The Most Political Show in All of Time and Space

Beyond time-travelling aliens and intergalactic invasion plots, Doctor Who is political; it always has been, and always will be. Sylvester McCoy, who played the 7th incarnation of the titular Doctor, understood that one of the factors that propelled Doctor Who’s success was the political subtlety it holds within. As the longest-running science fiction show in history, airing its first episode in the wake of JFK’s assassination, the programme was quite literally born in the midst of political upheaval. It is a fascinating time capsule, not only reflective of changes in the political psyche of Britain’s general audience, but, in its own compact way, constitutive of it. Given the increased research onus to consider the role of everyday influences and the aforementioned longevity of Doctor Who, the show is likely one of the definitive specimens for study when considering the overlap between pop culture and British politics. 

One interesting way of exploring this is through the triad of the show’s major villains, all of whom are constructed allegories of extreme political ideologies. Firstly, the most iconic villains in all of science fiction (if we exclude, say, Darth Vader) are the Daleks. Staples of British iconography, intent on extinguishing all ‘inferior’ life (anything that isn’t Dalek), their real-life designer, Terry Nation, took inspiration from the Nazis when creating the infamous pepper pots. Their in-universe creator, Davros, is a raving madman who designs the Daleks as a form of racially pure military elite. As one author noted, he’s the spitting image of “Hitler raving in the bunker”, having created a species who are themselves “essentially the Nazis”. In one serial, 1964’s ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’, the Daleks trudge around London performing Nazi salutes, an example of allegory flying too close to the sun. They are clearly extraterrestrial representations of fascism, or more specifically Nazism, with extreme militarism, a centralised state structure, cult-like worship of the state leader (e.g. Davros), and above all, a desire for genocide to achieve racial purity. 

Secondly, the Cybermen, who are comparatively far more complex. Originally thought up by the show’s unofficial scientific advisor, Kit Pedler, as a manifestation of growing 1960s fears surrounding plastic surgery, the Cybermen quickly came to embody more distinct political reflections. Cybermen are often mischaracterised by passive viewers as robots, whereas they are in fact cyborgs, which is significant because they are not purely mechanical. Instead, they are humans who have lost their emotions in pursuit of becoming something ‘better’. Cyber-conversion is often done by force – Cybermen aim to convert all life into cyberform without consent, referring to this process in almost moralistic terms; they see it as an “upgrade”, forcefully removing humanity’s dividing lines. As described by their own leader in 2006’s ‘Doomsday’, “Cybermen… remove sex, and colour, and class, and creed”. In an increasingly divided world, it is a dystopian twist on a compelling sentiment. Complicating the Cyberman even more, they are more of an idea than a species, appearing in different forms across the universe, often readable in different ways, embodying a myriad of symbolic messages. What is fairly consistent, however, is that they are what happens when equality is enforced in pursuit of something ‘better’. Stateless, classless, genderless, and authoritarian, they serve as a vanguard elite primed to bring their form of technocratic communism across the universe. 

Finally, the Master, who in many ways is the opposite of the show’s lead. Instead of desiring structure, order, and peace, he desires outright chaos, using his free will and agency for destruction simply because he can. The Master is sometimes characterised as a scheming but ultimately ruthless Bond-like villain, and at other times more like a completely insane madman, akin to Heath Ledger’s iconic take on the Joker. In one story, 2007’s ‘The Sound of Drums’, he becomes British Prime Minister, turning Britain into a ‘utopia’ in which those he dislikes are locked up or poisoned, while the Doctor is labelled a terrorist. It has even been suggested that the whole story uses the Master to reflect Tony Blair. The Master’s characterisation, however, is more reflective of anarchism read through the lens of Hobbes: perpetual insecurity and rising chaos without governance to keep it in check. Only answerable to himself, the Master acts how he sees fit, choosing to align and oppose at whim to meet his agenda, vehemently rejecting authority and reformism while embracing individual agency and voluntary association. 

Through the deployment of particularly cynical, though generally fair, alien forms of extreme ideologies, Doctor Who effectively reflects and contributes to understandable public fears of extremism in all corners of the political spectrum. The politics of Doctor Who can therefore be said to be, above all else, avidly anti-extremist. This leaves us with the question of the politics of the Doctor himself. If the show is to be labelled primarily anti-extremist, it is clear what the show stands against, but what exactly is it fighting for? 

The Doctor doesn’t quite fit a specific ideological zeal. In his article for the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Alan McKee argues that Doctor Who does not function ‘as vernacular political philosophy’. It is not anti-capitalist; 2018’s ‘Kerblam!’ can be seen as a pseudo-defence of Amazon, though it is neither pro-capitalist. 2017’s ‘Oxygen’ involves a mining corporation renting out the ability to breathe to its own employees, before killing them off simply because automation is cheaper. The Doctor navigates these plots without appearing incoherent, in that they are rarely dragged into the political nuances of the (inherently political) situations in which they often find themself. If anything, the Doctor is a political entity defined by their ethics and morality, in that their political beliefs are shaped by what they believe is right and wrong in any given situation. 

The character is therefore both a political entity and not an ideological one. Somehow, that feels scarily fitting. The Doctor is perpetually striving to see the good in people, and while they certainly have a conceptualisation of what bad is, they refrain from imposing a particular philosophy, but instead take issues as they see them, allowing their actions to be dictated by their moral compass, and less by what fits the worldview of a particular ideologue. In a modern epoch increasingly defined by populists with sharp (and often warped) visions of the future, perhaps it's the alien with the time machine who has a lot to tell us about interpreting the political world around us. Not through party badges or manufactured rhetoric, but through our own ethics and experiences, and from that angle, the politics of Doctor Who has never been more timely.

Image: Flickr/The Untrained Eye

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