We heard it when Jodie Whittaker was announced as the Doctor. The first time we saw a photo of the new ethnically diverse companions Yasmin, Ryan, and Graham we heard it. When Segun Akinola, a black man, was recently named the new composer of Doctor Who we heard it. We heard the cries and tweets of people who identify as long time fans of Doctor Who degrading the show because it has become “too politically correct and too social justice warrior influenced.”

About casting…

“Doctor Who has been overrun by social justice warriors!”

“I’m a lifelong fan of Doctor Who, but I’m done because they’ve caved to pressure to be more politically correct!”

“Who (sic) can they be so blatantly ignorant to the history and continuity of the character. 50+ years thrown into disarray because the producer thought it would be a good idea to have a him turn into a woman. Shame. And, yes, that clip looks awful.”

About Akinola…

“Who cares if he’s good, he’s politically correct.”

“Don’t like this move at all. This guy has barely any experience and only has four songs on his @AppleMusic page. And this guy is replacing Murray Gold? Sorry, but I think @BBC is playing politics with this once great show. #DoctorWho #AppleMusic”

If you don’t like the casting of Whittaker because you genuinely aren’t a fan of her work, or don’t like the hiring of Akinola because you don’t care for his music this isn’t directed at you. This is for those claiming that all of this is being done because “they” are caving to the pressure of the social justice warriors and politically correct movement. To you I say…

You’re right! Doctor Who has become very politically correct! It didn’t used to be like that at all, I mean except for that one time…

  1. Verity Lambert was the first female producer at the BBC.
  2. Waris Hussein, the director of the very first Doctor Who story “An Unearthly Child”, was an openly gay, Indian man.
  3. When we meet Susan Foreman in “An Unearthly Child”, she’s talking back to her teachers and pointing out the flaws in the “official” version of history as portrayed in her French Revolution textbook.
  4. In “The Cave of Skulls” the cave society was portrayed as having a matriarchy. The Old Mother was the most sensible character in a tribe of “noisy males”.
  5. In “The Daleks” the titular characters are specifically considered evil because of their thirst for “racial purity”. Creator Terry Nation would later admit they were inspired by the Nazis.
  6. The Dalek home planet of Skaro was devastated by a nuclear arms race that got out of control.
  7. Barbara Wright. Every single thing about Barbara Wright. In “Edge of Destruction” it was Barbara who stood up to The Doctor and challenged his dismissive behavior toward she and Ian.
  8. “Planet Of Giants” is about environmentalism.
  9. “The Rescue” features a strong critique of gaslighting behavior.
  10. “The Dalek Master Plan” introduces us to Space Security Service agent Sara Kingdom. She helped the Doctor and Steven defeat the evil Mavic Chen and his Daleks.
  11. “The Savages” is basically about colonialism and it portrays the “Natives” as the good guys and the so-called civilized “Elders” as the bad guys. If that isn’t convincing enough the original title was “The White Savages.”
  12. “The War Machines” introduces working-class sailor Ben, who we’re meant to side with in opposition to the aristocratic idiots who keep talking down to him, and Polly – a thoroughly modern upper-class young woman with a knack for solving problems based on her traditionally female expertise. She’s arguably Doctor Who’s first lipstick feminist.
  13. In “The Tenth Planet”, the Cybermen call Polly out for only caring when someone dies in front of her, and not about the millions of people who are dying around the world. This is the kind of “oh-so-clever” retort some edgelord on Twitter might say. That’s right: in 1966, Doctor Who compared Cybermen to concern-trolls.
  14. “The Macra Terror” is about the importance of questioning authority. It encourages the viewer to look beneath the cheery façade of life and ask what’s really going on. The Doctor overthrows an oppressive regime who keeps its people pacified with pretty slogans and lies. The Macra is Fox News, is what I’m saying.
  15. “The Ice Warriors” takes place in a future where another ice age was triggered by climate change caused by humanity.
  16. Salamander is explicitly based on hard-right, fascists like Juan Peron.
  17. Zoe is said to be smarter than the Doctor and is certainly smarter than the boys.
  18. “The Mind Robber” takes a lot of visual cues from psychedelia and drug counter-culture.
  19. “The Krotons” has the Doctor leading a student rebellion in 1969.
  20. “The War Games” portrays war as a situation where poor young men die while posh old men pull the strings from afar.

