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Doctor Who 'had anti-Thatcher agenda'
- brazzy 17y agoIs it a sign of a more innocent era that one could produce a fiction show without having an army of pundits decrying its "leftist media bias" - even when there was one, deliberately? Or were they just so bad at getting their message across that "nobody really noticed or cared."
- jff 17y agoI wouldn't exactly characterize the 80s as a particularly innocent era. Most likely, nobody cared by that point. Doctor Who was in its final stages by then. Ever notice that in general when a fiction program decides to make a political statement, it turns to utter ham-fisted crap? I'm imagining every show like that, in the kind of ultra-earnest tone of a street-corner communist, and it doesn't surprise me at all that the show was cancelled.
- ZachPruckowski 17y agoI'm shocked, shocked I say! A show about an intellectual hippie who refuses to carry guns and regularly overthrows authorities is liberal? Sorry for the snark, but I don't really see it as that surprising that Doctor Who has an explicitly liberal message when it's main character is The Doctor. He's a textbook left-wing radical - dude blew up an arms factory to grow a banana orchard, ran away from the Time Lord Presidency, was jailed (exiled to Earth as the 3rd Doctor) for violating Time Lord laws to help the less fortunate, and ultimately chose to die rather than kill (9th Doctor, "The Parting of the Ways").
- acg 17y agoNo doubt it's not the only show of the time to have an anti-thatcher bias. Many shows openly ribbed the government particularly in comedy like spitting image and Alexei Sayle. Why should anyone take notice of a show that tries to say it subtly when everyone else is saying it openly. No wonder it got cancelled, the script-writers sound pretentious. Perhaps they thought they were Huxley, Orwell or someone.