History BrokenAesop / DoctorWho

* In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E7TheWheelInSpace The Wheel In Space]]'', Zoe confidently asserts that the ''Silver Carrier'' must have been deliberately piloted to the space station. The Doctor dismisses her argument with "Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority." As it turns out, the ship ''was'' deliberately piloted, and her reasoning was absolutely correct.

* The two-parters story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E5TheRebelFlesh The Rebel Flesh]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E6TheAlmostPeople The Almost People]]" is about a rebellion of clones who are sick of being treated as disposable vessels by miners to operate in dangerous circumstances. The Doctor even sides with them saying ClonesArePeopleToo and try his best to save them. At the end of the day, the Doctor reveals to his companions the reason of their visit to the factory: [[TomatoInTheMirror Amy has been replaced with a clone all along]]. The Doctor ''immediately '' and rather hypocritically [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman kills Amy's clone]] with his sonic screwdriver as if nothing in the last few hours ever happened. The problem is lessened a bit in that Amy's clone appeared to just be remotely controlled by the real Amy, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar which the next episode confirms]], but it's still a matter of how sure was the Doctor that it hadn't been gaining sentience like the others. He axed Amy's clone awfully quickly when he figured it would help Amy.

* In the ScriptWank at the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E4PlanetOfTheDaleks Planet of the Daleks]]", the Doctor delivers a heartfelt speech that the Thals must tell their people WarIsHell, and not to make it sound like their adventure was a 'fun game'. The story involves, amongst other things, them escaping fun, toyetic AlwaysChaoticEvil nasty pepperpot people by [[DressingAsTheEnemy dressing up in purple fur coats]] and MacGyvering a hot air balloon. The reason for this discrepancy is because the scene was appended to the end by Creator/TerranceDicks at the last minute because [[invoked]][[{{Padding}} the script was underrunning]].

* The two-parters story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E5TheRebelFlesh The Rebel Flesh]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E6TheAlmostPeople The Almost People]]" is about a rebellion of clones who are [[CloningBlues sick of being treated as disposable vessels]] by miners to operate in dangerous circumstances. The Doctor even sides with them saying ClonesArePeopleToo and try his best to save them. At the end of the day, the Doctor reveals to his companions the reason of their visit to the factory: [[TomatoInTheMirror Amy has been replaced with a clone all along]]. The Doctor ''immediately '' and rather hypocritically [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman kills Amy's clone]] with his sonic screwdriver as if nothing in the last few hours ever happened. The problem is lessened a bit in that Amy's clone appeared to just be remotely controlled by the real Amy, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar which the next episode confirms]], but it's still a matter of how sure was the Doctor that it hadn't been gaining sentience like the others. He axed Amy's clone awfully quickly when he figured it would help Amy.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E6TheArk The Ark]]" is about a slave race, the Monoids, who are mute and subservient to humans. After a plague occurs, the Monoids eventually rise up over the humans and enslave them instead. The (apparent) attempted moral is announced at the end of the story when the Doctor tells the humans and Monoids that they need to live in equality to survive, but thanks to WhatMeasureIsANonHuman writing (in which the Doctor doesn't care about the deaths of tens of Monoids but realises it's an emergency when a human dies) and the fact that the Monoids' defining character traits are being "savages" and [[IdiotBall making terrible tactical decisions for no reasons other than to allow the humans to win]], how the Monoids are returned to an underclass at the end, and how the story was made in 1966, it comes across more like a racist allegory for how extending civil rights will cause the oppressor to become oppressed by a race that can only run civilisation with incompetent savagery unless they are returned to HappinessInSlavery.

* In the ScriptWank at the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E4PlanetOfTheDaleks Planet of the Daleks]]", the Doctor delivers a heartfelt speech that the Thals must tell their people WarIsHell, and not to make it sound like their adventure was a 'fun game'. The story involves, amongst other things, them escaping fun, toyetic AlwaysChaoticEvil nasty pepperpot people by [[DressingAsTheEnemy dressing up in purple fur coats]] and MacGyvering a hot air balloon. The reason for this discrepancy is because the scene was appended to the end by Terrance Dicks at the last minute because [[invoked]][[{{Padding}} the script was underrunning]].

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhos28e7TheIdiotsLantern The Idiot's Lantern]]" has one of the most bizarre examples of a broken aesop in the entire revival. Mark Gatiss devotes the entire B-plot of the episode to the Connolly family, and it's about domestic abuse. It's incredibly uncomfortable to watch, but it's clearly meant to be and the audience trusts that it will lead someplace worthwhile. Sure enough, the entire B plot builds to an aseop about realizing when someone you used to love has become utterly toxic to you and knowing when it's time to just let go, cut ties with them and kick them out of your life - take back control. This is something that's always painful and always hard to do when it comes to abusive relationships in real life - especially when it involves your parents - but considering Mr. Connolly has been characterized for the entire episode as a creepy, controlling, disrespectful and quite frankly disgusting husband and father [[AbusiveParents who treats his loved ones like his property but only dares to do so behind closed doors]], it's definitely the right call for Tommy and his mother to make. Up until the last five minutes, when the episode suddenly decides that Tommy ''should'' try to keep his bastard dad in his life after all, for literally no reason other than Eddie being his father. Not only does this sabotage the moral of the episode, it's also terrible advice to give to someone who just got out of an abusive relationship. It sort of makes sense that Rose would give it - she got burned twice by her alternate universe parents in the previous story and she's clearly projecting her feelings about Pete onto Tommy here - but it's incredibly baffling coming from the Doctor.
