THE miracle of time travel means Doctor Who can visit anywhere in the universe at any point in history.
Yet I can almost guarantee the Tardis will, henceforth, never randomly land in the following settings: The Soviet Union during the Stalinist purges of 1936-38, Budapest in the brutal crushing of the 1956 uprising, North Korea at any time and China during either the cultural revolution (1966-76) or the great famine of 1959-61.
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Or indeed anywhere else that would remind BBC1 viewers socialism is one of the most lethally stupid ideas in the whole history of mankind.
Instead, the Doctor, if he lasts much longer, will continue to ping-pong between state-approved destinations, like the old British Empire (booo!) and America during the 1950s segregation era, where he can flag up the issues of racism and . . . more racism.
Last time he landed here, in 2018, it was for a lecture about the civil rights movement called Rosa, which almost made the BBC combust with self-satisfaction, even though the idea was done much earlier and more effectively by Quantum Leap, in 1989, with its brilliant Color Of Truth instalment.
To nobody’s great surprise, then, the Doctor returned to the deep south of Florida, 1952, on Saturday, to investigate some cartoon s**thouse who went by the name of Mr Ring-a-Ding and had vanished 15 people inside a Miami cinema in the name of God knows what cause.
On the face of it, a promising enough start to the adventure. But that’s all the episode turned out to be.
A start that was followed by a deeply boring middle and a feeble ending which involved Mr Ding-a-Ling, who turned out to be Lux, the God of light, wafting away into the sunset, much like the plot and the show itself.
There are no prizes for guessing the cause of this disappointment, of course, as Doctor Who has become the embodiment of all that is obsessively woke, self-destructive and deranged about the BBC.
It was still a bit of a shock to see the scale of it, however, on this episode which began the moment Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and his new assistant nurse Belinda Chandra — the H and Claire of intergalactic time travel — exited the Tardis in Miami and spotted the name “Rock Hudson” above the haunted cinema.
“The most beautiful man,” said the Doctor, reverentially.
“Yes, we did him on our HIV training course,” replied Belinda, like a talking NHS leaflet. “This time travel thing is so strange, ’cos we know what happens to him, poor soul.”
Which was a terrible thing to say about his stint on Dynasty, given it rarely fell short of 20million viewers.
Rock wasn’t the oddest namecheck, though. That would have to be Cuba’s former President Fulgencio Batista, who’s one of those dictators the BBC doesn’t like (a right-wing one) and another distraction from a storyline ultimately derailed by the show’s unhinged obsession with politics and segregation.
It follows a pattern set by the previous series, obviously and the first episode of the current run where all manner of robot twattery turned out to be a front for another telling-off about toxic masculinity in some “planet of the incels” caper.
It’s one thing allowing the cult of woke to sabotage the scripts, obviously, but quite another to let it also ruin the villains on a show like Doctor Who, which is now overrun with cutesy harmless twerps, like Mr Ring-a-Ding and The Meep, who can be safely despatched without anyone hiding behind the sofa.
To the extent that Davros is now an upright, bustling little gimp, rather than the terrifying one-eyed walnut of yesteryear and the most terrifying-looking creature in the entire franchise is probably Anita Dobson.
If this has been done because Russell T Davies and the BBC believe its audience is too fragile and politically sensitive to be scared by anything more threatening than capitalism then they really have missed the entire point of the show and I have disturbing news for them.
On Saturday, Doctor Who got its lowest ratings of all time with just 1.58million viewers.
They can, of course, try to explain away this terminal decline with the fact the figure doesn’t take into account iPlayer viewers, but it won’t wash.
It’s a disaster and an act of self-sabotage that owes everything to political bias and the brain-washing cult of woke which are both so entrenched at the BBC I’ve started to think a Hungary 1956 episode might not be so far-fetched, after all.
With the Doctor commanding a Red Army tank division and Belinda purging the communist party of bourgeois elements via a bullet in the neck.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In the popular nursery rhyme, the monarch who called for his fiddlers three is called Old King who?”
Jaz: “Queen.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Equestrian Life is a magazine for riders and lovers of which animal?”
Saleem: “Dogs.”
The Finish Line, Roman Kemp, looking for bats: “Something vespertilian resembles what flying mammal?”
Paul: “Cows.”
And Ben Shephard: “What word for the fruit of a palm tree can also mean a romantic appointment?”
Mike: “Mango.”
Ben: “DATE!”
CELEBS ALL ON BRAND-I
TV is forever warning us about strobe lighting, bad language, violence, sexism, homophobia, racism, “graphic depictions of mental health” and all sorts of other worries about old shows that “reflected attitudes of the time.”
You name it.
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But it never flags up the sort of weapons-grade sycophancy which knackered my enjoyment of An Evening With Elton John And Brandi Carlile, on ITV, where the tone was set by host Dan Levy, a nervous little creep who wanted to know how the pair met: “And why was I not there?”
A question that neither required nor got an answer from Elton and Brandi, who were anxious to get on with the music.
No matter how hard they tried, though, the grovelling never stopped, and if celebrity guests weren’t actually paying tribute inside the London Palladium they were doing it via video message, like Dua Lipa who said: “Dearest Elton, it’s impossible to say how deeply in awe I remain of you.”
But then she had a go at it anyway.
If you thought that was the worst of it, however, Sam Smith then appeared, practically on all fours as he claimed: “Without people like Brandi, the Earth would stop spinning, the rivers would run dry and the birds would sing no more.”
A claim so bold and nauseating it left poor Elton with nowhere else to go except: “Wow! This is kind of one of those things where you say, ‘I was there,’ maybe.”
Yeah, or maybe you say: “Thank f*** I wasn’t.”
TV (NOT QUITE) GOLD
NOTHING on television really deserved such a glowing reference this week.
But I did enjoy the following: The return of BBC1’s brilliantly stressful Race Across The World. Black Mirror’s Eulogy episode, on Netflix.
Bill Maher’s demolition of the “not working class,” on Real Time.
Bradley Walsh’s lightning-quick response to Blankety Blank contestant Helena revealing: “I’m a sex therapist.” “And have you got any hobbies?”
And an unfiltered Harry Clark, from The Traitors, who’s clearly watched too many Shaolin kung fu movies, asking a Cistercian monk, on the first episode of BBC1’s very earnest Pilgrimage: The Road Through The Alps: “Do you have any super-powers? Are your ging gang goolies made of titanium?”
Answer? “No.”
Random TV irritations
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THE astonishing CBB revelation that Patsy Palmer is even more miserable than her East- Enders alter ego Bianca Jackson.
BBC1 imagining there is a hidden army of Naga Munchetty fans who love to start the day with three hours of shark-eyed frostiness.
And “topical quiz show” Have I Got News For You still attacking Liz Truss, long after she’s stopped being PM, every single week, yet not having a single word to say about the Supreme Court’s historic and very grown-up ruling on gender.
Someone put these cowards out of their misery, please.
Great sporting insights
DION DUBLIN: “The defender’s thinking ‘should I not go, or should I stay’.”
Paul Merson: “Arteta left no stove unturned.”
Robbie Savage: “The whole of the stadium drove United on and half of them had gone home.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
Lookalike of the week
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Sent in by Peter Scott, of Glasgow.
Best quiz show answer of the week.
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Which Radio 4 broadcast contains information issued by the Met Office on wind, sea state, weather and visibility?”
Simon: “Tomasz Schafernaker.”