Dragonball Z vs. Doctor Who: Morality
So, I've recently started rewatching parts of the old school anime Dragonball Z, of which I was a huge fan of in the late 1990s. Most of it is pretty much as I remembered (or pretty much as I assumed, since I was watching fansubs at the time and didn't get all of the episodes originally). However, one bit in the Android Saga recently had me pondering stuff in relation to a similar scene that takes place in Doctor Who's "Genesis of the Daleks." It's a minor thing, so I don't really even know why I'm bringing it up, but I wanted to ponder it here with all of you anyway.
Although very different in nature, both of the stories in the Android Saga and "Genesis of the Daleks" are similar. There is a huge threat from a super powerful enemy (DBZ: Cell; DW: Daleks) which can be thwarted via time travel. In the Doctor's case, he goes back in time to a point before the Daleks are created with the intention of destroying them before they can be born. He holds the two wires up to destroy them, thinking about all of the worlds the Daleks have wrecked with their plans of universal domination. It's even more effective to watch if you know New Who, because by then the Daleks are directly responsible for the destruction of the Doctor's people and homeworld as well (which they hadn't done yet, in the Fourth Doctor serial). Ultimately, the Doctor realizes he can't do it. Even though he knows in the future that the Daleks destroy everything, they haven't done it yet. In the end he decides that destroying them would make him no better than the Daleks themselves.
In Dragonball Z time works slightly differently--you can't go back into your own timeline. If you try, you go into an alternate timeline. In one alternte future, artificial humans/cyborgs have wrecked the world. A teenaged-boy named (Future!)Trunks goes back in time before the androids are built in a time machine created by his mother. His plan is not to destroy the androids before they're built, but to warn the strong fighters in the past (who were killed in his timeline) that the androids are coming in three years and how to prepare. (He also brings the strongest fighter some medicine to cure a heart virus that is curable in his time, but not twenty-years in the past.) Anyway, while Future Trunks is twenty-years in the past helping the fighters there to prepare for the arrival of the androids, Cell (another even more powerful artifical human from a THIRD timeline), kills the Trunks in that timeline, steals his time machine and goes twenty-four years back in time (ending up in the canon timeline), where he grows and waits for the Androids to go online so he can absorb them and become his perfect form (he couldn't in his timeline because that Trunks had killed them).
Anyway, when the people in the canon timeline discover Cell and he Reveals His Plan and Origin to them, they realize that the genesis of Cell, so to speak, has already been created in their timeline. Future Trunks tells them that destroying it won't wipe out THIS time-traveling Cell, but it will prevent the little embryo from one day becoming another Cell. So, Future Trunks and Krillin decide to destroy it. They fly to the basement laboratory where they know the baby Cell is growing and set about destroying the place.
In Doctor Who, baby Daleks pretty much look like hideous slimy green ooze and octopuses. In Dragonball Z, baby Cell looks like a green embryo suspended in a large clear tube. The Doctor spares the Daleks. Future Trunks and Krillin do not spare Cell. I kept expecting there to be a moment where one or the other paused and said, "Can we really do this? This collection of cells hasn't even been born yet. Can we really kill it now before it's caused any harm?" I could understand Future Trunks, who comes from an apocalyptic hellworld, not thinking in those terms. Krillin, on the other hand, is That Guy. He's the Xander or Wash of the team; the comedic human sidekick and the weakest of the bunch. (Spoilers: He actually ends up marrying one of the evil androids, so you can see he's forgiving.) You expect him to have doubts or show remorse about this, but he doesn't. They just go shoulder to shoulder and oblierate the baby Cell. The footage is pretty intense too--they blow up the tank and their blast is so intense you even see the little fetus melting into nothingness.
Afterward, they sort of pat themselves on the back at a job well done.
I don't really know what, if any, sort of conclusion I want to draw from the comparison, only that I noticed it and it left me a bit thoughtful. It's an interesting bit of characterization for both Future Trunks and Krillin. As horrible as Cell is (or could've been, if undefeated), his level of destruction is significantly less than that of the Daleks. Given time perhaps Cell could've become as destructive as the Daleks; there's no doubt in my mind that after destroying Earth he'd go into space and cheerfully destroy other planets with a flick of his wrist, but he hadn't. The Daleks have. So the Doctor spares far more devestating killers than Cell. I can't even really argue the genocide line. Although the Doctor killing the Daleks was exterminating an entire speices, the Daleks were created almost exactly the same was as Cell and the Androids--in a laboratory by a mad scientist. Granted there were many more Daleks than Androids, but it's not hard to see if the three androids and Cell had survived that they might've learned to reproduce/build more androids and become an army like the Daleks. Destroying Cell and the androids is just as much genocide as destroying the Daleks.
