Look, I cannot be deemed responsible for the Specials featuring David Tennant’s return to the role of The Doctor coming out at the same time I was trying to finish Blindspot. So, no, I did not finish Blindspot this past two weeks. I did, however, with unbelievable amounts of commitment, finally, much to some of my friends and family’s glee, catch up on, Doctor Who.
New Show! So, the details first.
An Introduction
I am relatively new to the fandom, so we’ll keep this brief and focus on the New Who revival of 2005.
That said, Doctor Who is a British Sci-Fi television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963, with the original run (Classic Who) concluding in 1989. There was a failed attempt to revive it in 1996, a 1999 Red Nose Day special; that is deserving of it’s own post, before it was successfully brought back in 2005 with what is sometimes affectionately referred to as New Who. Though, it is officially called Doctor Who, which remains an ongoing series, and it is currently airing, at the time of writing, a set of three special episodes for the 60th Anniversary Special.
This new series was produced by the BBC Wales in Cardiff. Now, as of 2023, it is co-produced by BBC Studios and Bad Wolf, still located in Cardiff.
The 2000’s revival initially starred Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, before The Doctor did as he does, and changed faces, with the role now having been played by several fantastic actors (some of which have been genuine fans of the show since they were children), including the likes of David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, and Jodie Whittaker (who was the first female Doctor). Alongside the role of The Doctor, there have been several Companions, played by some brilliant people, including but not limited to, Billie Piper, Catherine Tate, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Jenna Coleman, Peal Mackie, Bradley Walsh and Mandip Gill, and this is not an extensive list. The show also featured several brilliant guest stars who would come in to partner up with The Doctor on occasion, and infrequently recurringly, including the likes of Michelle Gomez, John Barrowman and Alex Kingston.
Producer’s of New Who have included Russel T. Davies, Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, amongst a long list of others, but these three are also known for being showrunners at a time.
Since the revival Doctor Who has become quite the franchise spawning several spin-off’s including The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood, as well as an impressive multitude of audio dramas, comics, novels and the like. It has been parodied by a scary amount of people, referenced infinitely in pop culture, and effectively it has become a Cult Classic, since it’s airing in 1963.
Almost all Doctor Who content can be found on BBC iPlayer in the UK.
A Summary (Mostly Spoiler Free)
Nearly impossible but we’ll give it go. If David Tennant can do it 15 seconds I can do it in a few sentences.
The Doctor, a couple hundred years old, a being of many faces, and also an alien, travels all the Universe, literally all of time and space in his blue box: The TARDIS. Usually accompanied by an earthly companion, as they explore space, battle aliens, discover the secrets of history, and all in all attempt to make it out alive, as trouble seems to follow The Doctor when he doesn’t look for it, and gets deadlier when he does.
Space adventures? Time travel? It’s all good fun, with a little hint of painful traumatic drama, so prepare your tissues.
I don’t think I did so bad, do you?
With that said, let’s dive in. Oh, and SPOILERS!
Where Am I?
To be specific, I watched New Who, and New Who only. I have not watched any of Classic Who, or The Sarah Jane Adventures or any of Torchwood. Believe me, they may now all be on my soon to be watched list, but for right now all we have is New Who, and any knowledge of the lore I have gathered from edits, the internet, and some particularly knowledgable friends. Regardless, I have specifically watched up until the second of the 60th Anniversary Specials; “Wild Blue Yonder”, featuring Tennant as The 14th Doctor. The IMDb can be found here, but the Wiki page is more succinct.
Boy, was catching up worth it! I am beyond excited for the third and final Special on Saturday, and to see Ncuti Gatwa’s upcoming tenure as The Doctor, and I can’t wait to see where it goes with Russel T. Davies back in the drivers seat. If the last two Specials are anything to go by we are in for a treat. Tate and Tennant have knocked it out of the park; as could only be expected, Davies’ writing is brilliant, and they got Neil Patrick Harris for the Toymaker? It’s going to be fantastic! Well, brilliant… Well, gorgeous… Well, all of the above.
Well, indescribable.
What Did I Think?
To be brief, this show is amazing. Why didn’t I watch it sooner? You will have to wrench it from my cold dead hands to get me to stop watching it. Even through the pain of Chibnall, there is something to love in every season… You just may have to look really hard sometimes… In the grand scheme of this show, though? I am in love.
