Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Era (2018-2022)

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the entire Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who! It seemed like a smart idea to put my thoughts down now while it's still fresh in my mind to save me from having to watch it all again at some point. I mean I'm not saying that this run was bad... not up here in the intro anyway.

Though I'm starting to regret committing to this, as I'm not sure I can come up with anything I haven't said already, never mind the rest of the internet. Reviewers have turned tearing apart the Chibnall era into an art form. YouTube's packed full of video essays with hours of content, each of them representing months of work. Meanwhile all I have is a few scribbled down thoughts I've had over the last few days. Basically I'm not in a great position to be criticising trite half-baked writing.

But I said I'd do this and I need to see it through, so now that the smoke has cleared and the dust has settled etc. I'm going to take a look back at the Thirteenth Doctor era and figure out if I liked it. There will be SPOILERS beyond this point.

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Change is good, at least when it comes to Doctor Who. The secret to the series' longevity is its ability to regenerate and evolve while still staying true to what it is, and Peter Capaldi's third season was definitely the right time for the series to transform. I mean I like Steven Moffat, I think he's a contender for the best writer the series has ever had, but after eight years we'd seen the whole contents of his bag of tricks several times over. When you start coming up with ideas like 'the moon is an egg for a space dragon that hatches and immediately lays another identical moon egg', that means it's time to pass the baton. He wasn't the only one who passed his baton though, as we got a entirely new cast, new writers, new directors, even a new composer. Doctor Who hasn't had a reset this dramatic since Russell T Davies brought the series back in 2005. 

First I want to give Chris Chibnall some credit: there were no moon eggs, magic forests, sleep monsters, or electromagnetic ghosts during his time on the series. It was a controversial run for sure, but I think it typically avoided revisiting rock bottom. The regeneration process never quite stopped however, as even though Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill both stuck around for all five years, the style of the show kept shifting each year.

Chibnall's first series was a jumping on point for new fans, with no returning monsters or characters, and zero continuation of the accumulated continuity. It was all about new villains, big guest stars and trying to look like a prestige drama. It was a lot more grounded too, without the big story arcs and ridiculous events of previous seasons. Though we did get to see Ryan growing closer to Graham as they both grieved for his gran, while also dealing with his feelings about his absent dad. And Yaz was also there.

Then the second series suddenly opened the continuity floodgates... and started retconning things. It featured the return of Captain Jack, the Time Lords, the Master, the Judoon, and the Cybermen, and tied them together in a bit of an arc. This series also got a bit depressing and patronisingly preachy about real world issues, which I supposed tied in with the Doctor being a bit sad in a couple of episodes due to the destruction of her homeworld. That was about it as far as character arcs went though.

And the third series, Flux, completed the show's evolution into a hyperactive mess of simultaneous plotlines untethered from any kind of reality. It broke from the typical format by going all-in on serialisation, telling one complete story with a ton of recurring characters over six episodes.

Flux also jumped between locations more, getting a lot of use out of big text over pretty establishing shots. Chibnall had a fondness for making the Doctor dart around between multiple problems, even though it was sometimes better when she stayed put in one place, with Village of the Angels and Eve of the Daleks being two of the strongest episodes of the whole run. 

The style of historical episodes shifted dramatically over the run as well. The first season promised that the era was going to use the female Doctor and the different backgrounds of the companions to bring us to new locations and give us their perspective on unfamiliar parts of history, and I was into that. Doctor Who hasn't been teaching history since the First Doctor era, so it was something different, especially when they gave Rosa a bit of a Quantum Leap twist with the TARDIS team having to keep history on track. Then for year two it switched to the more typical approach of having the Doctor team up with historical figures and go on an adventure, with the twist that it was putting a spotlight on people like Ada Lovelace who maybe aren't a household name. But then it got bored with teaching history and disappeared off into the magical realm of total bullshit, with Joseph Williamson digging up portals while Mary Seacole spied on Sontarans and pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao went off on a solo voyage to save her kids. I don't know if that was always Chibnall's plan, or if it was a course correction to steer away from controversy, but I was a bit disappointed. I like some authenticity in my historicals; when it's all made up it doesn't have the same appeal to me.