* How the series handles the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler's codependent relationship. It's very apparent that the Doctor and Rose were just what each other needed in Series 1. The Doctor needed to cope with his depression and survivor's guilt so he could enjoy saving the world again, and Rose needed someone to come along and change her monotone outlook on life. But the problem with the idea of ‘needing someone’ is that that line of thought leads to really codependent places really fast, and that’s what eventually happens with the Doctor and Rose. In Series 2, the Doctor and Rose become increasingly lost in each other and their clever adventures, and increasingly detached from and uninterested in everyone around them, which numerous characters notice and become worried about. By the second half of the season, Rose comes to loathe her old life and builds so much of her new happiness around the Doctor that she can't live without him in her life. She even tries to ditch all of her friends and family in an alternate universe forever so she won't have to say goodbye to him. The denouement of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts Army Of Ghosts]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday Doomsday]]", in which the Doctor and Rose are forcibly separated and Rose in particular is absolutely devastated, appears to be a cautionary tale about why you shouldn’t make one person the centre of your world, because it will only lead to your heart being broken (hints of this were seeded back in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion School Reunion]]", when Rose realized that while the Doctor might be the centre of her world, he's lived far longer than her and she will never be the centre of his). But if that’s the case, then Rose’s return in Series 4 is positively baffling. In “[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth The Stolen Earth]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey’s End]]”, we learn Rose has not even tried to move on, she’s spent the last few years trying to think of ways to get back to the Doctor (remember that time moves faster in Pete’s world, so it’s been a good long while since “Doomsday”), and when the Daleks almost destroy the universe Rose leaps at the chance to jump universes so she can try to find the Doctor. She’s rewarded with a clone Doctor that can grow old for the rest of his life with her, and in a deleted scene she was going to receive a TARDIS so they can go travelling again. So that Rose can receive a happy ending, the lesson of her arc is changed from 'beware unhealthy, codependent relationships' to 'if you cling to someone hard enough, and never ever let go, eventually you’ll get everything you ever wanted and more'.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]]" is yet another and even worse example of the series trying to suggest that the Doctor's attitude to the Daleks is FantasticRacism while still depicting them as AlwaysChaoticEvil. The Doctor treats his clone as wrong for wiping out the Daleks ([[JokerImmunity they're back next series]]), saying it shows how violent and brutal he is. Yet the Daleks had just come very close to wiping out entire Universes and are fictions poster creature for ScaryDogmaticAliens. The Doctor had temporarily incapacitated them but considering how resourceful they are it was unlikely they would have remained like that for long. The moral makes even less sense considering that 10 in the same series had basically done the same thing to a race that wasn't as dangerous as the Daleks and in the process killed 20,000 innocent people, even if this was what history decreed. Meanwhile his clone was only wiping out the Daleks and ([[JokerImmunity possibly]]) their OmnicidalManiac Creator Davros, who refused a chance to be saved by the Doctor. Not only that but when the Doctor declined a chance to destroy the last Dalek in their previous appearance, claiming there has been too much death today, that Dalek had escaped and caused the problems of this episode. Not only that but that Dalek had been responsible for most of the deaths, killing the Dalek-Humans that numbered over a thousand because they were not Dalek enough. To be fair, the Doctor may just be using the clone Doctor's supposed 'genocide' of the Daleks as a convenient excuse to put the human Doctor onto Rose and prevent her from damaging the universe through the disk-hopping.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays The Parting of the Ways]]" has the Ninth Doctor decline from destroying Earth to destroy the Daleks, claiming that it's the morally better choice to not wipe out humanity with the Daleks. However the Daleks have just attacked Earth with such force they have distorted continents, meaning they have probably wiped out at least nearly all humanity and any survivors will soon be either killed, enslaved or turned into Daleks, which is clearly a FateWorseThanDeath, the Dalek Emperor even saying humanity will be harvested. The Doctor even points out that humanity won't be wiped out with Earth as they have spread to other worlds by now, "You're the only Daleks in existence. The whole universe is in danger if I let you live". But the Daleks surviving means they'll attack other worlds, giving humanity even less of a chance. It's only a literal DeusExMachina that saves possibly the Universe from the Daleks. Overall the Doctor's decision, considering he may well be the only non-Dalek in range of the delta wave and the Daleks are about to exterminate him anyway, looks quite odd. It is suggested that his actions are based on his overwhelming guilt at having to destroy the Time Lords in order to also destroy the Daleks, he's too broken and demoralised to essentially make the same decision once again with Earth, and that he's just looking for any thin shred of hope that will justify him not doing so.

