The real death of the Doctor

A little told story about the sad tail end of the initial twenty-five-year run of "Doctor Who" -- the Sylvester McCoy years, with which I am completely unfamiliar.

“The idea of bringing politics into Doctor Who was deliberate, but we had to do it very quietly and certainly didn’t shout about it,” said McCoy.

“We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do. At the time Doctor Who used satire to put political messages out there in the way they used to do in places like Czechoslovakia. Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered.

......

The following year Cartmel (the series script editor at the time) wrote an emotive speech for the Doctor about the evils of nuclear weapons. It borrowed heavily from material obtained from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was a persistent thorn in the side of the government.

A spin-off Doctor Who children’s novel called Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, which was published under licence by the BBC in 1987, featured a despotic villain called Rehctaht — Thatcher spelt backwards.

Sophie Aldred, who played Ace, the Doctor’s feminist companion, said a shared contempt for right-wing ideology had inspired “a real bonding process” for cast and crew.

The point can't be made too often about the way that this series manages to reflect its times. But here idiotic politics were met with hostility and indifference.... The series tanked soon after and went into a fifteen year hiatus. Once again, thank god for Russell Davies.