purplecat

It is true that these events happen with disturbing regularity and radicalisation was an issue before Friday (obviously, otherwise Doctor Who wouldn't have been attempting to use it thematically), however to show a closely parallel but simplistic story the day after a major such event, in which many people in the country in which it is shown will directly know someone involved, remains more tasteless than to show such a story at a time and place divorced by some distance from such an atrocity. The parallels with Beirut and the Russian Airbus are also less exact - The Zygon Invasion/Inversion was aimed squarely at themes around acceptance of refugees and radicalisation of disenfranchised youth - where the situation surrounding the Beirut bombings and Sharm el-Sheikh is similar, but different, and the parallel less exact.

I'm not denying that reporting is uneven. There has been a great deal of discussion of this, in fact, and I can point you to some links if you are interested. But I think there were particularly close parallels to Paris here, partly because the discussion and situations prior to the bombings in both France and the UK had many similarities, and the bombings have contributed to the intensity of those discussions and it is the UK context that is reflected in Doctor Who which would have made showing The Zygon Invasion/Inversion particularly problematic in that moment.

I'm also absolutely not trying to say that the solution offered by the Doctor Who story was anything but grossly simplistic, in fact, my argument is completely the opposite. Hence why I describe it as things like puerile and trivial.