Yeah, but that was the swinging 60s! Everyone was involved in a revolution against something. This is all the Beatles fault! There weren’t any politics or agendas in the show in the 70s, except for…

  1. “Spearhead From Space” is anti-corporations.
  2. “The Silurians” portrays the Brigadier as wrong for his Reagan-esque “shoot first and ask questions later’ attitude.
  3. “Inferno” is about the dangers of oil drilling & fracking.
  4. Liz Shaw.
  5. “Terror of the Autons” is anti-corporations.
  6. “Colony In Space”: Anti-arms race and pro-environment.
  7. “The Daemons”: incredibly sympathetic towards Paganism at the expense of Christianity. They literally blow up a church.
  8. “The Curse Of Peladon” is pro-European Union. I wonder if this is Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson’s least favorite story?
  9. “The Time Monster” features a female scientist portrayed as awesome and capable while her male counterpart is portrayed as an idiotic sexist.
  10. “Carnival Of Monsters” is about anti-slavery.
  11. In “The Green Death” the off-the-grid hippies are the good guys. Capitalism is the bad guy. It’s about as pro-environment as you can get.
  12. Sarah Jane Smith. Again. Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah. Jane. Smith.
  13. “The Monster of Peladon” is about the miner’s strike. Also, there’s Sarah Jane’s amazing “there’s nothing only about being a girl” moment.
  14. “Planet of the Spiders” positively portrays a non-Christian religion as – essentially- the closest thing to spiritual truth as exists in the Doctor Who universe.
  15. Harry Sullivan is nice-ish guy, but sexist and clearly wrong as hell.  Sarah Jane doesn’t hesitate to call him on it.
  16. “Genesis Of The Daleks” Did I mention nuclear war was bad? Did I mention the Daleks were Nazis?
  17. “The Seeds Of Doom” – more pro-environment propaganda. Like, a LOT of it.
  18. The Deadly Assassin – All authority is corrupt–even Time Lords.
  19. The Face Of Evil – Religion is corrupt.
  20. Now, granted, the show’s not perfect. “Talons of Weng-Chiang” is pretty racist – they actually cast a white guy as an evil Asian guy and put him in yellow-face … but I’ll give the show some credit for portraying all the white British people as massive idiots.
  21. “The Sunmakers” features a sort of “Tea-Partyish plot with an anti-tax perspective. The government on Pluto acts more like a private business than a government. The moral is essentially “greed is bad.”
  22. Romana. She changed her species yet you’re having a hard time with a Time Lord changing their gender?
  23. “Ribos Operation?” Essentially, Galileo was right.
  24. “The Pirate Planet”? Essentially, predatory resource mining is inherently exploitative.
  25. “Power Of Kroll?” Colonialism is bad.
  26. “The Armageddon Factor?” Wars fought over ancient grudges are really bad.
  27. Romana II. Chooses her own form. Let’s unpack that one … Chooses her own form.  So they have a choice in how they turn out all the way back in the 70s.
  28. “Destiny Of The Daleks” Computerized war is just as bad as war plotted out by humans, because the people it kills are still super dead.
  29. “City Of Death” may not have a huge message beyond a bit of anti-creationism, but it deserves to be mentioned because it’s really good.
  30. “Full Circle” is super pro-evolution. Actually, the whole rest of this season serves a pretty strong rejection of religious dogma in favor of scientific fact and humanistic values… “Warrior’s Gate”, “The Keeper Of Traken”, “Logopolis”.

