Doctor Who and politics

[Nick off of Twitter]

Then again. no future portrayed in Doctor Who ever comes close to the egalitarian utopia that Star Trek likes to present itself as (personally  I think it's an American military dictatorship that just happens to be benign for most people, but that's by the by). Humans and human society are never shown as achieving any kind of stable perfection, which I think is good. Just taking for granted that we get there someday but not showing us how (a la Star Trek) is a bit of a cop out. Doctor Who, like hard sci-fi, presents us with future dilemmas for us to ponder now and hopefully avoid, but in the spirit of adventure fantasy, gives us contemporary human companions and the Doctor, as the Master said, 'makes [them] better' - and these should be our role models. We are the ones who make the future brighter and better - we cannot simply assume that it will all be warp drive, transporters, no poverty, holodecks and free food; it's up to us and the Doctor shows his companions (and, through them, us) that we can do it.

[lambowolf]

Then again. no future portrayed in Doctor Who ever comes close to the egalitarian utopia that Star Trek likes to present itself as (personally  I think it's an American military dictatorship that just happens to be benign for most people, but that's by the by). Humans and human society are never shown as achieving any kind of stable perfection, which I think is good. Just taking for granted that we get there someday but not showing us how (a la Star Trek) is a bit of a cop out. Doctor Who, like hard sci-fi, presents us with future dilemmas for us to ponder now and hopefully avoid, but in the spirit of adventure fantasy, gives us contemporary human companions and the Doctor, as the Master said, 'makes [them] better' - and these should be our role models. We are the ones who make the future brighter and better - we cannot simply assume that it will all be warp drive, transporters, no poverty, holodecks and free food; it's up to us and the Doctor shows his companions (and, through them, us) that we can do it.

This is why I always thought of the Doctor as more of Libertarian.   

[Henry Gordon Jago]

I'm not sure I buy into the Doctor as a Libertarian.  He has a strong belief in personal liberty certainly (not least for himself), but he clearly believes in social justice as well.  When the Doctor looks at the Hooverville in "Daleks in Manhattan," I'm certain that he would consider the social welfare programs designed to ameliorate that poverty and suffering by the Roosevelt administration to be a good thing.  This position would be anathema to a Libertarian, as the New Deal programs amounted to redistribution of wealth through taxation.

Where the Doctor quite sensibly seems to draw the line is when a society is deemed to be unduly oppressive or coercive, which for dramatic purposes form a good proportion of alien societies the Doctor has encountered over the years (cf. The Sunmakers, The Happiness Patrol, The Macra Terror, The Savages, State of Decay).  So while the Doctor has leanings toward small-s socialism, he would have no truck with Soviet-style big-S Socialism.  It would be interesting, however, to see how the Doctor would react to a socialist regime like that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, which has become more autocratic over the years and faces fierce and vocal opposition domestically, but retains the broad support of the poorest and formerly most dispossessed sectors of society (the people with whom the Doctor would have the most sympathy).  Of course, in Doctor Who it would be revealed that Chavez is under the control of an evil alien, simplifying the dilemma to no end. 

[Rory Pond]

It would be interesting, however, to see how the Doctor would react to a socialist regime like that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, which has become more autocratic over the years and faces fierce and vocal opposition domestically, but retains the broad support of the poorest and formerly most dispossessed sectors of society (the people with whom the Doctor would have the most sympathy).  Of course, in Doctor Who it would be revealed that Chavez is under the control of an evil alien, simplifying the dilemma to no end. 

Of course, the audience would be well ahead of the Doctor on this point as soon as they realize Chavez is being played by Peter Kay.