Doctor Who has certainly had an interesting history since it was revived back in 2005, hasn't it?
First beginning in 1963, Doctor Who became a pop-culture hit in the UK and would expand its appeal globally with people outside of the UK also coming to enjoy the series for its creative premise, iconic imagery with the Daleks and TARDIS designs, cheesy, camp nature, goofy sci-fi elements and also tackling deep themes that most family shows wouldn't tackle. The series came to an end in 1989 and tried to come back in 1996 with a TV movie, but that didn't go well. It wasn't until 2005 when Russell T. Davies revived the show and made it a hit all over again. Seriously, if you were living in the UK during the mid to late 2000s, you couldn't go ANYWHERE without seeing Doctor Who merch everywhere! It was like you had to be watching the show in order to function in our society back then!
But then RTD left in 2009 and Steven Moffat took over as showrunner from 2010 to 2017. His tenure was...mixed to say the least. People feel his era simultaneously has some of the best AND worst stories to ever come out of Doctor Who with many finding his story-arcs too long, confusing and convoluted to figure out, too much focus on the character of Clara Oswald and the writing was too pretentious for its own good, thinking it was much smarter than it actually was. I remember quitting the show after Series 5 because the stories got too complicated to follow and I didn't return until Moffat was replaced as showrunner. Come 2018, we had Chris Chibnall heading the show and his tenure lasted until 2022. His run was better than Moffat's, but still a far cry from the show's glory days. His stories tended to be over-plotted, overstuffed with characters and ideas and some plot-points he had felt like they could've been better handled if given to other characters or better thought out.
So come 2023, we have Russell T. Davies returning to the writer's chair. Now at the time, this sounded like a gift from the heavens. This was the man that made Doctor Who great again back in 2005, so he'll be the ideal guy to make it great again, right? Well...we'll get to that. He released a trio of specials for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, and they were a massive mixed bag. They were OK as regular episodes for any series, but as anniversary specials, they just fell flat and the bi-generation thing just felt more weird than anything. Anyhow, we're here with a brand-new series to kick off a brand-new era with a brand-new Doctor. Was it any good? We'll dive into that. But I need a companion of my own to review this series with me. Let's welcome back The Wandering Fox everybody!
The Wandering Fox: Thanks for having me here, Media Man!
I have to say, I was introduced to Doctor Who in 2005, and ever since then, at the age of eight, my life changed. Doctor Who was this show I not only grew up with but learnt from, inspiring me in being a writer, I’d pick up on story tropes, plot threads and the complexity of characters. It also let me take my own trip back in time through Classic Who, watching the Doctors from Hartnell to McGann, seeing the origins of UNIT, discovering the Master, Sontarans, Susan, Ace, Davros, and so on.
David’s Doctor was my hero growing up and while I didn’t like how he left, I still have fond memories of him. Matt Smith helped me understand it was okay to let go of David and embrace a future without him. I will confess I dipped out of Doctor Who after series 8 as I felt the writing was weakened, though nothing against Capaldi, he was great as the Doctor. I returned for Whittaker because I wanted to see the show in fresher hands though let’s just say I was quite underwhelmed ^^;
Though like lots of fans, I thought RTD was going to give us some awesome stuff for Doctor Who as soon as he was announced to be returning but…what we got, in my eyes, was the worst ever season of Doctor Who and this is somebody who got through Chibnall and Whittaker! The 60th specials felt more like “DAVID TENNANT IS BACK, REMEMBER DAVID? FORGET PAUL OR MATT OR CLASSIC WHO, ITS DAVID TENNANT!”
Yet here we are, at the end of the line and we’ve had a full season of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor. I wanted to give him a chance, he’s a new Doctor, new adventures, I wanted to see if he was going to be any good. Well, we’re here to discuss that.
Do you want to start, Media Man?
Media Man: Sure thing WF.
Section 1: The Writing
The series sees our new Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday going off on adventures together through time and space, all while trying to solve the mystery behind Ruby's mystery mother and why weird things seem to happen when they try to investigate it.