But that was the 70s! Drugs, disco, dancing, it was fun, man! By the time Gordon Gecko came along in the 80s all of this PC stuff was done! I mean, except for…

  1. Tom Baker suggested that he be succeeded by a woman.
  2. Tegan. Literally Tegan.
  3. “Four To Doomsday” kind of attempts to make a positive statement about multi-culturalism.  Admittedly, it comes up a bit short, but points for effort!
  4. “Kinda” Colonialism is bad and men are stupid.
  5. “Snakedance” Colonialism is bad and most people are stupid.
  6. The tagline for “Terminus” could have been a repeating “Healthcare is a right!” chant.
  7. “Warriors Of The Deep” Mutually assured destruction sucks.
  8. “The Awakening” Toxic masculinity sucks.
  9. “Resurrection of the Daleks” War really, really sucks, and Tegan’s literally done with your toxic masculinity B.S. Jovanka out!
  10. “Planet Of Fire” Religion is stupid!
  11. “The Caves Of Androzani” highlights that greed is bad, we shouldn’t exploit people, and that we need safer labor regulations.  Meanwhile, Sharaz Jek is the ultimate basement dwelling misogynist creep.
  12. “The Twin Dilemma” It essentially…nope, can’t defend that one. Nothing’s perfect.
  13. “Attack of the Cybemen” had the Cryons with a matriarchal society.
  14. “Vengeance on Varos” the media is manipulating you through fear and violence. An eerily predictive statement on reality television.
  15. “The Two Doctors” promotes a vegetarian lifestyle.
  16. In 1986, Sydney Newman, the Head of Drama at the BBC who greenlit Doctor Who suggests we should have a female Doctor.
  17. “Paradise Towers” is about a left-wing, punk rock, working class rebellion against a coded neo-Nazi regime of unearned male privilege. Meanwhile, Pex is clearly a critique of toxic masculinity.
  18. “Delta and the Bannermen” An inter-racial (and species) couple in the 1950s.
  19. Ace.
  20. “Remembrance of the Daleks” has a not remotely subtle commentary about how bad racism was in the 1960s. It was critical of its era in a way that goes well past “Oh, that’s just what they thought back then.”
  21. “The Happiness Patrol” is about as anti-Thatcher as you can get. “Up The Killjoys!” is based on a chant shouted by the social justice left.
  22. In “Silver Nemesis” the neo-nazis are the bad guys and the Doctor blows up the Cybermen with jazz. Yeah, jazz man.
  23. In “Battlefield” we meet Brigadier Winifred Bambera, a black woman in charge of UNIT, and she falls in love with one of King Arthur’s knights. Additionally, we meet Shou Yuing, an asian character who address latent racism in society.
  24. “Ghost Light” resents evolution is real and states that categorization via ethnicity is stupid.
  25. “Curse Of Fenric”  Oh there is so much to unpack here. Faith is what you make of it, sexual repression is bad, we should look out for single mothers, the Commie is a good guy, the computer scientist is supposed to be analogous to Alan Turing (the novelization suggests that he was a lot closer with the base commander than we saw on screen…) etc.
  26. “Survival” Toxic masculinity is bad and tough women rule

Okay, fine! But that’s just Classic Who, right? When the show returned in 2005 we didn’t see any of this! I mean, I guess there was…

