Thanks to the glorious shovelling of Classic Who onto BBC IPlayer, I have been enjoying a glut of mid-80s classic Who.
It struck me how many of the CBaker-McCoy era stories are dystopian tales, reflecting the pro-establishment neo-captialist society that the writers felt was being inflicted on them.
Varos, Paradise Towers and Terra Alpha (of Happiness Patrol) are obvious examples; Necros (Revelation of the Daleks) and is a particularly nasty one. Even Trial of a Timelord was, at its heart, a tale of authoritarianism and narrative control.
Modern Britain is clearly in another phase like the 80s. If anything, the authoritarianism is more extreme, and the government's avarice more naked.
So where are the writers' reactions to that nowadays? Whenever the show has recently attempted to address societal issues, it has been either a direct sermon like Orphan 55 or an incompetent muddle like Kerblam.
Where are the dystopias?
I think this is a good point. Stories seem to be stuck more or less in the present day.