Doctor Who: Season 11 in retrospective
Dec. 11th, 2018 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartI was excited and apprehensive about the latest season of Doctor Who in pretty much equal measure. Excited because we were finally going to get a female Doctor, and apprehensive because I wasn't particularly impressed with Chris Chibnall's earlier episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood; even granted that he wasn't responsible for the appalling Cyberwoman costume, my overall impression was pretty much "meh".
I have absolutely loved Jodie Whittaker's performance. From the moment she appeared on screen, she felt like the Doctor. Very different from Capaldi's Doctor, but no more so that he was different from Matt Smith, and not different in a way that feels gendered to me so much as the result of different showrunners having very different conceptions of who the Doctor is. For RTD, he was a Messianic figure, a powerful force for good driving out evil across the universe. Moffatt's Doctor was a lot more ambiguous; a trickster, a madman with a box, dependent on his human companions to act as his moral compass. And Chibnall's Doctor is someone who helps people. I can see the roots of all of these in classic Doctor Who; none of them feels like an invalid interpretation of the character, but they're very different.
I think this change in the focus on the character of the Doctor also drives change in the stories each showrunner chooses to tell. RTD was all about grand, epic stories where the Doctor faced down existential threats to the Earth or even the whole universe. Moffatt wanted to tell tricky, complicated stories which used time travel as a plot point and not just a Macguffin. And Chibnall seems to be telling stories on a smaller scale, where sometimes the Doctor isn't even facing an antagonist, just helping people solve a problem.
Given how much I loved Moffatt's storytelling, I was surprised to find myself also loving these smaller stories, and I think my favourite episodes of the season have been the ones where the SF element has basically been a backdrop - 'Rosa', 'The Tsuranga Conundrum', 'Demons of the Punjab'. My least favourite was 'The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos', which was the one that attempted to do a grand epic SF finale and didn't quite seem to get it right.
Generally, I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I've loved the stories, and pleasantly unsurprised by how much I've loved the Doctor. And it's been great to see a much more diverse cast and a more diverse team of writers and directors. I'm just sorry that there won't be a new series until 2020 (and I wish I didn't suspect that this was because the BBC wouldn't renew a series with A Gurl in the lead role until they'd seen the ratings). Still, at least there's the New Year's Day special to come, and we'll always have iPlayer.
I have absolutely loved Jodie Whittaker's performance. From the moment she appeared on screen, she felt like the Doctor. Very different from Capaldi's Doctor, but no more so that he was different from Matt Smith, and not different in a way that feels gendered to me so much as the result of different showrunners having very different conceptions of who the Doctor is. For RTD, he was a Messianic figure, a powerful force for good driving out evil across the universe. Moffatt's Doctor was a lot more ambiguous; a trickster, a madman with a box, dependent on his human companions to act as his moral compass. And Chibnall's Doctor is someone who helps people. I can see the roots of all of these in classic Doctor Who; none of them feels like an invalid interpretation of the character, but they're very different.
I think this change in the focus on the character of the Doctor also drives change in the stories each showrunner chooses to tell. RTD was all about grand, epic stories where the Doctor faced down existential threats to the Earth or even the whole universe. Moffatt wanted to tell tricky, complicated stories which used time travel as a plot point and not just a Macguffin. And Chibnall seems to be telling stories on a smaller scale, where sometimes the Doctor isn't even facing an antagonist, just helping people solve a problem.
Given how much I loved Moffatt's storytelling, I was surprised to find myself also loving these smaller stories, and I think my favourite episodes of the season have been the ones where the SF element has basically been a backdrop - 'Rosa', 'The Tsuranga Conundrum', 'Demons of the Punjab'. My least favourite was 'The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos', which was the one that attempted to do a grand epic SF finale and didn't quite seem to get it right.
Generally, I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I've loved the stories, and pleasantly unsurprised by how much I've loved the Doctor. And it's been great to see a much more diverse cast and a more diverse team of writers and directors. I'm just sorry that there won't be a new series until 2020 (and I wish I didn't suspect that this was because the BBC wouldn't renew a series with A Gurl in the lead role until they'd seen the ratings). Still, at least there's the New Year's Day special to come, and we'll always have iPlayer.
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Date: 2018-12-12 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 12:39 pm (UTC)I want a 'travel hopefully' icon from the last episode!
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Date: 2018-12-12 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 07:47 pm (UTC)