Speaking of things that didn't have the same appeal to me, the Thirteenth Doctor was rarely all that impressive in action. I mean just off the top of my head:

• She teleported all her companions into the vacuum of space and was saved by pure chance.
• She let Jack Robertson get away with everything he did. Twice.
• She had to stand by and watch events unfold in Rosa and Demons of the Punjab.
• She gave up the Cyberium to the Lone Cyberman, let the Master deal with him, and then let Ko Sharmus sacrifice himself to stop the Master.
• She failed to stop the Weeping Angel from bringing her to Tecteun, watched helplessly as Swarm and Azure defeated her, and then just stood there as Time defeated the two of them.
• She got caught in the Master's trap and basically killed.

I need to stop listing these now, because if I mentioned that she let half the universe get destroyed in Flux you might start to get the impression that she was an unusually ineffective incarnation of the Doctor. She didn't even try to break out of prison!

Thirteen was like a cross between a school kid and a school teacher a lot of the time, more suited to take her friends on a tour of the universe than to race around saving the day. Words are the Doctor's weapons and it felt like she was going around unarmed. Metaphorically speaking. Don't get me wrong, I liked her being kind and childish and enthusiastic, and how she cracked jokes to lighten the mood. That's very Doctory, and Whittaker did it well. The Twelfth Doctor's character arc ended with him passing on what he'd learned to his successor, and Thirteen was everything he wanted to be. She'd left all her angst behind, she always tried to be nice, and she never failed to be kind.

But she was also weirdly nervous and her dark side was more like a grumpy side. I missed the righteous fury and the sense that she was capable of scary things if she was pushed just a little too far. I also felt the absence of those big hero moments where her awesome theme kicked in and she saved the day. It's like we were only getting half a Doctor. She did get some of her fire back as her era went on and some of her most satisfying moments were the times she got to turn the tables in conversation, or at least fight back, but it was a bit too little, too late.

It didn't help that the writers generally portrayed her as if she was always absolutely morally correct in some very ambiguous situations. Like is it really better to lock spiders in a room and let them starve to death than it is to mercy kill them? Is it really ideal to reduce automation so that more people can perform soul-crushing unnecessary jobs in a nightmarish Space Amazon? Did Graham really deserve praise for trapping his nemesis in endless torment instead of shooting him? Did she really have to murder so many TARDISes? I feel like the writers didn't always think it through, and this made it seem like the Doctor wasn't thinking it through.

Fortunately Thirteen had her fam around to question her decisions and complicate things with their own perspectives and convictions. Though they typically didn't. Sure Ryan had his issues when it came to dads, but most of the time they were just nice people who asked all the necessary questions and helped out. It was a bit jarring coming from previous series where the relationship between the Doctor and his companion(s) was the core of the series arc. Ryan and Graham did get an arc of their own, but it was mostly isolated from whatever the Doctor was doing. In fact episodes often came to a halt so that characters could have a chat about their feelings, until the plot started up again and they were dragged back into the actual story. TV series have gotten really good at serving their plot and characters simultaneously, but this isn't so sophisticated (aside from the occasional exception like It Takes You Away).

Though that wasn't the only issue I had with this era...

THE BAD

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Russell T Davies put his own stamp on Doctor Who lore with the Time War and the destruction of Gallifrey. Then Steven Moffat made his mark by bringing Gallifrey back and dropping little hints about the Doctor's childhood. But that was nothing compared to what Chibnall had in mind.

When I saw that Gallifrey had been destroyed (again) I rolled my eyes a bit, but I wasn't that bothered, because I knew that it was probably going to be undone by the end, or they'd at least reveal that the people had survived. I knew the series wasn't really going to spoil the big dramatic win at the end of the universally beloved 50th anniversary special that wrapped up an arc that began with the Ninth Doctor, because that would be incredibly stupid and also kind of pointless. Turns out I was the idiot though, as Gallifrey was never restored. Chibnall pissed all over the 50th just to give us a couple of scenes of the Doctor being sad and some regenerating Cybermen. That's a bad trade.

Undoing all of the Master's character growth as Missy after one season with no explanation was also an questionable choice. We got a pretty good Master out of it though (especially in The Power of the Doctor) so I'll let him have this one.

