Doctor Who: Harriet Jones

[Jonathan101]

Asking for someones help in an emergency is not legally empowering them to be anything, even if you are the Prime Minister. Especially when the Sycorax themselves have no legal standing on Earth whatsoever and don't pretend to.

The situation in question was way, way worse than WW2 so I'm not really sure that holds water here.

The deals we have to make with bad people don't usually start with those bad people using mind-control on a sizeable portion of the human race and threatening to make them commit suicide if we don't let them enslave us all. We don't expect Saudi Arabia to kill billions of people if they don't get their trade deal.

Jones may have been wrong to blow up the Sycorax, but the idea that the rest of the universe will see her or the Earth as inherently untrustworthy and treacherous over this just seems REALLY unlikely.

[TrueMetis]

Speaking of legal standing, exactly what gives the Prime Minister of Britain any standing to negotiate or otherwise act on behalf of the entire planet in this scenario? I'm not exactly familiar with Doctor Who so maybe there is something, but this all seems like a really stupid conversation to be having.

[CharlesPhipps]

Speaking of legal standing, exactly what gives the Prime Minister of Britain any standing to negotiate or otherwise act on behalf of the entire planet in this scenario? I'm not exactly familiar with Doctor Who so maybe there is something, but this all seems like a really stupid conversation to be having.

Eh, presumably any and all nations have the right to act on their behalf. Mind you, a major theme of the Tennant series was that Torchwood was a Pre-Brexit UK-only version of UNIT.

[Sir Will]

Except the Doctor had legal standing because he was empowered by Harriet Jones as an arbiter/aid.

The whole public request for salvation and all that.

...no.

[CharlesPhipps]

....Right.

[Sir Will]

No, you're wrong.

[Jonathan101]

Speaking of legal standing, exactly what gives the Prime Minister of Britain any standing to negotiate or otherwise act on behalf of the entire planet in this scenario? I'm not exactly familiar with Doctor Who so maybe there is something, but this all seems like a really stupid conversation to be having.

Circumstance. London was just where most of this stuff went down.

Just before the Sycorax showed up, the Doctor regenerated into David Tennant, and the TARDIS landed in London at the home of Rose and her mother. The Doctor was still regenerating so was acting weird and ended up collapsing so they put him in a bed, trying to make sense of what was going on. The Sycorax picked this up and, being intrigued, sent robot Santas (it being Christmas) to capture the TARDIS and the Doctor to see if they could harvest the energy they were detecting.

The Doctor dealt with the Santas but since he was still in the process of regenerating, he went right back to sleep- this time in the TARDIS itself- in the middle of the big attack, with the Sycorax showing up over London (since, again, that's where the energies of the TARDIS and the Doctor were coming from) and demanded that Earth surrender to them, using blood hypnosis to force people with a particular blood type all over the world to walk to the highest roofs they could find and threaten to jump if Earth doesn't give in.

Harriet Jones, like every other leader on Earth presumably, went on television to try and get people not to panic, but since she knew the Doctor she made the appeal on TV that if he can hear her, please dear God help us now. She's also aware of Torchwood- despite them being so super-secret even the Prime Minister isn't supposed to know about them- and encourages them to get the super-laser she knows they have ready to fire if things go south (well, more south).

Anyway, since the Sycorax happen to be over London looking for the TARDIS, it's Harriet Jones that they end up dealing with, and after she and a couple of her staff are teleported up to the Sycorax ship the aliens finally find the TARDIS and bring that up to, the Doctor still asleep, so Rose and Mickey (who were on the TARDIS at the time) have to stall. The Sycorax also kill a member of the negotiation team in front ofJones just to show they are serious.

It's only now that the Doctor wakes up (he just needed some tea) and Harriet Jones is confused because the Doctor looks nothing like Christopher Eccleston any more, and he basically just takes charge of the situation and breaks the hypnotic hold the Sycorax have on their victims, then gets into a fight with the leader of the Sycorax, which he wins and demands that the leader take his forces and leaves or else the Doctor will kill him- in the process, his hand is cut off, but because he's newly regenerated his hand grows back. The Sycorax leader agrees, but tries to attack the Doctor again when his back is turned, and the Doctor kills him.

At this point he basically scares the other Sycorax into leaving, but Harriet Jones orders Torchwood to blast them anyway in order to scare any other aliens who might be watching into not trying this sort of crap again, especially if the Doctor won't always be there (and bare in mind from her POV he didn't show up until the last minute, and since he looked totally different he only seems even more unpredictable; the Doctor, furious, sabotages her career by starting a rumour that she's getting old and tired, which eventually costs her the next election.

So, yeah, she was in charge of negotiations because the Sycorax ship happened to hover over her country and brought her on board. Presumably the rest of the world would still have to agree to whatever terms she sent back.

[Riedquat]

So, yeah, she was in charge of negotiations because the Sycorax ship happened to hover over her country and brought her on board. Presumably the rest of the world would still have to agree to whatever terms she sent back.

If she could persuade them to clear off without involving anything else then that's fine but if she'd told everyone else "You've all got to pay tribute in slaves from now on" they wouldn't have to agree to that at all and would be understandably annoyed with her.

[Jonathan101]

Well yes but I'm sure if it came to that she'd be annoyed with herself too.

In that case though she's just relaying their demands, not ordering everyone else to go along with them. At the end of the day she's just the messenger.

[DanteC]

Harriet Jones for the win.
I won't reiterate what others have said so much better, and to be frank, the Doctor cannot be relied on to save the day. Prevention is better than cure. But I'll make one point. In a later two-parter, the ones with the cybermen in a parallel dimension, 10 has a go at Harriet Jones's double, saying you can't trust her, while later on trying to get Rose's mum shacked up with the double of her deceased husband.

He has made assumptions on the parallel universe double of someone he's had a hissy fit with. Who I'm sure he even acknowledged earlier on that they would likely be very different from the people they'd knew. (Could be bad writing, it was the cybermen two-parter which was terrible, but does sum up 10's hypocrisy).

Let's skip forward to the Family of Blood two-parter. Because he doesn't want to fight, he runs away, hiding as a human. We're all meant to feel sad that he's missed out on a human life. Boo hoo. Screw him. Because of him, four innocent (well, one little shit and three innocent) people are abducted, murdered, and turned into flesh puppets, who he then condemns to immortal life imprisonment. And lets not forget the people that the Family kill also. He's quite rightly called out on it later on. It's something that 10 really, really needs. Probably the reason why I find Donna the best companion. She doesn't have luvvy-duvvy eyes for 10 and is perfectly willing to call him out on his shit.

Harriet Jones was forced into a terrible position, and she made the call that she thought was needed. Forget the fact she'd just saw colleagues murdered and a significant chunk of the population controlled. She doesn't have the Doctor's experience and knowledge, and as far as she was concerned, she had to put faith in a man who turned up in his pajamas, in regards to a race that had already reneged on their deal once. And in Turn Left, we see what happens when the Doctor doesn't turn up. Humanity needs to stand up for itself, and the best way is probably to kill anything that threatens outsiders. Not as if the show has had good examples of benevolent aliens visiting Earth since, well, the Doctor really (not familiar with anything pre-9 and I stopped watching after they killed off Amy and Rory). Was it the best approach? Probably not. Was it the one that needed to happen? Probably yes.