Doctor Who used to be fun. Now it’s just preachy
Oh, Doctor Who. I have tried to love you, really I have. A female Doctor? Bring it on! Bradley Walsh as a companion? Could be inspired casting. Two extra companions? Been done before, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t work. Storylines about Rosa Parks and Partition? Well, the show has lots of young viewers for whom these subjects could be both new and interesting, and there’s nothing in the rules which says it can’t tackle significant moments in history.
But the Praxeus episode was the final proof, if it were needed, that
Doctor Who (BBC One) is not what it was. By which I mean that it is no longer a sci-fi show. It is a show preaching messages to children, which happens to have the occasional alien in it as a bit of sci-fi window dressing.
We were back in James Bond adventure mode, rapidly switching datelines from Peru to Madagascar to Hong Kong. It began promisingly enough, with astronaut Adam (Matthew Mcnulty) missing presumed dead after his spacecraft hurtled out of control on a return from the International Space Station. Back on Earth, a man called Jake (Warren Brown) received a text from Adam, begging for help and pinpointing his position to Hong Kong.
Then to Peru, and a clue to where this was all heading. Two backpacking travel vloggers turned up to a spot which three years earlier had been an unspoilt paradise, but was now covered in rubbish. To cut a long story short, the astronaut and one of the backpackers became infected by an alien bacteria. And what did it feed on? Microplastics.
“It’s in the air, it’s in your food, it’s in your water. Humans have flooded this planet with plastics that can’t be broken down,” explained the Doctor. This is a subject worth exploring – Anita Rani and Hugh Fearnleywhittingstall did an excellent job in last year’s War on Plastic series. But in the context of Doctor Who, it felt like a school lecture. This didactic tone means that everything feels as if it has been shoehorned in to make a point. It shouldn’t be of note that Jake and Adam turned out to be married, and yet the series has somehow got itself to a place where everything seems deliberately worthy.
On top of this, the script was confusing and boring and the actual alien bit – human bodies being covered by a sort of creeping carapace – was genuinely horrible, far too scary for the younger children who would have been most receptive to the environmental message. The show has lost its way.
For male readers of a certain vintage, Jenny Agutter dispensing with her nurse’s outfit in An American Werewolf in London remains a potent memory. Forty years on, Agutter taking off her wimple in
Call the Midwife (BBC One) felt equally transgressive, if not quite the stuff that teenage dreams are made of.
Sister Julienne, you see, was questioning her place in the world. Could she really empathise with the needy when she wanted for nothing? First she was confronted by a grieving woman whose late grandmother – raised in the workhouse and a mother of 13, with three children dead before they reached the age of 10 – had left some of her meagre life savings to Nonnatus House. “It’s women like her that ought to be revered, not people like you who don’t know the meaning of hard work,” she fumed.
Then Grace (Samantha Spiro), who had a sick husband, ailing mother and newborn grandchild to contend with, demanded: “How the hell would you know what it’s really like living around here? Hiding away from the world in your robes with a plum stuck in your mush.”
All of which led to Sister Julienne staring at herself in the mirror as she removed her wimple, in a scene with a peculiar amount of power. It was as discombobulating for us as it was for her to then see her venturing out onto the street in her civvies.
Otherwise it was business as usual. The aforementioned Grace was caring for everyone but herself and buckling under the strain, until the combined care of Dr Turner (Stephen Mcgann) and Sister Frances (Ella Bruccoleri) put her back on track. Frances arranged a home help, plus a place at a day centre for Grace’s mother. “Thank goodness for the welfare state,” she beamed, in one of those frequent reminders that the show gives us about how lucky we are now compared to those who lived in the first half of the 20th century.
This may be one of TV’S most heartwarming shows, but sometimes it can also be the most cloying. Please spare us from the lovefest that is Dr Turner’s marriage; their date night was almost as painful as giving birth.
Doctor Who ★★ Call the Midwife ★★★