Relating to Difference: Aliens and Alienness in Doctor Who and International Relations

Abstract

In this paper, selected episodes of the 2005 series of the BBC science fiction television show Doctor Who are used to discuss self/other identity formulations, in terms of how "we" relate to those considered different. I shall examine how Doctor Who represents threats and dangers and relate this to how we can use such understandings to learn, discuss, and critique conventional understandings of security in International Relations (IR). Popular culture texts such as Doctor Who provide examples of how difference is often conceptualized as a threat to be eliminated. At the same time, Doctor Who also gives space to question and critique these understandings of "others" as threats, especially in its illustrations of the location of threats, its shifting perspective, and its centralization of a nonhuman as its protagonist. As such, Doctor Who points toward theorizing world politics in which the self = good/others = threats dichotomy can be questioned and opens up new ways of engaging with those considered different.

Rethinking the Political / -Science- / Fiction Nexus: Global Policy Making and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots

“… 13 Dixit 2012. Indeed, science fiction is often at its best when it both reflects and critiques socio-political reality. …”

Teaching international relations with film and literature: using non-traditional texts in the classroom

“…Although works from any number of literary genres might profitably appear in the IR classroom, in this section we narrow our focus to science fiction in order to present a more cohesive set of recommendations and suggested texts. This choice also reflects what seems to be a growing cottage industry of IR scholars drawing upon the sometimes overlapping genres of science fiction and fantasy in both their research and their teaching (Weldes 2003;Nexon and Neumann 2006;Ruane and James 2008;Dixit 2012). The notion that science fiction might provide insight into the study of political life is not as far-fetched as it initially sounds.…”

Fifty Years of Science Fiction Television

“…Just as in the case of Star Trek, the popularity of DW certainly has some degree of influence on the attitudes of its fans (Jenkins & Tulloch, 2005). Dixit (2012) notes that DW, with its nonhuman protagonist, challenges the notion of ethnocentricity by frequently featuring stories in which "outsiders" are not necessarily a threat. From a more direct psychological perspective, Charles (2011) describes a number of cases in which the DW series features the Freudian concept of the uncanny, in which familiar but potentially dangerous things are kept out of the conscious mind.…”