Nil points for Doctor's right-on Euroderision

Have hostile aliens infiltrated Doctor Who? The show's baffling commitment to wokery has done for its ratings what the Weeping Angels did for nocturnal graveyard gatherings. Viewing figures plunged to a feeble 1.53 million last month - less than half of what it had when the BBC axed it in 1989.

- with GARRY BUSHELL

It’s not science fiction in any grown-up sense, more a space pantomime for children that comes overloaded with ham-fisted student politics.

They've box-ticked eco-doom, Iraq, trans issues, American racism (twice) and evil corporations (multiple times) but we'll never see an allegory about the perils of Communism, or China and the Uyghurs or bogus Sontaran asylum seekers infiltrating future Earth...

Last weekend they hit peak camp with Ncuti Gatwa’s disco-dancing Doc at the “Interstellar Song Contest”. This 2925 version of Eurovision, with finalists from 40 planets, included references to Brighton pride, a holographic Graham Norton, an abundance of “babes” and “darlings”, “the immortal Rylan” and a woman dubbing herself she/her. Do sod/off.

The gist was ‘Eurovision meets Die Hard’. They had the rotten songs (Dugga Doo? Dugga Don't!) but where were the singing Cybermen, dancing Daleks and warbling goblins? And why had music barely changed in centuries?

They didn't bother with tech innovation. Star Wars predicted 3D holograms, Star Trek foresaw medical tricorders and virtual reality (the Holodeck) - but who needs forward-thinking when you can have the Doc flying through space propelled by an anachronistic confetti cannon? “Camp!” he cried gleefully.

Fabulous or fatuous, you decide. The action hero exploits were lamer than Limpy the Viking.