God, I am rambling here about something NO ONE is going to care about, but it's really got me thinking, ahahaha.
In conclusion: it's often played for laughs, but Dragonball Z can be really fucking dark. :D
Although very different in nature, both of the stories in the Android Saga and "Genesis of the Daleks" are similar. There is a huge threat from a super powerful enemy (DBZ: Cell; DW: Daleks) which can be thwarted via time travel. In the Doctor's case, he goes back in time to a point before the Daleks are created with the intention of destroying them before they can be born. He holds the two wires up to destroy them, thinking about all of the worlds the Daleks have wrecked with their plans of universal domination. It's even more effective to watch if you know New Who, because by then the Daleks are directly responsible for the destruction of the Doctor's people and homeworld as well (which they hadn't done yet, in the Fourth Doctor serial). Ultimately, the Doctor realizes he can't do it. Even though he knows in the future that the Daleks destroy everything, they haven't done it yet. In the end he decides that destroying them would make him no better than the Daleks themselves.
In Dragonball Z time works slightly differently--you can't go back into your own timeline. If you try, you go into an alternate timeline. In one alternte future, artificial humans/cyborgs have wrecked the world. A teenaged-boy named (Future!)Trunks goes back in time before the androids are built in a time machine created by his mother. His plan is not to destroy the androids before they're built, but to warn the strong fighters in the past (who were killed in his timeline) that the androids are coming in three years and how to prepare. (He also brings the strongest fighter some medicine to cure a heart virus that is curable in his time, but not twenty-years in the past.) Anyway, while Future Trunks is twenty-years in the past helping the fighters there to prepare for the arrival of the androids, Cell (another even more powerful artifical human from a THIRD timeline), kills the Trunks in that timeline, steals his time machine and goes twenty-four years back in time (ending up in the canon timeline), where he grows and waits for the Androids to go online so he can absorb them and become his perfect form (he couldn't in his timeline because that Trunks had killed them).
Anyway, when the people in the canon timeline discover Cell and he Reveals His Plan and Origin to them, they realize that the genesis of Cell, so to speak, has already been created in their timeline. Future Trunks tells them that destroying it won't wipe out THIS time-traveling Cell, but it will prevent the little embryo from one day becoming another Cell. So, Future Trunks and Krillin decide to destroy it. They fly to the basement laboratory where they know the baby Cell is growing and set about destroying the place.
In Doctor Who, baby Daleks pretty much look like hideous slimy green ooze and octopuses. In Dragonball Z, baby Cell looks like a green embryo suspended in a large clear tube. The Doctor spares the Daleks. Future Trunks and Krillin do not spare Cell. I kept expecting there to be a moment where one or the other paused and said, "Can we really do this? This collection of cells hasn't even been born yet. Can we really kill it now before it's caused any harm?" I could understand Future Trunks, who comes from an apocalyptic hellworld, not thinking in those terms. Krillin, on the other hand, is That Guy. He's the Xander or Wash of the team; the comedic human sidekick and the weakest of the bunch. (Spoilers: He actually ends up marrying one of the evil androids, so you can see he's forgiving.) You expect him to have doubts or show remorse about this, but he doesn't. They just go shoulder to shoulder and oblierate the baby Cell. The footage is pretty intense too--they blow up the tank and their blast is so intense you even see the little fetus melting into nothingness.
Afterward, they sort of pat themselves on the back at a job well done.
I don't really know what, if any, sort of conclusion I want to draw from the comparison, only that I noticed it and it left me a bit thoughtful. It's an interesting bit of characterization for both Future Trunks and Krillin. As horrible as Cell is (or could've been, if undefeated), his level of destruction is significantly less than that of the Daleks. Given time perhaps Cell could've become as destructive as the Daleks; there's no doubt in my mind that after destroying Earth he'd go into space and cheerfully destroy other planets with a flick of his wrist, but he hadn't. The Daleks have. So the Doctor spares far more devestating killers than Cell. I can't even really argue the genocide line. Although the Doctor killing the Daleks was exterminating an entire speices, the Daleks were created almost exactly the same was as Cell and the Androids--in a laboratory by a mad scientist. Granted there were many more Daleks than Androids, but it's not hard to see if the three androids and Cell had survived that they might've learned to reproduce/build more androids and become an army like the Daleks. Destroying Cell and the androids is just as much genocide as destroying the Daleks.
God, I am rambling here about something NO ONE is going to care about, but it's really got me thinking, ahahaha.
In conclusion: it's often played for laughs, but Dragonball Z can be really fucking dark. :D