Late December

Another lunch listening to a Dr Who commentary for 'Full Circle' (1980). The script-writer mentioned he quit writing soon afterwards to join the Metropolitan Police where he would join just in time to serve as a 'mailed fist' for the Thatcherite counter-revolution.  IMDB says he joined the "served in Special Branch." Yikes! 'Special Branches' are usual the "counter-intelligence" or "Red Squad" that would do more political policing. WIKIPEDIA: "The first Special Branch, or Special Irish Branch, as it was then known, was a unit of London's Metropolitan Police formed in March 1883 to combat the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The name became Special Branch as the unit's remit widened to include more than just IRA-related counterespionage [[...] its role sat somewhere between that of the Security Service (MI5) and that of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO13)."

So the writer of Dr Who's 'Full Circle' (1980) was recruited by Robert Holmes, a former Met police officer, and then left to join the Met's 'Special Branch'; both men would have been vetted by MI-5 before being allowed to work for the BBC. Holmes, before becoming a cop was an officer in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders regiment in Burma. British rule in Burma lasted from 1824 to 1948 despite three Anglo-Burmese wars, it was only after quelling a brutal attempt by Japanese fascists to liberate it that an exhausted Britain would final release Burma.

There is some weird linkage between policing and SF writing.

The opening scene is basically skinny-dipping teenage males. Matthew Waterhouse, who plays the teenage sidekick, informs us that most of the swimming footage was unusable because of all the dicks visible. What no one mentions is that this is the first season of Dr Who produced by John Nathan-Turner whose wikpedia page states he was "openly gay" and he and his partner, a Afrikaner BBC employee, "were preying on male teenage fans during his period as producer of the series."  The wiki entry adds "the age of consent for gay men at the time was 21 in the UK" but it is the power dynamic not just the raw ages that make predatory behavior wrong. Dr Who was a kid's show beloved by nerdy teenage boys, turning that type of show into your on- and off-screen meat market is a deep violation -- but still not on the scale of BBC's Sir James Vincent Savile (OBE KCSG)

The Dr Who commentary is now discussing how the Lagoon Creature costumes were originally designed with genitals by a female costume designer until that idea was scotched. If that English costume designer was cut from the same clothe as Jenny Beavan then I probably support their biological frankness; and it reminds me just how much the sexual predators of the time must be read against a cultural background of openness, hedonism and a larger 'sexual revolution'.