Doctor Who Magazine – Issue 572 – January 2022
English | 89 pages | pdf | 38.53 MB
Welcome at Doctor Who Magazine Issue 572 January 2022
By the time this issue of Doctor Who Magazine is published the COP26 conference will be entering its final stages. The outcome of this historic gathering will have an impact on us all.
The extent to which Doctor Who qualifies as science fiction is a debate I won’t address here, but in the days when the programme retained its own scientific advisor, many of the scripts fulfilled the genre’s defining tropes by offering grim warnings about Earth’s dystopian future. In The Moonbase (1967), the world of 2070 is at the mercy of extreme weather conditions, with only the technology of the Gravitron keeping disaster at bay. Shortly afterwards, The Ice Warriors (1967) dramatised a once widely held view that cooling temperatures would culminate in a devastating ice age. In the early 1970s, when the
Doctor Who production office subscribed to New Scientist magazine, the dangers of meddling with the delicate balance of
nature prompted catastrophe in Inferno (1970) and The Green Death (1973). While watching the COP26 news coverage over the last few days, I’ve been reminded of the Brigadier’s misjudged enthusiasm in the latter story. “Cheap petrol and lots of it,” he tells Jo Grant. “Exactly what the world needs.” Jo’s horrified response was years ahead of its time.
As the potential horrors of actual climate change slowly became apparent, it seems the subject slipped from Doctor Who’s agenda. Maybe the programme’s producers and writers figured their work was done – there was perhaps less dramatic value in predicting something that was, after all, already happening.
More recent episodes, however, have returned to the subject. The 2020 stories Orphan 55 and Praxeus reflected the current sense of urgency with the series’ most direct references to ecological collapse since
The Green Death. This time around, I didn’t hear anybody extolling the virtues of cheap petrol – not even for comic effect.
The spectacular return of Doctor Who at the end of October was a welcome distraction from the real world’s problems. The consensus of opinion in the DWM offi ce is that The
Halloween Apocalypse was well worth the wait. Judging by our letters page, this is how most of you feel too. We’d love to know what you think of the rest of Flux. In the meantime, we’re working on the next issue, which will preview the New Year’s Day Special, and the 2022 Yearbook, which will provide unrivalled coverage of the whole of Series 13.
Both will be on sale in December. Until then, take care.
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