** The episode draws a parallel between him and his companion Bill Potts, who are both in situations where they each must deal with and accept an unwanted, fundamental change to their lives. She's [[spoiler:been converted into a Cyberman against her will]], he's on the cusp of regeneration. Neither wants to live if they can't stay who they are. At the end of this episode, the frustrated Doctor gets a RayOfHopeEnding setting up a ChristmasEpisode in which he accepts regeneration and the LossOfIdentity it comes with at last. Too bad that in the meantime Bill [[spoiler:gets her original form restored with awesome new powers to boot when a barely foreshadowed DeusExMachina (Bill's former empowered girlfriend, Heather) steps in to make her AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence]]. [[Recap/DoctorWho2017CSTwiceUponATime "Twice Upon a Time"]] does end with the Doctor deciding that helping the universe is WorthLivingFor even if it means he has to lose his identity, but never addresses Bill's fate so the Aesop remains broken. In the episode's defence, the traditional rules of ''Who'' would not have been in Bill's favour had the Aesop '''not''' been broken since [[spoiler:she would have succumbed to the Cybermen's Hive Mind eventually and have to be killed]], and given that Bill is a rare TwoferTokenMinority (black and lesbian) among series regulars it would have looked '''really''' bad for the show. And a {{novelisation}} reveals that [[spoiler:Bill eventually chose to have her mortal body back, and lived to a ripe old age, eventually passing away]].

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls "The Doctor Falls"]], the Twelfth Doctor's penultimate episode, draws a parallel between him and his companion Bill Potts, who are both in situations where they each must deal with and accept an unwanted, fundamental change to their lives. She's been converted into a Cyberman against her will, he's on the cusp of regeneration. Neither wants to live if they can't stay who they are. At the end of this episode, the frustrated Doctor gets a RayOfHopeEnding setting up a ChristmasEpisode in which he accepts regeneration and the LossOfIdentity it comes with at last. Too bad that in the meantime Bill gets her original form restored with awesome new powers to boot when a barely foreshadowed Deus Ex Machina steps in to make her Ascend To A Higher Plane of Existence. [[Recap/DoctorWho2017CSTwiceUponATime "Twice Upon a Time"]] does end with the Doctor deciding that helping the universe is WorthLivingFor even if it means he has to lose his identity, but never addresses Bill's fate so the Aesop remains broken.

----** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E6TheArk The Ark]]" is about a slave race, the Monoids, who are mute and subservient to humans. After a plague occurs, the Monoids eventually rise up over the humans and enslave them instead. The (apparent) attempted moral is announced at the end of the story when the Doctor tells the humans and Monoids that they need to live in equality to survive, but thanks to WhatMeasureIsANonHuman writing (in which the Doctor doesn't care about the deaths of tens of Monoids but realises it's an emergency when a human dies) and the fact that the Monoids' defining character traits are being "savages" and [[IdiotBall making terrible tactical decisions for no reasons other than to allow the humans to win]], how the Monoids are returned to an underclass at the end, and how the story was made in 1966, it comes across more like a racist allegory for how extending civil rights will cause the oppressor to become oppressed by a race that can only run civilisation with incompetent savagery unless they are returned to HappinessInSlavery.
** In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E7TheWheelInSpace The Wheel In Space]]'', Zoe confidently asserts that the ''Silver Carrier'' must have been deliberately piloted to the space station. The Doctor dismisses her argument with "Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority." As it turns out, the ship ''was'' deliberately piloted, and her reasoning was absolutely correct.
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E1TheDominators The Dominators]]" has two:
*** The [[invoked]]WordOfGod aim was an allegory about how the hippie movement is bad because they would have got their arses kicked if they'd been in control when the Nazis had invaded. However, the oppressed, pacifistic Dulcians don't work as a hippie allegory, as they're characterised either as elderly politicians or as attractive young people who unthinkingly repeat the elders' lessons by rote until the Doctor and companions turn them against their racist, fascist oppressors, while the old Dulcians get slaughtered through trying to negotiate with AlwaysChaoticEvil aliens. The result is that it comes off as an allegory about how student activism is the future because the apathetic old politicians are only concerned with keeping superficial comfort and not with fixing big societal problems, and have engineered their own destruction.
*** The villains have an internal conflict, between Rago, who favours caution and condemns meaningless destruction, and Toba, a PsychoForHire who just loves destroying things. The problem is that everything Toba says is right - if he just had blown everyone up on sight (including the Doctor and Jamie) the Dominators would have succeeded in their plan. The result of this is that the story is simultaneously both far more left-wing and far more right-wing than intended.
** In the ScriptWank at the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E4PlanetOfTheDaleks Planet of the Daleks]]", the Doctor delivers a heartfelt speech that the Thals must tell their people WarIsHell, and not to make it sound like their adventure was a 'fun game'. The story involves, amongst other things, them escaping fun, toyetic AlwaysChaoticEvil nasty pepperpot people by [[DressingAsTheEnemy dressing up in purple fur coats]] and MacGyvering a hot air balloon. The reason for this discrepancy is because the scene was appended to the end by Terrance Dicks at the last minute because [[invoked]][[{{Padding}} the script was underrunning]].
** Some people - including Creator/TomBaker - have expressed discomfort that the moral of the show is about how violence is never as good as love and understanding, and yet most of the stories [[ViolenceReallyIsTheAnswer still end with the Doctor murdering the aliens]]. This was pointed out in New Who but led to more broken aesops (see below).
