The Evils of Technology
posted February 14th 2024
I recently wrote an essay elsewhere about classic SF and the effect technological dependence has on dystopias. Though the spooky house of Order of Simplicity is nowhere near the post-apocalyptic dystopia of Blade Runner, technology as a force for evil is a theme that Doctor Who has used over and over again in various different ways, from the Daleks to Gridlock to Mr Smith.
Order of Simplicity is the second in the anthology Forty Five, and is loosely connected to the final story The Word Lord by that number. Simplicity is a relatively simple tale which asks whether technology is improving or ruining our lives by stopping the threat of a technological virus designed to revert everyone to an IQ of forty-five, while The Word Lord brings us to a secret military Antarctic base, overrun by a so-called 'Word Lord' from another dimension who is trying to kill the Doctor.
Thematically, the two have very little in common, but as I was researching for this other essay, I read a piece by Christopher Sims about technology in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I bring this up, because Sims defines tehcnology as 'the adaptation of available material or knowledge into an instrument or process that provides humans with an advantage over their environment. Technology can imply abstract structures such as language and mathematics.'[1] His inclusion of language in this definition is interesting to me as I certainly would not have immediately jumped to language as an example of technology. Ursula Le Guin has a similarly pointed comment about what we define as technology, saying:
We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all. As if linen were the same thing as flax — as if paper, ink, wheels, knives, clocks, chairs, aspirin pills, were natural objects, born with us like our teeth and fingers — as if steel saucepans with copper bottoms and fleece vests spun from recycled glass grew on trees, and we just picked them when they were ripe.[2]
It is with this in mind that I would like to think about Order of Simplicity. As discussed, the villain of the piece intends to destroy all intelligence and technology in the universe, as she percieves these things to be to root of all evil and that for humanity to stop being immoral and ruining the universe around them, they have to be regressed to 'apes'. Humanity's negative impact on the universe is in no way an unfamiliar topic to Doctor Who, but what I found interesting here was the complete dichotomy 'technology and intellect' and 'nature and simplicity'. Of course, there is only so much space for nuance when writing a thirty minute episode, and the clear message of this episode is that science is a force for good, but it still got me thinking about the way people are constantly pitting 'science' and 'nature' as opposites.
This episode was written in 2008 but is still just as relevant today in 2024 in the age of 'girl dinner' and other ways Tik-Tokkers [3] reinvent ways to keep the patriarchy in force. This episode is in complete ideological opposition to those ideas of the 'natural' being best for humanity, but ultimately I think it is a little too quick to write off Nature as something primitive and unhelpful. It is clearly written in response to people who hail the 'natural' as the superior way of being, and certainly as we live in a world where people will accidentally poison themselves with so-called 'natural remedies, making us question if this is really a better way to live certainly can be a positive force. But by positioning the Natural as primitive, stupid apes, the story begins to seem patronising towards anything that is anti-science and perhaps could have been served better by not depicting the Natural as a cartoonish force against sense and rationality.
To pull all the pieces of my point together, in short, I feel that the ultimate way that the Doctor 'assures the future' by asserting that the scientific method is the best way to do things is a little reductive, especially when we consider that technology is not just 'the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources'[4] but also includes things such as language and matches. After all the virus is defeated in the end by fire, and by the 'low intellect' of the Things being unable to solve the puzzles. Despite what the episode is saying about the good of technology, which it certainly can be, by dismissing the 'simple', it is doing a disservice to the evolution of things we rely on everyday, such as the ability to communicate. The very fact of seeing technology as only a complex, mechanincal thing almost creates a hypocrisy if you consider the broader definition of technology, and on top of that the whole reason for this situation is because of a 'technological virus', which by definition is a blending of Nature and Science.
Technological viruses pop up all over the BF canon, from the Patient Zero[5] arc which gave us the virus in Simplicity to the Dogma Virus of the Gallifrey series. The Dogma Virus too is intended to 'revert' Time Lords back to a primitive state, either by turning them into a mindless creature when they regenerate, or by removing their ability to regenerate altogether. Like in Simplicity, the aim of the Free Time movement is to make a point about the negative effect people can have in the environment. However, by nature of length more than anything, Gallifrey has a chance to ask more questions about the reason behind feeling that the only way to prove a point is to remove intelligence, and if that really is a solution to issues at all. Though Simplicity gives us a relatively clear cut answer textually, that we need intelligence to improve things, as I have explored here, it is a little too simple to posit Science and Nature as exact opposites. This is more or less the conclusion Gallifrey comes to as well, ultimately saying that though the Dogma Virus being aimed at the tyranny of the Time Lords is not an unworthy goal, destroying the population of Gallifrey is not worth the message.
Finally, I would like to loop back around to ideas of language as technology and The Word Lord. Though this story almost certainly isn't intended to be a continuation of the ideas in Simplicity, if we look at the way the Word Lord uses language as a technology, then we find these two episodes in contradiction - Simplicity is telling us that technology is the solution to all our problems, while The Word Lord presents us with a villain whose technology is going to unravel our whole universe. Each story individually gives us a different idea about how people can affect the world through technology, but when the anthology is considered as a whole, it seems that the nuance of the situation can be seen. After all, Nature and Science are not a contradiction of terms, and we need both to truly thrive.
Additional Note
I don't really have a real place for this in the essay because it's pretty much irrelevant to what I'm talking about, but I would also like to take a moment to recognise Casualties of War because I really enjoyed that story. Anything that concerns Ace and her family is pretty much guaranteed to wreck me and this was no exception. I thought it was a very compelling and touching half-hour and honestly, I'd rank it as my favourite one of the anthology. But it is often not one's favourite stories that provoke the strongest reaction :P