But I think the absolute winner when it comes to doing a hard 180 on the previous showrunner's episodes has to be giving us the Timeless Child arc right after Twice Upon a Time brought back the First Doctor and demonstrated how much the character has grown since then. 

Now he's apparently not the First Doctor anymore, he's just the first Doctor to not get his memory wiped. The Fugitive Doctor already had the name, the skills, the rule about using guns, the police box TARDIS with the faulty chameleon circuit etc. Even though the Doctor remembers choosing their name and we actually saw them steal the TARDIS. I kind of hate this to be honest. I mean I hate 'everything you know is a lie' stories in general, but this I especially hate.

I really really hate it.

Before this run the reason the Doctor was so different to the other Time Lords was mostly because they'd ventured outside their stuffy secluded society and travelled the universe, but now they're literally a different species! Plus giving them infinite regenerations screws up the Eleventh Doctor's ending and Clara's trip through his timeline (not that that made much sense to begin with). I read a quote from Chibnall saying "You're not carrying a vase across a room – you've got to get in there and say what you want about the show, the character and the world," and I can agree with the second part. But... he kind of was carrying a vase, and he dropped it. And now it's damaged.

The retcon's not all negative though. It did give the Doctor a dramatic scene where she questioned her identity... though she ultimately decided that this revelation didn't actually change anything. It also established that the Doctor has swapped sex and "race" before in the past, which was also pointless seeing as we already had the Fugitive Doctor. And we already got to see the Time Lords send the Doctor on secret missions in the classic series, so the introduction of the Division was pretty unnecessary as well. In fact the only thing I like about the Timeless Child arc is the Fugitive Doctor, and she was better when she was still a mystery.

Funny thing is, it would've been fine if someone else had been the Timeless Child. But then that would've made even more obvious that the arc didn't really lead anywhere. In fact this run had a bit of a problem with pay offs in general. The writers had no trouble constructing cliffhangers, building up seemingly unstoppable villains, and setting up surprising twists, but when it came to connecting up the dots and giving us some closure and catharsis they struggled.

At least Vinder and Bel weren't revealed to be the Doctor's parents. Their baby was just a big red herring. (Hopefully not literally).
 

Also I may have mentioned it before, but this TARDIS interior really doesn't work for me. I can't fault the designer on their creativity, it's definitely not a look I've seen a thousand times before on other sci-fi series and the colours are pretty nice, but it's so dark and flat. Something's gone wrong if you can barely see the TARDIS console in the TARDIS console room. Plus it's dominated by those weird glowing crystal spider legs that get in the way of the camera. A lot of people like it though, and many fans like the homemade sonic screwdriver as well, so I'm not going to claim either of them are objectively bad. 

I don't think Segun Akinola's soundtrack is objectively bad either, far from it, even if I can't stand the remixed opening theme. His music's less adventurous, playful and operatic, in fact it's downright subtle at times, and there's a noticeable absence of familiar themes. But he could bring the drama when asked to, and he also bought with him unusually light airy synths and atypically heavy harsh horror sounds. Plus the Thirteenth Doctor's theme is great on the rare occasions it makes an appearance, and the Evil Dan theme is iconic. Personally I like that we got a breather from the 12 year reign of Murray Gold, because the series thrives on change. But if Gold comes back with RTD next year, well that would be a nice change too.

Speaking of things that weren't all bad...


THE GOOD

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One of the concerns I had about Chibnall's era was that it'd go too 'Fifth Doctor' and give us a far less quirky and eccentric Doctor. Fortunately that wasn't the case, as Thirteen is plenty weird and goofy, and the series still has a sense of humour. It's not as witty as previous seasons and some jokes are kind of cringe (the line "I suppose we'll have to have... a conversation," from Resolution jumps to mind), but the tone hasn't changed that much.