This series did have potential to be great, and with a mystery carrying the show like this, it certainly had me interested right from the start. The execution...left much to be desired. This has got to be one of the most poorly-thought out, ill-paced and half-baked series of Doctor Who I have ever watched, and this is coming from someone who found the Chibnall era to be challenging to figure out half the time!
I really don't know what happened here, but this series doesn't feel like it was written by RTD, rather it feels like it was written by a less experienced writer who doesn't have the credentials that he has. The stories during his era were well-thought out, exciting, interesting and hold up even to this day. This however? It feels like he was making some of these stories up as he went with no real plan to follow through. You have episodes like Dot and Bubble where the premise is only half-explained and we're left to fill in the gaps, episodes like 73 Yards and Empire of Death where plot-holes galore can be spotted if you think about them for even a second and episodes like Space Babies or Rogue where they're too goofy for their own good. It feels like RTD needed to spend more time in the kitchen baking this cake, if you get what I mean, because these scripts clearly needed more drafts before they started filming. Maybe they would've benefit from a year-long break before he started writing them? Also having more writers would've helped instead of essentially writing all but two episodes by himself (Boom and Rogue were the only ones he didn't write). While not every episode in this series is terrible with The Church on Ruby Road (if the Christmas special is counted as part of the season) The Devil's Chord and Boom being genuinely good or enjoyable, this series as a whole just felt underwhelming and disappointing with how half-arsed the writing felt this season.
WF, would you care to list some specifics?
The Wandering Fox: Oh yes I will.
I was intrigued by Ruby’s birth mum, the strange things occurring about it like how it snows with Ruby no matter where she is, or why the memory of the Doctor’s about her mum changed, it was set up with us hooked.
But we’ll come to that later.
The writing of this season was just awful. It feels like an insult to anybody’s intelligence with how bad it is. You start the series with Space Babies which has talking babies, a farting space station, the Bogeyman is literally made out of bogies, what the flaming heck? The Devil’s Chord is after Space Babies and we learn the Doctor and Ruby have been travelling together for months so we’ve missed a lot of the basic developments of the Doctor and the companion which is vital to the series. It doesn’t help the series tries hard to say the Doctor and Ruby are besties when we’ve not seen them get there.
There’s great big plot holes of 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble, like why didn’t Kate call the 14th Doctor to help Ruby with this mystery woman? Seriously, he’s there, he can help. Don’t give me the retirement excuse because he happily took Rose Noble to Mars and he’s still the Doctor, he wouldn’t sit back and let a companion suffer.
Dot and Bubble was so bad Media Man thinks it’s worse than Orphan 55! Like, why didn’t the A.I turn on the Dot and killed everybody either in their sleep or while they’re walking? How did the A.I create the Mantraps? How come the Doctor didn’t go through the door after he got the first survivor through? What is the Homeworld? What are these people, they humanoids or humans? We don’t know.
Rogue himself is clearly a discount Captain Jack Harkness you can easily just replace him with Jack.
But the biggest offender of flaming plot holes comes in the finale! But we’ll come to that later.
I think the majority of the episodes had interesting concepts to them with Boom being the best episode and I still have my problems with it. What ruined Boom was the Doctor crying and the kid being a complete idiot but the rest of it was good. The Devil’s Chord I do like but the camp and ham factor should be toned down, I mean, this monster is absorbing music and it crippled the human soul? It’s a neat idea.
Though the other thing which annoys me is the lack of development between the Doctor and Ruby. They have great chemistry but the problem is we never got to see them reach that point of closeness, it’s like the Ninth Doctor and Rose, they were chummy at first but then they began to peel back their layers and realised there was more to each other than they thought, it was tense for a bit but then they became incredibly good friends. Here I don’t see that with the Doctor and Ruby.
What do you think?
Media Man: I'm with you there, mate. The Doctor and Ruby have incredibly fun chemistry together, but there's just no depth to their relationship at all. They're just besties and we're supposed to roll with it despite a lack of onscreen development to get us to that factor. And this is where I feel the show's biggest Achilles Heel comes in: the episode count.
