Doctor Who’s Ecocritical Revisit to Narnia

Year 2023, Volume: 33 Issue: 1, 91 - 106, 04.07.2023

Buket Akgün

https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2022-1197505

Abstract

This article analyses the writers Steven Moffat and Sydney Newman and the director Farren Blackburn’s Doctor Who Christmas Special episode titled “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe” (2011) as a retelling of C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew (1955) and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) with cross-references to the two books in the light of ecocritical theory. Employing Jane Caputi’s terminology, the article argues that “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe” is an invocation of the “Mutha,’” that is, Mother Nature-Earth. The article asserts that as opposed to Digory’s ill mother Mabel and not so brave or competent Susan and Lucy respectively in the first and second books and unlike what Father Christmas claims in the second book, Madge, akin to the “Mutha,’” demonstrates in the episode through her kindness, resilience, and wits that battles do not get ugly when women come to the aid of those that are in danger—be they human or non-human. It illustrates that the books accommodate both arcadian and imperial ecologies whereas the episode offers arcadian ecology as a countermeasure against imperial ecology. This article states that the episode not only condemns wars and ecocide like the two books do, but also refers to the imperialism and colonialism and rectifies the speciesism and sexism in the two books.

Keywords

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Doctor Who, ecocriticism

References

• Adams, C. J., & Gruen L. (2022). Ecofeminist footings. In C. J. Adams & L. Gruen (Eds.), Ecofeminism: Feminist intersections with other animals and the earth (2nd ed.) (pp. 1-44). New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Boehmer, E. (2005). Colonial and postcolonial literature: Migrant metaphors (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Caputi, J. (2020). Call your “mutha’”: A deliberately dirty-minded manifesto of the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Daly, M. (1985). Beyond god the father: Toward a philosophy of women’s liberation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Dickerson, M., & O’Hara, D. (2009). Narnia and the fields of arbol: The environmental vision of C. S. Lewis. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky.
• Donovan J. (2022). Caring to dialogue: Feminism and the treatment of animals. In C. J. Adams & L. Gruen (Eds.), Ecofeminism: Feminist intersections with other animals and the earth (2nd ed.) (pp. 47-67). New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Echterling, C. (2016). Postcolonial ecocriticism, classic children’s literature, and the imperial-environmental imagination in The Chronicles of Narnia. Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 49(1), 93-117. https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2016.0016
• Filipova, L. (2022). Ecocriticism and the sense of place. London, UK: Routledge.
• Frankel, V. E. (2018). Women in Doctor Who: Damsels, feminists and monsters. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
• Jameson, F. (2009). War and representation [“War” Special Issue]. PMLA, 124(5), 1532-1547. https://doi. org/10.1632/pmla.2009.124.5.1532
• Langrish, K. (2021). From spare oom to war drobe: Travels in Narnia with my nine-year-old self. London, UK: Darton, Longman and Todd.
• Lewis, C. S. (2002a). The lion, the witch and the wardrobe. London, UK: Grafton.
• Lewis, C. S. (2002b). The magician’s nephew. London, UK: Grafton.
• Lewis, C. S. (2009). C. S. Lewis to Douglas Bush, March 28, 1941. In W. Hooper (Ed.), The collected letters of C. S.
• Lewis, Vol. 2: Books, broadcasts, and the war, 1931-1949 (pp. 475-477). New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books.
• Moffat, S., Newman, S. (Writers), & Blackburn, F. (Director). (2011). The Doctor, the widow and the wardrobe.
• [Television series episode]. In M. Wilson (Producer). Doctor Who. London, UK: BBC.
• Oelschlaeger, M. (1991). The idea of wilderness: From prehistory to the age of ecology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Phillips, D. (2015). Posthumanism, environmental history, and narratives of collapse. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 22(1), 63-79. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isv004
• Phillips, I. (2020). Once upon a Time Lord: The myths and stories of Doctor Who. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
• Saha, J. (2022). Colonizing animals: Interspecies empire in Myanmar. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Subramanian, A. (2020). “The whole country below them”: Gazing imperially on Narnia from above. Space and Culture, 23(4), 370-381. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331219845306
• Tribe, S. (2017). Doctor Who: A brief history of Time Lords. New York, NY: BBC Books.
• Worster, D. (1977). Nature’s economy: The roots of ecology. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club