I hesitate to make a definitive ranking of The Doctor’s regenerations, and I want to rewatch it and do some succinct deep-dive’s into the show in the future, but for now, of the regenerations I have watched I would have to rank them from most loved to least loved as such: 10, 12, 11, 13, 9. This ranking is 100% subject to change. If I were to include 14 in it?… after 12, but I’ll slot him in for sure after his regeneration.
The Companions vary as they do, with them all being varying brands of intelligent and stupid (if we’re being totally honest). I often found I didn’t fall in love with a Companion until they were gone and then I miss them. With exceptions taken to Bill, Donna and specifically Clara with 12, all of whom I just loved. The others it was a love after the fact because then the vibes were different and I wanted them back, which says something good for their impact on the show and the audience.
Can I Rant for a Minute?
I don’t have particularly strong opinions about most of the Companions. I will however say, breaking my general seal of positivity I’ve had so far going on this blog, that when Ryan left I barely noticed a difference. He had about as much personality as a wooden plank, and when The Doctor was getting upset about his departure, I have to be to totally honest, I didn’t even know they were friends. You presume they are, because they travel together, and the show relies on that for this emotional payoff, but I swear they don’t have any kind of intimate bonding scene that’s not in this episode (Episode 1211: “Revolution of the Daleks”). An episode in which it’s so clear Ryan is considering giving up the TARDIS travels from nearly his first scene.
On the other hand, Yaz thrives without Ryan. The two felt like one person when he was there, but once he’s gone Yaz is great. I like her friendship with Dan, and her feelings for The Doctor. I understand The Doctor’s reasons for not engaging, they make total sense for her, but I also think they’re dumb and they should be allowed to be gay! Cowards.
I do love 13, though. She’s so silly! She’s fun, she’s cute, she rambles to herself and is so open about her social anxiety it makes me laugh. She doesn’t really get angry even though she has every right to considering what she goes through. I don’t know why, considering we’ve seen this character threaten genocides over less, and has had to be stopped by multiple companions on multiple occasions. Like some of Clara’s final words are begging him not to crumble into his grief and anger and go on a bit of revenge spree, and then he still promises to make Ashildr’s life a living hell if they ever cross paths again. The Time Lords though? Lie to her her whole life, The Master murders them all… and her best reaction is like a slightly panicked face? Maybe a teary eye? I guess, because women can’t be angry? Is this what we’re saying here? 13 is very Doctor in everything else about her, but that fire is an ember now. It does mean she is characterised by a tendency to completely close herself off, though, and I’m not totally against that. It’s an interesting dimension to The Doctor’s character considering all of them have kind of varied in degrees of openness, and generally the strength of his bond with a Companion is directly proportional to how much they know about him. Martha had to make 10 tell her about Gallifrey, so being closed off is not a new trait, it’s just that 13 takes it to new extremes. We had to go there eventually, so I don’t mind it.
One last thing before I conclude this rant, and I regret that this post is likely to be focused in the direction of 12, 13 and 14 as those are the ones I watched most recently, and the freshest in my mind… but erm… Chris Chibnall. Can you talk about 13’s run without talking about Chibnall? I don’t know. He had such an effect on 13’s run, he became showrunner and something changed. The most confusing part is I know Chibnall is capable of brilliant writing. I watched Broadchurch before I watched this, a series he created and wrote basically every episode of (I will dive into Broadchurch in the future I’m sure). It’s a great series. The mystery is enticing, the characters are well written, and individualistic, it’s engaging, it’s not slapping you in the face with social commentary every episode… and yet Seasons 11-13 of Doctor Who? I mean, what went wrong?
