BBC audiences were recently introduced to their first black Doctor Who. In the episode which aired in the UK on January 26, Jo Martin previously best known for roles in Holby City and Blue Story played an ostensibly ordinary human who was, towards the end of the episode, revealed as a previously unknown (possibly past, future or parallel) incarnation of televisions most famous Time Lord.

A few weeks earlier the latest version of the shows recurring super-villain, The Master, had for the first time been portrayed by a person of colour, a role played with manic zeal by Sacha Dhawan in a performance dubbed by The Guardian as the Hot Camp Master.

Both events provoked strong responses on social media, from enthusiastic plaudits through to rants from fans ranging from the sincerely woke to the reactionary and even racist. The latter response might be considered out of character for the followers of a show whose liberal hero has for more than half a century renounced violence and struggled for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability.

This is a series whose very first episode had a female producer, Verity Lambert, and a British Asian director, Waris Hussein phenomena virtually unheard of back in 1963. (The latter was also played by Dhawan in the BBCs 2013 docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time.)

Its a programme which, in 1972, argued passionately (albeit symbolically) in favour of membership of the European Economic Community (or in its own terms the Galactic Federation), and a year later railed against the impacts of industrial pollution.

In recent years, it has foregrounded LGBT+ protagonists, issued dire warnings against climate change and even made reference to the fabrication of evidence to support the invasion of Iraq.

Yet since 2017, when Jodie Whittaker was cast as the first female Doctor Who, arguments have raged between those strange misogynists depicted by the Huffington Posts Graeme Demianyk as man babies and, in contrast, the likes of The Guardians Zoe Williams, who heralded Whittakers Doctor as representing the revolutionary feminist we need right now.

If, like mine, your social media bubble overwhelmingly favoured the Remain campaign and still cant get its head around the fact that the majority of people didnt, then your friends and followers may well have applauded Martins appearance. But you might then be surprised if you were to venture into some Doctor Who fan forums. Youd see quite a backlash against what some perceive as the politically correct direction their favourite show has taken. This show and all it used to offer has been destroyed by politically correct writing and casting, opined one fan. Another responded: Its not woke, unless your idea of woke is it has a black woman in it. Its the blandest form of mainstream liberalism but some internet talking heads treat it as if it was 50 minutes of Jodie Whittaker reciting the Communist Manifesto.

The outrage of the anti-PC brigade has simultaneously fuelled and been fuelled by coverage in the mainstream media. Echoing a populist press narrative that the series has become, in the words of the Daily Mail, a tiresome ordeal of political correctness since Whittaker assumed the role, The Sun reported this week that viewers baulked at the programmes unbearable political correctness as another female Doctor was revealed.

Also writing in The Sun, Jeremy Clarkson observed that angry fans say its littered with ham-fisted attempts to ram Lefty dogma down our throats.

This backlash has sparked an equal and opposite reaction one which, like the fan who described the series current ideological stance as the blandest form of mainstream liberalism is not simply aligned with that stance, but which is concerned that its stance is not radical or robust enough. Writing in the New Statesman, assistant editor Jonn Elledge has argued that the casting of the first female Doctor has been undermined by the fact that that she has been given no material as meaty as that written for the supporting male characters.

Despite having repeatedly argued for the importance of that casting decision in books and articles, both here and elsewhere, Ive since expressed concern at the series simultaneous weakening of the character.

Jack Hudson has recently argued in The Guardian that, beneath its guise of progressive politics, the show has in fact grown profoundly conservative in ways which may at once alienate both its progressive and its reactionary fans.

In December Lenny Henry (in the run-up to his recent appearance in the series) was quoted as suggesting that BBC bosses would rather cast a dog than a black actor in the title role. In this context, Martins casting as the first black, female Doctor seems particularly significant.

Yet Martins Doctor is not (as yet) the series lead. Progressive voices in fandom have sometimes suggested that, when Whittaker eventually leaves the series, her successor will most likely (and most appropriately) be a woman of colour. There may now be those who fear that Martins tangential Doctor (whoever and whenever in the Time Lords timeline she may turn out to be) has ticked both those boxes and that the production team may next time once more fall back on casting a white, male lead.

These arguments will doubtless continue to rage, along with much bigger ones. The polarisation of political perspectives among the British public since the Brexit referendum of course remains a matter of ongoing national concern. The current disagreements amongst Doctor Who fans once a group which unambiguously embodied the liberal consensus may appeal to the mainstream media precisely because they mirror those larger societal divisions, and may prove of greater significance as indicative of those broader ideological shifts and splits.

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Doctor Who: fan reaction to first black Time Lord exposes Britain's deep divisions on race and gender - The Conversation UK