Outside the Beltway

And Now For Something Completely Different

Steven L. Taylor
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This may resonate with no one but me, but here we go.

I notice on Twitter that both “David Tennant” and “Dr. Who” were trending. Since I love me some Doctor Who, I was curious. Little did I know my interest in comparative party politics would also come into play.

Apparently, back in June, David Tennant, who was both the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctor (IYKYK), criticized Conservative MP and Minister for Women and Equalities at the time, Kemi Badenoch, during an awards ceremony.

The BBC reported at the time: Sunak wades into Badenoch row with actor Tennant.

Trans rights campaigners have criticised Ms Badenoch’s views on gender.

Tennant won a prize for being a “celebrity ally” at the awards show and used his speech to criticise Equalities Minister Mrs Badenoch.

In his acceptance speech he said: “If I’m honest I’m a little depressed by the fact that acknowledging that everyone has the right to be who they want to be and live their life how they want to live it as long as they’re not hurting anyone else should merit any kind of special award or special mention, because it’s common sense, isn’t it?”

He said it was “human decency”, adding: “We shouldn’t live in a world where that is worth remarking on.

“However, until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist any more – I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up – whilst we do live in this world, I am honoured to receive this.”

Harsh, I will allow.

Ok, so why bring this up now?

Well, Badenoch decided to bring it up herself today:

This resulted in retorts such as

And

And

On the one hand, she is getting attention, so mission accomplished, I guess.

On the other, what a weird flex by referring to Tennant not as an actor, or by name, but actually calling him Doctor Who.

Keep in mind that Doctor Who is a cultural icon in the UK akin to Sherlock Holmes or James Bond. And, further, Tennant is arguably the most popular actor to have played the character since the show premiered in 1963. I guess she wants to show she is tough, but this strikes me as a poor choice.

This is all in the context, by the way, of the Conservatives getting utterly trounced in the elections this summer. So maybe best not to take something that is unifying for many Brits and attack it to launch your campaign?

At a minimum, the various twitter retorts were amusing to read.

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52 responses to “And Now For Something Completely Different”

  1. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    One of the things I appreciate about Tennant as a human being is he appears to be a genuinely good guy and has been a long time supporter of trans and other rights.

    11
  2. Rick DeMent Avatar
    Rick DeMent

    It would be like trashing Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton, what idiots would do that in the USA?

    10
  3. gVOR10 Avatar
    gVOR10

    Society, for good or ill, has always sanctioned people outside the norm. We used to call it “shunning” or “ostracizing”. Now we call it “cancelling”. And conservatives, who shunned and ostracized all they could, can’t stand that they’re being cancelled because they refuse to see they’re now the ones outside the norm.

    13
  4. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    “You know all the dumb shit we said and did that resulted in our getting our collective ass handed to us in the last election? Let’s turn that up to 11! We’ll surely triumph!” — UK Conservative Party, probably

    3
  5. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Rick DeMent:

    I can think of two weirdos who might.

    BTW, is it worth getting into Dr. Who with whatever stuff is on Disney+? I gather there’s a lot of backstory and series mythology and background accumulated from decades of prior shows.

    The same goes for Trek, naturally. I posit a lot of Lower Decks would be less funny without any knowledge of prior Trek series. And given the fad of doing fan service call backs in newer works within a franchise, I’d be oblivious to anything Who related.

    I need something for when I finally run out of Youtube Mythbusters eps.

  6. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Mikey: And yet, when Mitt lost in 2012, who did conservatives/Republicans turn to? It’s all bone deep. They can’t help being who they are any more than Trump’s scorpion, or was it a snake. (I wasn’t really paying attention.)

    1
  7. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Kathy: Dr. Who is an acquired taste thing. I don’t watch Dr. Who, but I do watch Supercar and Captain Scarlet. It’s a matter of taste, and I don’t have any in the conventional sense.

    1
  8. drj Avatar
    drj

    On the other, what a weird flex by referring to Tennant not as an actor, or by name, but actually calling him Doctor Who.

    Trump (or at least his flunkies) expressed pride in him being endorsed by Hulk Hogan (the character, not the actual person Terry Bolea).

    In a world where school kids can get bottom surgery without parental consent, it’s not a big step to being either opposed or supported by fictional characters.