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E4TheFaceOfEvil The Face of Evil]]" is based on the premise that the Doctor's egotistical attempts to save a space mission AI (by simply imposing a print of his own brain over it instead of actually fixing the problem) led to the AI becoming an insane God who selectively breeds the settlers into opposing CargoCult factions that worship him, and creating a dystopic {{Egopolis}} based on the Doctor's image. It all seems like it's set up to criticise the Doctor's big ego and ChronicHeroSyndrome... but it ends with the AI, having realised who it is, asking the Doctor for an explanation as to where he went wrong, absolving the Doctor of all responsibility and even having 'God' ask him for tips on how to be better.
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E4TheSunMakers The Sun Makers]]" is supposed to be a right-wing allegory about how taxation is bad, written by an openly Conservative writer. However, ignoring a few throwaway flippant comments made by the Doctor, the story is really about the evil of taxation that targets the poorest in society, and societies that strip away social safety nets so the untaxed rich can rake in massive profits. The reason for this situation is privatisation, where every utility (including sunlight) is run by corporate interests and the government is viewed only as an extension of the MegaCorp. At the very least, it comes across as left-wing in an Occupy kind of way. If you choose to read into the fact that the Doctor wins by inspiring a populist revolt to execute their leaders while quoting Karl Marx, it becomes actively ''Communist''. Not what you'd expect from something written by a Margaret Thatcher supporter in 1977.
** The character of Whizzkid in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E4TheGreatestShowInTheGalaxy The Greatest Show in the Galaxy]]" was intended as a TakeThat to fans who criticised 80s Doctor Who by saying it wasn't as good as it used to be in a time they couldn't possibly remember. The problem here is that Whizzkid's similar opinions about the titular Psychic Circus are shown to be absolutely correct. Consequently, all Whizzkid does is vindicate the same fans the character was supposed to be chastising.
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek Dalek]]", while the Doctor is certainly being unpleasant in torturing the Lone Dalek, he is treated as wrong for wanting to kill the Dalek and treating it as absolutely evil. However when the Dalek gets free it kills hundreds of people and it is clear it intends to wipe out all humanity. It does gain human feelings but is clearly an exception and Rose's sympathy towards it is largely born from ignorance, while the Doctor knows first-hand how dangerous the Daleks are and is proved right.
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays The Parting of the Ways]]" has the Ninth Doctor decline from destroying Earth to destroy the Daleks, claiming that it's the morally better choice to not wipe out humanity with the Daleks. However the Daleks have just attacked Earth with such force they have distorted continents, meaning they have probably wiped out at least nearly all humanity and any survivors will soon be either killed, enslaved or turned into Daleks, which is clearly a FateWorseThanDeath, the Dalek Emperor even saying humanity will be harvested. The Doctor even points out that humanity won't be wiped out with Earth as they have spread to other worlds by now, "You're the only Daleks in existence. The whole universe is in danger if I let you live". But the Daleks surviving means they'll attack other worlds, giving humanity even less of a chance. It's only a literal DeusExMachina that saves possibly the Universe from the Daleks. Overall the Doctor's decision, considering he may well be the only non-Dalek in range of the delta wave and the Daleks are about to exterminate him anyway, looks quite odd. It is suggested that his actions are based on his overwhelming guilt at having to destroy the Time Lords in order to also destroy the Daleks, he's too broken and demoralised to essentially make the same decision once again with Earth, and that he's just looking for any thin shred of hope that will justify him not doing so.
** This seems to be a general problem with Dalek stories in New Who, as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E4DaleksInManhattan Daleks in Manhattan]]" / "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks Evolution of the Daleks]]" tries to be a story entirely themed around the evils of racism, while still blatantly depicting [[HeroicLineage humans and Time Lords being good]] and [[VillainousLineage Daleks being evil]] as overwhelmingly determined by their genes.
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhos28e7TheIdiotsLantern The Idiot's Lantern]]" has one of the most bizarre examples of a broken aesop in the entire revival. Mark Gatiss devotes the entire B-plot of the episode to the Connolly family, and it's about domestic abuse. It's incredibly uncomfortable to watch, but it's clearly meant to be and the audience trusts that it will lead someplace worthwhile. Sure enough, the entire B plot builds to an aseop about realizing when someone you used to love has become utterly toxic to you and knowing when it's time to just let go, cut ties with them and kick them out of your life - take back control. This is something that's always painful and always hard to do when it comes to abusive relationships in real life - especially when it involves your parents - but considering Mr. Connolly has been characterized for the entire episode as a creepy, controlling, disrespectful and quite frankly disgusting husband and father [[AbusiveParents who treats his loved ones like his property but only dares to do so behind closed doors]], it's definitely the right call for Tommy and his mother to make. Up until the last five minutes, when the episode suddenly decides that Tommy ''should'' try to keep his bastard dad in his life after all, for literally no reason other than Eddie being his father. Not only does this sabotage the moral of the episode, it's also terrible advice to give to someone who just got out of an abusive relationship. It sort of makes sense that Rose would give it - she got burned twice by her alternate universe parents in the previous story and she's clearly projecting her feelings about Pete onto Tommy here - but it's incredibly baffling coming from the Doctor.
