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Its come to my attention that various shows are considered bad because of political correctness (as opposed to shitty writing). These guys claiming this are usually guys in their late 20s or early 30s so presumably they grew up in the 90s at least. Since I am predominantly interested in sci fi /fantasy, I will limit my observation here.

For the first example, the pregnant man on Doctor Who, even though, you know, he kind is an alien.
https://www.msn.com/zh-hk/news/other/do ... ar-BBPn9et

Some people are very upset after Doctor Who featured a pregnant man.

The November 4 episode of the BBC sci-fi show, “The Tsuranga Conundrum,” introduced Yoss, a member of the alien Gifftan species, played by Jack Shalloo.

Although Gifftan look like humans, it’s revealed that Yoss is heavily pregnant.

The character explains that unlike humans, both male and female Gifftans can give birth—men give birth to boys, and women give birth to girls.


The news was enough to upset some viewers, who lashed out at the BBC over the storyline on Twitter.

Um, ok. The theme of a pregnant man in sci fi was around in the 1990s. Take for example the Sliders episode Prince of slides.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3jck67 (at the 2:39 mark)

Or even earlier in Alien Nation.

Example 2 from Doctor Who is that its too politically correct for having episodes involving Rosa Parks or the partitioning of India.
http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/doctor-who ... torylines/

This seems a bit weird in light of historical Who episodes from the Hartnell era Such as the Reign of terror and the Crusades with similar themes, just look at Reign of terror with people being persecuted for their religious affliliation just like the recent Who episode involving the partitioning of India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reign ... octor_Who)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crusade_(Doctor_Who)

Or perhaps the Troughton episode, "The Highlanders," where Scots were feeling persecuted by the English. Oh wait a minute...

But I think that all important symbol of manliness, Sorbocules tops the political correctness scale in terms of antibigotry. Behold season 2 episode 5, The Outcast
http://hercules-xena.wikia.com/wiki/Outcast

Where we have such awesome lines as a man going (and I am paraphrasing here) - "I can't find work because the centaur does the work of 3 men."
Hercules then replies - "But does he get paid the wages of 3 men, he has to feed his family too."

Seriously. In Australia this episode was advertised as Hercules fighting the most dangerous monster of all... BIGOTRY. Can you imagine how people would shit themselves if we advertise Doctor Who as, The Doctor now fights the most dangerous monster of all... BIGOTRY.

Example 3, again from Doctor Who
If you watch Dave Cullen on youtube he rants against Doctor Who, and while he does have a point about some shitty episodes like "To kill the moon," describing the show as man hating because of jokes like the one Clara made about too much testosterone is a bit of a stretch. What's the betting if someone made a racist joke, they would wave it away as just joking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dU2RmLX6c

Well, the thing is, Sliders tops that as well.
http://sliders.wikia.com/wiki/The_Weaker_Sex

I was totally triggered and offended when a character says something about men cannot fly aeroplanes because of too much testosterone. Oh wait, I wasn't.


As someone who grew up watching sci fi / fantasy in the 80s and 90s, my first thought is, what's the big deal? You can make a case that you would rather the Doctor fight Daleks than human bigotry, but to claim its too politically correct? Like wow.

What other examples which would be considered "too much political correctness" appeared in your childhood shows without triggering the alt right types during that time?

The way I understand it, the people complaining about political correctness are just bigots who want to complain about something, but don't want to state their real reasons for opposing it. Maybe they don't realize their own bigotry because screaming about political correctness lets them convince themselves that they aren't racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc

Oooh,

Well, Red Dwarf also has a male pregnancy. And they pull no punches on reversal of the 'cheap little tart should have used precautions":
https://youtu.be/SIn5aCZNomI

And they somewhat smashed tokenisim when 2/4 cast members are black. I don't recall a big deal being made of that ever.

Of that same time period was the amazing, anarchic: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/maidmarian/

Long before fronting Time Team, Tony Robinson proved there was much more to him than Baldrick by both writing and starring in this hit children's sitcom. Robinson was already a successful children's writer, penning a popular series of zany retellings of Odysseus's adventures and in 1989 he turned his attention to the legend of Robin Hood.

