We were watching the recent Doctor Who season finale (the last Jodi Whittaker episode) where the Doctor attempted to rescue what looked to be a little girl. She told the girl that she promised to free and save her. The Master, then, swoops in and cackles that “The Doctor lies!” before activating a portal and the girl gets vanished to someplace else.
I gritted my teeth.
Then a couple of days later, I was reading a middle grade novel where the main character’s mom promised him that 13 was going to be a very special year…right before everything fell to pieces. He reflects on this and concludes that his mom lied.
I gritted my teeth even harder. My dentist will have a field day next time I go for a check-up.
Why was I so annoyed? It’s because the writers are lying about “lies.” Okay, maybe they weren’t lying…but they are just dead wrong.
A lie implies that subterfuge is involved, that someone is purposefully trying to mislead or misdirect someone else. But it’s NOT a lie when someone says things in good faith, believing whatever it is they said to be true, or will be true. It’s being misguided, perhaps, or being blindly optimistic, but it’s not the same as lying.
The Doctor honestly intended to save the girl and so she promised to save her. The mom honestly wanted to have her son’s 13th year to be a great one, and would likely have done all she could to make it so if calamity hadn’t struck. Both said what they did in the spirit of good intention, so I don’t consider them to be lying.
Stay tuned to future episodes of “Teresa’s grammar/semantic pet peeves”…because I have a ton of them. Hah!
I’m going to stare at a quiet potted plant until I regain some calm.