De ja vu Daleks on RT cover

This week's Radio Times celebrates the Daleks, with a cover recreating the 2005 cover (which in itself was a recreation of a 1966 RT photoshoot and cover!). There are three different colour versions available, red, blue and yellow (representing our three main political parties) all with the slogan 'Vote Dalek!' a reference to our forthcoming elections. If only we could, I'd be tempted - it would make a change from the androids we have as MPs.


The Radio Times website has covers and photos here. Combom has scans of the articles here

And here's the double page scan from 2005 - with the 1966 black and white photo insert, again with 'Vote Dalek!'.


And yes, we have new style Daleks, but so far those seen in the clips for Victory of the Daleks have been the usual style to date for the New Series...

Political Who 2

A couple of months agos Who made the national news with revelaions of the hidden agenda in its late 1980's incarnation - to bring down the then current Tory government no less.

Now new Who is in on the act, with tonight's episode to feature a message blasting the Conservatives.

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."

The show's new star, Matt Smith, has declined to reveal who he will be voting for but executive producer Steven Moffat said this month: "I hope the Tories don't win."

I say we need to overthrow the system, not just the government!

Link

Political Who

The Sunday Telegraph has revealed that the Doctor has been using his power to meddle in UK politics...

Left-wing script writers infiltrated Doctor Who to give it anti-Thatcher plot lines in the late 1980s in a failed attempt "to overthrow the Government" Sylvester McCoy has claimed.

McCoy, now 66, who took over as the Doctor three months after Thatcher's third election victory in 1987, said they brought politics into the show "deliberately" but "very quietly". He said: "We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do. Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered," he told the Sunday Times.

One three-part programme, The Happiness Patrol, featured a transparent caricature of Thatcher.


Sheila Hancock played Helen A, a big-haired despotic ruler of a human colony on the planet Terra Alpha, whose subjects – called "drones" – worked in factories. The Doctor calls on the drones to down their tools and revolt, an obvious reference to industrial disputes like the miners' strike.

Also a spin-off children's novel, Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, published under licence by the BBC in 1987, featured a villain called Rehctaht - Thatcher backwards.

I've also seen interviews with the script editor at the time, who aparently when asked what he wanted to achieve when auditioning for the job, said he wanted to bring down the government, and McCoy, where he's stated that he took on Thatcher in roleplay as an advisory in his audition.

The fact that its taken this story twenty years to hit the press reflects the sad lack of interest in the Classic series before it was cancelled, and the fact that its not much of a story. New Who is full of so many political, moral and cultural references that I guess it's only a matter of time before someone does a Phd thesis on the good Doctor's effect on polictics and our society. Or perhaps someone's done it already?

Link