There's only EIGHT episodes for this series and it does this show NO favours at all. It feels like RTD was worried eight episodes wouldn't be enough to tell his story, so he had to rush a lot of things in order to get to where he wanted. As such, we have Dot and Bubble with how half-baked and half-explained the entire thing was, the Doctor and Ruby's rushed development together and a lack of proper build-up to Sutekh. Either RTD needed more episodes, or he should've used his time more effectively. Give Chris Chibnall credit, when he wrote the Flux storyline, he made it a season long arc instead of trying to cram in as much as he could as a result of the short episode count. This season might've benefit from also being a season long arc instead of six standalone episodes and a two-parter that are vaguely tied together. It's not like the show's glory days where they had 13 episodes to work with per season and thus the stories had more time to breathe.
But even with an improved pacing, it doesn't change the fact that this show also has some downright bad ideas that shouldn't have even been thought of in the first place. Dot and Bubble especially has me wondering how thinking human brains ever conjured up such a cringeworthy concept and thought it was a good idea for an episode, the villains of Rogue are essentially just evil cosplayers (no I'm not making that up), Space Babies in general is just a concept too goofy even by Doctor Who standards, and most damning of all is the clumsy retcon regarding Sutekh. Yeah, remember him? Apparently, he's somehow been piggyback riding on the TARDIS ever since the end of his debut in Pyramids of Mars back in the Fourth Doctor's era. This is a retcon that's so stupid and nonsensical that the fandom have memed it to death and turned Sutekh, this scary classic Who villain who is the LITERAL GOD OF DEATH into a joke. Congratulations RTD, you ruined Sutekh forever. =P This retcon naturally raises a crap tonne of questions, as WF can list for you right now.
The Wandering Fox: Oh I’ve got LOTS of questions regarding Sutekh hanging on the TARDIS since Pyramids of Mars.
Sutekh could’ve killed the Doctor and Sarah straight after Pyramids of Mars then destroy everything in 1911. He didn’t.
He could’ve killed the Fifth and Sixth Doctors as they regenerated. He didn’t.
He could’ve killed everything in the TV movie while the Doctor was dead in the morgue. He didn’t.
He could’ve killed everything during the Time War. He didn’t.
He could’ve killed the Daleks in the Parting of the Ways. He didn’t.
He could’ve killed the Master in Sound of Drums. He didn’t.
He could’ve tried stopping the Daleks in Journey’s End. He didn’t.
He could’ve stopped the other villains in the series 5 finale. He didn’t.
He could’ve stopped the Silence. He didn’t.
He could’ve stopped the Great Intelligence. He didn’t.
He could’ve killed everything after the Twelfth Doctor regenerated. He didn’t.
This raises other questions:
What happened to Sutekh in Frontios after the TARDIS was destroyed? Don’t know.
Was he dying in the Dalek Crucible after the Daleks dumped the TARDIS in the core? Don’t know.
Why didn’t the TARDIS tell the Doctor in The Doctor’s Wife Sutekh was on her? Don’t know.
Why didn’t Jack see anything as he clung on the TARDIS in Utopia?
If Sutekh knew everything about the TARDIS, then how come he didn’t know of the hidden gun?
Don’t give me any crap of “Oh he was spreading his angels of death everywhere” that was RTD just pulling crap out of his arse to cover up why we didn’t see Susan Triad in any of the old stories. He could’ve killed everybody before Ruby’s mum was born, I don’t see how Ruby’s mum was that scary to him he didn’t just kill everything after Pyramids of Mars!
You know, the more I think about it, the more I think of how RTD has copied Steven Moffat, like how Ruby was erased from time after a big crack appeared in her ceiling, then we have Susan Triad appearing in most of the Doctor’s history under our noses just like Clara?
Sutekh though, he had such a great return in The Legend of Ruby Sunday, but then he’s just generic giant CGI monster who doesn’t even have the green eyes he had before, he’s defeated in the most humiliating way in which he looks like a dog on a lead being dragged through the Time Vortex, he SOMEHOW brings life back because RTD’s logic is “Oh if I bring death to the God of Death then I bring life!” Then he has Sutekh dying in the Vortex. I’m sorry but even if he can say “Sutekh bonded with the TARDIS” then how come he didn’t nearly die like Jack did in Utopia?
