The Doctor Who Thread

I liked it.

I'm in two minds about whether the season contained an 'instant classic' episode but there were some really good ones.
The worst episodes weren't as bad as some of the previous seasons' worst episodes.

Very happy with 13 as the Doctor.

Roll on season 12...

I overall like Jodie and the Thirteenth Doctor.

However I do worry that the writers may have been playing it a little safe with her, which has resulted in her coming across as a little too nice for her own good. Being laid back and friendly is fine, but it needs to be balanced out with those little glimpses that beneath the surface, the Doctor is perfectly capable of bringing down a world of pain for all eternity on those who cross her.

Another issue is that I think they're going for her Doctor seeming a little scatterbrained (which I don't mind), but the writing sometimes instead makes it seem more like she's easily lost, confused or overwhelmed by the situation, which unfortunately can come across as ineptitude. They really need to write her more as being on top of things, even if she's flying by the seat of her pants.

Most of these problems seem more prevalent in Chibnall's scripts, so I don't know if it's bad writing or that they've still not really worked out how to write for Jodie yet? She's brilliant and I have zero complaints about her performance, but the writing is seriously letting her down at times.

(I had the same issue with the Twelfth Doctor. I loved the character and Capaldi's performance, but his run often suffered from iffy writing/stories, because it was clear that Moffat had run out of ideas by that point. Like Jodie now, he deserved better.)

Not sure if the rumours are true that Chibnall might be leaving after S12, but if so, I hope they aren't also true that Jodie may be leaving with him. If they need a new showrunner or headwriter, sobeit, but I'd prefer she remains because I'm really enjoying her as the Doctor.

Hopefully they'll iron out the kinks by S12, so none of that will be necessary anyway.

Does anyone else feel like Yaz is getting a bit of the short stick?

Ryan and Graham had a lot of the focus and character development in S11 (at times, it felt more than the Doctor herself got), but in comparison, Yaz seems to be... just there.

Even Yaz being a copper doesn't seem to barely amount to anything. The show seems to largely forget she's one in situations when it might be useful ("Arachnids in the UK"), but then when the episode does require her to engage cop-mode, she fails to announce her position to anyone, which makes it strange people listen to her instructions?

The New Year's special really made these problems stand out;

She's doing at least one more series - beyond that, we don't know, but all the post-2005 Doctors except Eccleston have done three. So if I were a betting woman, I'd bet on getting two more series of Jodie but no more than that.

Anyone else seeing a lot of bad wolf bumper stickers lately?

He gave an interview last year where he finally came forward with the real reasons why he left, now that there's been a change of the guard at the Beeb and enough time has passed that he's finally comfortable talking about it.

"My relationship with my three immediate superiors - the showrunner, the producer and the co-producer - broke down irreparably during the first block of film and it never recovered. They lost trust in me, and I lost faith and trust and belief in them.

Some of my anger about the situation came from my own insecurity. They employed someone who was not a natural light comedian. Billie, who we know is and was brilliant, was very, very nervous and very, very inexperienced. So, you had that, and then you had me. Very, very experienced, possibly the most experienced out of it, but out of my comfort zone.

When I left, I came my word to Russell T. Davies that I wouldn't do anything to damage the show. But they did things to damage me. I didn't criticise anybody."

According to him, after his relationship broke down with the BBC, they effectively blacklisted him. He might be exaggerating, but that does seem to align with a few strange things I've noticed over the years.

It'd explain why he was absent from British telly for over a decade and turned to doing film projects instead during that time. Why the Ninth Doctor's run was rarely, if ever, repeated on BBC3 or iPlayer (even back when there were only 4 series in total), because someone at the BBC had an axe to grind with him. And why both he and the producers were always so vague on the exact reason why he left, claiming at various times it was because he wanted to avoid typecasting or only wanted to do one series.

It was reported a while back that one of the reasons he didn't come back for the 50th was because he'd wanted them to use a director he'd worked with during his tenure... which in hindsight, sounds far more reasonable of a request, if he didn't really feel comfortable working with the BBC again without someone in his corner?

New Doctor dropped!

Well next series will be a new/old writer, Russell T Davies, responsible for the 2005 revamp and onwards until Chris Chibnall took over, so may be he can get it back on track. Ncuti Gatwa was his choice.