Wednesday, December 9, 2015
The Doctor: Examples of Ne/si Dynamic
Anyone who has watched Dr Who knows what his Ne is like even if they haven’t defined it as such. His crazy madcap zany everyday-a-new-adventure attitude is one of the many things I love about the show and it also clearly defines him as an ENXP. Through his judging functions it’s clear to see that he is an Ti/Fe, an ENTP.
Moving on, even though we know him as a high Ne user, his inferior Si defines him just as much. Throughout the series we see examples of this. The Doctor is a man (Time Lord) running from his past. “I've been running all my lives... through time and space.” Whenever something hurts him, specifically losing someone he cares about, it follows him always. Past experiences shape everyone, but for an Si user, even an inferior Si, the impact can be much greater. Imagine The Doctor as an ISFJ! If negative past experiences are problematic for some Si users, The Doctor would be a complete wreck.
Whenever The Doctor is simply mean, bad tempered and inconsiderate, we’re seeing that inferior Si. Granted it’s a stressed, unhealthy expression but it’s Si nonetheless. I see this in the Tenth Doctor more than the Eleventh. A specific example is in “The Sontoran Stratagem” and “The Poison Sky” when Ten encounters UNIT. Even though the UNIT commander is friendly and completely respectful The Doctor, instead of using Ne in a positive way (What if this soldiers is a really good guy who can actually help) he assumes that nothing good can come from UNIT’s involvement. Throughout the series Ten disregards people who he has “figured out”. “Nothing new here. Just the dumber half of the human race.” The nice thing of course is that this kind of behaviour stands out because it doesn’t happen very often. For the most part Ten is a really nice guy. It’s as if sometimes he doesn’t have the Ne to spare since he's using most of it to save the (insert important thing here).
I think it’s safe to assume that The Doctor’s dislike of soldiers comes from the Time War, not surprisingly since it was a war so big it would make most people pacifists. He never talks about it but the war obviously made a huge impression on him. For the rest of his lives he is looking back on it, always in regret. His dislike of soldiers also comes from his XNTP value of autonomy and the combination means that soldiers will get very little cooperation from the Doctor.
In conclusion, one of the primary drives for The Doctor’s character is his Ne/Si Dynamic. It gives us the contrasting image of a swashbuckling never-a-dull-moment hero and an old man weighed down by the tragedies in his past. Without it the show would be missing a compelling aspect of his character.
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