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The world is full of darkness. So much is going wrong. Experts agree that America has succumbed to right-wing authoritarianism; call it fascism or something else, these are extraordinarily difficult times.
This post is a break from all of that. At least kind of.
In this piece, I will try and convince you that Doctor Who is the best TV show ever made, explain to you why it matters, and why it’s particularly important in our current context. In a time when cruelty and fear dominate headlines, it’s worth celebrating a show that insists on the power of kindness, intellect, and hope.
Bear with me. Let’s go.
First, a primer: what is Doctor Who?
You’ve probably heard of Doctor Who, but you might not have watched much or any of it. That’s okay.
The core of every story is this: there is a problem, somewhere in time and space. There might be vampires in Venice in 1580; a plot afoot to steal the Mona Lisa in modern-day Paris in order to fund time travel experiments; a society of pacifists on a far-away planet locked in a generations-long war with warlike, genocidal racists. The Doctor, a strange traveler who carries no weapons, helps solve the problem using intelligence and empathy. They bring along friends who are our “in” to the story, but who also remind the Doctor what it means to be human.
There’s a lot of backstory, but unlike other science fiction shows, it doesn’t matter all that much. There’s canon and history, but it’s constantly evolving. And because it’s squarely aimed at a whole-family audience, and is almost but not quite an anthology show, it’s accessible, fun, and very diverse in its approach. One story might be incredibly silly; the next might be a tense thriller. If you don’t like the tone of the one you’re watching, the next one might be a better fit.
There are a few more constants, but not many: The Doctor’s time and space machine, the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), is stuck as a 1963-era British police box on the outside, and is radically bigger on the inside; every time they die they are “regenerated” in a new body; they stole the TARDIS and fled their people.
Oh, and it’s been running since November 23, 1963: 62 years and counting. It’s the longest-running science fiction show in the world — which makes its accessibility and freshness all the more remarkable. In its original run, it launched the career of authors like Douglas Adams. And in its most recent incarnation, it’s been an early career-launcher for actors like Andrew Garfield, Daniel Kaluuya, Carey Mulligan, Felicity Jones, and Karen Gillan.
Okay, fine. So that’s what the show is. Why does it matter?
Subversive from day one
In 1963, the world was only eighteen years out from the end of World War II. The end of the Holocaust and the closing of the camps was as close as the release of Spider-Man 3 is to us now. Enoch Powell, who would later give the notoriously noxious “rivers of blood” anti-immigrant speech, was the Minister for Health. Homosexuality was illegal.
Waris Hussein, a gay, immigrant director, helmed An Unearthly Child, a story about a teenage girl who obviously didn’t fit in and the teachers who were worried about her. (If the subtext to this story isn’t intentional in the writing, it certainly emerges in the direction.) In the end, her grandfather turned out to be a time traveler who lived in a police box that was more than meets the eye, and the rest is history.
The very next story was about a society of pacifists, the Thals, who were locked in a struggle with a race of genocidal maniacs, the Daleks. It’s a more complicated story than you might expect: in the end, the Doctor and companions help the Thals win by teaching them that sometimes you need to use violence to defeat fascism. The morality of it isn’t straightforward, but it’s an approach that was deeply rooted in recent memories of defeating the Nazis, and that had a lot to say about a Britain that was already seeing the resurgence of nationalism. In a show for the whole family!
When the main actor, William Hartnell, fell into ill health, the show could have come to an end. Instead, the writers built in a contrivance, regeneration, that allowed the Doctor to change actors when one left. In turn, the show itself was allowed to evolve. It was created by necessity rather than as some grand plan, but in retrospect laid the groundwork for Doctor Who to remain relevant for generations.
By the 1980s, the show was still going strong — and still slyly subversive. In The Happiness Patrol, the Doctor faces off against a villainous regime obsessed with mandatory cheerfulness, clearly modeled on Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. The episode includes thinly veiled references to the miners’ strike and the inequality many Britons faced under her leadership.
It also didn’t shy away from queerness. One male character leaves the main antagonist for another man, and at one point, the TARDIS is painted pink.
Eventually, it was canceled, in part because the BBC controller at the time, Conservative-leaning Michael Grade, hated it. (The Thatcher thing, and that Colin Baker, one of the last actors to play the Doctor in the classic run, was in a romantic relationship with Grade’s ex-wife, probably didn’t help.)
When it came off the air in 1989, scriptwriters and fans alike began to write novels under a Virgin Books New Adventures banner that took the subtext of the show and made it text. They told complex stories that could never have been televised — they weren’t as family-friendly, and didn’t fit within a 1980s BBC budget. But they collectively expanded the lore and the breadth of the show.
