I'm voting for Dr Who

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Publication: The Guardian
Date: 2005-03-31
Author: AL Kennedy
Page:
Language: English

Only the dependable doctor can save us from Wolfowitz, Bolton, Blair and all the other political Daleks

So what's left of the BBC has finally made the effort and brought us back Dr Who. High production values, proper scripts, acting, glossy ads — they've really pushed the boat out, or the Tardis out, or the Dalek out, whatever would seem most appropriate.

Can't watch it myself. After all, the last time it caught my interest I only wept in supermarkets because I'd lost sight of my mum; now I do it because I'm awake. When Tom Baker was the Doctor, I appeared to have a future and potential. Now it's Christopher Eccleston and knowing I have no point.

Don't get me wrong, the programme seems surprisingly splendid; it only makes me want to kill myself, because most things do. And because of the rather larger problem it can't help raising — you know, the one about The End of the World.

Because that's what the Doctor prevents: I remember. He's ecological, he tries not to kill things — even nasty things. He has at least one assistant with whom I can identify and he saves the world. Now, am I the only person who sits down on a Saturday evening and listens to that dibbidie-dum signature tune and thinks: "Given that most things are buggered and humanity is on the way out, wouldn't it be good if our only visible hope wasn't a fictional character?"

I mean, the removal of me would be a mercy, but I'm generally in favour of everyone else being able to keep on with all of that breathing, chatting, falling in love, going to parks stuff that people seem to like.

Clocking on for the Autons, Cybermen and general Bad Monsters we have people like the Pentagon official Douglas Feith, who define the efforts of the international criminal court and international law as "asymmetric warfare that various actors can use to try to constrain, shape our behaviour".

I would have thought there are certain types of behaviour — like buggering innocent strangers and beating people to death — that we might want laws to restrain, but apparently that would be wrong and pandering to a form of terrorism.

Soon we'll have Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank and John Bolton at the UN, both of them devoted to delightful agendas which include privatising rainwater, encouraging illegal logging, the use of torture and disappearance, aboveground nuclear testing, pre-emptive warfare for profit, the US's right to the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons, the single-minded appropriation, exploitation, and combustion of all hydrocarbons on earth by the US and the end of life on earth.

It may be that, eventually, the vast majority of US citizens will notice that their rivers are full of mercury and arsenic, they can no longer sue their doctor for malpractice, their economy is owned by China and balanced on a bubble of unsustainable debt, but by then it will be too late to unseat their government without a lot of unpleasantness. And way too late to save the world.

Within the current global context our own forthcoming elections are, of course, especially meaningless. But still they're on the way, limping into view like a very deformed and malodorous circus donkey. The proceedings will naturally conform to another popular TV format: take individuals uniquely unsuited to ballet, opera, neurosurgery, mountaineering, childbirth, marquetry, the conjuring of malign spirits or the onerous and awesome responsibilities of government. Then subject them to vigorous grooming by a coven of nut-jobs and power-freaks, before spewing them forth across an unsuspecting public who are meant to be entertained by their gaping character flaws and predictable incompetence.

So I'll soon get to put my little X next to representatives of A) the ginger muppet who can't even get it together to vote against detention without trial. B) Mad Mike "Burn a gippo" Howard, who appears to have been subjected to a partially successful tongue transplant. This is the only feasible explanation for his strangely adhesive pronunciation and tendency to repeat a handgun-waving, foetus-hugging agenda suited to an entirely different country. C) Blair — a term used to describe any blood-spattered piece of ordure. D) My nearest Travis Bickle clone, whose particular manifestation of bigotry has been flushed out of obscurity by the political vacuum at the centre — and indeed the edges — of UK politics. E) A nice independent who will do no good.

Pardon me if I stay at home and work out whether razor blades in the bathtub would be better than paracetamol. Or should I just hope that I choke myself in my sleep? At least that would actually solve a problem.

Meanwhile — once a week and digital repeats on Sunday— we'll get to see the Doctor vanquish evil and defend humanity, because he's always had a soft spot for us and thinks we have a future and potential.

Me, I agree with the words from Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition which run: "We're all between perdition and the deep blue sea." If I vote for anyone now it'll be the Doctor. Only he can save the world.

I'm voting for Dr Who

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