“Doctor Who” is a long-running show beloved by many. The show began in the sixties and rapidly became a favorite throughout the decades. Despite the low budget and low-quality special effects of the time, the Doctor and his adventures have always been entertaining to watch.
The original seasons of the show were created between 1963 and 1989 before it went on an extended hiatus. The show’s premise is the Doctor is from an alien race known as Time Lords that can travel through space and time with their ship, the TARDIS . The Doctor protects and saves many people and planets across the universe alongside human companions he finds on Earth.
The return of “Doctor Who” in 2005 brought back old fans and helped foster a wave of new ones, including myself. We were drawn in by Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, his newest companion. The later seasons remained well written, and the characters were fun to watch. New fans met old “Doctor Who” villains such as the Daleks and Cybermen for the first time, while fans of the original series enjoyed seeing the return of familiar faces.
Changing companions and Doctors is always painful. Fans get attached to the Doctors and their companions then lose them again when the Doctor is regenerated. This is an ability that Time Lords have when they are dying. This also means that the actor playing the Doctor is replaced.
Our emotional attachment reflects how well the characters are written—at least for the seasons before 2018—and how well the actors portray their roles. The writing for the seasons with Doctors Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve was able to elevate the world of “Doctor Who” to a new, emotionally affecting level. This all changed in October 2018 when the writers were replaced for season 11.
This change in writers led to dramatically weaker plots and characters. The Doctor no longer acts anything like their infamous character, now calling to mind the image of a hyper child on too much caffeine. The plots introduced new, poorly developed villains who are not memorable or compelling.
Sloppy integration of important messages into the plot has also made recent episodes difficult to watch. “Doctor Who” has always made statements about social issues, but recently, social issues stick out as the sole focus of each story. Rather than subtly integrating issues into an interesting adventure, the adventure blatantly becomes the issue. There’s no depth to the writing; episodes are bland.
Then there’s the Doctor’s swap in gender. The Twelfth Doctor had regenerated at the end of season 10, allowing Jodie Whittaker to become the new Thirteenth Doctor. Personally, I disliked the change because the Doctor has always been male. Yes, fans were aware that Time Lords could regenerate into different genders. This wasn’t anything new. In fact, we saw it ourselves with another Time Lord, the Master, when he became Missy.
Don’t get me wrong, I love female representation in media, but we already had that in “Doctor Who.” Companions were almost exclusively female, including River Song, who could fly the TARDIS and use a sonic screwdriver. These companions were all amazing, smart and important. They were never brushed off by the Doctor because they were female, or even because they were human.
We also had Black representation with characters such as Martha Jones, Mickey Smith and Bill Potts. We even had LGBTQ+ characters like Captain Jack Harkness, who is attracted to men, women and aliens of all shapes and sizes. We had all sorts of representation throughout “Doctor Who.” I feel the Doctor did not need to be female.
Perhaps this is no fault of Whittaker’s. Maybe she’s an amazing actor—I’ve never seen her act before. However, the character arc that the writers created for the first female Doctor is simply too flat to be fixed by any amount of acting skill.
The fact that the Thirteenth Doctor will be getting a third season is disheartening. Fans look at that and wonder if “Doctor Who” will ever be good again or if it has simply been run into the ground. It hurts to see such an amazing show crumble this way.
All there is left for me to do is re-watch previous seasons and remember the show for what it used to be.