Doctor Who Secretly Explained Nixon's Watergate Scandal

Doctor Who secretly explained President Nixon's downfall in the Watergate Scandal. Watergate was undeniably one of the greatest political scandals of the 20th century, ultimately leading to the downfall of a president. Richard Milhous Nixon was a paranoid man, and he was in the habit of taping every conversation in the White House.

Nixon was not the first president to record conversations, but he was unusual in that he had a voice-activated system installed instead of one that needed to be switched on. Ironically, these recordings proved to be Nixon's downfall, because they incriminated him in a burglary at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Between February 1971 and July 1963. President Nixon secretly recorded some 3,700 hours of conversations - and they're all now publicly available. While Nixon was guarded about some of his prejudices, suffice to say the tapes don't all display Nixon at his best. But why did Nixon record all his conversations?

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Doctor Who has provided an answer in the season 6 episode "Day of the Moon," in which the Doctor worked with President Nixon to deal with the threat of the Silence. The race known as the Silence are dangerous aliens who possess what can be called a "memory filter," meaning anyone who sees them forgets them the moment they look away. They had ruled the Earth throughout human history, and they whisper in the ears of humans in order to plant ideas in the subconscious mind. They were the ones truly responsible for the Space Race, because they needed a spacesuit for the child River Song, whom they had kidnapped to assassinate the Doctor. And, though the Doctor did not know it, his battle against the Silence would have a profound effect on Nixon's life.

The Doctor instructed Nixon to tape all his conversations, so they would be able to play them back and identify whether or not he had been influenced by the Silence. This explains why the system was voice-activated rather than requiring a switch; because the mere sight of a Silence would shock the president so much he would never remember to trigger the switch, and the conversations would have gone unrecorded as a result. The human mind cannot recall anything directly pertaining to the Silence, so Nixon would have forgotten this instruction. But it would have remained in his subconscious, leading him to insist on taping everything throughout his presidency. And so, in the end, the Doctor - the one Nixon asked whether he would be remembered - was responsible for the downfall of a president.

The Doctor has been part of many great moments in history. He was responsible for the Great Fire of London (in a roundabout way), he was present at the destruction of Atlantis, and he sailed on the Titanic when it sank. But "Day of the Moon" is one of the most interesting Doctor Who historicals, in that the Doctor's involvement in the Watergate Scandal was much more subtle.

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August 20, 2021 at 12:19AM