Former Doctor Who actor defends show’s politics amid attacks from Tory leadership contender

Sylvester McCoy says the show has “always been political, as far as I’m concerned”

Former Doctor Who actor Sylvester McCoy has defended the political messaging behind the long-running sci-fi series,

He claimed that it’s “always been political” amid the show becoming a tool for Kemi Badenoch’s Tory leadership campaign.

McCoy played the seventh incarnation of the Doctor on the BBC series, lasting from 1987 until 1989. He was the last actor to play the character in the show’s original run before it was rebooted in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston at the helm.

Speaking at a special BFI screening of the Doctor Who serial “The Happiness Patrol”, a political satire with Sheila Hancock playing a caricature of Margaret Thatcher called “The Iron Lady”, McCoy admitted that he’d been sucked into the show in the 1960s because of the way it portrayed politics.

The actor, now aged 81, said: “In the 1960s, I got hooked on Doctor Who, and the reason why was because of the politics in it, subtly put there.

He added: “The 1960s they started to swing, they started to change... it was a kind of a revolution, a peaceful and wonderful revolution going on, and Doctor Who was the only decent thing on [the BBC] at the time that had anything that talked to young people like me in a political way. So it’s always been political, as far as I’m concerned.”

It comes after Doctor Who fans have defended David Tennant after Tory party leadership contender Kemi Badenoch hit out at the actor in a new campaign video.

On Monday (2 September), Badenoch launched her campaign to become the new leader of the Conservative Party in a video, in which she said she is “not afraid of Doctor Who”.

Badenoch railed against the “cultural establishment trying to keep Conservatives down” and promised to “take the fight to Doctor Who or whoever and not let them try to keep us down”.

(BBC / Getty Images)

Doctor Who has made strives in recent years to be more inclusive for viewers, including the first female Doctor in Jodie Whittaker as well as the first ever same-sex kiss on the show.

The 15th Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, who is the first ever Black actor to play the character shared a kiss with the dashing anti-hero named Rogue (Jonathan Groff) after a night of flirting and ballroom dancing after a Bridgerton-themed which aired in June.