhuman. But I’m afraid your judgement’s at fault here, Miss Wright. Not mine.” The Doctor, An Unearthly Child.

After Ian stops the Doctor killing the caveman, we have Barbara questioning the Doctor’s morality. She says what the audience is probably thinking about how he considers his own safety above anyone, not just the ‘savages’ but Ian and Barbara too. But the Doctor has this wonderful response in which he stands up for himself and his own way of doing things. He clearly believes that what he is doing is the right thing for him and Susan. He doesn’t believe that every action he does can be judged by human standards of what is acceptable or wrong.

He is being rational, he doesn’t take into account Barbara’s ideals that we should help people no matter who they are, he sees it logically that the cavemen will capture them and they are in danger and he doesn’t want to be judged based on those terms. We find it interesting because the Doctor is principled but not by Earth standards but he has his own outlook and really he is thinking about himself and Susan when he acts in these seemingly disgraceful ways.