Doctor Who and the Son of Doctor WhoBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 14 April 2010 - Reported by Dean Braithwaite
This article asks: “Is this the Doctor Who general election? And are Labour hoping that some of the popularity of the show will rub off on them?” The forthcoming UK general election and Doctor Who do seem to be becoming evermore interlinked.

The new issue of Radio Times, harking back to its 30 April to 6 May issue from 2005 (opposite), shows the Daleks in the colours (blue, red and yellow) of the three main UK political parties, David Tennant, earlier this year, declared his support for the UK’s Labour Party and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the party’s current leader. Earlier this week, the Labour Party turned to the Doctor and a son of the Doctor in it’s campaign to win re-election in the contest.

The first party-election broadcast of the campaign premièred on YouTube before airing on UK television channels. In the Labour Party broadcast, The Road Ahead, the third Doctor Jon Pertwee’s son, Sean Pertwee, appeared, while the tenth Doctor David Tennant provided the voice-over.

See our earlier story about this week’s Radio Times and the interview with Brown, who reveals that Tennant is his favourite Doctor, and that he saw him recently in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In recent months, both Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat have separately warned against David Cameron’s Conservatives winning the election, fearing the future of the BBC would be under threat. Citing Moffat’s comments, the Daily Mirror claimed that Saturday’s episode, The Beast Below, featured a message blasting the Tories:
A livid Doctor says: “Once every five years everyone chooses to forget what they have learned. That’s democracy.”
A source said: “This almost echoes what Labour has been saying about how people should not forget what they learned in the 80s. They think the Tories will drag the country down again and it looks like the Doctor feels the same.”

In February, the Sunday Times claimed that writers wove anti-Tory propaganda into Doctor Who scripts in the 1980s.

As for the Liberal Democrats, their candidate for Blaenau Gwent, Wales, is one Matt Smith!




FILTER: - Steven Moffat - Russell T Davies - Jon Pertwee - Matt Smith - David Tennant - Series