Doctor No.
I'm going to stop writing about Doctor Who.
I finally get it: it's a children's programme. Finally, after thirteen years of transmission, it meets its brief. It is a show, suddenly and rather patronisingly, aimed at children.
And that's fine. Chibnall's master-plan has become manifest; he's gone back to Sydney Newman's original vision: a Tardis full of boring people with nothing much to do. None of the rogue's gallery of monsters well remembered by men in their 50's are present. In their place is a rogue's reliquary of the least interesting villains ever created. A good baddie is hard to do - look at the Marvel universe: they were so grateful to Thanos they gave him his own movie! But my god, this looks deliberate: bearded racist, tooth face man, not Donald Trump. It's pathetic on purpose: the worst possible threat in this new universe is MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN. It's true - we're the worst. Week after week the supposed villains are either benign or just meddlers exploiting the horror that is human behaviour.
It's an unusual lesson to teach children and its hard to understand the allure for Team Tardis either. Since meeting the Doctor Graham has lost his wife and Ryan his Gran, they've seen the ugliness of racism in America and been forced to do nothing (even when Ryan was slapped in the face). They've been on a planet where everything tried to kill them because the Doctor had forgotten where she had parked. They've seen the Doctor leave a mutated spider to suffocate until it is put out of its misery by an American businessman. And what happened to those other spiders, lured to the vault by Ryan's grime? Starved into cannibalism, no doubt. But fuck 'em, eh Doctor - they're only spiders! Last week they go trawling around a junk planet (it looked good in the brochure), get blown up, get rescued by a hospital ship (handy) get attacked by Taz of Tasmania (not so handy) and threatened with explosion by the planet they are attempting to reach.
I mean, fucking hell! What's their incentive? Wandering through space with an inept idiot who can't keep hold of her spaceship and doesn't know how to solve any of the problems they find themselves facing. Why would they do this? There's no upside, there's no real sense of wonder. Its just one bloody thing after another!
The Doctor has become a liability. That used to be okay - he did powerful pair-bonding in the past, usually with a damaged and impressionable young woman to whom he made himself invaluable. Don't like the idea of the Doctor as a predatory older man? Let's look at those companions:
Rose Tyler - no Dad. Martha Jones - Dad abandons family for younger woman. Donna Noble - fiance betrays her for a giant spider, Dad dies. Amy Pond - Orphan. Clara Oswald - Orphan, boyfriend dies. Bill - Orphan, girlfriend dies. He certainly has a type, doesn't he? No wonder they all fall for this mysterious and remarkable older man.
Obviously this is a bit odd. And Chibnall has obviously changed this dynamic. His progressive new idea is that the Doctor is a worn out, had-it-up-to-here mum, desperate for something to do in the summer holidays. She has adopted a family and then gets quietly frazzled while they squabble boringly in the back seat. She is Time Lord as foster parent: knackered, at the end of her tether, knowing she has bitten off more than she can chew and just wanting to keep them busy.
So that's Chibnall's plan: he's taken his secateurs to Rusty and Moffat's peculiar and not-fit-for-purpose comedy-space-opera-horror show and cleaned its limbs, pruning back the wit, the surprise, the pregnant history, the in-jokes and out-jokes, everything, in fact, that made me like it. He has delivered what he was no doubt requested to deliver - a floating space family looking appalled at all the bad things human beings have done to each other in well researched and carefully exposited chunks.
But that's not the reason I will stop writing about Doctor Who. The real reason I will stop writing about Doctor Who is that I don't want to join in with other people who talk about Doctor Who. There appear to be three strands to current fandom: children, nice parents who seem to think the programme is societal roughage for their little ones and finish every missive with "and I learned something too!" Oh, and racists.
That's it.
If I read your comment and you start talking about "virtue signalling" and "PC nonsense" then I'm going to instantly assume that you're a sexist homophobic racist. I just am - I'm bigoted like that. If you're none of these things then find a better way of expressing yourself, because wittingly or unwittingly you're using sexist/ homophobic/racist shorthand. Or just shut up. That's an option. You're a middle-aged man complaining about a kid's show. No one cares about you.
I am a middle-aged man complaining about a kid's show. Until last year Doctor Who was meant, fairly specifically, for me. Now it isn't. And that's fine. I had a good run with it. I hope it always continues, as I'm a little bit in love with Doctor Who and I wish it nothing but the best. But I know its over - we just wanted different things. Doctor Who - its not you, its me.