  1. Rose and Mickey – interracial couple
  2. “The End of the World” is critique of greed, classism, racism, & specifically Cassandra’s “racial purity.”
  3. “Dalek” illustrates how  war turns really good people into really bad people. Acquisition for acquisitions sake is bad.
  4. “The Long Game” was originally titled “The Untitled Rupert Murdoch Biopic”.  That’s not true, but it could have been.
  5. “Don’t forget the welfare state!”
  6. “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” focuses on a single mother in World War II, dealing with the kind of shame she’d deal with at the time.
  7. Captain Jack Harkness.
  8. In “Bad Wolf” we see that a society without empathy reduces its populace into fodder for cheap entertainment. It wasn’t the Doctor who saved the universe, but rather the working class teenage girl who  literally became a goddess, brought Jack back to life, turned the Daleks into atoms, and saved the universe.
  9. “New Earth” Can we borrow that “Terminus” tagline again? “Healthcare is a right!”
  10. “School Reunion” – Ketchup is not a vegetable!
  11. “Age Of Steel” is anti-capitalist
  12. “The Idiot’s Lantern” is anti-patriarchy
  13. “Fear Her” is anti-patriarchy
  14. Donna Noble.
  15. Martha Jones.
  16. “Gridlock” illustrates how the ritualistic aspects of religion can be a connecting and productive force when facing adversity.
  17. “Daleks In Manhattan” has diverse casting in 1930s New York, social inequality, literally features an anti-capitalist rebellion
  18. “Human Nature/Family Of Blood” is anti-racist, classist, sexist, and specifically anti-toxic masculinity as you can get.
  19. “The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords” –  If you claim you can watch that two-parter now without thinking of Trump and/or Theresa May, you’re lying.
  20. River Song.
  21. During “Turn Left”, an immigrant family is taken away and WIlf says “it’s just like before the war.” That imagery is even more so haunting today given things going on in the world.
  22. “The Waters Of Mars” features a strong woman incredibly critical of the Doctor’s presumptive egotism and she is first person on Mars.
  23. “The End Of Time” is about someone becoming President and deletes what the previous President did at any cost.  Nah, that’s not relatable.

But that was the Russell T. Davies era! Of course he would make liberal leaning statements! We didn’t have any of that stuff with Steven Moffat in charge, except for…

  1. In “The Eleventh Hour” we meet Rory who is a male nurse and it wasn’t an issue or plot point
  2. “The Beast Below” flat out admits that “The Good Guys” (the British) have done some terrible things throughout history and that modern day civilization depends on us forgetting all about it.
  3. “The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood” – so, how do we deal with indigenous people, and share land with them, and…. Ooh, hope we don’t mess this up?
  4. “Vincent and the Doctor” – mental health care is a right!
  5. “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang”: Rory waited for Amy for thousands of years.
  6. “A Christmas Carol”: greed is bad, compassion and empathy are good, child abuse is bad, and boys can be babysitters.
  7. Canton Everett Delaware III has a black boyfriend.
  8. In “The Doctor’s Wife” we learn that the Corsair switched genders. Confirmed. It’s canon. It also flipped the script and made the Tardis – a woman – essentially the protagonist of this story all along, if you want to read it like that. (“I stole a Time Lord and ran away.”)
  9. “The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People” – not only is capitalism bad and exploitative, it actually dehumanizes us.
  10. Gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled.
  11. Bad-ass Warrior Amy from “The Girl Who Waited”.
  12. Fascinatingly diverse casting in “The God Complex”.
  13. Love conquers all, and being a good Dad is super important in “Closing Time”.
  14. Biracial lesbian Victorian detectives. One of them is a lizard.
  15. “The Bells of St. John” – net neutrality is a right!
  16. Kate Stewart.
  17. Osgood.
  18. While one of the more problematic tropes of the Moffat era is “Woman as savior,” it should be noted that this also means that one of the tropes of the era is “Men are cocky violent idiots who need to be saved from themselves.” It’s not perfect, but you really see that over and over again, especially in… “The Day Of The Doctor.”
  19. “Flatline” – Clara’s basically the Doctor and who’s her companion? Essentially Banksy.
  20. “In The Forest Of The Night” – totally nonsensical, has bad ideas about psychiatric meds…and I hate it.  However, it *is* about as pro-environment as it gets. The trees are literally taking their revenge.
  21. M-I-S-S-Y.
  22. Yeah, Moffat should have hired more female writers. But guess which Doctor Who showrunner hired more female directors than anyone else, ever? Yup. Sheree Folkson, Hettie Macdonald, Catherine Moorhead, and Rachel Talalay. 15% of episodes were directed by women – that’s still way too low a percentage, but it’s way higher than any other era in the show’s history.
  23. We get to actually see the General regenerate from a white guy into a black woman. On screen. It’s canon. Get over it.
  24. Bill Potts – first openly gay full time companion.
  25. “Thin Ice” – racism and classism are the enemy.
  26. “Oxygen” – capitalism is the enemy.
  27. “Lie Of The Land” – authoritarian propaganda is the enemy, and the only thing that can beat it, is a black woman who loves her mom.
  28. “Empress Of Mars” – colonialism and racism are the enemy.
  29. “The Eaters Of Light” – Rome was gay as hell.
  30. Bill gets rescued by her almost-girlfriend at the end of “The Doctor Falls”, and the fact that we’re talking about how that didn’t make a lot of sense logically instead of the fact that “Bill got rescued by her girlfriend” is a pretty good sense of where the show is coming from.
  31. Oh, also, the 13th Doctor is a woman.

