Analysis of Doctor Who - An Essay by PrimariumZ11

Political Coding

Part 1 into this dive into New Who is probably the most controversial aspect of the show in recent history - the political coding.

Series 11 reviews have often been praised by critics and a fair amount of the audience... however, the contrary have offered less than favourable praise. A large chunk of the audience of (specifically) Series 11 have had a massive and often personal issue with the politics worked into the explicit text or subtext of the show. It's been stated that Doctor Who has been forcing a left-wing political agenda into the show, particularly a majority of the villains throughout the series have been some embodiment of corrupted view points throughout history, for example; Krasko being a racist, Becka Savage being an internalised misogynist and of course, Jack Robertson being essentially an explicit representation of Donald Trump. 

So what exactly makes the leftist views can be basically summarised as anything progressive and explores ideals without judgement and experiments with an open mindset. This is true specifically in Series 11 as the Doctor has regenerated into a woman, Graham being an older man, and Ryan and Yasmin being people of ethnic minorities. The majority of the main cast are now diverse in terms of it's gender and race, more than it's ever been. With this series, we also got episodes that focused on Rosa Parks, the Partition of India and Witch Hunts. Now any viewer who doesn't care about politics would watch these episodes and think that it's just an episode touching on geopolitical issues in fragile parts of history... that wasn't the case for most. For some, it seemed more like that the writers were forcing messages down the viewer's throats expressing how humans behaved and why those who embody that behaviour are the villain. In this series we have had a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe and a gun-crazed American business man.

At quick glance, they do seem on the nose, especially considering how nit-picked and lowered the expectations were for this series. However, what the audience who make the claims of "too much political correctness" seem to forget is that art reflects politics and Doctor Who has always done this and not always with a leftist view. We are of a time when leftist politics is the most present in society and media as humans develop more empathetic, sympathetic and rational thought processes towards things we don't understand, like different cultures and groups. Doctor Who translates this into their stories, in the past to show how bad things used to be if you were born a certain way (e.g. sex or skin colour) and in the future when prejudices seem to be almost completely eradicated from every society. 

Rosa was the third episode of Series 11 and told the story of Rosa Parks and her starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks was of course, a very important icon of equality and racial sensitivity in the west. For many viewers, this where things seemed to start changing. The opening episode of the series seemed to exceed expectations with people initially assuming a female Doctor was too much of a people-pleasing move to tell a cohesive story and managed to pull it off and the episode following was a simple adventure story about trying to find the Tardis. In Rosa, we see Team Tardis land in Montgomery Alabama in 1955, one day before Parks refuses to stand on a segregated bus. In the past, if there was a racist character, it would mainly be an un-intimidating villain like Sutcliffe or just a passing ignorant or snarky comment made by William Shakespeare or Banes in Series 3 and does not further the plot. In this case, Racism is around every corner. Not even 5 minutes into being in the past and Ryan gets assaulted and threatened due to his skin colour. Not even 5 minutes later, Yaz falls victim too as she and Ryan are refused service at a restaurant for the same reasons. The writing team had finally done something that was never fully done in the history of the show and that is to have consequences for characters of minorities to travel back in time. In the cases of Martha and Bill, the only ethnic minority long-running companions before Ryan and Yaz, had only experienced racism from no more than two people each and the worst that happened was being spoken to intolerantly either maliciously or just used the wrong wording in the case of The Shakespeare Code. In the case of Rosa however, there was an actual risk of death, assault or imprisonment for Ryan and Yaz if they touched a white person or were caught in or around a white-only motel or sat in the wrong bus seat. For Bill and Martha, no such consequences happened, The Doctor never fully understood their fears of getting enslaved as the past depicted in those episodes was a more ideal past, where everyone was free and racism was in the low percentage, rather than a realistic one where you were seen as sub-human if you happened to be a minority. 

Similar political issues were brought to light in episode 8, The Witchfinders, where this time, the Doctor was attacked because of her gender. The Witch Hunts were during a superstitious time whenever anything bad happened so someone, that today, would be identified as bad luck, was always linked to a woman who expresses an odd living style, owns a cat, experiments with medicine (the list could go on), and was labelled a witch and was put through unfair trials that resulted in death regardless of outcome. The only reason the Doctor was accused of witchcraft was of course her gender, as well as her sonic screwdriver being mistaken for a wand. The relevance of this episode today is for the same reason as Rosa; societal equality. We aren't legally executing people for their race or gender today, but there are certain factors in today's society that result in unfair treatment to ethnic minorities and women. For example; women are blamed for leading on men who assault them sexually, African Americans receiving biased treatment from law enforcement, as well as the 2016 shootings and the gender pay-gap just to name a few.

The writers have made these episodes specifically to relate to the world today. These issues are still alive and kicking and the episodes set in the past are a mirror to how bad things were and how better things are now. 

So what about the coding in DW in the past? Well, the most obvious example is the Slitheen from 2005's Aliens of London/World War Three story. The Slitheen are part of a lizard-people race that hide in human skin suits and masquerade as figures of importance to exploit a resource on Earth and sell it. Why is this relevant? In the story of introduction, the Slitheen disguise themselves as politicians who are called to 10 Downing Street to discuss an emergency involving an alien threat. They make up a story of a waging war with an alien race and request nuclear launch codes. Little as the rest of the Earth knows, they plan to use a missile to attack another nation, eventually obliterating Earth in a war to end all wars and sell the molten slag that used to be Earth. The political subtext here is that politicians are lizard people who lie to the public and use false flag policies against other countries, as well as exploiting the planet.

(A false flag policy is when it is made to look as if one country was attacked by an enemy nation to rally support from the public and allies to attack whatever country accused of instigating attack)

This isn't the only time politics have been used as inspiration for a Doctor Who story as there are many more examples including the Muslim/ISIS allegory in the Zygon stories of 2015, Capitalism in Space in Oxygen, Slavery with the Ood and Global Warming and Carbon Emissions in the Sonataran Stratagem etc.

The point is that there have always been more crystal clear political coding from Doctor Who since it came back in 2005. The reasoning for people to notice more this season is of course, the gender change in the Doctor, the diverse casting of her companions, the accurate depictions of history and relating episodes to society in the modern world.

So why does it seem that there is so much progressive politics in this series? We are in an age now that with a booming social media network and global news coverage, we are more aware of political issues and scandals, we are awash with hearing things as such every day. There is also the fact LGBT, women's and minority rights are stronger than ever and are getting closer to equality, giving more voice, rights, opportunities and protection to under-spoken groups. As the times change, so does the show in the writing, film-making, politics, cast, monsters and stories.