The Search for a Modern British Messiah

Tom Moran, The Devil’s Hour

Peter Capaldi and Jessica Raine in The Devil’s Hour

Peter Capaldi, the Twelfth Doctor, receives second billing in The Devil’s Hour, behind Jessica “Call the Midwife” Raine. Yet he’s remarkably absent from the first half of the series, commenting on things he’s seen, but unseen by others. We don’t even learn his character’s name for several episodes. When we do, it confuses more than it resolves: who, exactly, is Gideon Shepherd? Needless to say, the following involves spoilers.

For practical purposes, we know Gideon (he’s generally addressed by his first name, once it’s uncovered) combines aspects of Capaldi’s two most influential roles, the Doctor and Malcolm Tucker. When the show’s other male lead, DI Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel), asks whether Gideon is perhaps a time traveler or a soothsayer, given his foreknowledge of events, he hedges. Because the show knows its audience already recognizes Capaldi’s face and voice.

Perhaps the solution comes in Gideon’s name. In the book of Judges, Gideon arises from the disorganized tribes of Israel when the nation has lost its collective respect for God. When the neighboring Midianites invade, Gideon alone recognizes this as God’s judgment upon the people. He musters an army and, after winning the unworthy from its ranks, challenges and defeats an overwhelming Midianite force in a Thermopylae-like underdog performance.

The specifically Biblical implications of Gideon’s name, contrasts with his superficially violent approach. As both a Judge of Israel and a shepherd, a title used by Jesus Christ, he’s implicitly declared a Judeo-Christian messiah. But like Malcolm Tucker, Gideon is violent and vulgar, turning an almost operatic language of vindictiveness on anyone who crosses him. If he’s a messiah, he certainly isn’t anybody’s Prince of Peace.

Not that he lets that stop him, protected by the certainty of deterministic destiny. The universe seems to provide him favor; cornered by DI Dhillon in Gideon’s first substantial appearance, a literal lightning bolt from above provides the protection he requires. Once he finally becomes an active participant in the story, we see him appearing to target children for psychological conditioning and torture, which he justifies with self-righteous rationales.

Peter Capaldi as Gideon Shepherd
in The Devil’s Hour

Gideon displays his Christian implications through the interstitial narration that unifies the series. As the story unfolds out of sequence, we see two tracks throughout the story. Lucy Chambers (Raine) and DI Dhillon watch their story unfold, as Dhillon tracks Gideon’s trail of destruction, and Lucy struggles with her son’s flat affect and her own seemingly psychic premonitions. In the moment, little makes sense, for them or us.

In the second track, Gideon explains the truth about everything the characters previously experienced. What seemed meaningless as it happened, turns out to possess explicit purpose. But that purpose isn’t frivolous, and it happens in the person of Gideon himself. For the religiously inclined, it’s impossible to avoid comparisons to the Gospel of Luke, wherein the resurrected Jesus, at Emmaus, explains how the whole Tanakh points ultimately to himself.

If Gideon is a messiah, though, he’s an unquestionably brutal one. What gospel does Gideon preach? He certainly follows the apocalyptic facet of Christ, who on the final day, looks into every person’s heart and judges accordingly. Unlike DI Dhillon and the police, who can only respond to crimes that have already occurred, Gideon judges people according to their hearts, and metes out responses accordingly. These responses are frequently violent.

Unlike the Doctor, Gideon has only one approach, to crush humanity’s worst inclinations. The Twelfth Doctor’s anti-war speech in the episode “The Zygon Inversion” urges Kate Stewart, as representative of humanity’s power structure, to uphold humanity’s best tendencies, to avoid war, and to resolve conflicts through our better nature. Gideon, by contrast, can only hope to stop people by hurting others, usually by hurting them first.

Only in the sixth and final episode do we discover Gideon’s motivation. His worldview is bleak and deterministic because he, uniquely among humanity, understands time’s nature as a flat circle. Gideon’s messianism directly counters his father’s Presbyterian religiosity, but it isn’t nearly as counter as he believes. Both are judgmental and believe in corrective violence. Gideon just doesn’t justify his brutality through appeals to an invisible God.

Like the Biblical Judge, Gideon Shepherd’s mission begins when the people have lost their communal faith: Gideon’s mission of retributive justice begins in approximately the middle 1960s, when British religious observance plunged dramatically. Both Gideons want to restore justice to the land. But this Gideon brings a truth that Britain’s power structures don’t want to hear, and work to quell. We know his crucifixion must be imminent.