Subversive on its return
One of those New Adventures authors was Russell T Davies, a TV writer who had started with children’s shows like Dark Season, Why Don’t You?, and Children’s Ward, and moved on to creating adult fare like Queer as Folk and The Second Coming, a tale about the second coming of Christ that happened to feature up-and-coming film star Christopher Ecclestone. He spent years lobbying the BBC to bring Doctor Who back, and in 2005, they acquiesced. There had been one other attempt at a revival — and American co-production with Fox — which had understood the letter but not the spirit of the show.
From the start, the reboot was vital and contemporary. The human companion, Rose, was a teenager from an unapologetically working class family; a major theme of the show was that everyone was special, and that openness, inclusivity, and empathy, rather than wealth and status, were prerequisites for living a good life. This was a theme that would later be revisited to great effect with Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble: that ordinary people become extraordinary not because they’ve been chosen, but because they care.
In 2005, the Iraq War was underway; there was an increase in state surveillance and a stepped-up fear of immigration in the wake of 9/11. America in particular was under the helm of a right-wing theocratic administration. In contrast, Doctor Who stood up to say that everyone was beautiful, our differences were to be celebrated. Christopher Ecclestone’s Doctor had been through an unseen war and was scarred, traumatized, and determined that everyone should live.
The new series was able to play with sexuality and gender norms. Captain Jack, a pansexual time traveler, slotted right into the narrative. Characters casually mentioned changing genders or having same-sex spouses without it being the subject of the episode. In every episode, alongside the exciting story of the week, the show normalized and celebrated diversity.
It was unashamedly political. In one of my favorite episodes, Turn Left, the Doctor is missing and Britain is suffering in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster. England becomes “only for the English”; Donna Noble watches in horror as her neighbors are taken away to a labor camp. “That’s what they called them the last time,” her grandfather ruefully notes. It was an important callback in 2008, at the tail end of the second Bush administration, and it’s only grown in importance now.
Again: this is a family show.
Anchored in good, accessible storytelling
You might be forgiving for thinking, based on my argument so far, that Doctor Who is a heavy-handed, ideology-first show. What a bore. The good news is that this couldn’t be further from the truth: it’s a genuinely fun, accessible romp with award-winning storytelling that ranks among the best of science fiction. It rules.
At the time of writing, it’s received 163 awards and been nominated for 411. That includes BAFTA awards (the British Oscars); Hugos (the annual literary award for best science fiction works of the year); National Television Awards; Nebula Awards; and so on. It’s well-regarded as some of the best writing, anywhere.
And, of course, it’s also deeply weird, in the best ways. There are haunted libraries with flesh-eating shadows. Star whales ferrying orphaned humanity across the galaxy. A sentient sun. A race of aliens that live in television signals. Some episodes are space operas; others are bottle dramas; some are screwball comedies with robot Santas. Occasionally, it’ll make you cry over a character who appeared for five minutes and then died nobly to save a moon that turned out to be an egg.
At its best, Doctor Who manages to be profoundly silly and heartbreakingly sincere in the same breath. It lets you believe that logic and love can coexist. That monsters are sometimes just scared people. That sometimes scared people can become monsters — and that they can still be saved.
There have been missteps, of course, as you’d expect from anything this experimental. Some come from changing expectations; there are certainly some racial stereotypes in the 1960s/70s episodes that did not age well. More recently, there was an era of the show where Rosa Parks was robbed of agency as an activist. In the same season, an apparent critique of Amazon-style capitalism led into a bizarre statement from the Doctor, who announced: “The systems aren't the problem. How people use and exploit the system, that's the problem.” And writers made queer people and people of color expendable.
It wasn’t the best, to be honest, but the show has ably course corrected. More recently, trans and non-binary characters have become central — all while expanding the narrative canvas of the show under a refreshed budget and a focus on new viewers. Ncuti Gatwa as the first openly queer Doctor is a revelation, full of joy and life. It’s as brilliant as it ever was.
Why it matters now
The world hasn’t gotten any less terrifying since Doctor Who first aired in 1963. If anything, the monsters feel closer, less metaphorical. They’re holding office. Writing curriculum. Rewriting history.
But that’s exactly why this show endures.
Because Doctor Who doesn’t promise us a perfect future — it promises us people who will fight for one. It shows us a universe where the best tool you can carry is your mind, your heart, and your ability to listen. Where change is baked into the story, and where survival requires transformation.
It’s a story that insists on second chances. That redemption is possible. That the most powerful force in the universe might just be compassion.
And in a world that tells us to numb out, shut down, or look away — Doctor Who dares to say: be curious. Be brave. Try to be nice, but always be kind.
It’s great television.
But also, maybe that’s how we save each other.
Get started
If you’re Who-curious, here are a few places to start:
Blink (2007). A gripping, self-contained episode with an innovative narrative loop that happens to star Carey Mulligan.
Rose (2005). The first episode of the revived show. Why not begin at the beginning?
The Eleventh Hour (2010). Matt Smith’s first story as the Doctor. Guest stars include Olivia Coleman as a barking alien. Positively cinematic.
