Honestly? Relief.<\/p>\n
That sounds harsh, but for me personally this era of the show has been a slog more than a joy. I\u2019m reminded of the Annie Hall \u201csuch small portions\u201d joke but there\u2019s been so little new Doctor Who since Capaldi left that it\u2019s doubly frustrating that the tiny morsels we get have been so poor. However, that does at least mean that\u2019s when we look back on the grand sweep of the show as a whole, the Chibnall years will be a fairly brief segment. Thus, relief. As odd as it is for showrunner and leading actor to both commence and depart together, and as odd as it is for a producer not to outlive a Doctor, they\u2019re leaving, it\u2019s official and plans are no doubt already underway for their replacements.<\/p>\n
Now, let\u2019s acknowledge that bad things happen when people are made to run shows for which they no longer have any enthusiasm. Watching the Season 24 Blu-ray box set, it becomes clear that John Nathan-Turner first expressed thoughts of leaving after The Five Doctors<\/em> anniversary special in 1983. He ended up still working on the show when it was cancelled in 1989 \u2013 following the BBC\u2019s eccentric decision to fire Colin Baker who wanted more than anything to keep playing the part, but to retain the services of JNT who wanted more than anything to be assigned to a different show.<\/p>\n So, if Chris and Jodie want to leave, then leave they should. But the timing is odd.<\/p>\n Less so for Jodie. Every Doctor post Eccleston has done about-three-seasons over about-four-years. Tennant did three x 14 episodes back-to-back and then four specials between Christmas 2008 and New Year\u2019s Day 2010. Matt Smith had that weird split series six which was at least partly about manoeuvring the fiftieth anniversary special into position, but again completed the equivalent of three full seasons between spring 2010 and Christmas 2013. Under Capaldi, an episode was shaved off the season length and he had a year off between December 2015 and December 2016 but again he completed his tenure about four years after he began and with the usual quota of 40 or so episodes to his name.<\/p>\n Even before COVID, the latest team took an unprecedentedly long amount of time to prepare an unprecedentedly short season. Ten months after Capaldi\u2019s farewell, a ten episode season began airing on BBC One. Over a year later, another ten episodes finally emerged. Now, after a further eighteen months, we will get Jodie\u2019s third season of just six episodes. Together with two New Year\u2019s Day specials and three more 2022 specials, that will give us just 31 episodes broadcast over five calendar years. At the end of which the showrunner is so knackered that he has no option but to quit the show? Really? (I\u2019m not saying he was forced out, but it is peculiar.)<\/p>\n As lovingly detailed elsewhere in these pages, very few of these episodes have been to my taste. But rather than the tone being too jokey or too serious, or the emphasis being on elements of the show I care less rather than more for, my chief complaint about what little we\u2019ve been given is that basic elements of scriptwriting craft have been largely absent. So we have an overstuffed TARDIS full of thinly-drawn characters, who rarely impact the plot in meaningful ways. We have episodes in which good ideas are squandered and dialogue is rarely more than functional. We have endless minutes drifting by in which the main cast just wanders about. We have horrific interpretations of the Doctor\u2019s morality and we have plotting which is as often predictable as it is nonsensical. And no good jokes. At all. None.<\/p>\n A few episodes stand out. The Witchfinders<\/em> has a plot that makes sense and a strong guest cast and it\u2019s about something. It Takes You Away<\/em> has a real sense of atmosphere and a balls-to-the-wall bonkers climax. The Haunting of Villa Diodati<\/em> has some of the best the era has to offer, although it\u2019s not consistent. But honestly, that\u2019s about it. And that\u2019s before we get to the gibberish of the Jo Martin Doctor and the Timeless Child. Chris Chibnall upends the history of the show, proffers a lengthy explanation that barely explains a quarter of the mysteries he introduces, then immediately tells us why it doesn\u2019t change anything (before having the murderous and cowardly Doctor have someone else do her killing for her to resolve the plot). Sigh.<\/p>\n Amidst all of this is Jodie Whittaker. Veteran script editor Terrance Dicks observed that the part of the Doctor is basically actor-proof. This is a diplomatic slam on some of the actors who post-dated his day-to-day involvement in the show who he thought were miscast. And he\u2019s probably right. The part isn\u2019t ideally suited to traditional leading-man actors like Peter Davison or Paul McGann. Weirdos like Tom Baker and Matt Smith are easier to write for. It\u2019s hugely to both of their credits that the combination of Russell T Davies and David Tennant created such a massively popular version of the programme, despite Tennant seeming to lacking the eccentricity that the part usually benefits from.<\/p>\n As far as non-male actors go, Jodie Whittaker is firmly in the traditional leading camp, rather than the character type. If the part had gone to Tilda Swinton or Miriam Margolyes or Meera Syal or Katherine Parkinson, that would have hugely impacted the way the scripts were written. But, while Jodie will show up, look the other actors in the eye, and say the lines with conviction, she isn\u2019t going to alter the fabric of the programme in any way at all. And beyond taking the not-good-with-social-niceties element of the previous two Doctors and running with that, the showrunner hasn\u2019t created an actual character for her to play either, so she\u2019s generally been reduced to little more than a bit of Davison-esque breathless enthusiasm where an interpretation should be.