** How the series handles the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler's codependent relationship. It's very apparent that the Doctor and Rose were just what each other needed in Series 1. The Doctor needed to cope with his depression and survivor's guilt so he could enjoy saving the world again, and Rose needed someone to come along and change her monotone outlook on life. But the problem with the idea of ‘needing someone’ is that that line of thought leads to really codependent places really fast, and that’s what eventually happens with the Doctor and Rose. In Series 2, the Doctor and Rose become increasingly lost in each other and their clever adventures, and increasingly detached from and uninterested in everyone around them, which numerous characters notice and become worried about. By the second half of the season, Rose comes to loathe her old life and builds so much of her new happiness around the Doctor that she can't live without him in her life. She even tries to ditch all of her friends and family in an alternate universe forever so she won't have to say goodbye to him. The denouement of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts Army Of Ghosts]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday Doomsday]]", in which the Doctor and Rose are forcibly separated and Rose in particular is absolutely devastated, appears to be a cautionary tale about why you shouldn’t make one person the centre of your world, because it will only lead to your heart being broken (hints of this were seeded back in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion School Reunion]]", when Rose realized that while the Doctor might be the centre of her world, he's lived far longer than her and she will never be the centre of his). But if that’s the case, then Rose’s return in Series 4 is positively baffling. In “[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth The Stolen Earth]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey’s End]]”, we learn Rose has not even tried to move on, she’s spent the last few years trying to think of ways to get back to the Doctor (remember that time moves faster in Pete’s world, so it’s been a good long while since “Doomsday”), and when the Daleks almost destroy the universe Rose leaps at the chance to jump universes so she can try to find the Doctor. She’s rewarded with a clone Doctor that can grow old for the rest of his life with her, and in a deleted scene she was going to receive a TARDIS so they can go travelling again. So that Rose can receive a happy ending, the lesson of her arc is changed from 'beware unhealthy, codependent relationships' to 'if you cling to someone hard enough, and never ever let go, eventually you’ll get everything you ever wanted and more'.
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E6TheDoctorsDaughter The Doctor's Daughter]]" is one of those anti-violence, anti-gun, and anti-murder stories. The problem is, it calls the Doctor "the man who never would". And while refraining from shooting the man who'd killed Jenny is admirable, the "never would" part is only true when applied to firing the gun-- violence and cold-blooded murder are things the audience already knows the Doctor is capable of, and will continue to be.
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]]" is yet another and even worse example of the series trying to suggest that the Doctor's attitude to the Daleks is FantasticRacism while still depicting them as AlwaysChaoticEvil. The Doctor treats his clone as wrong for wiping out the Daleks ([[JokerImmunity they're back next series]]), saying it shows how violent and brutal he is. Yet the Daleks had just come very close to wiping out entire Universes and are fictions poster creature for ScaryDogmaticAliens. The Doctor had temporarily incapacitated them but considering how resourceful they are it was unlikely they would have remained like that for long. The moral makes even less sense considering that 10 in the same series had basically done the same thing to a race that wasn't as dangerous as the Daleks and in the process killed 20,000 innocent people, even if this was what history decreed. Meanwhile his clone was only wiping out the Daleks and ([[JokerImmunity possibly]]) their OmnicidalManiac Creator Davros, who refused a chance to be saved by the Doctor. Not only that but when the Doctor declined a chance to destroy the last Dalek in their previous appearance, claiming there has been too much death today, that Dalek had escaped and caused the problems of this episode. Not only that but that Dalek had been responsible for most of the deaths, killing the Dalek-Humans that numbered over a thousand because they were not Dalek enough. To be fair, the Doctor may just be using the clone Doctor's supposed 'genocide' of the Daleks as a convenient excuse to put the human Doctor onto Rose and prevent her from damaging the universe through the disk-hopping.
** On a related note, the times the Doctor questions whether he should kill the villains or not contradicts itself. A MonsterOfTheWeek will be slaughtered without a second thought, regardless of motives but when it comes to recurring aliens like the Daleks or the Master, who have proven to be AlwaysChaoticEvil or unlikely to change no matter what, it is suddenly wrong to kill them.
** The Doctor talking about how wonderful and resourceful humanity is can be slightly undermined by the fact a lot of their achievements and survival are due to him and many other aliens, the Daemons, the Osirians and the Silence to name a few. It makes you wonder -- what about other races that don't have the benefit of the Doctor helping them out?
