#letts era

HOT TAKE TIME AGAIN!!

Zoe in this story is in intelligence terms functioning as a spare Doctor, with some nice scenes where they work out the technobabble between them. This may fall under “people telling each other stuff they already know” but it’s quite stylishly done. Zoe is a genius and it works with that.

Fast-forward to a slightly more enlightened decade and Liz Shaw is written out for being “too clever.”

But a character being clever should not be a problem. Yeah, you have to write them a bit differently, be more sparing with them asking stupid questions, etc, but if you the writer are any good at your job you should be able to balance more than one clever main character. Especially since Liz Shaw can only be expected to know 1970s-Earth stuff, and you’re surrounded by side characters who.... well, let’s just leave it at “military intelligence is an oxymoron” shall we.

Mac himself said of Doctor Who: “It’s a very political show. Remember what politics refers to, it refers to relationships between groups of people. It doesn’t necessarily mean left or right … so all Doctor Who’s are political, even though the other group of people are reptiles, they’re still a group of people.”