I feel bad for his voice actor Gabriel Woolf. The guy is 91, he became a sci-fi legend with his portrayal of Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars, then this is how his character is defeated in a complete messy episode which sees his character treated like a dog on a leash.
This isn’t even getting into the bull crap with Ruby. I think we can squeeze this in before we talk of the characters, hey Media Man?
Media Man: Oh definitely mate. Another thing that made this show feel like such a letdown was the fact the mystery was a big pile of nothing in the end. It turns out Ruby's mum...is just some random nobody. Yep, they pulled a Star Wars: The Last Jedi twist on us. RTD even cited that movie as an inspiration for this plot point, which is a terrible idea because no writer in the history of the universe should EVER take inspiration form The Last Jedi. You're asking for your story to suck if you take inspiration from that movie!
I really don't get why such a big deal was made about Ruby's mum if it's just an ordinary woman in the end, and the fact the episode tries to pass it off as "the mystery made it feel special" just feels like a lazy attempt to justify all of this. It was a crap solution to an intriguing mystery and Ruby's character deserved better than this.
With an ill-paced season full of plot-holes, dumb ideas and underwhelming solutions to its story-arcs, this may stand as one of the worst seasons of Doctor Who period. How did the man that made the show a success in 2005 end up dropping the ball THIS badly...?
Section 2: The Characters
Given how poor the writing is, the characters sadly drew the short straw here.
The Wandering Fox: I want to stress I wanted to give Gatwa a chance. I had hopes for him. I thought a up and coming actor like him combined with RTD’s show running could’ve been gold. Gosh I was wrong, not just in his acting but in the character of the Doctor.
The Fifteenth Doctor to me only works best if he’s having more quiet and mature moments, like him urging the Fourteenth Doctor to retire for a bit, him solemnly playing the keyboard as he almost feels guilty in banishing Maestro, his talk of Susan with Kate and his conversation with the Kind Woman was good, including his chat with the police officer. But those are few and far between.
The best way I can sum up this Doctor is he’s way too millennial. I get he’s meant to be “unburdened” by the trauma of his past but you can enjoy life without acting like a modern day young guy who constantly yells “babe” “honey” or dances to any bit of music being played. There’s Rogue in which I feel like I wasn’t seeing Ncuti Gatwa playing the Doctor, I was seeing Ncuti Gatwa just having fun on set as himself which, hey, is nice but I want to see the Doctor. It doesn’t help in Rogue as Ruby is about to die he makes out with Rogue.
Yet the biggest problem to me is the fact he cries. Like a lot. In nearly every episode he’s in he’s crying. Now, past Doctors have cried.
The Eighth Doctor cried after his great grandson was killed. The Ninth Doctor shed a tear as he talked with Jabe. The Tenth Doctor broke down in tears after the Master died. The Eleventh Doctor cried after Idris “died” and lost Amy and Rory. I think the Twelfth Doctor cried. Yet they didn’t cry ALL THE BLOODY TIME!
In Boom he not only cries there’s snot coming out of his nose. How can I take him as the Doctor if he’s like that!?
It doesn’t help this Doctor lacks a proper costume, the closest he’s had was the ones he wore in Church on Ruby Road and Space Babies and at the end of Empire of Death. RTD felt it was strange to him the Doctor never changed his clothes, when he did. The Doctors, aside from 1, 2, 5 and 6, swapped their costumes around like Jon’s Doctor would swap his shirts and coats, the Fourth Doctor swapped his coats and trousers around, but the whole identity was still there. Jon’s Doctor had the frilly shirts and velvet jackets with a cape, the Fourth Doctor still had the scarf and coats which easily told you he’s the Doctor.
Gatwa’s Doctor here just swaps his clothes around, ditching the leather coat for a duffle coat and jeans then wears a checkered suit then a white t-shirt. Just settle for a single costume, Doctor.