** The two-parters story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E5TheRebelFlesh The Rebel Flesh]] / [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E6TheAlmostPeople The Almost People]]" is about a rebellion of clones who are [[CloningBlues sick of being treated as disposable vessels]] by miners to operate in dangerous circumstances. The Doctor even sides with them saying ClonesArePeopleToo and try his best to save them. At the end of the day, the Doctor reveals to his companions the reason of their visit to the factory: [[TomatoInTheMirror Amy has been replaced with a clone all along]]. The Doctor ''immediately '' and rather hypocritically [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman kills Amy's clone]] with his sonic screwdriver as if nothing in the last few hours ever happened. The problem is lessened a bit in that Amy's clone appeared to just be remotely controlled by the real Amy, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar which the next episode confirms]], but it's still a matter of how sure was the Doctor that it hadn't been gaining sentience like the others. He axed Amy's clone awfully quickly when he figured it would help Amy.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls "The Doctor Falls"]], the Twelfth Doctor's penultimate episode, draws a parallel between him and his companion Bill Potts, who are both in situations where they each must deal with and accept an unwanted, fundamental change to their lives. She's been converted into a Cyberman against her will, he's on the cusp of regeneration. Neither wants to live if they can't stay who they are. At the end of this episode, the frustrated Doctor gets a RayOfHopeEnding setting up a ChristmasEpisode in which he accepts regeneration and the LossOfIdentity it comes with at last. Too bad that in the meantime Bill gets her original form restored with awesome new powers to boot when a barely foreshadowed Deus Ex Machina steps in to make her Ascend To A Higher Plane of Existence. [[Recap/DoctorWho2017CSTwiceUponATime "Twice Upon a Time"]] does end with the Doctor deciding that helping the universe is WorthLivingFor even if it means he has to lose his identity, but never addresses Bill's fate so the Aesop remains broken.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E4ArachnidsInTheUK "Arachnids in the UK"]]: The Doctor chastises [[CorruptCorporateExecutive corrupt businessman]] [[HateSink Jack Robertson]] for just wanting to shoot the mutated giant spiders, insisting they deserve a humane "natural" death. This argument falls down when the Doctor's "humane" solution turns out to be to lock them all in a small room and [[CruelAndUnusualDeath leave them to slowly starve to death]]. Most people were left thinking that the JerkassHasAPoint.

----
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E6TheArk The Ark]]" is about a slave race, the Monoids, who are mute and subservient to humans. After a plague occurs, the Monoids eventually rise up over the humans and enslave them instead. The (apparent) attempted moral is announced at the end of the episode when the Doctor tells the humans and Monoids that they need to live in equality to survive, but thanks to WhatMeasureIsANonHuman writing (in which the Doctor doesn't care about the deaths of tens of Monoids but realises it's an emergency when a human dies) and the fact that the Monoids' defining character traits are being "savages" and [[IdiotBall making terrible tactical decisions for no reasons other than to allow the humans to win]], how the Monoids are returned to an underclass at the end, and how the story was made in 1966, it comes across more like a racist allegory for how extending civil rights will cause the oppressor to become oppressed by a race that can only run civilisation with incompetent savagery unless they are returned to HappinessInSlavery. Elizabeth Sandifer of the TARDIS Eruditorum subscribes to this interpretation and believes the stupidity of the Monoids was intentional, rather than the SpecialEffectFailure it is generally imagined as.
* In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E7TheWheelInSpace "The Wheel in Space"]], Zoe confidently asserts that the ''Silver Carrier'' must have been deliberately piloted to the space station. The Doctor dismisses her argument with "Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority." As it turns out, the ship ''was'' deliberately piloted, and her reasoning was absolutely correct.
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E1TheDominators The Dominators]]" has two. The WordOfGod aim was an allegory about how the hippie movement is bad because they would have got their arses kicked if they'd been in control when the Nazis had invaded. However, the oppressed, pacifistic Dulcians don't work as a hippie allegory, as they're characterised either as elderly politicians or as attractive young people who unthinkingly repeat the elders' lessons by rote until the Doctor and companions turn them against their racist, fascist oppressors, while the old Dulcians get slaughtered through trying to negotiate with AlwaysChaoticEvil aliens. The result is that it comes off as an allegory about how student activism is the future because the apathetic old politicians are only concerned with keeping superficial comfort and not with fixing big societal problems, and have engineered their own destruction. The second is in the B-plot: The villains have an internal conflict, between Rago, who favours caution and condemns meaningless destruction, and Toba, a PsychoForHire who just loves destroying things. The problem is that everything Toba says is right — if he just had blown everyone up on sight (including the Doctor and Jamie) the Dominators would have succeeded in their plan. The result of this is that the story is simultaneously both far more left-wing and far more right-wing than intended.
* In the ScriptWank at the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E4PlanetOfTheDaleks Planet of the Daleks]]", the Doctor delivers a heartfelt speech that the Thals must tell their people WarIsHell, and not to make it sound like their adventure was a 'fun game'. The story involves, amongst other things, them escaping fun, toyetic AlwaysChaoticEvil nasty pepperpot people by [[DressingAsTheEnemy dressing up in purple fur coats]] and MacGyvering a hot air balloon. The reason for this discrepancy is because the scene was appended to the end by Terrance Dicks at the last minute because [[{{Padding}} the script was underrunning]].
** Some people — including Creator/TomBaker — have expressed discomfort that the moral of the show is about how violence is never as good as love and understanding, and yet most of the stories [[ViolenceReallyIsTheAnswer still end with the Doctor murdering the aliens]]. This was pointed out in New Who but led to more broken aesops (see below).
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E4TheFaceOfEvil The Face of Evil]]" is based on the premise that the Doctor's egotistical attempts to save a space mission AI (by simply imposing a print of his own brain over it instead of actually fixing the problem) led to the AI becoming an insane God who selectively breeds the settlers into opposing CargoCult factions that worship him, and creating a dystopic {{Egopolis}} based on the Doctor's image. It all seems like it's set up to criticise the Doctor's big ego and ChronicHeroSyndrome... but it ends with the AI, having realised who it is, asking the Doctor for an explanation as to where he went wrong, absolving the Doctor of all responsibility and even having 'God' ask him for tips on how to be better. Striking because the new series absolutely would ''never'' have missed the opportunity to criticise the Doctor's god complex.
