Thread by @maxgladstone

I'd forgotten just how sharp and political the first season of the new Dr Who was.

Villains, by episode, so far:
E1: Plastic people of the universe.

(Okay, that wasn't very political, but they had to do a lot of scene-setting.)

E2: Miserable image-obsessed white supremacist .0001%er plots murder and blackmail in order to maintain her miserable image-obsessed white supremacist .0001%er lifestyle, which she can't afford any more

E3: Ghosts.

E4-5: Grotesque mob family murders and manipulates their way into executive power using successive engineered crises and mass media, only to purge the security establishment of anyone who can stop them, then set about a plan to kill everyone and sell of the Earth for spare parts

(Russell T, I take back everything I ever said about the Slitheen.)

E6: Elon Musk's / Peter Thiel's / Jeff Bezos's shitty hobbies lead to space fascist almost annihilating Earth

E7: Political control through broadcast news sets humanity back a century through isolationist fearmongering, all in the service of a foreign government, represented in this case by a giant carnivorous ceiling slug.

(Also relevant: our tech-bro wannabe protagonist ("I kinda am a genius, yeah") almost gets everyone killed with shitty praxis.)

Haven't rewatched past E8, but iirc it goes down like this:
8: Death and entropy (Great episode)
9-10: Terror of the unknown
11: That same gross crime family again
12-13: More space fascists.

So I'm sitting here thinking, "Where did RTD find his crystal ball?" and then I remember: wait, no, this is also what 2004 looked like.

In light of all the discourse around caring/not caring/trolling/whatever, the bit about how the Daleks don't let themselves feel anything but hatred lands like a direct hit.

Yes, this mess has deep roots. But in a way that's reassuring. The response to it has deep roots, too. Reach out and graft yourself on.