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Have hostile aliens infiltrated Doctor Who? The show's baffling commitment to all manner of wokery has done for its ratings what the Weeping Angels did for nocturnal graveyard get-togethers. Viewing figures plunged to a feeble 1.53 million last month - less than half of the audience it was attracting when the BBC axed it in 1989. It's not science fiction in any grown-up sense, more a space pantomime for children that comes over-loaded with ham-fisted student politics. In recent years they have box-ticked eco-doom, the Iraq war, trans issues, American racism (twice) and evil corporations (multiple times) but we'll never see an allegory about the perils of Communism, or China's persecution of 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 blokes calling each other "babe" and "darling", "the immortal Rylan" and a woman dubbing herself she/her. Do sod/off.

The gist was 'Eurovision meets Die Hard'. They had the requisite rotten songs (Dugga Doo? Dugga Don't!) but where were the singing Cybermen and Dancing Daleks? Where were the 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. Two horned Hellion terrorists hijacked the event with a plan to kill three trillion viewers in revenge for the corporate exploitation of their planet (or something). The Doc had a personality change, becoming spitefully vicious and brutalising the chief creep Kid (Freddie Fox). He also had flashbacks of his granddaughter Susan - unseen since 1983 and still played by Carole Ann Ford. A joy for Whovians, yes, but why hadn't she crossed his mind before? After his rage subsided, Hellion Cora's emotional ballad won over the watching trillions, and Anita Dobson's mysterious Mrs Flood was outed as a Time Lady who "bi-generated" into two halves of The Rani (Kate O'Mara's renegade boffin, now played by Archie Panjabi). Disney's dosh makes it look terrific, but are they happy with children being bombarded with cack-handed propaganda? Are parents? Are teenagers? They're not all "progressive". The show needs fresh thinking, better plots, and more imagination, not this right-on 'issue of the week' tedium.

Obsessive virtue-signalling is one of the main reasons Dr Who no longer flies, along with sloppy scripts and a hugely annoying soundtrack. Talking of which, Eurovision did well in the ratings for the Beeb, especially among 16-34s. It wasn't a vintage year; Norton was sub-par, but at least Estonia fielded a magnificent Max Wall impersonator. The voting has been disgraceful for decades - I wrote about Bosnia and Croatia giving each other "nul points" in the 90s. This year, the public voted overwhelmingly for Israel's Yuval Raphael - a survivor of the October 7th atrocity - while the "professional juries" gave them (and the UK) nothing. Funny that. So victory went to a peculiar Austrian dirge sounding like a dolphin call-to-prayer. (Lovers of real European music might prefer The Berlin Philharmonic whose extensive digital arcades go back to the 60s and cost £4 a week to subscribe to.)

Ncuti Gatwa was supposed to be the UK's jury announcer but pulled out at the last moment. It was at best unprofessional but if claims it was an anti-Israel protest turn out to be true, then it fits in with the show's politics. It's not true that Ncuti was axed as the Doctor because of that, we already knew he was leaving after two series. But the show's core problems will remain. The only way for the BBC to save Doctor Who is to appoint a new showrunner and to employ writers with no overt political agendas and with a passion for crafting smart sci-fi stories.

Elsewhere ITV's vainglorious calamity, Britain's Got Talent But We Can't Find It, continues to exasperate. Firstly, and most pedantically, how can BGT have five semi-finals? Semi means half, semi-finals come in twos. Secondly, this golden buzzer lark is a con. The judges and presenters now use them in the semis as well as the heats, so they can effectively rig the final (which they also fiddle by making sure the acts they want to win appear in the show's second half). Equally irritating is when they cut to conveniently miked-up audience members to tell us how viewers are supposed to react. You expect a degree of manipulation but BGT is running on empty, padding itself out with imported pros who are conveniently eliminated before, or in, the final. Sorry Ping Pong Pang. But how did Japan's Idolls, who appeared in 2018 under a different name, get another shot? How did Taiwan's squeaky-toy virtuoso Papi get through at all? The gushing judges are overpaid and under-qualified. Most have little knowledge of the variety acts they are asked to judge, none of them know comedy, and I don't believe they're ever genuinely surprised by anything because they will, almost certainly, have seen the dress rehearsals earlier in the day. Time to pull the plugs on this farce and reset it.

Just room for the week's small joys: Clarkson's Farm, with Harvey Swinestein (Prime), Cynthia Erivo on Later, and the late Dustin Gee on Wheeltappers, once the funny half of an 80s double act with Les Dennis.