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E4TheSunMakers The Sun Makers]]" is supposed to be a right-wing allegory about how taxation is bad, written by an openly Conservative writer. However, ignoring a few throwaway flippant comments made by the Doctor, the story is really about the evil of taxation that targets the poorest in society, and societies that strip away social safety nets so the untaxed rich can rake in massive profits. The reason for this situation is privatisation, where every utility (including sunlight) is run by corporate interests and the government is viewed only as an extension of the MegaCorp. At the very least, it comes across as left-wing in an Occupy kind of way. If you choose to read into the fact that the Doctor wins by inspiring a populist revolt to execute their leaders while quoting Karl Marx, it becomes actively ''Communist''. Not what you'd expect from something written by a Margaret Thatcher supporter in 1977.
* The character of Whizzkid in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS25E4TheGreatestShowInTheGalaxy The Greatest Show in the Galaxy]]" was intended as a TakeThat to fans who criticised 80s ''Doctor Who'' by saying it wasn't as good as it used to be in a time they couldn't possibly remember. The problem here is that Whizzkid's similar opinions about the titular Psychic Circus are shown to be absolutely correct. Consequently, all Whizzkid does is vindicate the same fans the character was supposed to be chastising.
* In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek Dalek]]", while the Doctor is certainly being unpleasant in torturing the Lone Dalek, he is treated as wrong for wanting to kill the Dalek and treating it as absolutely evil. However when the Dalek gets free it kills hundreds of people and it is clear it intends to wipe out all humanity. It does gain human feelings but is clearly an exception and Rose's sympathy towards it is largely born from ignorance, while the Doctor knows first-hand how dangerous the Daleks are and is proved right.
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays "The Parting of the Ways"]]: The Doctor is faced with using a weapon called a Delta Wave to destroy a Dalek fleet, which will destroy them, but also any humans still living on Earth, as he didn't have time to refine the transmission when he set it up. He declines to do so, on the grounds that it's the morally better choice to not wipe out humanity with the Daleks. However, the Daleks have bombarded Earth with such force that they deformed entire ''continents'', meaning they have probably wiped out all humans living on Earth, and any survivors will probably soon be killed, enslaved or converted into Daleks, a FateWorseThanDeath. The Doctor even points out that humanity will survive, as it's the far future and they've spread to other worlds by now, saying "You're the only Daleks in existence. The whole universe is in danger if I let you live." The only thing that saves the universe from them is a literal DeusExMachina. The Doctor's decision, given that he's probably the only non-Dalek in range of the transmitter, looks quite odd. ''However'', it's suggested that the Doctor's decision stems from his lingering guilt over how he resolved the Time War, by wiping out both the Daleks and the Time Lords. He's too broken and demoralized to make the same decision regarding Earth, and is looking for even the slightest shred of hope that will justify him not having to make that choice.
* How the series handles the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler's codependent relationship. It's very apparent that the Doctor and Rose were just what each other needed in Series 1. The Doctor needed to cope with his depression and survivor's guilt so he could enjoy saving the world again, and Rose needed someone to come along and change her monotone outlook on life. But the problem with the idea of ‘needing someone’ is that that line of thought leads to really codependent places really fast, and that’s what eventually happens with the Doctor and Rose. In Series 2, the Doctor and Rose become increasingly lost in each other and their clever adventures, and increasingly detached from and uninterested in everyone around them, treating others with callous indifference, which numerous characters notice and become worried about. By the second half of the season, Rose comes to loathe her old life and builds so much of her new happiness around the Doctor that she can't live without him in her life. She even tries to ditch all of her friends and family in an alternate universe forever so she won't have to say goodbye to him. The denouement of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E12ArmyOfGhosts "Army of Ghosts"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday "Doomsday"]], in which the Doctor and Rose are forcibly separated and Rose in particular is absolutely devastated, appears to be a cautionary tale about why you shouldn’t make one person the center of your world, because it will only lead to heartbreak (hints of this were seeded back in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion School Reunion]]", when Rose realized that while the Doctor might be the center of her world, he's lived far longer than her and she will never be the center of his). But if that’s the case, then Rose’s return in Series 4 is positively baffling. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth "The Stolen Earth"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "Journey’s End"]], we learn Rose has not even tried to move on, she’s spent at least six years trying to think of ways to get back to the Doctor (since time moves faster in Pete’s world), and when the Daleks almost destroy the universe Rose leaps at the chance to jump universes so she can try to find the Doctor. Not only that, but her dialogue implies she was trying to travel between universes beforehand even though the Doctor said travelling between universes again would destroy both worlds, meaning Rose risked two worlds just for her happiness. She’s rewarded with a clone Doctor that can grow old for the rest of his life with her, and in a deleted scene she was going to receive a TARDIS so they can go traveling again. So that Rose can receive a happy ending, the lesson of her arc is changed from "beware unhealthy, codependent relationships" to "if you cling to someone hard enough, and never ever let go, eventually you’ll get everything you ever wanted and more".
* This seems to be a general problem with Dalek stories in New Who, as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E4DaleksInManhattan Daleks in Manhattan]]"/"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks Evolution of the Daleks]]" tries to be a story entirely themed around the evils of racism, while still blatantly depicting humans and Time Lords being good and Daleks being evil as [[VillainousLineage overwhelmingly determined by their genes]].