And yes…not everything is perfect in the history of Doctor Who. There are problems with representation as a whole and many missteps along the way, but I applied some degree of revisionist history on how stories represent current issues.  Think of it as replying to baseless generalizations with generalized facts. If you somehow missed all that, and you still think “Doctor Who has been taken over by the “Social Justice P.C. Brigade,” I’m not sure what show you were watching the past 55 years.

Special thanks to Andy Hicks (@dystopiandy) for helping out with a lot of the research as we prepared a version of this for the Coal Hill A/V Club Podcast.

Click here to read more from Stephen!

Author

Stephen is a stay-at-home dad, husband, writer, podcaster, performer, & pop culture fanatic.

23 Comments

  1. John Smith

    This is amazing. Thanks for posting and God bless you 🙂

    I can’t wait for series 11

  2. Good list, but how could you mention Tegan and not Nyssa? A teenage girl who was a scientist, whom The Doctor freely admitted was more capable than him in certain disciplines? And before the push for more STEM programming aimed at girls in libraries and schools, no less!

    • Yep, I love Nyssa. She was on the list and I think got removed by mistake during editing. The list definitely could have had a lot more added on. I’m also kicking myself for not including Delia Derbyshire for obvious reasons.

      Thanks for calling me out on Nyssa though! She deserves the acknowledgment for sure!

      And hey – if the fandom as a whole can argue about all the awesome women who I mistakenly left off the list, then we’re not arguing about the Doctor being a woman. Mission accomplished! 🙂

  3. And don’t forget Leela – badass warrior woman!

  4. Michael E. Rubin

    This article is so full of win I can’t do it justice. Thank you!

    Instead, I’ll point out my favorite bit: “7. Barbara Wright. Every single thing about Barbara Wright.”

    Absolutely goddamn right.

    Barbara is – to coin a phrase another Doctor would use – fantastic. I was given a copy of “The Aztecs” on DVD some years ago and I was blown away by how fully realized of a character she was.

    In that story, she stands up to the Doctor without being shrill and even though she “loses” the argument about being able to change history, she doesn’t go off and cry, sulk, or pout (unlike a LOT of companions over the years). She acknowledges that she was wrong, but does it with dignity and in a manner that clearly communicates “this isn’t over.”

    And lastly, let’s face it: Ian was a dingbat who got that first crew into so much trouble all the time. Barbara was clearly the brains of the outfit and wore the pants in that particular relationship.

    At your service,
    Michael

      • Ian wasn’t just a dingbat – he was also a bit of a murderer. His “non-chalant kill count” got up pretty high! HA!

        Seriously though, I love Ian and Barbara both because of that dynamic. The scene at the end of the first episode in Edge of Destruction where Barbara stands up to the Doctor when he accuses she and Ian of messing with the TARDIS is one of my favorite parts in Doctor Who. (And not just because she’s still wearing the Diamond Cut leather pants she borrowed from the Thal in the previous story – though it helps!)

  5. THANK YOU !
    This list gave me feelings of pleasure and I smiled a lot while reading it.
    Most of the Classic Who episodes I see are at night on the weekends on KeraTV so I cant comment much on those (exept that they are still relevant) but since 2005 DW has established a long conversation about social awareness.
    So I don’t understand why people are now getting mad at The Doctor for being super anti gun or portraying racists on the show when it has been that type of show all along.