Plus I think they did a successful job of handling the switch to the first female Doctor, by mostly ignoring it until she'd had time to establish herself. Steven Moffat put in the work during his run to set it up properly, but I don't think he could've resisted making a couple of eye-rolling jokes after the regeneration, so I reckon we had the right showrunner at the right time. Chibnall got a bit greedy throwing in the first black Doctor as well, but if Jodie Whittaker hadn't convinced people that a female Doctor could work, Jo Martin certainly did. Personally I didn't need any convincing, because I've seen TV and movies before, and I know that women can play characters and do things, but I'm glad they didn't screw it up.

I'm also glad that they continued the tradition of Doctor Who generally looking a little better each era. The new anamorphic lenses combined with the switch from 16:9 to 2:1 gave the series a more cinematic look, and shooting on location in countries like South Africa and Spain gave it bit of a scenery upgrade. It didn't always work out, Legend of the Sea Devils looks especially terrible, and you might argue that previous series could be a bit more stylish, but this is a pretty good looking run in my opinion.

Plus the writers managed to jettison some of the Doctor Who tropes that had gotten a bit old. There were no companion death fake outs for example. And when companions left the series they just... left. None of them got trapped in alternate dimensions or became puddle gods or whatever.

CONCLUSION

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Is the Thirteenth Doctor era as bad is its IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes scores claim? Well I'm not going to say that my opinion is more valid than the hundreds of people who have voted... though it's probably more valid than the hundreds who voted '1'. There's been a little bit of review bombing there I think.

I did the maths on my own ratings and on average the Thirteenth Doctor's run scored about the same as the Twelfth Doctor's run for me. Because the Twelfth Doctor's run was all over the damn place. The excellent Flatline was followed by In the Forest of the Night, and Heaven Sent came a couple of weeks after Sleep No More. Thirteen's run was a lot more consistent I reckon, settling into a comfortable 'it was okay, could've been better' place for the most part. We're up to 175 episodes of modern Doctor Who now and I wouldn't expect to see many of these stories in a top 50 list. Well, maybe Village of the Angels is in with a chance, people seem to really like that one.

When I try to really pin down what's holding this era back, I think it's mostly that it just isn't that clever, which is a bit of an issue for a show about the cleverest hero in science fiction. Russell T Davies was inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you can see it in the season arcs, witty dialogue and big emotional moments that defined his run. He could get away with his ridiculous deus ex endings because he was tearing your heart out in the next scene. The next showrunner, Steven Moffat, was a sitcom writer, and that showed in how his scenes, scripts and entire seasons were crafted like he was setting up punchlines. Like I said, neither had a perfect track record, but you could see their intelligence shining through, same with other writers like Paul Cornell, Neil Gaiman and Jamie Mathieson. Okay I haven't seen a Paul Cornell episode yet myself, but other people seem impressed!

Anyway, Chris Chibnall brought his own spin and his own writers to the series, making it feel new and familiar at the same time, but not quite as bright as it used to be. Not as intelligent or thoughtful. The first episode kicked off with an incredibly convenient chain of contrived coincidences and concluded with a cliffhanger that got resolved with another coincidence! Characters rarely had anything really insightful to say about anything. Moral dilemmas were left unexamined. Ideas were unexplored. Episodes set up multiple threads at a breakneck speed but the pay off was usually weak. Basically a crucial ingredient was missing and it left a lot of viewers still feeling hungry afterwards. In fact it left a lot of people feeling bored while they were watching.

I'm not saying that you have to be an idiot to enjoy this run. There's still plenty going on with the Doctor and how she interacts with her friends. The stories generally hold together alright. It's got decent production values. But Chibnall's Doctor Who aired while Rick & Morty and Legends of Tomorrow were both running, meaning that it somehow managed to be the third most imaginative, entertaining and well constructed Doctor Who series on TV at the time. I mean Legends juggled like ten main characters and gave them all their own arcs and moments to shine, while Doctor Who didn't even know what to do with four of them!

Graham O'Brien: Thirteen started with a bit of a crowded TARDIS, but Graham still stood out. He was somehow both the most comedic and the most down to earth, and I don't think there's a companion in the modern era who was better at just sitting down with someone, having a chat about their problems, and being supportive. Sure he did a 180 from his fear of weird space problems very quickly, but all the companions were fairly unbothered by bizarre situations.

