Going Woke Drove Doctor Who Into Oblivion

I watched a bit of Doctor Who in the early 80s. My main memory of it at the time was that it seemed incredibly cheap compared to just about anything on American TV. I found it a bit hard to suspend disbelief when some of the special effects seemed to be made out of actual cardboard.

The show went off the air in 1989 and wasn’t revived again until 2005. I wasn’t paying attention then but sometime in 2006 I decided to give the show a try and I was impressed. The new show obviously had a much bigger budget and it had David Tennant who was spectacular as the main character. I still love that second season of the revised show and you’ll find that most fans agree it was probably the best season the show every had which is why Tennant keeps coming back for guest appearances year after year.

Season 3 of the show also had one of the single best episodes of genre TV ever produced. It’s called “Blink” and it features a unique and creepy group of villains called the weeping angels. This particular episode happened to be one where David Tennant was out of town so he only appears in a little, but it’s the single best episode the show in my view. Even if you don’t like Doctor Who, you should watch “Blink.”

I’ll spare you a detailed history of the show except to say that a central gimmick is that every few years the Doctor transforms himself, literally changing into a new actor who may be slightly different in various ways but who is essentially the same person. It’s a clever gimmick because it allows the show to trade out actors every few years before things get too stale. 

The revised show in 2005 started with actor David Eccleston as the Doctor. He left after one season and was replaced by Tennant. Tennant was around for three full seasons plus two more years where he did specials. Then Matt Smith, who you may have seen in House of the Dragon, took over as the next incarnation, followed by Peter Capaldi and then, well, that’s when things started to take a nose dive.

In 2018 the show introduced the Thirteenth Doctor (going all the way back to the beginning of the show in the 1963. The new doctor would, for the first time be played by a woman, actress Jodie Whittaker. 

I had made it through a lot of years of episodes by that point, more than a decade. It seemed to me the show was starting to fade a bit in the Capaldi years, not because he was bad in the role but just because the writing wasn’t as good. But I think I have up after about 4-5 episodes of Jodie Whittaker. It just did not work for me or for most viewers.

The first season (they call them series in the UK) had pretty good ratings. But by series 12, the glow had definitely faded and viewership was about half what it had been at the start of series 11. Series 13 was even worse. People were just tuning out and the average viewership was under 4 million per episode (from a high of 10 million at the start of series 11). I can’t really comment on the quality because I’d given up long before that. But the producers agreed it wasn’t good because after Whittaker’s run of three years, they replaced the showrunner who’d come in with her and brought back Russell T Davies, the guy who revived the show back in 2005.

People were hoping for a return to form after the downturn. Disney signed on to co-produce which meant the budgets could go back up a bit. But instead of returning to form, Davies decided the next doctor would be black and gay. Ratings remained low for series 14 and then dropped in half by the end of series 15. By the end of the run, the average viewership was under 2 million per episode. It was a disaster. Disney walked away. 

Actor Ncuti Gatwa, who was probably signed on to do at least three seasons, either left or was asked to leave and the show had been driven into such a woke ditch that no one wanted the job anymore.

A source claimed to The Sun that producers have “found it difficult to find anyone who’ll take on the part of the 16th Time Lord”, in part because of the “baggage of the most recent series”.

There was supposed to be one more Christmas special which would wrap up loose ends but yesterday it was announced that had been canceled.

The corporation announced last year that there would be a festive special in 2026, but confirmed on Wednesday that it will no longer proceed.

Instead, the broadcaster is inviting production companies to put themselves forward to help co-produce the next series.

Showrunner Russell T Davies also confirmed he will leave the long-running programme, writing on Instagram that it is “goodbye from me but hello to a big new future for the show”.

So what went wrong here? I think it’s obvious but the Telegraph summary is pretty good. Starting with the Jodie Whittaker era:

It’s arguable that the show became a little too preachy; the Sunday-night scheduling forced it away from being simple whizz-bang fun, and that a reduction from 12 to 10 episodes per series took away the “appointment viewing” feel and made storylines feel rushed. Moreover, the show had become simply dull. On the fan website Doctor Who TV, eight of Whittaker’s instalments make the 10 worst Doctor Who episodes…

Jodie is a good actress and lovable, but there was all this baggage [during her run]. There was a pregnant man and assistants going back in time to look at their heritage histories. If you’re going for a populist audience that was ill-judged.”

As for the Gatwa era, people hated it.

Some episodes were deliberately childish, while others contained distinctly adult social and political themes – stories about incels and trans rights. The latter became increasingly remarked upon, something that doesn’t surprise the show’s former writer: “We had this nonsense, this identity politics, and there is nothing less likely to make people feel at ease than by making them think they are being hectored or lectured.”

There you have it. Doctor Who was an entertaining show for quite a few years and then it went woke and now the show is history and everyone associated with it is done for good. It will be 4-5 years at a minimum before they find a way to reboot this. It’ll take at least that long for viewers to forget what a boring, woke scold of a show this had become.

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