I finally get it: it's a children's programme. Finally, after thirteen years of transmission, it meets its brief. It is a show, suddenly and rather patronisingly, aimed at children.
And that's fine. Chibnall's master-plan has become manifest; he's gone back to Sydney Newman's original vision: a Tardis full of boring people with nothing much to do. None of the rogue's gallery of monsters well remembered by men in their 50's are present. In their place is a rogue's reliquary of the least interesting villains ever created. A good baddie is hard to do - look at the Marvel universe: they were so grateful to Thanos they gave him his own movie! But my god, this looks deliberate: bearded racist, tooth face man, not Donald Trump. It's pathetic on purpose: the worst possible threat in this new universe is MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN. It's true - we're the worst. Week after week the supposed villains are either benign or just meddlers exploiting the horror that is human behaviour.
It's an unusual lesson to teach children and its hard to understand the allure for Team Tardis either. Since meeting the Doctor Graham has lost his wife and Ryan his Gran, they've seen the ugliness of racism in America and been forced to do nothing (even when Ryan was slapped in the face). They've been on a planet where everything tried to kill them because the Doctor had forgotten where she had parked. They've seen the Doctor leave a mutated spider to suffocate until it is put out of its misery by an American businessman. And what happened to those other spiders, lured to the vault by Ryan's grime? Starved into cannibalism, no doubt. But fuck 'em, eh Doctor - they're only spiders! Last week they go trawling around a junk planet (it looked good in the brochure), get blown up, get rescued by a hospital ship (handy) get attacked by Taz of Tasmania (not so handy) and threatened with explosion by the planet they are attempting to reach.
I mean, fucking hell! What's their incentive? Wandering through space with an inept idiot who can't keep hold of her spaceship and doesn't know how to solve any of the problems they find themselves facing. Why would they do this? There's no upside, there's no real sense of wonder. Its just one bloody thing after another!
The Doctor has become a liability. That used to be okay - he did powerful pair-bonding in the past, usually with a damaged and impressionable young woman to whom he made himself invaluable. Don't like the idea of the Doctor as a predatory older man? Let's look at those companions:
Rose Tyler - no Dad. Martha Jones - Dad abandons family for younger woman. Donna Noble - fiance betrays her for a giant spider, Dad dies. Amy Pond - Orphan. Clara Oswald - Orphan, boyfriend dies. Bill - Orphan, girlfriend dies. He certainly has a type, doesn't he? No wonder they all fall for this mysterious and remarkable older man.
Obviously this is a bit odd. And Chibnall has obviously changed this dynamic. His progressive new idea is that the Doctor is a worn out, had-it-up-to-here mum, desperate for something to do in the summer holidays. She has adopted a family and then gets quietly frazzled while they squabble boringly in the back seat. She is Time Lord as foster parent: knackered, at the end of her tether, knowing she has bitten off more than she can chew and just wanting to keep them busy.
So that's Chibnall's plan: he's taken his secateurs to Rusty and Moffat's peculiar and not-fit-for-purpose comedy-space-opera-horror show and cleaned its limbs, pruning back the wit, the surprise, the pregnant history, the in-jokes and out-jokes, everything, in fact, that made me like it. He has delivered what he was no doubt requested to deliver - a floating space family looking appalled at all the bad things human beings have done to each other in well researched and carefully exposited chunks.
But that's not the reason I will stop writing about Doctor Who. The real reason I will stop writing about Doctor Who is that I don't want to join in with other people who talk about Doctor Who. There appear to be three strands to current fandom: children, nice parents who seem to think the programme is societal roughage for their little ones and finish every missive with "and I learned something too!" Oh, and racists.
That's it.
If I read your comment and you start talking about "virtue signalling" and "PC nonsense" then I'm going to instantly assume that you're a sexist homophobic racist. I just am - I'm bigoted like that. If you're none of these things then find a better way of expressing yourself, because wittingly or unwittingly you're using sexist/ homophobic/racist shorthand. Or just shut up. That's an option. You're a middle-aged man complaining about a kid's show. No one cares about you.
I am a middle-aged man complaining about a kid's show. Until last year Doctor Who was meant, fairly specifically, for me. Now it isn't. And that's fine. I had a good run with it. I hope it always continues, as I'm a little bit in love with Doctor Who and I wish it nothing but the best. But I know its over - we just wanted different things. Doctor Who - its not you, its me.
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