Ryan Sinclair: Some companions come across so sincere during intense Doctor Who weirdness that they feel like a real person trapped inside a goofy TV series. I could say the same thing about Ryan, but it wouldn't be a compliment. Sometimes he really comes alive and shows some emotion, but most of the time his line delivery is the deadest deadpan imaginable. Plus the writers gave him dyspraxia and then never made it a hinderance. It seems harsh to call him the worst companion of the modern era, so I'll just say he's in my bottom five (for the entire 60 year history of the series).

Yasmin Khan: Yaz lasted all 31 episodes, making her one of the longest running companions ever. Okay she didn't come close to matching the ridiculous episode counts of some of the classic companions, but Sarah Jane Smith and Clara Oswald were both around for a little under three years while Yaz was in the show for just over four. So it's pretty impressive how she still failed to live up to her potential. Having a police officer in the TARDIS could've given us a different perspective, some friction, or something, but she was mostly just competent.

Dan Lewis: Dan was introduced in Flux, so he was a bit overshadowed by 75 million other ongoing threads. Even so he immediately established himself as a worthy successor to Graham, filling the emotionally intelligent comic relief role while also being weirdly fearless. Sure he's one of the few companions to quit travelling with the Doctor out of a concern for his own life (at the beginning of an episode!) But the dude got shot in the face so that's what you'd expect really. Dan lived up to his potential more than most by just not being all that complicated, so his early exit worked for me.

Eustacius Jericho: Professor Jericho was more like Yaz's companion, and he only showed up in three episodes, but I was surprised that he stuck around for even that long. I was also surprised that he turned out to be an actual badass with the nerve to stare down an invading hoard of Angels.

Karvanista: This guy was definitely the Doctor's companion, just not the Thirteenth Doctor's. He's one of those characters like Vinder and Bel whose story was woven into the whole season of Flux, and I was always happy to see the guy when he showed up. In fact I was happy to see all of them. Flux had some fun, likeable characters and for once they weren't all from 21st century England. 

My top three Thirteenth Doctor episodes:

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1. Eve of the Daleks (7)
2. The Power of the Doctor (7)
3. The Vanquishers (7)

Two of the specials made the list! I have to be honest, Fugitive of the Judoon was my number #2 right until the last minute, but it feels kind of tainted by the Timeless Child twist now, so I've decided to swap it with The Power of the Doctor. Placing the Flux finale at #3 is perhaps a controversial choice, but I liked seeing the three Doctors running around, being Doctory. In fact we got a bit of that in Power of the Doctor as well, with the holograms.

And on the other side of the scale:


Bottom three Thirteenth Doctor episodes:

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29. Can You Hear Me? (5)
30. Legend of the Sea Devils (5)
31. Orphan 55 (5)

I feel like I've typed "These episodes aren't bad, they're just my least favourite" a few times in my season reviews lately. These episodes, on the other hand, are pretty bad. But Can You Hear Me? had a cool animation in it, so it gets to escape last place at least. Legend of the Sea Devils is the rare episode of modern Who where the production let it down more than the script (though the script helped). And Orphan 55 is Orphan 55.


Next time on Doctor Who:

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What do I want from the RTD2 era? I guess what I really want is more of what I've liked in the past, except different, and better. And with a less harsh sounding version of the theme. It'll be nice if they can at least skip the farting aliens this time.

This seems to be an even bigger reboot than when Chris Chibnall took over, with Bad Wolf Productions taking over from the BBC and getting a huge cash boost from Disney. I'm not sure what a more expensive Doctor Who would look like, seeing as it already looks great, but it'll be interesting to see what this series can be when it's not so restrained by its budget.

I already know that RTD and David Tennant are up to the job, and I'm pretty sure they won't be throwing out the continuity. Ncuti Gatwa is a bit of a question mark for me, but question marks are Doctor Who's style and I'm curious to see what he's like. Presumably not a copy of Ten Fourteen, considering that he's coming right after him. Only a year to wait before we find out.

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NEXT EPISODE

Okay, I'm done with Doctor Who for the year, unless there's a surprise Christmas special. Next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 19: The Wheel of Fire. Four episodes left.

If you've got any thoughts about the Thirteenth Doctor's era of Doctor Who you want to share, you're welcome to use the comment box below.