Is Dr Who on a mission to tick every single box?

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It great to see more diversity and I quite like the female Doctor, but it's starting to feel like they're actually taking the mickey out of themselves (or us?) and playing some sort of game to see how many boxes they can tick.

One of the opening lines tonight "I'm your niece's wife" although it appears not to be relevant to the story.

I have no issue whatsoever with any of the individual characters or their relationships and straight white males have no more right to representation than any other group. It's the tick boxing of identity groups that seems really obvious.
Dr Who has often had gay characters, characters of different ethnicity and alien characters that shed light on humanity and it's failings. But it did it in a much more subtle way where the message was absorbed as part of the story. This series I think while being more in your face diversity is actually proving less effective at getting over the message of inclusion and tolerance.
This is wrong on so many levels and I can't believe that you don't see it. It's not surprising we have a problem with racist.

Fucking hell it used to be that MN was full of interesting, clever people, back when it were all fields round here etc.

Now it's this racist, right wing shite. WTF is wrong with some of you? This is why the world is so fucked up.

My fav Dr Who was William Hartnell ... even though he was an old white man
They ticked the "age" box with Dr #1 right back in the 1960s

That's probably because back in 1963, I was just the right age to start watching my very first scifi on the telly
I used to hide behind the settee to watch

There have been loads of gay supporting characters included regularly in New Who ever since The Empty Child in series 1. And several of them introduced in fairly clunky ways. I grant you the dialogue this time was somewhat lacking in naturalism but then that’s Chibnall for you. It’s all a bit Year 7.

I think Davies and Moffat got away with the more CBBC elements because a) they had a lot of prior experience writing for that age group without writing down and b) they were genuinely good at writing jokes, which made it much more palatable to adults. And then of course Moffat abandoned the child audience completely with the inevitable consequences for ratings. It’s such a tough line to tread.

I'm loving the new Dr Who and thought last week's episode was pretty awesome and poignant. This week's was alright but the new Dr is finding her feet with her new companions. And I really like Bradley in this. Who cares if BBC is trying to be PC, better to represent and be PC then the alternative? Perhaps a Dr who that's pro guns, homophobic, racist, pro torture & hunting and wants to destoy the planet for profit? Maybe not hey?

Dr Who is shite regardless. But it's a rather odd mix of bemusing and infuriating that so many people take issue with somehow being confronted by diversity in such a stark manner. Almost as though we should have perhaps just one Asian bus-conductor or something till the next series where perhaps we'd be treated to the bus conducting skills of a black actor.

OK. I'll try again.
My point is about quality not quantity.
Quencher I'm probably going to get shot down here, but I take objection when you infer racism? My comment above specifically calls out the BBC for not being as effective as it might be in promoting diversity and tolerance? It's not the what, it's the how.

Can’t watch it anymore, first couple of series when it was reinvented were fabulous. It’s really gone downhill imo, can’t recognise the quirky but fun programme it was.

I do find it a bit clunky, but to be fair have never watched consistently before. Dds 10 and 6 who I actively forced to sit and watch in order to indoctrinate them with the idea that Dr Who is a woman, are absolutely loving it, and I'm so pleased because they usually watch a load of shite on Nickleodeon. Last night one of them had to hide behind the sofa- it was a dear diary moment, and served to remind me that adults who enjoyed Dr Who as children have tried to appropriate what is really a children's programme. We live in an almost offensively all white small north west town,so I am thrilled when they get diversity shoved down their necks. Apart from anything else,one of the 4 main characters is a white male, so how are they not represented? ( I also quite like that a male Dr only used to have to keep a maximum of 2 companions alive from episode to episode,whereas a female Dr can naturally handle more than that)

You forgot the Doctor has been married, and still goes back.. Forward to visit River Song..

Imagine how great it is to see same sex relationships portrayed casually on a high profile show like this if you are a child from a same sex relationship.
Imagine being an Asian kid and seeing a heroine who is not a terrorist in the same show etc etc etc
It's a kids show not a documentary (spoilers, the doctor isn't real)

( I also quite like that a male Dr only used to have to keep a maximum of 2 companions alive from episode to episode,whereas a female Dr can naturally handle more than that)

Not quite right but ok.

I think the issue is not with diversity itself, but the way in which it is represented. Everything is being made such a big deal out of these days. I remember the days of Captain Jack, who was quite obviously gay, but it was never a case of trying to score any moral points. This season so far has lost the fun element to the constant moral lecture and trying far too hard to tell the audience how they have to feel about certain issues.

