Doctor Who and political correctness: A never-ending battle

BBC

The term ‘political correctness’ often gets thrown around, especially late in the Doctor Who fandom. What, if anything, can be done?

First, I want to put a disclaimer that this article is not meant to, in any way, to insult people who might disagree with this article. I’m simply opening up a means of discussion, not trying to insult.

Political correctness is defined as “the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.”

The term political correctness has been thrown around lately in the Doctor Who fandom since season ten began. As I was writing about an episode, I would also get a comment saying that there was “too much PC” in Doctor Who.

It confused me. How could there be too much political correctness (which I took to mean, a polite way of saying something), in an episode? Isn’t that what Doctor Who is for?

Well, isn’t it?

To a point, yes. Obviously, we don’t want people yelling slurs and being sexist or misogynistic in the show. But I can see the other side. If every episode is a telling of the way things “should be” or how people “should act”, it does take a way from the show.

For instance, I always think History should be depicted as it was, but that’s especially hard in Doctor Who. We don’t want someone yelling anything inappropriate at a companion just because it was “okay at the time”. But every episode doesn’t need a lesson behind it, does it?

In Classic Who, there’s a now-infamous episode called The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Becuase of the time, it was produced in, no one found anything wrong with the episode. But don’t expect to see BBC playing it anytime soon.

When I talked to James about it, he said there were parts of the episode that could be taken as very racist, including makeup to make someone have an Asian Face. And not that anything is ever “right”, but with the time it was made and filmed, people didn’t see the issue with the episode, whereas now fans would be going crazy!

Doctor Who will always be going through a political correctness battle. As times change, as they go back in time and try to keep things right — especially considering what was right a couple years go isn’t right now.

Even between Doctors in the New Who season, things have changed. There’s no sense in arguing about “Political Correctness” because it will always be there. As life races on, a television show has to keep up, or it will lose its viewers. Even if it adds dimensions that long time viewers don’t want to see.