    I guess my bigger point is that some people care more about narratives, regardless how fantastic, than reality. Which offers, of course, fertile soil for fascist or fascist-adjacent thinking.*

    * The trains did, in fact, not run on time in Mussolini’s Italy.

    5
  9. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    @Kathy: @just nutha: I couldn’t get into the Christopher Eccleston (9th) Doctor when I tried twenty years or so ago but really like Tennant’s take on the character as well as his succcesors Matt Smith and, especially, Peter Capaldi. I haven’t seen the last few seasons it will get back into it at some point.

    5
  10. Ben W Avatar
    Ben W

    You know you’re destined to lose this fight if you keep referring to Tennant’s character as “Doctor Who” instead of “the Doctor.” And again, considering Tennant is the most popular Doctor outside of Tom Baker and Matt Smith, it’s a very boneheaded decision to wave in front of longtime Whovians.

    4
  11. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Ben W: Sure, but how many true Whovians are likely to vote Tory to begin with? It may just be a free shot on her side.

    2
  12. DrDaveT Avatar
    DrDaveT

    @Ben W:

    And again, considering Tennant is the most popular Doctor outside of Tom Baker

    I’ve never been deeply into Who, so I assumed I was weird even by those standards for thinking Tom Baker was the best Doctor ever. Limited exposure, formative years, that sort of thing.

    1
  13. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Kathy: I would try “Rose,” the 2005 pilot for Russel T. Davies’ reboot of the show (which continues to this day). It’s got Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor — Tennant came in the following year — and does a brilliant job of introducing the show to newbies while (apparently) reassuring viewers from previous years.

    I never watched the early days of Doctor Who — aside from a piece of an episode I saw in a London hotel on a family trip to Europe when I was 11 — and always thought it was cheap and childish, or at least child-aimed. But an old friend who loved the Davies (and then Moffat) versions persuaded me to give Rose a try, and I was hooked. Went through four or five seasons in a couple of weeks.

    The show definitely has its ups and downs, but if you watch “Rose” and think “Yeah, there’s something about this that appeals to me,” you’ll enjoy the run. And if you hate it, then you don’t need to look any further…

    4
  14. wr Avatar
    wr

    @wr: And by some awesome galactic experience, the 2005 pilot featured the same alien villains who had been in that single partial episode I saw in my youth…

    1
  15. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @DrDaveT:
    Tom Baker had the longest run as the Doctor. His run also featured some of the shows best episodes. Even in the UK, prior to the relaunch, he was considered by most to be THE Doctor.

    Fun side fact about Tennant is that his wife is Peter Davidson’s daughter. Davidson was the Fifth Doctor, Tom Baker’s replacement. So if you go after Tennant, you are getting into a multi-doctor battle.

    6
  16. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @just nutha:

    Sure, but how many true Whovians are likely to vote Tory to begin with?

    Much like with X-Men, Doctor Who fandom definitely developed a strong queer component in the 1980’s and 90’s. I’m no expert on Trekies but I think that embrace happened a little later for them (more so in the 90’s… But I could be wrong).

    1
  17. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @wr:
    Also, if Rose doesn’t fully grab you, “Father’s Day” from that same season is a great option. Or the really wonderful “Unquiet Dead” which is also hits the BBC specialty of doing a “gaslight” time-period semi-historical episode.

  18. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @James Joyner:

    I couldn’t get into the Christopher Eccleston (9th) Doctor when I tried twenty years or so ago

    I hadn’t realized until you wrote this that it has almost been 20 years since the relaunch. I personally loved Eccleston and wished he had stayed on longer. Unfortunately that wasn’t the best time for him from a mental and emotional health perspective.

    especially, Peter Capaldi

    I do wanted to like him more than I did. I really think Moffitt ran out of steam as a creator and the plots Capaldi got did him no favors. Again am absolutely brilliant actor (highly recommend “In The Loop” for Capaldi at his best… Just be prepared for a matter class in swearing). I just always wanted different material for him. I ended up falling off there and then missed the Jodi Whitaker phase entirely.

    3
  19. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    @Matt Bernius: Capaldi did get “Heaven Sent,” IMO one of the best episodes of any TV show ever. And he carried it entirely on his own.

