Saturday 13 May 2017

Bit of Politics there...

Saturday 13 May 2017

Eagle-eyed viewers of tonight's episode Oxygen think they may have detected a few political points and are asking on social media when Doctor Who got political.

Well, it has certainly had episodes with political references since the Pertwee era, if not before. These are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are many more.
  • Environmentalists versus capitalism in The Green Death.
  • Joining the Galactic Federation (Common Market) in The Curse of Peladon.
  • Decolonisation in The Mutants.
  • Margaret Thatcher in The Happiness Patrol.
  • Tony Blair's 'dodgy dossier' in World War Three ('massive weapons of destruction', indeed!)
Politics aside, I thought it was a  very good episode.  I hadn't been looking forward to it, space zombies not really being my thing, but there was a very real sense of jeopardy.  This was not the sanitised space of Star Trek,  but a hostile environment, which is trying to kill you.

There were some nice touches,  such as the moment when Bill came face to face with her first blue-skinned alien.  And we didn't have an ending where everybody lived and the TARDIS crew escaped unscathed.

Looking forward to next week.

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