Doctor Who has no shortage of stories warning of the dangers of AI, and yet more and more AI-generated clips and even full fan-made episodes of Doctor Who are crawling onto the internet.
This deluge of sludge would horrify the Doctor, and any self-respecting fan of the show would steer clear of the trash. In aid of this position, I have compiled a list of 4 episodes of Doctor Who that prove the Doctor would hate AI.
#1 – The War Machines
All the way back to the First Doctor, we have The War Machines. This is your typical AI taking over the world kind of story.
It’s very simple: AI = bad. Shouldn’t be too hard to understand.
This is one of my favourite stories from the 1960s (there aren’t many bad ones from then, actually!) WOTAN is the sentient supercomputer intent on taking over Earth (London first, of course) by creating an army of robots.
Despite the excitement of the episode, it ends with a bittersweet note as this is goodbye to Dodo who was absolutely wonderful on the TARDIS, but Ben and Polly begin their adventures.
#2 – The Green Death
The Third Doctor meets an AI enemy in The Green Death, in season 10. We have yet another supercomputer – BOSS – whose plan is a corporate takeover of Earth.
From this serial, we can learn that the best thing to do with AI is to switch it off (they blow it up in the serial).
#3 – Robot
Tom Baker’s first story as the Fourth Doctor in season 12 is Robot – a story about humans losing control of AI that’s contained in a giant robot… Can you see where this is going?
The humans think they can use it for their nefarious purposes, but they can’t control it. No one can – not even those who create it.
#4 – The Robots of Death
The Fourth Doctor has another run-in with AI in The Robots of Death in season 13. In this story the humans have become dependent on AI robots – without their robot slaves, they are useless. But what happens when the robots start going against their programming?
This is my favourite “robot” story in Doctor Who, probably due to its heavy influences of Asimov with a healthy dose of cozy murder mystery!
Finally, I would like to reference the scene in City of Death where the Doctor tells Romana II off for dismissing art made by humans as she is used to pictures made by computers on Gallifrey:
ROMANA: Well, at least on Gallifrey we can capture a good likeness. Computers can draw.
DOCTOR: What? Computer pictures? You sit in Paris and talk of computer pictures? Listen, I’ll take you somewhere and show you some real paintings painted by real people.
