When Doctor Who first aired fifty-five years ago, its remit was to produce educational stories for a family audience that would teach children about science and history. That’s why the TARDIS travels in time and space, and it’s why the Doctor’s first human companions were a science teacher and a history teacher. The current series has returned to that remit in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s, producing historical stories that explore racism, sexism, war and colonialism for a family audience.

Political and social commentary in Doctor Who is nothing new, however. The series has always offered stories that reflect on ourselves and our culture, society, problems and history. Here, we’ve collected a smattering of just a few of the politically and socially conscious stories the show has told over the years.

There are many, many more stories we could have talked about, but we’ve aimed at a wide range covering as much of the show’s long history as possible. We’re focusing solely on television episodes here, and only on those that have survived, so that anyone wanting to watch any of these stories can do so. All the Doctors are represented except for the Sixth (a substantial chunk of whose relatively short time in the TARDIS was taken up by the Trial Of A Time Lord story), Eighth (who only appeared in one episode) and War Doctors (again, a one-episode-only Doctor) and the Thirteenth, on the grounds that we’ve all only just seen her first series and can still remember it pretty clearly. The Third Doctor is a bit over-represented due to the high focus on political and social issues during his tenure.

What we want to do here is to recommend stories casual Who fans might enjoy watching, and to offer recommendations from the Classic series (and older iterations of the new series) that new fans might enjoy, which also showcase the series’ on-going commitment to addressing major political and social issues. As such, some stories with very obvious political or social metaphors have not been included, on the grounds that we would not recommend them – Aliens Of London/World War Three and The Happiness Patrol, we’re looking at you! We’ve gone for stories that are both enjoyable in their own right, and that offer interesting political and social commentary, but there are so many more we could have included – add your own suggestions in the comments!