I want my kids to learn about social justice from Doctor Who: (Picture: BBC/ WireImage)

We’re halfway through Series 11 of Doctor Who, and it’s time for a mid-season sanity check.

Jodie Whittaker’s debut was watched by a staggering 10 million people, and while things have levelled off in the past few weeks, this is still the most talked about series of Doctor Who for quite some time.

But is it universally loved? While Whittaker’s goofball performance as the Thirteenth Doctor has been met with critical acclaim, there’s also been a concern that this series has been overdoing it on the social justice front.

Not a week goes by, it seems, without some point or another being rammed home, whether it’s gun control or gender politics.




Still, this is (mostly) the right call. Chris Chibnall knows what he’s doing – and it’s all to do with the show’s target audience.

First of all: social commentary and political awareness in Doctor Who is nothing new.

It’s been a part of the show ever since the first Dalek raised its sink plunger – through the Third Doctor’s encounter with the EEC, the Seventh Doctor’s brush with a Margaret Thatcher caricature, or that time the Slitheen took over Downing Street and fabricated stories about ‘massive weapons of destruction’.

So we’ve been here before. Doctor Who has always been current, has always been topical and has always been political.

All that said, there is a right and a wrong way of doing it, and thus far this series has been a bit of a mixed bag.

Social commentary works best in Doctor Who when it fits the narrative. In ideal circumstances the story works around it.

Take Rosa as a good example: the episode is actively about the role Rosa Parks played in the civil rights movement. It features a purposefully underdeveloped villain that is so bland he could be someone who lives down the road from us, which is the whole point.

Not that it really seems fair to accuse Rosa of making a ‘political’ point, anyway. What point is it trying to make? That racism is wrong? Is that really something people want to debate?

Conversely, in Arachnids In The UK we were faced with giant spiders in the middle of Sheffield. At its climax, Jack Robertson – the story’s villain – escapes scot-free, brandishing a handgun and promising that he’ll make America great again.

Robertson was a grotesque parody of Trump (Picture: BBC)

Here’s the problem: Robertson is a grotesque parody of Trump, but in many ways it was hard to argue with him. He offers the already dying spider a mercy killing, making him far more sympathetic than Chibnall seemed to want him to be.

It’s a sorry mess of a finale, spoiling what was otherwise a darned good episode. And it’s the same thing that ruined 2014’s Kill The Moon, which saw Peter Capaldi face off against giant spiders before finding himself thrust into a pointless abortion debate.



There have been other moments. The comment on knives from Whittaker’s first episode, for example, was topical – but it felt like a public service announcement. As a rule of thumb, if you notice it too much, it doesn’t fit the scene.

The upside to all of this is that at least it’s a talking point.

Perhaps the biggest mistake we make is to assume that the Doctor has to be right, or any sort of role model.

Maybe it’s time to finally deconstruct the ‘hero’ motif that’s been dogging the show for too long. At least then we can discuss things openly, rather than trying to justify the Doctor’s every move.

The other question is that of diversity: we have a female lead, supported by a young black man, a young Asian woman and an older white man, which is surely something to celebrate?

It’s easy to look at this as tokenism. But the fact is the cast work well together – sparking off each other with an easy chemistry, whether they’re fixing a boat or delivering a baby (although we do need more scenes with Graham and Yaz).

While Rosa dealt specifically with the issues Ryan and Yaz face on a daily basis, by and large their skin colour has been incidental – just like the Doctor’s gender. Aside from a couple of jokes about Whittaker’s height, it’s been business as usual.

Surely that’s our final destination? It’s tempting to think that the BBC are meeting a diversity quota, but the only way to get past that is to actively encourage diverse casting until you don’t even notice it.

The diversity of the Doctor Who cast isn’t tokenism: it works (Picture: BBC)

We need to have a programme that reflects, as far as the narrative will allow, both the society we live in and the people who live in it – because ultimately, Doctor Who is a children’s show.


Families enjoy it, but it’s for the kids. And it’s our failure to accept this that is holding us back.

And when you’re writing a show for the generation of the future, sometimes you have to be a little more transparent than you would otherwise.

I’ll close with a personal observation: I was one of the people who, nearly three weeks ago, was rolling my eyes at the final moments of Rosa, and what I perceived as an overriding preachiness.

And it was my other half who pointed out what I’d missed: our children had enjoyed it. And that it told a story that needed to be told, that it was a message they needed to hear, particularly in these dark and divisive days.

I can’t really argue with that, can you?

Doctor Who airs tonight at 7pm on BBC One.

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