    2
  20. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @wr: FWIW, the show was originally viewed as a fun but educational. The conceit of time travel was so that the original doctor could take his granddaughter back to significant moments in Earth history. My guess is that what changed the show was the decision to write the first doctor as indifferent and contemptuous of humans, with the granddaughter being the one who showed concern. It was a very science fiction-y conceit and so attracted a more mature audience in a time when there was almost no SF on television.

    1
  21. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @just nutha:

    It’s not a question of whether I’ll like it, but whether I can understand it. Trek, for example, can be hard to grasp if you haven’t seen some of it before*.

    @James Joyner:

    Case in point. I understood very little of that.

    @wr:

    I’ve no idea whether that would be available in a streaming service I either have now or am likely to get soon (I’m due to resubscribe to Amazon Prime Video; Apple TV+ only when season 2 of Severance comes out).

    Disney+ has some eps, but I think they’re all from last year and this year.

    Years ago, when I first got Netflix, they had the modern run of the series. I never saw it because 1) it takes me time to find the motivation to begin a series I know little about, and 2) back then, 2014, I think, there was still plenty to see on cable; I regarded streaming as an extra, mostly for movies and on the weekends.

    *I had seen eps of the classic 60s sereis, and even some of the animated series, but when I went to see Star Trek the Motion picture, I needed lots of things explained to me. When I saw Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I’d no clue who Khan was.

  22. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @Matt Bernius: One of the rare television shows that had me tearing up was “Vincent and the Doctor” which had Matt Smith’s doctor encountering Vincent Van Gogh with his mental health issues, self doubt and generally hard life.

    4
  23. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Matt Bernius: ” I really think Moffitt ran out of steam as a creator and the plots Capaldi got did him no favors. ”

    I thought Moffitt was struggling for the first half or two thirds of Capaldi’s first season, and then he figured out how to write the character and there were a couple of brilliant years. The last season with Clara has some of my all-time favorite episodes. Then, once she was gone the show felt like it had lost its engine for Capaldi’s last year.

    But the Jodi Whittaker years are unwatchable. Not because of her — I wish she’d gotten a real chance — but because Chris Chibnall decided the show should be written for very slow ten year-olds…

    4
  24. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Mikey: “Capaldi did get “Heaven Sent,” IMO one of the best episodes of any TV show ever. ”

    I am even fonder of “Hell Bent.” The moment when Clara realizes what he’s sacrificed for her makes me cry every time.

    2
  25. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Kathy: In the States, those years (2005-23) are on Max. Don’t know about Mexico.

    As for understanding it, Davies is excellent at bringing new viewers into a very established — and in some ways very silly — universe. There were basic creative choices made in the early 60s by people who were not at all sophisticated about science fiction (and didn’t have the budgets to pull them off if they did), and Davies manages to stay true to them while at the same time acknowledging the absurdity.

    For example, at one point shop girl Rose demands to know why if the doctor is an alien from space he sounds like he comes from the North. He says “Lots of planets have a north!”

    4
  26. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @wr:

    I have had Max for years*. I’ll look it up, but I think it would have put it on recommendations after all this time.

    *I subscribed using an offer for a lifetime 40% discount. The fee has gone up twice since then, but I still get charged only 60% of the nominal price. I’m impressed.

  27. Just nutha ignint cracker Avatar
    Just nutha ignint cracker

    @Kathy: Despite what people here say, I don’t see Dr. Who as being something one has to “understand.” It’s a particular type of escapist dreck just like Trek and Star Wars for people who don’t immerse themselves in the “industrial” Star Wars and Trek with the fan fic and all the bells and whistles.

    I watch lots of escapist dreck. Just finished Maggie Q’s rendition of La Femme Nikita and am about to finish off both Andromeda and Earth Final Conflict–which has proven to be even too drecky for me. I’ll would guess that I’ll watch about 5 total episodes of EFC‘s 5th season. And I’m going more slowly through Peta Wilson’s version of LFN. I like it okay, but it’s too dystopian for me to watch more than occasionally.

    ETA: While I’m still here, Screen Rant informs me that Dr. Who is only readily available in the US, UK, and for people who can subscribe to BritBox.
    https://screenrant.com/where-watch-doctor-who-streaming/

  28. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    I was offered perfectly good money to write a line of Doctor Who books, by a British publisher. Which might have been fun had I ever at that point seen a single episode. Or if I’d been not an American.

