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You’d be forgiven for thinking that Doctor Who is a sci-fi show packed with action, monsters and unbeatable cliffhangers - light years away from the world’s biggest news stories.

But throughout its 60-year history, there have been moments where, intentionally or otherwise, the time-travelling series has echoed events in the real world.

To mark Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, ����ý Bitesize takes a look at the times our Time Lord experienced adventures which had something in common with the national, and occasionally international, conversation.

The Curse of Peladon: The UK’s entry into the EEC

In 1972, the United Kingdom signed the treaty that would allow it to become a member state of the European Economic Community (EEC) on 1 January 1973. The EEC would be later known as the European Union (EU) and it was a trading bloc the UK had been trying to join since the early 1960s, when its membership had been vetoed by French president Charles de Gaulle on two occasions.

Also in 1972, the TARDIS, piloted by the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, accompanied by companion Jo Grant (Katy Manning) arrived on the planet Peladon. It was a moment when the planet was set to become part of the Galactic Federation, with delegates from Alpha Centauri and Arcturus visiting ahead of any formal agreement. The Doctor and Jo are mistaken for the Earth delegation and the previously villainous Ice Warriors also show up, except this time they’re on the goodies’ side as ambassadors from Mars.

The sleeve notes on the official ����ý DVD release of The Curse of Peladon describe the story as “a cheeky political allegory, made at a time when the UK was on the verge of joining the EEC.” However, in an interview, the show’s then script editor, Terrance Dicks, said: “Obviously, the parallel is there to be drawn. It may have been in Brian [Hayles, the writer]’s mind - it certainly wasn’t in mine.”

The Green Death: Ecological concerns

Pollution - and the importance of looking after the planet - regularly cropped up in global headlines and causes in the 1970s.

In 1973, along came a Doctor Who adventure called The Green Death. Set in South Wales, it’s about the mining village of Llanfairfach, chosen by the Global Chemicals corporation as the site of its new premises. Its writer, Robert Sloman, said in one interview: “Barry [Letts, the producer at the time] wanted to do [a story] about the state of the country and what we were doing to it. It became quite clear to me… that we are destroying the planet.”

Unfortunately, Global Chemicals is being run by an evil computer called BOSS and its waste products are pumped into the mine. This has the joint effect of making anyone who touches it turn a vivid shade of lime green and become dangerously ill, as well as producing giant maggots with snapping fangs.

Without wishing to spoil the ending, a big part in preventing the spread of the Green Death comes via a meat alternative fungus farmed by Llanfairfach’s small community of (what we would now call) eco-warriors. Self-sufficiency, or living off the land, was a popular concept in the 1970s - it also inspired ����ý sitcom The Good Life.

The Monster of Peladon: Miners’ strikes and women’s rights

Peladon was proving a positively allegorical planet for the TARDIS to materialise. In 1974, it again provided a setting for the Third Doctor to get caught up in an adventure with shades of current affairs.

In 1972, coal miners in the UK went on strike in an attempt to receive increased wages and improved working conditions. It was the biggest industrial action in the country since the General Strike of 1926. When the Doctor returned to Peladon, its miners had downed tools over working conditions.

The serial, written again by Brian Hayles, was broadcast less than three weeks after a second mining dispute in the UK had ended. It began in the winter of 1973 and led to a four-week strike in early 1974 - resolved after a 35% rise in pay was offered by the new Labour government.

Had Doctor Who ever been more topical? Well, perhaps. Producer Barry Letts said on the story’s DVD release, that the industrial action taking place when Brian Hayles was writing this story: “…were the first miners’ strikes since the General Strike in 1926, so they were a very big thing in our lives.” - it may have inspired Hayles’ script, but there is no definitive proof.

Away from the mining storyline, a memorable scene from The Monster of Peladon shows the Doctor’s new companion, the independent-minded journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) giving Peladon’s Queen Thalira a pep talk on women’s liberation. This was another movement that grew in the 1970s, and its first conference took place in Oxford in 1970.

When the Queen tells Sarah she is “only” a girl having to deal with a major crisis on her planet, Sarah reminds her: “There’s nothing ‘only’ about being a girl, your majesty.”

The Sun Makers: Taxes and rising inflation

“The Sun Makers was a skit on the Inland Revenue system,” its writer Robert Holmes once recalled. That certainly comes across in the story set on the fictional Pluto city of Megropolis, with a corridor called P45, guards called the Inner Retinue and the villainous Collector - intent on taxing the city workers on anything and everything at increasing rates - and putting his enemies through a nasty process called liquidation.

In an interview on the official DVD release of the story, its director, Pennant Roberts, says Holmes wrote The Sun Makers in retaliation over a tax bill.

When this story was broadcast in November 1977, the basic UK income tax rate was 34%, almost three-quarters more than the 20% set for the 2023/24 tax year. The world economy had been hit by an oil crisis earlier in the decade which drove up costs due to fuel shortages. There was high unemployment, and an inflation rate of around 15%. By comparison, the inflation rate in Autumn 2022 was just under 11%, and around 6% by summer 2023.

In an attempt to generate more revenue for the economy in the 1970s, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, Denis Healey, raised the tax rate for those on the highest incomes to 83%. This was not popular with many wealthier people and in a documentary on the ����ý's DVD release of The Sun Makers, historian Dominic Sandbrook notes that when this story was made, there was a: "climate of anxiety and anger and kind of middle-class anti-tax sentiment in Britain."

This sentiment is perhaps best demonstrated in a conversation between The Doctor and his companion, the warrior Leela.

Leela: "These taxes? They are like sacrifices to tribal gods?"

The Doctor: "Well, roughly speaking. But paying tax is more painful."

Classic episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s right up to the 2020s are available to watch on ����ý iPlayer.

This article was published in November 2023.