10 Times Doctor Who Was Accused Of Having A Hidden Agenda

8. The Anti-Thatcher Agenda

Doctor Who was facing all kinds of problems back in the 1980s. Colin Baker's ill-fated tenure as the Sixth Doctor had gone down like a lead balloon and dwindling public interest was resulting in ever decreasing viewing figures for what had once been the nation's favourite sci-fi series. As it turns out, though, the show's imminent - and at this point inevitable - cancellation was seemingly the least of its worries as producers were far too busy trying to bring down the reign of Margaret Thatcher in some sort of secret timey-wimey politically subversive agenda. So says Sylvester McCoy, anyway. The Seventh Doctor actor has claimed that left-wing scriptwriters purposefully infiltrated his adventures in a failed attempt to overthrow and undermine Thatcher's government. A case in point is the 1988 serial The Happiness Patrol in which the villainous Helen A, as portrayed by Sheila Hancock, is presented as a caricature of Britain's controversial Prime Minster who outlaws unhappiness and brutally controls the population through executions. That's a description of Helen A, by the way. Andrew Cartmel, who was then serving as Doctor Who's script editor, has admitted that "it seemed the right thing to do" at the time. Surely focusing their creative efforts on making Doctor Who good again should've been further up their 'to do' list? Life is full of mysteries.