There were definitely ones not included I might have added¹, but good list.

--Sweetie Belle

1. Such as Inferno, Vengeance On Varos, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Sun Makers, Happiness Patrol...

7566828
I love it! It's really sad that certain people complain that the show got political even though, if anything, it's been toned down massively from the 80s and RTD. I'm not a fan of Chibnall Who because of terrible storytelling and characterization, but this whole business of "the show has been invaded by leftists/sjws/the woke/whatever buzzword they're using now!!!111" is absolutely ridiculous.

7566849
Hell, sci Fi is arguably one of THE most political genres

7566849
It's about just as bad in the Trek fandom too, which is even more absolutely stupid, since Trek has always and quite deliberately been very progressive enough to merit most to all of those "buzzwords" being applied to it since the very beginning. So, you know, it's hard not to roll my eyes at such comments, because clearly such people making them don't seem to understand the show they're criticizing so (whether Who, Trek, or often otherwise) as well as they claim. I mean, seriously people, what did you expect?

7566870
Conservative Star Trek fans are something else. What show did they honestly think they were watching? It's always been one of the most left-leaning shows out there!

Back on Doctor Who, could you IMAGINE if the first two revival seasons came out in 2021? Rose and Mickey being interracial would have been SJW Propaganda, Jack Harkness being pansexual would have been Woke LGBT agenda, Henry Van Sattan would have been accused of being too blunt in attacking capitalism, Mr. Magpie would be criticized as SJW for attacking Toxic Masculinity, And Sarah Jane Smith would, once again, have been "Feminist Propaganda" (Just as both her and Ace were accused of being in the 70s & 80s). But of course, because these right-wingers grew up with all of this, they get a free pass because both they and talking heads (or "Reviewers") on YouTube think politics in media only started in 2016. It's infuriating.

7566888
Heck, at the time of those first two seasons of New Who, it was probably one of the most "woke" (I suppose) shows I was watching at time. It actually took a little adjusting on my part, because I wasn't used to shows being so open about some of these subjects back then. But even then I knew it wouldn't be the only one, it was just the one I was most familiar with at the time.

That might actually be all the difference here and now, though--it's much commonplace now, making it not so unique to any one particular show anymore. Not that this is a bad thing, of course, but from the rightie-tighties' point of view, I suppose it would appear not so niche anymore and a lot harder for them to ignore entirely now.

But meh, I say that's just a personal problem that they're going to have to figure out eventually.

7566849
Yeah, it was a nice shoutout to Doctor who having always been political, and I liked the reasons Orphan 55 was left off the list, as well as that only one Chibnall era episode made it on there.

And, yeah, politics was done better in older generations, and there's been some weirdness, like in Kablam. (Can we say terrorism is bad without being nice to big corporations?)

7566870
Star Trek has definitely always been political and progressive, though not always as much as it could have been, (Like Roddenberry not creating any gay characters on the show, and Rick Bergman toning down LGBT themes.) It's pretty political to say money doesn't exist in the 24th century and that "the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives", after all, and having a black woman on the bridge in the original Star Trek was pretty major at the time..

7566888
Remember Ace taking a sign out of the window and the sign saying "No Coloreds" back in Remembrance of the Daleks? Or, you know, this?

(Such a great scene...)

--Sweetie Belle

7566904
Sylvester McCoy's run wasn't perfect, it had its fair share of dumb moments, but by god when he was good, he was seriously one of my favorite Doctors! Honestly, his run had an such a unique atmosphere of paranoia that we haven't seen since. It reminded me of the Lemony Snicket books in a way, where I was desperately going through every line of it in order to figure out the big picture.

7566904
In Trek's defense, the only reason it didn't introduce a LGBT character as far back as the original series was because the networks would've thrown a fit about it and thus jeopardized the whole franchise's future. For example, George Takei (unsurprisingly) had approached Roddenberry about introducing a gay character (probably Sulu) fairly early on in TOS, and Roddenberry was totally open to the idea (he was purportedly pretty open about the idea until the end of his days)...but he was already in hot water for fighting with the network to get as much as he already had on TOS and feared this might be enough to break the camel's back, and then they'd all be out of a job, which Takei totally could understand--not much point in trying to pursue it if it would only get the show canned and taking any audience who'd appreciate the effort with it--and so that settled that.

A few decades later during production of the first season of TNG is the more infamous example, where one episode had been pitched that very briefly established a pair of male characters were married just in passing--just a small bit of on-the-side world-building, didn't even factor into the episode's overall plot. But the higher-ups and the network threw such a fit over it and blew it so out of proportion that it got the whole episode needlessly canned as a result. After that, the writers of Trek were a little leery of trying it again, for fear of another similar outburst, though the idea of Trek one day actually doing it never really went away.

I'm convinced it would've happened sooner if Trek hadn't gone into that long stretch from the early 2000s to mid 2010s without any new TV show content, but so much for regrets.

Anyway, point is, there was plenty of key Trek staff who wanted to do it from the beginning, but getting the networks airing their show to go along with it was another matter entirely. So...blame CBS, I guess?

7566912
Yeah, they didn't really seem to know what to do with him initially, but once they did, he was great. One of the tragedies of it being cancelled when it was was that the show had gotten its feet and was doing really well. I really wish I could've gotten another season or two of him and Ace.

That video suggested that I should watch this one, which, is, well, another great Sylvester McCoy moment.

--Sweetie Belle

7566933
I also had a bit in mind the TNG episode "The Outcast". It ended up having trans themes to it, but Jonathan Frakes actually wanted Soren to have been played by a male actor. It was groundbreaking anyways, but that would've been great! Jessie Gender talked about the episode a bit...

The show did do good things, though. Whoopi Goldberg saw Uhura, and realised that black women could be actors and have part larger than that of a maid, for example.

--Sweetie Belle

7566944
Oh yeah, and it was precisely that which lead Whoopi to all but demand she have a part in TNG. Apparently, when she first asked, the show's staff didn't take her seriously, since she was already this big-time actress by then, so she had to come back and tell them "No, I'm serious, I want in on this!"