  29. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    Another piece of Whovian trivia: much of the show was shot on videotape and the BBC reused quite a few of them, so there were years and years of lost episodes. But a dedicated fan base tracked down many of them from places copies were sent to, like Army bases and Australian television stations. There are still some missing but I believe they have the scripts and have released many of them as audio plays and a few of them have been storyboarded too.

    1
  30. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    @wr: Yes, as a pair those two episodes are the finest of Doctor Who.

    1
  31. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    @MarkedMan: Did you know many of the audio-only episodes have now been done with animation?

    Although apparently the BBC is not happy Disney has basically cut them out of future Doctor Who, so they won’t be animating any more of the lost episodes, sadly.

    1
  32. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    I guess I’ll just have to watch and see what happens (this sentence feels wrong).

  33. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    ‘Dr. Who is only readily available in the US, UK, and for people who can subscribe to BritBox.’

    Only if you mean 1963 – 1989 Who..

    1
  34. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @Matt Bernius:

    Otoh, for me the Capaldi years are the best in NuWho, including plotwise. And I think the arrival of Bill actually gave it a shot in the arm!

    2
  35. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    I find it hard to rank Doctors. Tom Baker (Fourth) is my Doctor (I discovered him on PBS when I was in High School). All the classic stuff is cheesy, terrible FX, and badly paced for a modern audience. But I love it all, just the same.

    I can rank Doctors 1…15 as much as I have tiers. Matt Smith, Tom Baker, Peter Capaldi, and David Tennant are my top tier.

    Moffat was the best show-runner, without any doubt in my mind.

    Chibnall was perhaps the worst. Jody Whittaker was underserved and I hope her stint doing audio for Big Finish redeems her Doctor.

    Ncuti Gatwa has amazing amounts of charm and charisma. But his first series was uneven.

    I agree that starting with “Rose” is a perfectly good place to jump in, although the best regeneration story is Matt Smith’s “Eleventh Hour.”

    1
  36. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @wr:

    Not on Max in Mexico

  37. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Assad K: Yes. But I included the Screen Rant link so that what I meant would be clear.

  38. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Steven L. Taylor: “Moffat was the best show-runner, without any doubt in my mind.”

    Yet another reason to declare you among the wisest people on the internet!

    There are people who just hate Moffat and his work, and I just don’t get it. What they complain about — his insanely intricate serialized stories, his always-clever dialogue, his insistence on constantly being smarter than his audience — are the qualities I enjoy most, both in Who and his other works, including his recreations of Victorian genre pieces (Sherlock, Jekyll, Dracula).

    In fact, I’m in the middle of editing a volume of critical essays on him for Bloomsbury Academic, although at the rate academic publishing seems to run we may need a Tardis to see its release…

    3
  39. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    11th Hour is possibly a better place to jump in than Rose, since as a story and production wise it is far superior…

  40. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @just nutha:

    Oops, sorry.. more fool I for not checking the included link!

  41. TJ Avatar
    TJ

    The theme music for Matt Smith’s Doctor (I am the Doctor) is just perfect.

    1
  42. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Assad K: I thought about suggesting that, but then you have skipped 10 altogether.

  43. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @wr:

    In fact, I’m in the middle of editing a volume of critical essays on him for Bloomsbury Academic, although at the rate academic publishing seems to run we may need a Tardis to see its release…

    Sounds cool (and indeed in re: academic publishing!).

  44. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Kathy:

    I gather there’s a lot of backstory and series mythology and background accumulated from decades of prior shows.

    On the one hand, the show has been on for 60 years and has a lot of mythology.

    On the other, in many ways the format is pretty straightforward: the Doctor and friend(s) show up in a different time and place each week and set about solving whatever the problem is.

    In many ways it is like a lot of 70s/80s shows: The Incredible Hulk, Highway to Heave, Knight Rider in terms of the general structure. And the Doctor is ultimately a superhero whose main power is being clever.

    2
  45. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I gave up on Enterprise at some point. A mix of the cable channel moving it around the schedule, and increasing weariness with retconning Trek. When Kovich reveals to Burnham who he is, I had no clue what his real identity was supposed to mean. I had to look it up.

    So, that was just some fan service that was wasted on me. If I’m going to have to look up things like that for every ep of Dr. Who I watch, then it begins to feel like work.

