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Doctor Who goes to Dubai - a dubious choice?

On January 24, 2009

In his blog for the Guardian newspaper, Gareth McClean has vented his anger at the BBC for choosing to film an episode of the cult British television series 'Doctor Who' in Dubai. He is shocked at the hypocrisy of how a family-orientated show which focuses on good triumphing over evil could be filmed in a place in a city with such an appalling human rights record. He writes; ‘you may run out of fingers counting the ways in which filming even some of Doctor Who there is wrong’. He goes on to describe the treatment of migrant workers as ‘by far the most atrocious of Dubai’s offences’:

It is no secret that Dubai's glimmering towers and artificially created islands in the shape of palm fronds, the world and Kate Moss's nostrils were and continue to be built by cheap-to-the-point-of-enslaved labour.

He is angered that the BBC have lend credibility and respectability to ‘brand Dubai’, which it does not deserve, by filming a morally charged television programme there, therefore ‘totally going against everything the Doctor stands for’.

by Olivia Furber