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"Is Doctor Who too woke?" came up again today. The answer of course is no, it isn't. But it's easy to mistake it for being so, not least because the headline put that suggestion into your mind (that's how click-bait works, after all).
The main reason this works, though, is because Doctor Who is a fifty-plus year-old monolith. The rest of TV has changed naturally around it, with new programmes introducing new, more gender- and ethnicity-balanced structures.
But Doctor Who can't change without changing a structure it's had in place since the 1960s, that of a cast led by a patriarchal figure, to whom all others show deference. Clearly in 2020 that's not acceptable.
But for Doctor Who not to be that way means it can't be quite what it was in 1963. So it changes, and it changes in a noticeable way. A very positive noticeable way, but it is a structural change - and structural changes are what click-bait stories can flag up for attention.
When such a change happens, there are what, three basic reactions? You can enjoy the new structure. You can miss the continuity of the old structure. Or you can miss what the old structure represented.
The latter of these reactions is problematic. Because it implies that the person who enjoyed and now misses the old, patriarchal structure, must presumably also believe "that's the way things should be."
And obviously that is very much not the way things should be. So those third bunch - the ones who come out of the woodwork whenever social justice, wokeness, virtue signalling or "too PC" get mentioned - probably don't deserve the kind of wonderful telly the modern day provides.
But it's unfortunate when he middle bunch, those who simply miss the continuity of the structure, get lumped in with that third bunch. Because sometimes a structural change does feel like a lurch, but it's inherently a positive change, and generally this group does come around.
Anyway, that's my tuppenceworth on "Is Doctor Who too PC?"
I hope that everyone reading this falls into the first group, those who embrace positive change.
I hope that everyone reading this falls into the first group, those who embrace positive change.
