- by Amelia, Canberra Branch
- The Guardian
- Issue #2145
Conrad at the Tardis doors. Photo: BBC
The politics of Doctor Who are as varied as its main character, and have been made and remade over the decades. The Doctor, when played by Peter Capaldi, Christopher Ecclestone, and the incomparable Tom Baker, has cracked anti-capitalist jokes. Matt Smith’s Doctor was allies with Richard Nixon, and best mates with Winston Churchill. Malcolm Hulke, member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, wrote politically intricate episodes for Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee – often showing the rigid mindset of the British military establishment.
Just now, Doctor Who seems to lean liberal and confused. One of the most recent episodes, “Lucky Day,” offers a lucid demonstration of the close intersection between liberalism and fascism. It’s written by Pete McTighe who wrote the similarly odd 2018 episode ‘Kerblam!’ for Jodi Whittaker’s Doctor. The opening few minutes of ‘Kerblam!’ set the viewer up for an anti-Amazon satire. Instead, the villain turns out to be an ultraleftist worker who’s worried about automation. Whittaker’s Doctor solemnly proclaims that the “system isn’t the problem, it’s the people.” The ultra-leftist worker is abandoned to death, while the Doctor leaves the rest of the Amazon-alike’s workforce to the mercy of corporate automation and sympathetically portrayed HR managers. Not for the first time in popular fiction, capitalism is only a problem when nasty people are in charge.
‘Lucky Day’ shares the anti-worker politics of “Kerblam!” It focuses on UNIT, the show’s fictional military organisation devoted to investigating alien threats. Some people are suspicious of the money and resources spent on UNIT. So far, so realistic, especially since by this stage of Doctor Who, UNIT has own London skyscraper and small army. However, as far as ‘Lucky Day’ is concerned, UNIT’s only critics are nutty misogynistic, right-wing, conspiracy-theorist podcasters. These misinformation peddlers have succeeded in hoodwinking a substantial portion of the population, and our heroes are in danger of social media pile-ons, and crowds throwing eggs at the nice cars UNIT uses.
The message seems to be that if you criticise the state, you’re probably a deluded, right-wing troll, like this week’s bad guy Conrad (one of the most repulsive Doctor Who characters to grace our screens in recent memory), or a member of his troll army. For the bourgeois police state keeps you safe from terrifying external threats (like the Shreek, the toothy alien of the week). Just to rub it in, the Doctor drops in on Conrad and gives him a little lecture about Conrad’s likely fate, imprisonment and violent death.
Cranky right wing conspiracy theorists are a real thing, but so too is wrongdoing by powerful militarised government agencies. “Lucky Day,” like “Kerblam!” demonstrates how liberalism is opposed to working people, applauds extra-judicial violence, and is committed to shoring up corporate dictatorships and a secretive, xenophobic military-industrial complex.
