Live Blogging 'Doctor Who'

Tim Brooke-Taylor and (in the background) Bill Oddie - i.e. The Goodies.

As regular readers will probably know, I don't really watch BBC drama these days, except for Doctor Who, the ultimate BBC family programme, famously geared for kids - and, even more famously, geared for dads (via the female assistants and the whole sci-fi thing) . 

Yes, I know. I'm nearly 50 and shouldn't be watching such things. But, in my defence, I'm claiming it as my only such sin.

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So here I am live-blogging tonight's Doctor Who - 'Demons of the Punjab'. 

It features (Muslim) companion Yaz travelling back in time with (female) Doctor Jodie, and (black, dyspraxic) Ryan, and (stale, pale, male) Bradley Walsh to Partition India in 1947 to see her marvellous Pakistani granny (introduced as the first Muslim to give birth in the new Pakistan and the first Muslim woman to work in a cotton mill in England) get married.

And Bradley Walsh says he's really looking forward to ticking Pakistan off his to-do list, tourism-wise. (Don't we all? I particularly fancy the northern border with Afghanistan. Very scenic I hear. Check out Talibanholidays.booking.com). 

Ah yes, it's a 'jolly hockey sticks BBC romp' with 'sad bits' homing in on the massively murderous partition of India and Pakistan, when Muslims and Hindus slaughtered each other whilst Labour's Attlee government (unmentioned) tried to do the right thing (unmentioned).

(Bad Lord Mountbatten got a mention though.)

So that's the context. And Bradley (speaking on behalf of his Chasers perhaps) is now saying heart-tugging things about us all coming together. And Doctor Jodie (no back end of a bus her) is now talking love. Aw!

Good grief, call me Peter Hitchens, but it's like watching a children's programme on history, with added trendy school assembly moral messages laid on top of it.

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Oh, and the Hindu brother - the main flawed human baddie, who spent too much time listening to the radio (hint, hint, social media nowadays?), - turns out to be a mean, murderous Hindu hardliner who wants separation.

(A Hindu. Not a murderous pro-Pakistan-independence baddie Muslim, of course). 

And the murderous armed men who come at the programme's climax and do the murderous deed (too late to warn of SPOILERS?) are Hindus.

(Hindus. Not murderous baddie Muslims, of course).

For yes, it transpires that it's they, the Hindus who kill (our hero) Muslim-marrying Hindu Prem, who are the real Demons of the Punjab and not the aliens, who may look like demons and speak with classic TV sci fi 'alien baddie' voices but turn out to be really, really nice and are only there because they're concerned about the unknown victims of violent conflict in the universe and want to be "witnesses" for them, bless them.

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Doctor Jodie and Team Tardis

Interestingly, Britain only got the blame for messing up India, dividing it up, in passing - though it was poor ill-fated Prem (the hero of the story) who said it. I expected much more of that.

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Is it rude to the writer of this episode to say that it was an extremely clunky script?

It could even be called 'didactic'. And maybe the BBC intends it to be used in schools. 

Gawd, possibly even more rudely, it's like being whacked over the head by a BBC-branded fish.

Education, education, education.

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I know you know, even if you don't watch it, that Doctor Who has had its agendas over the years and has made the odd political point from time to time, and that it's got worse in recent years, but this series really is something else.

It's pure sledgehammer stuff.

Even the last Doctor, Alastair Campbell, didn't have the massive pile of PC poo piled on him that poor (no back end of a bus her) Doctor Jodie has had piled upon her young, attractive, female white face by the BBC.

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Well, maybe forty years too late, I'm now at the point where I think watching Doctor Who is something to stop watching...

...but here's my excuse if I don't follow up on that:

As an example of the decay of the BBC, caused by a sub-standard, ultra-social-liberal, identity-politics-obsessed, soggy-left mindset which sits several-parsecs-and-some-beyond-the-next-but-two-galaxies-away (at least) from the views of most of the licence-fee-paying-public, it's a consistent QED-worthy example.

And I'm expecting the viewing figures to fall even further after this episode.

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Bradley's still very good though. He's putting his heart and soul in it, ignoring all the dross around him. 

I like Bradley, but I think he's better than this.