Media Man: I personally really enjoyed this new Doctor. Gatwa's energetic and charisma-generating performance really made him fun and charming to watch anytime he was onscreen, but I have to agree with WF that the constant crying just got annoying real fast and made him look wimpy. I'm not against men crying of course, I'm not the toxic masculinity kind of guy. It's just when he keeps doing it, it gets real old and makes it hard to take him seriously. It'd be like if Chibnall made Jodie Whittaker cry all the time in his scripts, it would've made it hard to take her seriously as the Doctor if she did that. Another issue Gatwa has is that due to being busy with Sex Education at the time, we had TWO Doctor-lite stories in a row, hence what's supposed to be his first series ends up feeling as if we didn't get enough of him. They really should've waited so then there wouldn't be a need for these Doctor-lite stories and thus we could've seen more of him.
His companion, Ruby Sunday (played by Millie Gibson) is another character in where the only thing that salvages her is the great, entertaining performance of her actor rather than the writing itself. Ruby is a fun companion who also carries a fear of abandonment with her due to being an orphan, something we see on full display in 73 Yards. That episode to me was Millie's best performance and I really felt for her when Ruby's life was falling apart all around her thanks to the mysterious stalker. The trouble with her is that, as explained earlier, her relationship with the Doctor feels half-explored and very hurried due to the small episode count and how two episodes barely even feature the Doctor. Their dynamic just doesn't have the depth and layers to it that makes for a great Doctor/companion dynamic. While their relationship is still better handled than the Doctor and the fam's was in the previous era, it still feels like we needed more. And of course, the underwhelming conclusion to her story just felt like we made a big deal over nothing because her mother wasn't anything special in the end. It really didn't warrant forming a big mystery arc around it if the conclusion was this anti-climactic. This companion should've gotten more and had a better story to tell than what we got, and I doubt the next season will do any better since now she's stuck sharing the screen with the Doctor and another companion.
The Wandering Fox: Well, we don’t know how many episodes Ruby will be in.
I’ll just say I’m not impressed with how Carla and Cherry were handled, they were hardly characters in my eyes, Maestro was an okay villain in my opinion, but their hammy nature could’ve been toned down, Kate is still good, though I think there’s only a few characters we can really discuss.
Rogue. If you ask me, he was clearly meant to be Jack. I mean he has everything there is about Jack, he’s a time traveller, is American, carries a futuristic gun, is gay and has a thing for the Doctor, just lacks the charms of Jack.
Media Man: Maestro was an enjoyable villain my eyes, especially thanks to Jinkx Monsoon's go-for-broke performance and I feel their hammy nature made perfect sense given they're the God of Music and all, so a theatrical, over-the-top performance works for a character like this. Rogue, I have to agree was pretty much a Captain Jack expy and aside from Jonathan Groff's performance, the character didn't have a whole lot going for him.
We have Lindy Pepper-Bean (played by Callie Cooke). Unfortunately, she's our main character in Dot and Bubble and after spending an episode with her, all I want from her is to die a horrible, violent, painful death because of what a shallow, stupid, self-absorbed, racist sack of garbage she is. Nobody as stupid and bigoted as her deserves to live, yet RTD let her live anyway! Although given how blind to reality she and the rest of FineTime are, I don't think they'll survive in the wilderness for very long, something I'll be happy to imagine...
There's also the Chuldur, a race of bird-like creatures who love to cosplay. Yes, I wish I was making that up. Those are seriously actual characters in an actual episode of Doctor Who and their motivation is seriously based around a love of cosplaying. If I were to make a list of the most embarrassing Who villains ever, these losers would make it in the Top Three, I'm sure!
And finally, there's Sutekh (voiced by Gabriel Woolf). As mentioned, he's a classic villain who makes his first appearance since Pyramids of Mars back in the Fourth Doctor era. Sadly, he's done really dirty in this show. After a terrifying reveal and a scary first impression, he gets defeated in a really pathetic way that just makes him look lame and his presence only digs up tonnes of plot-holes that now make it impossible to look back on any Doctor Who episode since Pyramids of Mars since we'll constantly be wondering what he was doing on the TARDIS this whole time. This was NOT a good way to bring back a classic era villain and the fact his return has spawned tonnes of memes at his expense just makes what should be an intimidating villain nothing more than an internet joke. The God of Death deserved better than this.
