Mari Ness - Doctor Who and the revolutions:

So box_in_the_box directed me to this fascinating piece showing the changing radicalism/conservativism politics of Doctor Who over time.

The way current politics and beliefs and arguments become framed in fiction and art constantly fascinates me, whether in the obvious, overt way (24, The West Wing, the current incarnation of Battlestar Galatica) or the subtle (Dead Like Me, Rome, and, to an extent, Farscape. ) And I'm particularly fascinated by these reflections in what I'll term "unreal worlds" – that is, films/fictions/art deliberately set outside the reality of now: historical epics, science fiction and fantasy. We often assume that by their very unrealism these films must be detached from today's reality and politics, but any piece of art, no matter how fantastic or mundane, is rooted in and reflects its time.

Not many know this, but in a previous incarnation I studied the portrayal of the medieval in film, fascinated by the political messages of these films. The perhaps classic example is Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood, produced just before the U.S. entered World War II. Its producers (Warner Brothers) and Jewish director did not dare make an outright jingoistic, pro-war, anti-Nazi film, so instead, they transformed the Robin Hood story into an indirect, yet powerful, anti-Nazi movie and call to arms. Note how Robin Hood's fight is couched in racial terms of "Saxons" and "Normans" – a distinction present in some, but hardly all, of previous Robin Hoods, and how all of Prince John's men are going after peasants that were chosen for explicitly "Jewish" features, and routing the "Saxons" with Nazi-like methods, and the film's cry for standing against racial injustice and tyranny. (For real fun, compare the film to the highly racist Gone With The Wind, also starring Olivia DeHavilland, which uses colors and images to make an even stronger case that the U.S. should stay out of World War II.) Sometime, when you're watching a medieval epic or fantasy movie made in the U.S., note the almost universal message that aristocracy by nature is inevitably corrupt and corrupting. (In Braveheart, this is taken to the point where the aristocrats are literally physically dying from disfiguring, destructive diseases as they continue to cling to power.)

I don't know that the creators of Doctor Who actually had any overt political thoughts in mind, but this chart is absolutely fascinating nonetheless, and I think I'll be giving some of those old Doctor Who shows another look.