<\/p>\n The other apparent sea-change since 2018, apparently, is that the show is \u201cwoke\u201d now. I\u2019ll deal with this briefly as it doesn\u2019t really warrant more than a few lines. No, the show which told stories about the need for pacifism, green politics and feminism in the 1970s hasn\u2019t suddenly gone Marxist. No, the show which first included two men kissing in 2005, first included a non-white regular cast member that same year, and first gender-swapped a familiar character in 2017 didn\u2019t suddenly discover diverse casting when Jodie Whittaker was handed the keys to the TARDIS. It\u2019s just that when previous showrunners did these things, fans generally liked them because they were using these characters to tell good stories. But when the only thing you can say about Ryan is that he\u2019s black (and he\u2019s dyspraxic for about one episode in five) then that\u2019s going to look much more like stunt casting than Michelle Gomez as Missy. The anti-woke brigade isn\u2019t out in force in the same way for Sacha Dhawan. Why not? Because he was good (at least to begin with). If anything, it will be a pity if there\u2019s pressure on the next team to retreat to the \u201csafety\u201d of the kind of white, male, straight, non-disabled casting which in fact we were already seeing less and less of between 2005 and 2017.<\/p>\n So, who will be the next team and what will they do? Obviously, I have no idea. (Aren\u2019t you glad you took the time to read this?) But since there hasn\u2019t been a female showrunner since 1965, it\u2019s probably time for a woman behind the typewriter as well as hovering over the console. That rules out my top choice of Peter Harness (sorry Peter), assuming Neil Gaiman isn\u2019t free. Maxine Alderton\u2019s work on Villa Diodati<\/em> shows enormous promise, but if someone with Chibnall\u2019s CV can fail as comprehensively as he did, that suggests that we really do want someone with some miles on the clock in this role. Phoebe Waller-Bridge I suspect wouldn\u2019t want to be tied down for three or more years. Sarah Phelps?<\/p>\n And what do we want? Firstly, a vision for who the Doctor is. The blessing and the curse of the show at this point is you have 13 hard acts to follow. You have more than a dozen incarnations, all with their adherents and detractors, which means finding a new version which adds to the corpus, while not violating what we already know, is hard. That\u2019s why I say that it needs to be actor-driven. I had no idea that the Doctor was capable of some of the things which Matt Smith pulled off, but they all (or almost all) made sense once I\u2019d seen them.<\/p>\n Secondly, we need to get back to stories being plot-and-character led. Don\u2019t have three companions because you think it would be nice to go back to having three companions again. Have three companions because you have stories which need three companions. And give them at least as much personality and individuality as, say, Tegan Jovanka, even if they don\u2019t get the depth of Rose Tyler or Amy Pond. Don\u2019t have stories in which you revisit the show\u2019s origins because you think revisiting the show\u2019s origins is intrinsically exciting or interesting. Revisit the show\u2019s origins because you have an exciting story to tell which naturally leads you there.<\/p>\n And maybe it should be someone who wasn\u2019t a childhood fan of the show. Hiring fans worked with RTD and Steven Moffat, but hiring non-fans also worked with Barry Letts and Phillip Hinchcliffe. There\u2019s no shortage of people knocking around who can tell a future showrunner what a Judoon is, or what Fenric means. But people who can write really good science fiction television drama for a family audience and within a BBC budget – maybe they are rarer than we think.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the sixtieth anniversary to consider. My guess is that we will learn who the new producer is around the same time as the new series starts airing, and who the new Doctor will be shortly after those six episodes have gone out. So, say we get Jodie Whittaker regenerating into Gemma Whelan in December 2022. A production team headed by Kate Herron could be working on scripts from late this year and have 10-12 episodes ready to go by spring or summer 2023 – September at the latest. That one full series is going to be essential to establish the new direction of the show before any kind of nostalgic anniversary special at the end of November. And while it would be fun to get Capaldi, Smith, Tennant – even McGann – back for one last trip in the TARDIS, it\u2019s likely that Whittaker won\u2019t want to come back so soon, so I wonder if some other mode could be discovered to celebrate sixty years, rather than another multi-Doctor story?<\/p>\n Whatever happens, I will still be watching. And, as always, hoping for the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Honestly? Relief. That sounds harsh, but for me personally this era of the show has been a slog more than a joy. I\u2019m reminded of the Annie Hall \u201csuch small portions\u201d joke but there\u2019s been so little new Doctor Who since Capaldi left that it\u2019s doubly frustrating that the tiny morsels we get have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-doctor-who"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-Gj","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2626,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions\/2626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}