Tennant and Smith's characters were both deeply flawed (I stopped watching for a while when Capaldi took over), but it was often left up to the audience to interpret their sometimes questionable actions.

It feels like now we don't have that choice anymore.

Minorities are also minorities, because they are, well, less frequently present in our lives than the majority. Say, for example, 15% of the population are gay - then I would expect them to be represented in abut 15% of the characters in the episodes. Now it feels like they make more like 30%. That's an exaggeration, of course, but that's the point I'm trying to make.

Dr Who has lost its fun element to the preaching and lecturing, which, sadly, destroys a lot of good entertainment these days. The times when we could look at ourselves in a lighthearted way and even poke fun at things (a lot of humour is built around being politically incorrect) are slowly dying and are leaving a dreary world behind, where fun is fraught with too many hurdles.

I think the show is more aimed at children now. I watch this with my 10 yo DS who loves it. He said after last night's that he wished it was on every day. He hasn't noticed the number of ethnic minority/gay/other people in it at all. It just isn't on his radar. He just loves it

I love watching it with him. It's entertainment, that's all!

I think the main problem is that JW, as the doctor, is really boring. There is none of the brilliance and charisma of Ecclestone and Tenant. Matt Smith grew on me but PC was never really grew into it and JW is just dull.
I like all the companions, but they are not meant to be more interesting than the dr. Bradley Walsh is doing a brilliant job.

People want to be entertained, not lectured and Dr Who now feels clunky and condescending, which irritates viewers. I really want to like the first female dr but in all honesty I have been bored, so far, except for the bits about the companions.

I don't watch Dr Who but the BBC is bad for this, especially in children's programming. (I know Dr Who is not a kids' programme, but it does attract a young audience).

In shows like Holby or Eastenders which are pitched at an older audience there are plenty of black/asian/diasbled/gay characters. They are "people" in their own rights and get story lines which are not just about them being black/asian/disabled/gay. And that's as it should be.

The problem comes when you just know that someone's sat in a production office with a checklist - same sex couple - tick, person in a wheelchair - tick, black person - tick, asian person - tick... These people aren't there because they have a story to tell or because they're a fantastic actor, just to tick the diversity box.

I did catch the last 2 minutes of Dr Who when I was waiting for Strictly to start and wondered why there were 4 of them - the Dr Who of my youth was always the Doctor and a companion. And perhaps a mechanical dog.

Are people seriously saying davies and Moffat didn't preach?! Do you not remember the doctor's frequent and long monologues?!

This is different. The doctor speaks less and the representation just is without comment most of the time.

I'm with others, we live in a mostly white area. I don't want kids or family TV to doggedly represent that. I don't want any TV to be like that unless it's important to the plot to be white mc whitesville.

There's a BBC series on iplayer about how crap the representation of black people on Hollywood film is. One director talked about recently trying to get a domestic film off the ground about a Nigerian family in the UK and getting notes back from a funder not understanding why one brother wouldn't have stabbed another over a disagreement. Why would they have?! Because they were black? That's the prevailing attitude of many about how certain groups should be 'realistically' represented.

Everytime we have directors that realistically represent by having everyone just be normal is a brilliant thing. And Dr Who has been very much part of that since its reinvention.

Stop trying to claim it wasn't or that it did it better then because there were more white actors in the supporting cast. Whether you represent someone well or not is not related to the rest of the cast.

There were 11 characters in last night's episode. One of them, who had a small role and died quite early on, was mentioned as being in a same-sex relationship. That's not 30%.

To put that in perspective, I talked to 9 people yesterday. Two of them were lesbians, and they both managed to go a whole day without being killed!

Almost a quarter of the people I interacted with in a single day weren't straight, and that was just normal, everyday life.

It's not perfect now either, to be clear. We still have no black dads, but making lesson the supporting cast white can't be a bad thing.

I agree that Dr Who has had very right on political commentary right from the start. Yesterday’s episode was an updated rerun of a notoriously political serial from the early 1970s.

The Doctor couldn't save the spiders. They grew too big to absorb oxygen. Basic biology!

PiperPublickOccurences Doctor Who is, and always was, a children's programme.

This latest series is more like the Dr Who I watched as a child. Back to its roots.

Given up on it. I'll wait for the next Doctor. It's awful now.