Breaking the Wall: How One Episode of Doctor Who Masterfully Explores Depression and Suicide
“The king said, the third question is, how many seconds of time are there in eternity. Then said the shepherd boy, in lower Pomerania is the diamond mountain, which is two miles high, two miles wide, and two miles deep. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.”
The Brothers Grimm, The Shepherd Boy
There’s a powerful bit of symbolism from the episode of Doctor Who called Heaven Sent regarding the level of despair and hopelessness that thoughtful men experience at their lowest. The image has stuck with me since the episode first aired in 2015, holding a religious level of sanctity in my psyche. In fact, the whole episode is notable for providing a rare look inside the mentality of the universe’s most thoughtful and capable man at the depths of grief and sorrow.
What normally defines the man called The Doctor is his propensity for solving impossible problems in ways that only his superhumanly resourceful mind could. He never hesitates or lingers. He is absolutely dedicated to resolution and upholding good and order in the face of whatever threatens it. He is a paragon of last-minute miracles. He is the man who finds the one solution in one-in-a-million situations every week. So long as victory is possible, he will pursue it without question.
But the episode Heaven Sent stands out among the show’s long-running canon because it gives us a version of The Doctor we’ve never seen before. He is alone and at his lowest, overcome by disillusionment and emotional trauma. And now, like so many times before, he faces an obstacle that any sane person would accept as impossible to overcome and give up trying to win against.
The difference is that this time his superpower of impossible hope, resourcefulness, and determination is absent. We see our angel, our guardian, stripped down to disparate pieces, unable to perform the function we know and need him for. The Doctor wants to give up and allow himself to finally lose. He struggles with the role we are used to seeing him so effortlessly take in every other daunting situation he has overcome.
Image Credit: BBC
“I can’t keep doing this… I can’t! Why’s it always me? Why is it never anybody else’s turn? Can’t I just lose? Just this once? Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t, I can’t always do this. It’s not fair… It’s just not fair! Why can’t I just lose?!”
For fans of the character, it’s deeply unsettling to witness. If the universe’s most determined man can be beaten by despair, there’s no real hope for anyone, is there? We watch the thoughtful man we have come to love and rely on, for once, operating on the brink of surrender to what he accepts would be a futile endeavor.
The Doctor is a man, like Superman or Christ, who should be above self-pity, self-doubt, and the temptation to give up when life gets difficult. But because of this episode and its inside look at his internal thought process, we see that he is actually someone who experiences these faults deeper than any of us mere mortals are capable of. He doesn’t just suffer; he hyper-analyzes his own suffering, experiencing shades and nuances to it that people who try to ignore theirs cannot ever know. The man we thought to be impervious to emotional self-destruction turns out to be more vulnerable to it than any of us. It is our hero who actually needs saving the most.
Image Credit: BBC
The crux of the episode is whether our downtrodden Doctor can still muster the strength to consciously commit to breaking through a massive diamond wall that traps him, even if it takes billions of years and millions of lifetimes to do so. The physical barrier is the perfect symbol for his emotional state. How many depressed people feel exactly the same way? We know there is a way out, but it seems logistically hopeless to figure out how to make it through.
In The Doctor’s captive state, his only instrument is the strength of his own bare fists. This is another shocking break from the show’s common conventions, as The Doctor usually has endless alien technological wizardry and unexpected strategies at his disposal. But not this time. The only way out is by applying brute force and infinite endurance to literally punch a hole through the diamond wall. Each punch contributes an imperceptible chip of progress to the infinite task, and each throw of his hands brings more pain and injury as he makes rough contact with the wall.
The Doctor’s suffering is a necessary aspect of contemplating the worthwhileness of the attempt. Time alone does not matter. If the attempt were easy and guaranteed to eventually work, it wouldn’t matter to him how long it might take. The Doctor could be confident that he would eventually accomplish what he sought. But the fact that he will suffer both emotional grief and physical injury throughout the long process means that he must deeply consider whether the trade-off is worth it and whether he should change his mind before the task is complete.
Must he continue to suffer for what he believes in? Can’t he just give up? Why can’t he just accept the prospect of losing this time? It’s not fair that he is the one who has to deal with this sort of thing again, and again, and again. He longs to be free from the burden of being who he is.
But ultimately, we are reminded that that’s who The Doctor is at his core: The man who will commit himself to an eternity of torment against an impossible task because he knows it is right. He will make the choice that no sane man would make. He will spend eternity breaking the wall.
The choice to continue living often feels the same to me. My existence is a burden that I don’t always know if I can bear. I don’t really know what I am doing here most of the time except punching a wall that shows no sign of breaking. I can’t see what impact my actions are making. I don’t see anything chipping away before my eyes on a timescale I can appreciate. Yet, I feel the pain in my knuckles growing from the ongoing effort.
I know that, in principle, my choices are virtuous and that they represent values the world needs more of. But what good does that do me if I am doomed to spend the rest of my time here trying to dismantle a wall that doesn’t seem to be weakening? My arms are tired, and my hands are scarred. I just want to sleep. I just want to be free of dealing with it anymore. Do I have to know everything? Do I really have to do something important with my time? Must I have to persist in a situation that is so fundamentally uncomfortable for me? And for what? A few atoms of progress across an eternal timescale at the cost of my ongoing existential torment?
People always seem surprised when I show them this side of myself. It’s unsettling for them. I let my veil slip a little. I reveal glimpses of the truth that I have been suicidal for a long time and that I struggle to justify living and acting in the world. They see me as a thoughtful, engaging, and infinitely resourceful man. I am someone who doesn’t let conventional obstacles stop him from pursuing what he values. I am someone others turn to when they need helping climbing out of the pit they are in. How is it even possible for such a person to be depressed, especially to the degree that they consider ending their own life?
I still go out and function in the world. I still participate in deep and interesting conversations. I still play video games and have fun from time to time. I try to help out wherever I can in ways that only I can. I am still the man that the people who know and like me know and like me to be. And these same people cannot consider that I am also someone who struggles to continue existence.
Regardless of how strong I seem to be in many regards that others are frequently weak or underdeveloped, I bear a level of suffering that most others cannot comprehend or directly experience because it is unique to those who are superhumanly thoughtful and caring. We who hyper-analyze every thought and experience know things that others do not. We hurt in a way that comes from trying to improve the world and breaking the wall that stands between us and the world we need to be living in.
Every difficult task that needs to be done can be likened to an invincible and imposing wall that needs to be broken through prolonged, patient force. And so can the entire course of an introspected life.
Photo Credit: Gregory Diehl
There’s a wall of exposed stone in the bedroom of my house that I often stare at and meditate upon the symbolism of. Lately, I’ve even started punching it with as much strength as I can endure the pain from impact of. It’s a reminder I cannot ignore the infinite task that lies before me.
I must persist because I believe my existence here to be contributing to the long-term greater good of the universe. But is the theoretical promise of that belief enough for me to go on forever like this? Or at least until my natural death?
My arms are tired, and my hands are scarred.