Doctor Who has several aesops contradicting its actual plot.
Classic Doctor Who
- "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 What Measure Is a Non-Human? 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", 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 Happiness in Slavery.
- In "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 Dominators" has two:
- The Word of God 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 Always Chaotic Evil 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 Psycho for Hire 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 "Lesson of the Day" Speech at the end of "Planet of the Daleks", the Doctor delivers a heartfelt speech that the Thals must tell their people War Is Hell, and not to make it sound like their adventure was a 'fun game'. The story involves, amongst other things, them escaping fun, toyetic Always Chaotic Evil nasty pepperpot people by 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 the script was underrunning.
- Some people - including Tom Baker - 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 still end with the Doctor murdering the aliens. This was pointed out in New Who but led to more broken aesops (see below).
- "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 Cargo Cult 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 Chronic Hero Syndrome... 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.
- "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 "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" was intended as a Take That! 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.
New Doctor Who
- In "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.
- "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 Daleksnote . The Doctor even points out that humanity won't be wiped out with Earth as they have spread to other worlds by now. The Daleks surviving means they'll attack other worlds, giving humanity even less of a chancenote . It's only a literal Deus ex Machina that subsequently saves 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.
- This seems to be a general problem with Dalek stories in New Who, as "Daleks in Manhattan" / "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 overwhelmingly determined by their genes.
- Mark Gatiss devotes the entire B-plot of "The Idiot's Lantern" to the Connolly family, building to An Aesop 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. Considering Mr. Connolly has been characterized for the entire episode as a control freak 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. However, in the last five minutes, the Doctor suddenly tells Tommy to try to keep his bastard dad in his life after all, for no reason other than Eddie being Tommy's father. Not only does this sabotage the episode's moral, it's also terrible advice to give to someone who just got out of an abusive relationship.
- How the series handles the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler's codependent relationship. Rose builds so much of her happiness around the Doctor that she can't live without him in her life, and when she becomes trapped on a parallel Earth, she and the Doctor are absolutely devastated, which appears to warn that making one person the centre of your world will only lead to heartbreak. However, when the Daleks almost destroy the universe in "The Stolen Earth", Rose leaps at the chance to jump universes so she can try to find the Doctor. She's rewarded with a clone Doctor who can grow old with her. So the lesson of Rose's 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'.
- "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.
- "Journey's End" is yet another example of the series trying to suggest that the Doctor's attitude to the Daleks is Fantastic Racism while still depicting them as Always Chaotic Evil. The Doctor says his clone's act of wiping out the Daleks (they're back next series), shows how violent and brutal he is. Yet the Daleks had just come very close to wiping out entire Universes and are fiction's poster creature for Scary Dogmatic Aliens. The moral makes even less sense considering that, earlier in the same season, the Doctor wiped out another (albeit less dangerous) alien race 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 (possibly) their Omnicidal Maniac creator Davros. 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 already, that Dalek escaped and caused the problems of this episode.
- On a related note, the times the Doctor questions whether he should kill the villains or not contradicts itself. A Monster of the Week 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 Always Chaotic Evil 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 "The Rebel Flesh" / "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 Clones Are People, Too 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: Amy has been replaced with a clone all along. The Doctor immediately and rather hypocritically 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, 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.
- "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 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 "Ray of Hope" Ending setting up a Christmas Episode in which he accepts regeneration and the Loss of Identity 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 (Bill's former empowered girlfriend, Heather) steps in to make her Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. "Twice Upon a Time" does end with the Doctor deciding that helping the universe is Worth Living For even if it means he has to lose his identity, but never addresses Bill's fate so the Aesop remains broken.
- 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 Taking You with Me explosion, and blast them individually with his sonic screwdriver in the run-up to that (and this from a character who Doesn't Like Guns). The only reason this isn't broken is that Cybermen are irredeemable once fully linked to the Hive Mind, as their modus operandi is to either convert or destroy other species, so there really is no kinder option.
- "Arachnids in the UK": The Doctor chastises corrupt businessman 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 leave them to slowly starve to death. Most people were left thinking that the Jerkass Has a Point.
