Sir Gawain and the Doctor

    In ancient times, the men were men and gave only scorn to death and danger. Sir Gawain gave himself willingly into the hands of the Green Knight, his supposed executioner, while also capturing the heart of the Lady. In modern times, priorities for a hero have changed to include living to fight another day, but the interplay of duty, self preservation, and desire is still a complex issue. The television show Doctor Who analyzes these shifting forces in a very nuanced fashion, having dealt with the same situation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”  in ways both different and similar to the poem's which reveal the evolution of the hero over so many intervening centuries..
    At the beginning of the stories, both the Doctor and Sir Gawain are told they will soon die. For Sir Gawain, it is the twelvemonth and a day pronounced by the Green Knight. For the Doctor, it is an alien race saying, “your song must end soon,” followed up with a human low-level psychic warning him that his death will be heralded by four knocks. While Gawain's date and time of death are more well defined than their Doctor Who counterpart, this merely reflects on the different sources of suspense that each story is targeting. It is with the  two character's reactions that the meat of the comparison lies. Gawain volunteers for his fate, says goodbye, and moves on, fighting monsters on his way to the Green Chapel. He declares, “to count the cost over concerns me nothing,” when questioned about his upcoming sacrifice. On the other hand, the Doctor is told unwillingly twice, once by an alien and once by a prophet, and is horrified, aghast that his end might be near. However, the Doctor is similar to Gawain in that neither of them neglect their monster-fighting duties, with the Doctor even taking the time to save the universe in The Stolen Earth and Journey's End.
    Once the Doctor and Gawain approach when they are going to die, both of their demeanors change in illuminative ways. The Doctor once summoned to his death by the cloister bell ( a bell signaling distress of some kind ) does not pursue his duty but instead goes sightseeing, defeats the Red Carnivorous Maw, names a galaxy, and gets married. Gawain, on the other hand, meets up with the Lord of a castle and spends his days in equal leisure. The key difference is that the Doctor lazes about out of a fear for his own life, a fear Gawain has none of. In fact, Gawain repeatedly worries that he will not get to the Green Chapel quickly enough to be killed on time. It could be construed that in the case of the Doctor his self preservation comes about due to a stash of self confidence Gawain lacks, something that reflects on the humility of the Knights of the Round Table. However, Gawain is not unaffected by his death about to be, contrary to his passive exterior he is troubled, “though he lifts not his eyelids, little he sleeps.” From the two characters' reactions to their upcoming demises it is clear that as time has passed the form of cowardice also known as self preservation has proliferated.
    When finally confronted with their deaths, the Doctor and Gawain react in even more drastically different ways. Gawain practically begs for the Green Knight to kill him, citing that he will lose all his honor otherwise. In the end he wears a green sash to showcase his dishonor for having lived another day. In stark contrast, the Doctor does not want to die at all, and in fact only meets his death because he saves a human's life in the process. Right before he steps into the room about to be flooded with radiation he complains, “But me... I could do so much more! So much more! But this is what I get, my reward. And it's not fair!” In fact, his last words before his regeneration ( death ) are, “I don't want to go.” And so the Doctor and Sir Gawain are diametrically opposed, one wanting to die to preserve his dignity, and the other being self aware, knowing he is a genuine force of good, but that he must die. An additional difference lies in the nature of their executions. Gawain is brought low, he  has no control over whether or not he dies, and it is the Green Knight who proclaims he will not die that day. However, the Doctor is self-sufficient and powerful, deciding to accept his death and save a life. While it goes too far to say this means that older literature values the weak getting off easy, this still shows a clear trend towards using self-determination as a plot point in current art.
    At the end of the day, the differences and similarities between the Doctor and Sir Gawain in the face of death mean more than the fads of art having changed in the intervening centuries. Sir Gawain's desire to prove himself through what is most easily referred to as trial by death shows a puppy-like desire for approval amongst the ideal Knight of the Round Table as imagined by authors of this time, with him gallant, humble, and subject to an all powerful outside force. In contrast, the Doctor is a modern hero, conflicted, cowardly, but in the end in control over his own morality, a far cry from Sir Gawain.