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]]" is yet another and even worse example of the series trying to suggest that the Doctor's attitude to the Daleks is FantasticRacism while still depicting them as AlwaysChaoticEvil. The Doctor treats his clone as wrong for wiping out the Daleks ([[JokerImmunity they're back next series]]), saying it shows how violent and brutal he is. Yet the Daleks had just come very close to wiping out entire Universes and are fictions poster creature for ScaryDogmaticAliens. The Doctor had temporarily incapacitated them but considering how resourceful they are it was unlikely they would have remained like that for long. The moral makes even less sense considering that 10 in the same series had basically done the same thing to a race that wasn't as dangerous as the Daleks and in the process killed 20,000 innocent people, even if this was what history decreed. Meanwhile his clone was only wiping out the Daleks and their OmnicidalManiac Creator Davros (who is later revealed to have survived), who refused a chance to be saved by the Doctor. Not only that but when the Doctor declined a chance to destroy the last Dalek in their previous appearance, claiming there has been too much death today, that Dalek had escaped and caused the problems of this episode. Not only that but that Dalek had been responsible for most of the deaths, killing the Dalek-Humans that numbered over a thousand because they were not Dalek enough. To be fair, the Doctor may just be using the clone Doctor's supposed "genocide" of the Daleks as a convenient excuse to put the human Doctor onto Rose and prevent her from damaging the universe through the disk-hopping. Though that leads to further problems (see above).
* On a related note, the times the Doctor questions whether he should kill the villains or not contradicts itself. A MonsterOfTheWeek will be slaughtered without a second thought, regardless of motives but when it comes to recurring aliens like the Daleks or the Master, who have proven to be AlwaysChaoticEvil or unlikely to change no matter what, it is suddenly wrong to kill them.
* The Doctor talking about how wonderful and resourceful humanity is can be slightly undermined by the fact a lot of their achievements and survival are due to him and many other aliens, the Daemons, the Osirians and the Silence to name a few. It makes you wonder — what about other races that don't have the benefit of the Doctor helping them out?
* The two-parters story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E5TheRebelFlesh "The Rebel Flesh"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E6TheAlmostPeople "The Almost People"]] is about a rebellion of clones who are [[CloningBlues sick of being treated as disposable vessels]] by miners to operate in dangerous circumstances. The Doctor even sides with them saying ClonesArePeopleToo and try his best to save them. At the end of the day, the Doctor reveals to his companions the reason of their visit to the factory: [[TomatoInTheMirror Amy has been replaced with a clone all along]]. The Doctor ''immediately '' and rather hypocritically [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman kills Amy's clone]] with his sonic screwdriver as if nothing in the last few hours ever happened. The problem is lessened a bit in that Amy's clone appeared to just be remotely controlled by the real Amy, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar which the next episode confirms]], but it's still a matter of how sure was the Doctor that it hadn't been gaining sentience like the others. He axed Amy's clone awfully quickly when he figured it would help Amy.
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls "The Doctor Falls"]]
** The episode draws a parallel between him and his companion Bill Potts, who are both in situations where they each must deal with and accept an unwanted, fundamental change to their lives. She's [[spoiler:been converted into a Cyberman against her will]], he's on the cusp of regeneration. Neither wants to live if they can't stay who they are. At the end of this episode, the frustrated Doctor gets a RayOfHopeEnding setting up a ChristmasEpisode in which he accepts regeneration and the LossOfIdentity it comes with at last. Too bad that in the meantime Bill [[spoiler:gets her original form restored with awesome new powers to boot when a barely foreshadowed DeusExMachina (Bill's former empowered girlfriend, Heather) steps in to make her AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence]]. [[Recap/DoctorWho2017CSTwiceUponATime "Twice Upon a Time"]] does end with the Doctor deciding that helping the universe is WorthLivingFor even if it means he has to lose his identity, but never addresses Bill's fate so the Aesop remains broken. In the episode's defence, the traditional rules of ''Who'' would not have been in Bill's favour had the Aesop '''not''' been broken since [[spoiler:she would have succumbed to the Cybermen's Hive Mind eventually and have to be killed]], and given that Bill is a rare TwoferTokenMinority (black and lesbian) among series regulars it would have looked '''really''' bad for the show. And a {{novelisation}} reveals that [[spoiler:Bill eventually chose to have her mortal body back, and lived to a ripe old age, eventually passing away]].
** Also, the Doctor's stirring "Because it's kind" speech explaining that he's defending the seemingly doomed solar farmers from the Cybermen because it's the right, kind thing to do comes ''very'' close to being broken. In order to save the farmers, he has to wipe out the Cybermen — who ''were'' all once humans, some converted as children — en masse in a giant TakingYouWithMe explosion, and blast them individually with his sonic screwdriver in the run-up to that (and this from a character who DoesntLikeGuns). The only reason this isn't broken is that Cybermen are irredeemable once fully linked to the HiveMind, as their ''modus operandi'' is to either convert or destroy other species, so there really is no kinder option.

''Series/DoctorWho'' has several aesops [[BrokenAesop contradicting its actual plot]] due to its long-spanning run.