It physically pains me that I cannot reach through the screen and add a full stop somewhere in that second sentence.

I can understand wanting to move away from BBC English (sort of; being of untuned American ears my understanding is mostly theoretical), but arguing that Tom Baker's Doctor is a parody of a politician who wouldn't be in power for another twenty-five-ish years is...odd, to say the least. And accents can be learned and unlearned, even as adults; it'd be one of the more unreliable indicators of class, especially for someone who *had* to assume another accent.