Sci-Fi Saviors: Russel T. Davies and Michael Piller
Some of my favorite shows growing up were the Star Trek shows as supervised by Michael Piller or made in the legacy of Michael Piller. I characterize this era from TNG season 3, when Michael Piller took over as a show-runner, to the end of DS9, the departure of Ira Stephen Behr, the last hand picked show-runner by Michael Piller. These shows were strongly interested in character and exploring fascinating thematic ideas and have played a critical role in shaping who I am. Dr. Who is a show I barely knew until recently but over the last few months I have been watching every episode of the Davies Era from Rose onwards I have really come to love the show and the warm humanism embodied in the episodes. This post is a tribute to these two men.
When Michael Piller took over TNG, the show was frankly in disarray. To be charitable, the first two seasons had been messes with no real clear vision and characters who seemed overly stiff both literally and figuratively. Scripts often seemed loose and sloppy as exemplified by episodes like Up the Long Ladder which tried to deal with cloning while also indulging in some truly offensive Irish cliches. In the words of Michael Piler "It was compete turmoil at the time. Star Trek: The Next Generation was considered the worst place to work in Hollywood." In stepped Michael Piller, a man who had not grown up with Star Trek, but in the words of Bryan Fuller "had the classic sense of heroic storytelling and human philosophy that [he] was adamant had to be the primary ingredient to these shows." Brannon Braga echoes these words by noting that Piller always "focused on the humanity." And in the words of Piller himself "It's always about the human condition. Go back to that and you'll find your story."
It is that sense of humanism that reverberates throughout the Piller Era. In the episode, "the defector," we could just have a basic story of a romulan defecting, but the episode transcends that basic level. We see the Romulan spend time with Data on the holdeck where he thinks about his homeworld. In "Best of Both Worlds," there is the action stuff with the borg, but the beating heart of the show is Riker's struggle to become a man. "Family" abandons any sci-fi pretensions and just devotes its full run time to exploring the relationships between characters and their families. As a result of his efforts, TNG transformed from a incredibly troubled show to one of the most successful and beloved shows of all time. His name should never be forgotten. He is just as important to the success and legacy of Star Trek as other beloved names such as Gene Coon, D.C. Fontana, and of course Gene Roddenberry.
This is evident in the first episode, "Rose," as it opens not with aliens but focusing on the everyday life of its titular character. This overriding humanism is consistently present as whenever there is a massive battle with aliens, the focus is never just on the so called gods, i.e. the doctor, but rather on the common folk as well whether it be game show participants and news crew in "Bad Wolf/the Parting of the Ways" or the horrified reaction of Sarah Jane and other every day people to the dalek invasion in "The Stolen Earth." Additionally throughout the show, the doctor is constantly trying to learn people's names and the one time he does not, he seems thoroughly disgusted with himself and the other people around him who also did not bother to learn the name.
Davies' vision is perhaps most acutely realized in the maligned finale, "The Last of the Time Lords." In it, the doctor is made into a small and helpless thing and is only brought back by the common folk saying "doctor" over and over. This ending has often been dismissed, but to me it is perhaps the purest encapsulation of what Davies is seeking to do with the show. He is making a pointed comment that gods, and by extension leaders, can only accomplish things if they have the support and strength of the common folk behind them. In other words, power for power's sake is meaningless. Davies makes this explicit with the line the doctor delivers to the master "The one thing you can't do: stop them thinking." In other words, so long as the common folk keep their minds open, they can never be repressed. A deeply poignant message but one especially pointed for todays' world where so many try to close themselves off from reality and find comfort in a strong man to show them the way.
Now as with most things, neither man was perfect. Piller seemingly fell in love with 90s mumbo jumbo and ended up writing the incredibly offensive "Tattoo" which seemed to suggest that Native Americans only did great things because of white aliens. He also created the Kazon which were an attempt to comment on LA street gangs, but are highly uncomfortable if read that way, as they seem to be just a dumb monolithic vicious people. Davies also had an unfortunate habit of writing Asian characters incredibly poorly. In the episode, "Utopia" there is an insect alien who was played by Chipo Chung and was coded Asian. The character was characterized by smiling and laughing constantly while being unable to speak for herself which ties into problematic stereotypes about Asian women. Then the next season, an actually Asian woman was written in, again performed by Chipo Chung. This time the character played into the idea of Asian Women who seek to ensnare people and who cannot be trusted.
These flaws with the two men should not be ignored and the flaws should be discussed, but Piller and Davies also brought so much good to their respective series. And so much good that more modern mainstream media would do well to remember. It often feels as if so much of our media involves props rather than characters or that the characters are gods with the common folk being all but forgotten. Let us not forget the invaluable humanism of Piller and Davies and let us hope that their values re-appear in our media sooner rather than later.
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