In researching for this post, I found that Chibnall’s been occasionally writing episodes for Doctor Who since Season 3, in which he wrote Episode 307: “42”, which was his first, and a pretty good episode in itself, as well as some pretty good episodes throughout 11’s run. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to have wrote a single episode of 12’s before becoming showrunner and writing a solid high percentage of the episodes for 13. The episodes I did actually love of 13’s run were some of the few not written by him, despite some of his past ones being one’s I loved, and Broadchurch being a show I would happily watch over and over again. I had said to a friend earlier this week that it’s not that he can’t write for TV it’s that he can’t write Doctor Who. As, if you watch 13’s first episode (Episode 1101: “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”) after watching Broadchurch, they have the same vibes. It’s as if he’s trying to replicate the atmosphere of a British crime drama in Doctor Who, which is possibly one of the last genre’s next to Soap I would include this show in. Yet! He wrote episodes like Episode 702: “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”, which is some classic Doctor fun of the 11 era, and Episode 704: “The Power of Three”, which was a lovely mystery episode of Doctor Who I enjoyed quite a lot. The boxes, man! The boxes! That episode is quite memorable, for me, anyways. He can, in fact, write Doctor Who. So, what Chibnall, happened for 13?
As an only slightly related side-note, I was pleasantly surprised to find Neil Gaiman had written a few episodes of Doctor Who in the past. His credits include Episode 604: “The Doctor’s Wife”, which is known for including a literal physical manifestation in human-like form of The TARDIS played by Suranne Jones, an episode I remember enjoying quite a lot, in both the agony of it and the fun of it, because basically immortal beings low-key flirting seems to be a Gaiman specialty. Also, Episode 713: “The Nightmare in Silver”, which was a lovely scary exploration of The Doctor’s mind I enjoyed a little too much. I am always one for an internal battle over a physical battle, and Smith’s performance in this episode was astonishing. In conclusion, all praise Gaiman.
Chibnall can’t be blamed for everything. There was a lot of writers involved in the seasons really, even if he dominated at least half, if not more, of the writing credits. He was showrunner, though. The change in who was at the wheel was more than obvious, making him the most obvious name to fault for it. Something was different about these seasons. You felt like you were forcibly fed some social commentary almost every episode, that was often far from subtle, sometimes being just straight up preached at, while the continuity felt less consistent.
In Episode 1203: “Orphan 55”, The Doctor is surprised to discover the planet they’re on is Earth, despite having one of the deepest loves of any character ever for the planet in question and a pretty good working knowledge of it’s history, both past and future related. So, much so, that the first trip he took with Rose was to the destruction of Earth. Not only that, the episode ends with The Doctor preaching basically directly to the audience about Climate Change, which though a valid issue to comment on, this is such an inorganic way to do so, and doesn’t nearly match up to any of the episodes in the past couple seasons we’ve had that have delivered messages just as important, while remaining engaging and subtle. If you look for it, 12 has at least several episodes about capitalism, but you hardly notice. Yet these episodes felt like someone shot you with it, usually before the halfway point.
Also, and excuse my language, but he shit all over so much of the lore, and continuity, storylines and emotional depth of the last decade of the series. The Timeless Child has potential, admittedly, as much as it ruins, but he didn’t execute it as effectively as he could’ve. Burning Gallifrey? Just feels like a kick in the teeth after all that effort The Doctor went through to save it, sure it feels consistent enough for The Master’s characterisation, but it just almost feels as though Gallifrey was there now and the show was unsure what to do with it… so got rid of it. It’s like having a problem character and killing them off, except it was a whole planet. If it’s gone we don’t have to deal with the potential on whether The Doctor would return, and what the Time Lords may want of him in the future, and The Doctor gets to keep calling herself the last of the Time Lords, which isn’t true because The Master’s around anyway, and 12 was still calling Missy that regardless of Gallifrey’s survival! So, what does it matter?
In short, I’m still vying for the Time Lords survival, because if The Master can, so can they. Not because I care at all about them, as it goes, they’re mostly arseholes, but because The Doctor should now have a hell of a lot to say to them and I am interested in seeing that. This show excels at speeches after all. Some of 10, 11 and 12’s brought literal tears to my eyes, and the same goes for 14 in the latest special when he reacted to the Timeless Child news, and the Flux. That’s what we expect from The Doctor, and he delivered, even if he was cut for time. The Flux, by the way? Also dumb. Interesting enough story, I think it was the better of 13’s seasons, but I don’t like it, in a ‘it confusingly hurt’ way. In theory, they potentially destroyed the future of planets The Doctor has already experienced and had adventures on, which is a tad paradoxical to get your head around, and also means those futures now only exist in his mind. Hey! For all we know they destroyed New Earth! Now they’ll be no planet for the human race to escape to when the Earth goes caput, and the Face of Boe to deliver his final message on!
