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Cultural responses United Kingdom

November 23, 1963 – Doctor Who begins

Sixty years years ago, on this day, November 23, 1963, the BBC science fiction programme Doctor Who sixty years ago

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the BBC wanted to make an “educational” show, with some humans from the present visiting earth’s past and the audience being informed about x, y and z. No bug-eyed monsters. From the earliest days Doctor Who was concerned with environment – in the second story about the Daleks, we learned that there has been a nuclear war, the atmosphere is poisoned and they will all die of radiation if they’re not careful. In the second season there’s a thinly veiled warning about DDT (Planet of the Giants). Throughout the show, long before “The Green Death” and “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” environmental concerns were getting a look in.

What I think we can learn from this

Someone should write an article about this. Only to have it knocked about by sadistic reviewers in love with their anonymous power.

What happened next

Doctor Who kept going and going and going, for better or worse, and has become deeply embedded in institutionalised in the “symbolic reservoir.”

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.