Agree with the apparent predominant trend here – Whittaker could have made it if she had been given better material to work with. With a property like this you need not just technical skills but also a good vision from the showrunners/writers/directors.
The run from Eccleston through mid/late Smith was greatly propelled by the notion of the Doctor, sole survivor of the Time War (except for an annoyingly ever-increasing number of Daleks, so the erosion of the premise was already under way…) and aware of what that took. The later period lost much of that momentum.
And in some NewWho for some time I have seen a hint of the “Superman problem” or “but wait there’s more” phenomenon at play: where you keep making either your protagonist or the universe/backstory ever more ultrasuperduper fantastic in complicated ways that had not been previously hinted at, because it’s the only way to keep throwing in ever more cosmically significant threats and have him/her keep prevailing in ever more awesome ways – and you risk doing so to the point of breaking your own universe retroactively.
(and please oh please, for the near future at least, no companions who are somehow a predestined cosmically significant center-of-the-universe character…)
I stopped watching regularly after Matt Smith. I like Peter Capaldi in other roles and he is certainly a fine actor but I don’t think he received good material to work with from what I did see. I feel the Ecclestone-Tennant-Smith years of the 2000s and early 2010s was the right style of production at the right time. It was exciting and more fast-paced than the original era of the show but not too bogged down with computer generated effects but also not too woven with subplots.
I believe Doctor Who is suffering from the kind of problem James Bond has done from time to time whereby the show is struggling to stand out now they are no longer the sole or dominant force within the genre and newcomers take the tropes but do it better and more relevant to the trends of today.
In Doctor Who? I would say the best casting was Matt Smith with Karen Gillan. The best Doctor and companion combination we’ve had even though I like Tenant more as Doctor. Adding Arthur Darvill to the mix was the rare time an extra companion actually improved things. He’s so well cast as well.
I love David Tenant, but I love Smith-Gillan-Darvill era of the show.
Chemistry between the Doctor and assistant is important. Viewers need to believe there’s a friendship and reliance between the characters. They have each other’s backs.
I never got that vibe from Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman. Matt Smith had a better connection with Jenna. It was still nothing like Matt and Karen.
Doctor Who is at its best with wild, zany stories with a dash of horror. The Doctor is optimistic and represents hope for a better future.
It seems the BBC will continue its woke programming. Ratings don’t seem to matter.
It’s the problem that always happen to heroes who are effectively actuated by magic. All the power they have can make the story boring, so there always has to be bigger and bigger threats. And once you have saved the actual universe and all of existence from destruction or disappearance, where are you going to go from there? My favorite stories or story lines have been those that have a human significance and scale, rather than a cosmic one.
I’ve known fans who have been around since the Classic era who say that this is a problem that shouldn’t exist for the Doctor. She’s not supposed to be this super powerful hero. Sure, she’s smarter than humans, and uses her wits to win, but she’s not supposed to be above everything… She’s supposed to often get by by the skin of her teeth. And she’s supposed to need genuine help from her companions to pull it off. And a whole lot of luck.
You just don’t need to have the Doctor prevail in more and more fantastic ways. You just need the Doctor to prevail when it matters most.
The Doctor is supposed to be several steps ahead of his opponents quite often and a dozen ahead of the companions in most cases. But you are absolutely correct, his powers are mainly logic, trickery, persuasion and bluster and luck.
If I could make only one request for the new showrunner is to change the cinematography. The Chibnall era seemed to be almost entirely darkness and shadow. Add to that all the heavy stories it was all so dreary.
Especially inside the TARDIS! I know once the coral walls came in with the 9th it was already of a darker tone than the old bright white of the classic series, but there have been times in the Whittaker run when I thought they were camouflaging the lack of a set. I can barely bring to my mind’s eye what the back wall of the control room looks like.
Nothing much I can add that hasn’t been said above…I really like Whittaker as an actor, but like both Smith and Capaldi she was let down by the material constantly. I only became a Whovian with the relaunch, and I even caught up on that late. So maybe marathoning the first four series plus the first two of Torchwood over the course of a summer made me biased, but I think RTD set an incredibly high bar. Moffat could be a great writer but seemed so obsessed with trying to prove how clever he was that he kept losing me. Capaldi may well have been the best pure thespian to ever occupy the role, but the way his role was written kept changing so much it felt like the show was flailing.
And I had high hopes for Chibnall. He wrote my absolute favorite episode of Torchwood (“Adrift”) though he also wrote the worst pre-Miracle Day one as well (“Cyberwoman”). And I liked Broadchurch. But damn, he was a misfire all over Who. Pumping up the scope so episodes looked like Michael Bay movies, dropping massive retcons that I could never get my head around, and loading the TARDIS more full than it’s been at any time since the Tegan/Nyssa/Turlough era and not giving the companions much to do there…ugh.
No idea if he’s even in the running, but I wish they’d bring on Toby Whithouse to run the thing (unless Davies can be coaxed back). Ah well, nobody asked me. Nothing to do but wait for the inevitable betting on who’s taking over the lead role.
I would LOVE to see Jo Martin reprise the role - not as a past Doctor in that “Timeless Child” crap but as the next Doctor glimpse during Whittaker’s run. Have the Timeless Child stuff turn out to be some nefarious mind-control plot by the Master and Jo Martin be the Fourteenth Doctor.
I also agree that Jodie was good and did the best she could with poor writing and development. Additionally, the companions we’re not only bland and uninteresting as individuals, but they had no ensemble chemistry whatsoever with themselves or with the doctor. The only praise I can give is at least Jodie was better than Capaldi. Having seen everything in the Eccleston, Tennant, Smith run multiple times, I have zero interest in rewatching this last couple of seasons.
This is exactly what I texted my friend who likes the show. I said that it should be her. I hope they keep the Doctor female and if not that specific lady, perhaps an Asian or another Black lady. Or honestly, any woman of color.
The real question is if she needs to be British. Probably?
Yes, Bill especially, and Nardo, and sometimes Capaldi became too Scots, and Whittaker in what little of her I have watched. It’s not so much that individually they are not clear, but that all of them speaking as quickly as they often do leaves me completely baffled. As I said in an earlier post, I’ve been tempted to record it, play it back at 20% slower and with the subtitles on. It might be worth that if the rest of the problems got better. The current series, not so much.