Okay, I’m done. Back to the love, I swear.
So, What to Love About it?
I miss 12. Have done since I finished him, which is why he takes the second spot in my ranking. I enjoyed his run so much, and he’s second in the ranking only because my love for David Tennant is a significant factor in my love for 10.
In fact, in a brief history in why I came to watch Doctor Who at all, I finished Good Omens, fell in love with Tennant who I was already casually appreciating anyway. His return was announced to Doctor Who, and suddenly I just had to catch up for the specials. I did take a brief break when 11 was due to regenerate, because the regenerations make me sad, but since the specials started airing I was inspired to finish catching up and did so in the last two weeks, in order to be caught up for the final special this Saturday, and I am.
So, 10 gets the top spot for Tennant bias, and being the reason I watched the series in full beyond 10’s run to begin with. He’s also a blast and I miss him (and 11) too. 12 next because Peter Capaldi’s doctor is so fun in his grumpy, trying to be younger than he looks way, and I just enjoy so much of his seasons. 11 in third, because Matt Smith’s Doctor is just so silly and fun, it’s this ‘if this is the last I’ll enjoy it’ kinda guy and it’s so entertaining. 13 next because I do enjoy Jodie Whittaker’s portrayal, even if her Doctor is muted in terms of anger, who knows maybe 13 just has better control? 9 in the final spot because I wasn’t particularly paying attention when I watched him for the first time, and didn’t care because he wasn’t Tennant. Christopher Eccleston gives a brilliant performance for his short time though, and I didn’t realise until I just started rewatching it, but he’s so much crueler than the others. He blatantly murders Cassandra in his second episode while Rose begs him not to. Yet he is also the pleased time traveller we love, and that balance is interesting. He doesn’t lack the mercy we know, he’s just a little more war-scarred than later regenerations, an arc that even 10 carried over. So, I may give 9 another chance.
In terms of TARDIS’s? 12’s is my favourite. It’s very similar to the second one 11 has, so I like that one too, I would however say that I dislike 13’s the most. It’s very… crystal. It doesn’t feel homey like the others. In my opinion 12’s is the homey-ist, with it’s bookcases, chalk boards, desk and guitar. Though, 10’s does have a weirdly warm feel while remaining spacey. 14’s is awesome, but wow is it big. 11’s first TARDIS always felt like a set to me, perhaps because of the gap between the door and the steps to the console, but it’s cool and the glass floor is awesome.
I don’t think I can effectively summarise my love for 12. He’s brilliant. Missy’s brilliant. His TARDIS is brilliant. Most, if not all, of his plots are really engaging and fun, and I enjoy his relationships with Clara, Bill, and Nardole. He’s fantastic. No comments.
11 and 10 I watched too long ago to give any effective opinions on, but in short: loved.
I have already discussed in brief my love for 14 so far. He looks really snazzy in his latest fit, and it’s brilliant to see the Converse come back. On top of that, that sonic screwdriver can do some really snazzy new things. I eagerly anticipate the special on Saturday, and shall come prepared with tissues for his regeneration. I barely survived 10’s, I don’t see me surviving it again.
Caught up now? I think so. Let’s end this here. I’m sure I’ll discuss this show on deeper levels in the future.
To Conclude
So, aside from that rant in the middle there, this post is mostly full of love.
I’m so glad I finally caught up on this show, and I can’t wait to be an avid follower of the future of it. I do have a tendency to wait for episodes to build up and then binge them, so when Gatwa’s run as the 15th Doctor starts I may do that, but otherwise, I’ll be regularly-ish caught up. One of the few shows I’m actively following now, and most of the other ones I do follow release in bulk in streaming, so this will be fun. Like Season 4 of Blindspot all over again.
This post was yet again a Catch-Up, I hope you enjoyed it. I had enough fun writing this, but that’s likely because Doctor Who currently takes up a solid 78% of my brain cells, despite the fact I have things I need to do.
Thank you for reading. The next post is due in a fortnight.
So, I will see you in the next!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images, narratives or characters present or referenced in this post. All rights belong to the BBC and all other relevant parties.