Overall, this is a season of poorly-handled characters with our leads being fun but underdeveloped and the villains either being embarrassing, unmemorable or reduced to a joke. Not even the Chibnall era handled its characters as badly as this...
The Wandering Fox: Eh, I’d say Chibnall had some well cringe villains. But that was then.
I think the only thing I want to touch on left is the music.
The Music
With Murray Gold having returned to compose for Doctor Who since he left with Capaldi and Moffat, I was hoping we’d get some memorable pieces of music of the guy. Well, I can say there’s some that do standout for me like the Doctor’s theme here and Ruby’s theme, if it’s quite prominent, is well suitable as well. Though I can’t help but feel Murray didn’t bring his A Game to the season like he did before.
Media Man: Too right, mate. Murray Gold has composed some legendary tracks for Doctor Who and I can still remember a good chunk of his music even years later. This series however? I can't remember any of the music here. Not a single track stands out to me, and I don't find myself remembering it or singing it again afterwards. I can still remember Murray's Dalek and Cyberman themes, All The Strange, Strange Things, his Master theme, the Weeping Angels theme, his 11th Doctor theme and especially that kickass choir that plays in School Reunion when the kids are trying to crack the Skasis Paradigm. His Doomsday theme is also especially a sad, yet hauntingly beautiful melody that I'm sure even to this day can still have people crying. But with this show, the music all just blends in together and I find myself remembering nothing about it. Ask me to sing a tune from this season and I'm completely stumped.
How is it we have a head writer who catapulted the show from cancelled to stardom and a composer who put his name on the map with this show, and yet both feel as if they were only running at 10% this series...?
The Wandering Fox: It’s what brings me to this conclusion.
I, the Wandering Fox, will not return to watchDoctor Who for the Christmas special or the next series. I’ve lost faith in RTD. Ironic, he introduced me to Doctor Who, but now he’s leading me out of it. I’ll still buy the audios cos I love hearing the Classic Doctors on their journeys, but Doctor Who on TV is no more to me. In my honest opinion, the series has to go back to the Wilderness Years, let creative minds flourish in making their own Doctor Who stories then bring it back.
What of you though, MM?
Media Man: I can't say I'm too enthusiastic about the show's future either.
The only thing this series has going for it is the great visuals, and that's kind of expected considering this show has Disney backing them up now. The practical and CGI effects are especially very crisp and incredible looking with particular praise especially going towards the set designs, the costumes and make-up effects and the CGI model for Sutekh. But good visuals don't save a bad story unfortunately.
This series was a let-down, and it didn't have to be. With more time in the oven to think these plots through and more episodes to improve the pacing, this series could've been absolutely amazing. Instead, it was the opposite. With ill-though out stories, bad pacing, rushed developments, some utterly dumb ideas and ridiculous twists, this era of Doctor Who is NOT off to a good start, and I doubt it'll get any better going forward.
WF is right, maybe this show does need to go on another hiatus and take a break from TV before we get any more of it. We need to let fresh new talent come in and give the show a new spin to try and make things interesting again rather than letting the old staff come back again and again, because it's clear they're all used up by now. Doctor Who can still be saved, I'm sure, but RTD sadly isn't the one saving it right now...
And that's it for our review. We hope you enjoyed it and I invite you to share your thoughts down below. Do you like this series? Do you not like it? Do tell. Thanks again for joining me for this one Wandering Fox. Hopefully as you wander, you can find some better Doctor Who media to check out. :)
The Wandering Fox: Oh I already have, I’ve started checking out the Godzilla franchise, it’s honestly more pleasing than watching this current era of Doctor Who. :)
Thanks for having me here, MM :)
Media Man: Pleasure as always my mate. ^^
Next week, I'll be doing a Vs. essay on Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel. See you then media fans!
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