Right now, we need Doctor Who more than ever. In times of social crisis, when the world is frightening and unpredictable, stories about super-beings swooping down to save the human race from itself are reassuring. Hollywood has been pumping out superhero movies faster than Clark Kent can change in a phone booth; this summer alone, we’ve had Green Lantern, Thor, X-Men: First Class and Captain America. After a summer of scandal and civil unrest, The Doctor is fairly obviously how [the UK would] still like to imagine ourselves, and certainly how we’d prefer the rest of the world to see us: tweedy, morally upright, loveably camp, much cleverer than everyone else, and quietly, planet-shakingly powerful, zooming around sorting out the world’s problems but never making too much of a fuss about it. Unlike superhero movies, though, Doctor Who retains its sense of moral complexity.
Laurie Penny: The best future would be the one imagined by Doctor Who - The Independent UK