    Actually I had that problem with Duncan’s early eps on the History of Rome. He’d just casually mention some award or honor, or some magistracy, and I’d no idea what it meant. Later he realized he could assume little about what his audience knew about the period, and he fleshed things out more. But I did wind up consorting with Wikipedia a lot in the first year.

  46. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Kathy: I think if you start with “Rose” the show is self-conscious enough that it had been off the air for almost 20 years at that point that it fills in whatever gaps are needed and the rest doesn’t matter.

    I mean, yes, the monster-of-the-week in “Rose” dates to a set of episodes from the 1970s, but there is no need to know that, and absolutely nothing about the story that requires prior knowledge. It is more an Easter Egg for old fans than anything else.

    Everyone who watches the show had to start somewhere.

    2
  47. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @Mikey:
    “Although apparently the BBC is not happy Disney has basically cut them out of future Doctor Who, so they won’t be animating any more of the lost episodes, sadly.”

    I’m not sure that’s the case though… there was a previous announcement about the nimations being halted, likely due to cost-return issues, but Celestial Toymaker was animated after that decision so I think they are continuing again.
    In what way has the BBC been cut out of future Who? Just curious.. I know they are not making the show directly, it’s produced by Bad Wolf now, but that’s been done with other shows in the past like Spooks. But the Disney deal is more distribution rather than production.

  48. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    The hope, though, is that maybe people would go back to see more of what they missed… 🙂

  49. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    There has been a lot of reporting of centrist Conservative MP muttering that Badenoch has a massive problem in her sheer truculence: “she could having blazing row locked alone in a room with a mirror.”
    And that a lot of activists and right wing MP’s mistake sheer bad temper, and a determination to play to the “anti-woke” faction of the overly-online, for “fighting spirit”.

    Badenoch’s approach does nothing to address the main problems of the Conservative Party: being seen, to use a term much in use in the US of late, as rather “weird”.
    As well as opportunistic, incoherent in policy, and wedded to the interests of wealthy party-connected lobbyists.

    To re-build a governing voting coalition it needs to convince upper-middle voters who defected to the LibDems that it is capable of rational and properly administered governance. And, for the “winnable” electorate as a whole that it’s capable of devising and implementing serious policies that address the core voter issues: the economy, NHS, local government, etc.
    Rather than “pie in the sky” promises like Brexit, growth via tax cuts and deregulation alone, and bashing the “liberal establishment”.
    And rebuild the party in the country without trying to outbid Farage for the headbangers of Reform.

    If Badenoch ends up as their choice, they are in for an even longer stay in the dog-house.

  50. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    Regarding Doctors: my top three list is
    1) Tom Baker
    2) Peter Davison
    3) Jon Pertwee
    Perhaps showing my age.
    I have tended to find the “modern” era episodes as too often inclined to “running about with dramatic music” action than slow build up of suspense.
    There still moments brilliance, though
    “Blink” was exceptional.

    1
  51. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @wr:

    I thought Moffitt was struggling for the first half or two thirds of Capaldi’s first season, and then he figured out how to write the character and there were a couple of brilliant years. The last season with Clara has some of my all-time favorite episodes. Then, once she was gone the show felt like it had lost its engine for Capaldi’s last year.

    That’s good to know. I totally agree with that assessment. In particular, a decision about the fate of a supporting character in the final two episodes caused me to “nope” out at the end of the series (intentionally keeping this spoiler-free). To be clear it had nothing to do with the Missy character. After that year’s Christmas episode left me flat, I stopped watching and haven’t been back since.

    Given your (and other’s) praise for the rest of that run, I’ll definitely give it another try.

    @JohnSF:

    I have tended to find the “modern” era episodes as too often inclined to “running about with dramatic music” action than slow build up of suspense.

    Fair, though if we’re honest, the old show had a lot of running up and down non-descript corridors to fill out the 2-hour format.

    I think the bigger issue is constant stakes creep–i.e. that every season has to result in a universe-ending threat. Referring to the old series, the Peter Davidson regeneration episode (the highly rated “The Caves of Androzani”) is an exceptionally small scale story to end an era on. I don’t know if we’ll ever see one like that again.

    1
  52. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Matt Bernius:

    that every season has to result in a universe-ending threat

    I concur this is tiresome–and, unfortunately, RTD isn’t great as endings.

    1

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