  6. Great article, but I’d be really surprised if Waris Hussein was ‘openly gay’ in 1963, 4 years before homosexuality was (partially) decriminalised. I expect that Verity Lambert knew, and some of his close friends, but that’s very different from ‘openly gay’. I think it’s a disservice to underestimate how difficult things were for gay men back then.

    Great article otherwise though! 😀

    • Stephen Webb

      Thank you for your comments Neil.

      I had the opportunity to interview Waris Hussein a couple of years ago in front of an audience at a convention as well as talk privately with him for a couple of hours before that. We talked a lot about some of things he experienced during the production of Doctor Who.

      He referred to himself as “an open gay man” with everyone including the cast and crew and told some stories about how that came with some prejudices and not being treated the same as others.

      He also mentioned that though that he had it far easier than most gay people in that era as he was surrounded by a lot supportive people — Verity in particular.

      I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for gay people, especially gay minorities, in that time and in no way do I mean to lessen the strife that people experienced. I’m just speaking to the stories that pertain to Mr. Hussein specifically.

      Thank you for bringing up that point though. It is important that we remember what everyone went through to get where we are and not downplay that.

  7. Pingback: [TV Show] Doctor Who - Page 42

  8. Graham Burnett

    Malcolm Hulke who wrote many Pertwee era stories was also a total lefty….

  9. Honest question. How did you leave zygon inversions epic anti war speech out of this list

  10. Great list and you are quite correct. BUT…in the past the messages were usually done more subtly, using alien circumstances etc. The storylines made you think and realise the message that was being given.
    The current nonsense is being written for what audience, I don’t know. If I want that specific Earth history, I can read a book (or Google).
    I know this is a ‘children’s’ programme, but so many adults watch it, as I have done all my life (from William Hartnell on).
    Cast and acting is great. Just alter the writing.
    So please, I don’t mind a message, but make it more subtle – oh I forgot, this is probably aimed at the American market!

    • Jennifer

      Except if people are complaining about the obvious storylines now, one has to wonder if they got the message that it was taken from our history and problems. All I’ve heard are people that don’t seem to get that it’s always been there.

  11. Narcotic Casserole

    Ntm Aliens of London/World War III

    a flat out dig on Tony Blair and W’s insistence of WME’s in Iraq

  12. James ONeill

    Hello,
    You were starting to win me over until I got to “ The Macra is Fox News”, which tells me YOUR bent and your agenda! From my point of view they are CNN and Jim Acosta!
    I’m 65, I’ve watched Doctor Who as long as I can remember since it first came to the U.S.
    My problem with the current show is it’s blatancy! You convince people with a subtle, thought provoking story, like The Green Death, for example. Not being British, I did not catch the anti Thatcherism in Happiness Patrol. I enjoyed it though because it ENTERTAINED!
    Also, why does the BBC have to jump on the liberal anti Trump wagon? Don’t y’all have Terry May and Brexit to beat up?!!
    I’ll read the rest of your piece latter, but Cibnall, et.al. need to lighten up or risk losing half their audience ( mostly the monied half that buy their advertisers products, at least here in BBCAmerica!

  13. Soujihyde

    In ‘In The Forest of the Night’, I don’t think the trees were getting their revenge. They ‘decided’ to exponentially grow themselves everywhere to save humans from a deadly solar flare, so trees are good, don’t cut them down. The only enemies in that story are those with flamethrowers trying to burn them down.

  14. I guess you could also say stories like The Tenth. Planet, The Moonbase, The Wheel in Space and The Seeds of Death (amongst others) show that the human race can achieve more when diverse nations and cultures work together (even with dodgy American or Australian accents) – We we should have a thriving space program, a Moonbase and a functioning transmit system by now. 😉

  15. My god, this is the most spot on article EVER, THANK YOU. I have been so turned off with this new Doctor Who, but NOT because of the gender change. The fans and the new cast a crew have completely turned me off by acting that what is going on now in the series has never happened before. In a video i saw Joddie Whittaker made the statement that girls could now be fans of the series because now they can relate to the Doctor. At that point I was done, I tried to watch it though to be fair to the show and it all feels forced and haphazardly done