Over the past several months, I've found myself going back repeatedly to the Jodie Whittaker episodes of Doctor Who. I've been watching the show since the Tom Baker days in the late 1970s; I've enjoyed every incarnation to varying degrees and I quite like Whittaker's take on the character. But that's not why I keep going back to her episodes. I keep going back because one of her character's themes is hope, something which I find myself in short supply of lately.
The question is even more interesting when you compare the two characters. Superman, of course, has god-like powers and does good just because it's the right thing to do. While the Doctor doesn't have the same power set as Superman, her intellect combined with the technology she has at her disposal is pretty comparable. So while Superman might be able to physically shift the flight of a careening airplane, the Doctor might "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" using her sonic screwdriver to achieve the same result. And she also does good because it's the right thing to do.
I don't know exactly when creators started being explicit about Superman standing for hope. I think it was Mark Waid who first used the idea of the S-shield as symbolizing hope on Krypton, but I know I've seen people talking about the hope they find in Superman before that. Certainly, Christopher Reeve used the metaphor repeatedly. For the Doctor, while hope has been mentioned before, it's become more emblematic of Whittaker's Doctor than previous incarnations. You could say there's some similarities here again, in that while both characters represent hope, that is a new (relative to how long the characters have been around) idea.
I think, though, that perhaps the two characters represent different kinds of hope.
Superman's version of hope can be summed up in part of Marlon Brando's speech used in the Superman and Superman Returns movies. "They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son."
And that's the part that doesn't capture my interest about Superman's hope. What's wrapped up in the character is that Superman himself is the answer. Superman is a savior character. The sense of hope that comes with Superman is that he will be the one to save the day. "Don't worry! Superman will save us!" The problem I have with that is that it's an absolution of one's own agency. You don't have to really do anything, just hang around, and someone else will catch you.
I could get into why that idea resonates with me personally, and how that fits into my philosophical and theological ideas, but suffice it to say that I am very much in tune with the idea of being responsible for myself. Interesting. I never really though about those two characters in precisely those terms before.
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