Claiming to be the true story of Sherwood Forest, the story offered a revisionist (and feminist) account of the outlaws’ struggles, with Maid Marian as the brains of the outfit and Robin as a posh but cowardly tailor from Kensington whose unwarranted reputation nevertheless terrifies the Sheriff of Nottingham (played by Robinson). Marian's idealistic plans to rob the rich and feed the poor always cause unexpected results, usually because of the incompetence of her merry men: comprising Robin, the unhygienic Rabies, Barrington (a Rastafarian) and vertically-challenged Little Ron.

Like Marian, the sheriff is also surrounded by well-meaning fools such as his soldiers: Gary and Graham, as he desperately tries to please the tyrannical but immature King John. Robinson's scripts were always bursting with wit and imagination, injecting something of the spirit of Blackadder and often involving deliberately anachronistic, explanations of historical events. The writing was ably supported by both the impressive design and the regular inclusion of funny, original songs.

A talented cast, including trained dancer Danny John-Jules, brought these musical interludes to life and they undoubtedly made Maid Marian even more appealing to its intended audience. Unusually for a children's sitcom, there were no child characters among the main cast but even so kids flocked to a show that was offering a fun take on history, directly aimed at them. Running for four series it was a triumph for Robinson in a notoriously difficult genre, both garlanded with well-deserved BAFTA and RTS Awards at the time and still warmly remembered today.

---

Bertha the big machine has an episode dedicated to strike action at the factory,
Tracey beaker was set in a kids home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_P ... Planeteers
and X-men the animated adventures are both as subtle as a brick.

More as I recall them.

I don't know if it's really worth trying to break this down.

We didn't see this kind of thing in the 90s for a few reasons. One of them is that without the Internet being as important then as it is now, critical response to television shows or movies was almost entirely done by the handful of professional reviewers that worked at newspapers, magazines, early web sites, and so on. Not only did ordinary people not have the medium to disseminate their own reviews as widely as they can now, but back then critics would get advance screenings of shows/movies and be able to release their reviews before most people would have had a chance to see the show/movie in the first place. Outside of reviews, other discussion in those days (e.g. on the early chat rooms and web forums) was usually being conducted within a relatively small community of dedicated fans.

Now, critical response is driven by social media, since people can post their responses on that faster than reviewers can watch the show and write a thoughtful piece about it. In addition, ANYONE can right a review and we are inundated by thousands of possible choices, diluting the influence of the less reactionary mainstream critics. The discussion about a given show is now much broader and more complicated, as it is no longer just the dedicated fans going out of their way to talk about, now almost everyone in the Western world has something to say about it.

It's essentially the law of large numbers. Due to the saturated media culture, it is possible to find essentially ANY opinion (positive or negative) about ANY show or movie or whatever. So just because a couple people on Twitter posted a knee-jerk reaction to a Doctor Who episode doesn't mean there is some widespread perception of "political correctness" to respond to, nor does it mean that those people didn't exist 20 years ago. They almost certainly did - hell, I can remember classmates of mine when I was in elementary school in the 90s talking about this or that show being PC, so this conversation was definitely happening. It's only now that these conversations can happen on a broader scale.

Admittedly, our society DOES have a different relationship with these types of conversations now than we did 20 years ago. People are generally more aware of and attuned to such things, and more receptive to these conversations now than they used to be (obviously not universally, but on average). There is also more incentive for people to express such opinions even if they don't actually believe them! It's trolling; people want to get a reaction. But there have always been trolls. I think all of these changes are essentially the inevitable consequences of connecting people with instant communication and information the way we have.

People complain to the BBC on principle that they need to complain to the BBC. I'm sure a lot of other TV networks get similar letters, but being private funded they have much broader scope to throw the letters in the trash and probably get fewer in proportion to viewership because people know that.

Its generally just (very thin) code for "WAAAAAHHHH, I'm threatened by the existence of women and minorities!!"