Doctor Who is a show that always needs to walk a tightrope, a rope that feels like its getting increasingly narrow as time goes on. While offering stories with broad enough appeal that the show can cast its spell on anyone, it also looks to explore issues around the experiences of women, queer characters, and people of colour.
As science fiction and fantasy shows move towards having more diverse and representative casting, we are also seeing it come under exhausting fire. Doctor Who's welcome new addition Varada Sethu, who plays the brilliant new companion Belinda Chandra, wears this as a badge of honour.
So too does Doctor Who's current showrunner Russell T Davies. Speaking to Digital Spy and other press for the first episode of season two 'The Robot Revolution', Davies said of the relationship between Doctor Who and diversity: "It's like breathing. You open your door, and there is the world."
Davies says that while this is important to the show, it's not unique.
It's no wonder then that 'The Robot Revolution' would take the idea of creating science fiction that's politically charged (an idea that's as old as sci-fi itself) and run with it. Not only does the new season show us both the Doctor and the companion as people of colour for the first time, but the reveal of the episode's villain serves as a reminder that Doctor Who has never been afraid to take risks.
The episode opens with something that seems innocuous. A younger Belinda and her then-boyfriend Alan, sitting on a bench together. They're talking about the stars in the night sky, and he says, off-hand: "I know that girls aren’t very good at maths."
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It's a kind of funny moment, and could have been read like it was perhaps a shared joke between them – especially since Alan then gives Belinda a gift, something she calls "the nicest thing anyone's ever given me".
It's a certificate, naming a star after her, making some small part of the cosmos hers. This certificate, and this relationship, will become vitally important when an older Belinda is kidnapped by robots and declared the queen of the planet Missbelindachandra, where she will be married to a monstrous AI that rules over the planet.
But in a genuinely surprising final act twist, the AI is revealed to be Alan – Belinda's former boyfriend – who seems to have taken over a planet just to try and get the attention of his ex.
That offhand comment from the beginning wasn't, as it turns out, affectionate or self-aware – it was the tip of the iceberg, for the way that Alan viewed (and continues to view) women. In a flashback to the end of their relationship, when Belinda turns down his proposal, we see him firing off a series of conditions and constraints. She shouldn't wear clothes that he deems too tight, or text anyone after a certain time of day.
When the reality of this all dawns on Belinda, she declares this new world a "planet of the incels". There's something sharp, almost shocking, in the episode's willingness to use a term that's so fraught and direct. Through flashbacks, it also shows how this ideology takes root in Alan through his relationship to loneliness, gaming culture, and the promise of power offered to him from the robots.
But the thing is, as much as there might be some pushback, the idea that the show being politically charged is new shows an unwillingness to actually engage with what Doctor Who has been doing since it was revived two decades ago – even as far back as its original run.
The first series of the revival explored ideas around fake news and misinformation in 'The Long Game'. The 'Rise of the Cybermen' and 'Age of Steel' storyline is incredibly unsubtle in the way the uniformity of the Cybermen stands in for fascist politics.
Doctor Who often goes to the past in order to explore themes of social importance. The Jodie Whittaker-fronted 'Rosa', from season 11, used historical figures to explore not just the legacies of racism, but the potential for change within individuals. And then there was 'Thin Ice', where Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor punched a Victorian racist in the face for mistreating Bill.
And while there's sometimes a temptation for speculative fiction to act as if prejudices are simply products of the past, here 'The Robot Revolution' keeps an eye cast firmly on an ongoing, contemporary issue.
One of the most universally acclaimed stories in the show's history, 'Genesis of the Daleks' saw Tom Baker's Doctor ask if he had the right to go back in time and erase the Daleks from existence entirely.
If this new season shows any change from the deeply political legacy of Doctor Who, it's by presenting these stories in a way that doesn't always need to rely on the speculative subtext of far-off planets and alien races.
Doctor Who hasn't simply "become political", as some might try and argue. The show has always been political, because the world always has been. In the same way that Davies described the show's diversity, its politics exist in the same way: like breathing. Because you open your eyes, and there is the world: political, complicated, contradictory, constantly changing, just like The Doctor themselves.
And while the show has never had all of the answers – nor has it pretended to – it has never stopped being bold enough to ask the questions. An inquisitive spirit, that's as alive as ever in Gatwa and Sethu, and this new season.
The politics of Doctor Who will always be changing alongside the personality of whoever is playing the title character. Whether that's the warlike, combative, nature of Christopher Eccelston, or the prickly distance of Capaldi, or the warm optimism of Whittaker.
The dawn of Gatwa's second outing, in the Christmas special 'Joy to the World', showed us someone lost, lonely, and capable of incredible anger. If 'The Robot Revolution' is anything to go by, then the show itself might be a little angrier too – and with no short supply of places to aim that anger.
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Sam Moore is a culture writer from the UK, writing mainly about film, TV and music for the likes of The Guardian, GQ, The Independent and many more. He is currently working on a book about the making of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
