Day 44: Dangerous Journey

So the henchman in this episode
is called Smithers. When the bad
guy finds the Doctor and co., will
he have to release the hounds?

This is the first time since the first episode that the TARDIS has landed on what was then contemporary Earth. And so we get to see Doctor Who attempt to look at modern issues, not through allegories or comparisons, but through explicitly showing these things. The plot here revolves around insecticides, a topic that is still relevant today, particularly with both the agricultural community and the environmental community, because it has a large range of issues and problems with it. All the time it has to be considered whether the products are safe for human consumption, what the danger is to the ecosystem, and whether they will actually work, but they're balanced out by showing that these products can help save crops, and contribute to the fight against hunger. And it's a complex issue that is well explored here. Fortunately, the villain is only interested in the monetary gain from it, and so whilst the bad guy is clearly shown, it also allows for the sidekick, in the form of a man called Mr Smithers (I am seriously hoping that the next episode ends with him accepting a role at a nuclear power plant), to be more sympathetic, because he is the one who has the hopes for the future, and he is the one who wants to prevent starvation, and he is not the one who has killed people who have gotten in his way. And so this leaves the audience not sure as to whether these things are bad or not, because the bad guys have control over them, yet the sidekick seems like a reasonable chap, and thus the audience may think that these things aren't so bad after all. And so they're left to make up their own minds on this issue, maybe learn more about it to make a better judgement. And maybe this will inspire a future scientist to look into this issue, and develop it for future use. So, in effect, Doctor Who is showing a modern issue, strongly relevant to society, with strong implications for the future, and indeed the present and it is showing multiple viewpoints of this, and leaves the audience never quite sure as to which is the bad one. So in essence, it's doing a better job at being a current affairs programme in 1964 than Today Tonight or A Current Affair ever have. (For overseas readers, insert awful 'current affairs programme here, also, hello!)