BehattedWanderer said:
Again, I'm not arguing he's a pacifist. He's certainly not. But there's a difference between someone wanting to commit murder, and someone extremely capable of it, but is unwilling. The Doctor so far has gone out of his way, more often than not, to avoid flat out killing things.
Did he, or does it just seem that way because that's what 10th insisted?
Here is a vengeful, destructive creature that is essentially immortal, filled with all kinds of furies, yet who yearns for nonviolence.
That was 10th, sure. It doesn't appear to be 11th, nor any incarnation before 9th.
And some minor counterpoints for above: Vesuvius was a fixed point, but the lives of some minor people around the event can be changed without affecting the history of the event.
You pulled that from nowhere. ;-) How many people becomes too many, then? Why just the handful? Why not 100? 1000? If 10th wasn't sure where the limit was, why risk the one family? How did he know there was a limit when previous episodes go to great lengths to explain that fixed points can never be altered?
Once he knew he could, why didn't he go back and save more?
9th and Rose have this discussion when she saves her father. He couldn't have gone back to stop her becoming the cybercontroller, because then he'd be going back on his own timeline, which is to be used for only shenanigans, apparently.
Nah, he could have gone back before his arrival and dispatched the Cybermen before they ever ingrained themselves under London.
And as for the werewolf, he's killed quite a few of the one-off beasts that were attacking, merely because they were attacking the person of interest in that episode. He usually aims to subdue, but does occasionally mean that it ends up dead. This is something different from seeking out the death of an individual or group, which is what he's taken to doing lately.
So your argument is that the Doctor is not a pacifist, but that 10th always killed out of necessity... or whatever he believed was necessity. Whilst 11th has killed to eliminate an ambiguous threat.
Interesting. That might be worth delving more into.
