Why I’m Done-ish With Doctor Who

the alternate 8th Doctor

I think it was some time in 1984 that a friend of mine told us about a science fiction show he saw on PBS called Doctor Who that he said was really good. At the time it aired when my family was eating dinner and the VCR wasn’t an option, so it took some time before I finally got to see an episode, and longer before I was able to watch it regularly, when TV schedules and eating schedules didn’t overlap. Once I got to see it regularly, I was in. It was a great show, the TARDIS was cool, and he had a robot dog for awhile. K9 is still my favorite Companion.

I also liked how malleable a show it was, even for sci-fi. That’s one of the reasons I’m such a huge fan of the genre: sci-fi can be or imitate any other fiction and when done well does so seamlessly. I’m one of the few people who likes the episode “Black Orchid” because even though the only sci-fi element were the time travelers, most of whom were from space, doing a simple and strange murder mystery didn’t feel out of place to me. Then they just went back to dealing with the usual cyborgs, monsters, and near godlike beings as usual. Each serial was a different adventure, with continuity coming from being the same people going to the next adventure or transitioning to new characters and new Doctors. Regeneration also kept the Doctor himself fresh.

I was disappointed when it ended, especially since my local PBS station ended on “Dragonfire”, Ace’s debut and Mel’s departure, when I knew more episodes were being made in the UK. Even that I only saw in a final marathon of Seventh Doctor episodes. I enjoyed the TV movie, but because Fox did their usual whammy on sci-fi (I’m surprised The Orville made it past season one), it didn’t go further than that.

Then the new series was announced. AND it would air on The Sci-Fi Channel, meaning I’d actually be able to watch it! I was looking forward to seeing what this new Doctor and new adventure would be like. “Disappointed” is too strong a word given how we use it, but on a technical level it’s not wrong, either. There was a certain charm lost in the hour long non-serials with a bigger budget and seasonal story arcs. Still, I enjoyed enough of it to keep watching until events kept me away from seeing past Peter Capaldi’s debut episode, catching the occasional moment but not getting to see the full thing. I finally got to start watching again with Jodie Whitaker’s debut, and that’s when the real disappointment again, and as I predicted what I’ve heard about the specials right up to the most recent one, “The Church On Ruby Road”, I’m kind of done. NO, NOT BECAUSE OF THE GAY DOCTOR, although the way it’s been done can join the list of reasons why I never got into New Who and why Neo Who, as Harbo Wholmes called it in this morning’s video, was the fork that got stuck in me. All I’ve seen is the club scene and the line about a “long, hot summer” with Harry Houdini. Not that this series cares he was married to a woman because the show created to teach history to kids now can’t even get Isaac Newton’s race right because politics. However, as I’ll be trying to make clear, it’s been a long time coming…and yet I’m still not all the way out of this franchise. Grab a seat and a decent monitor, folks. We’re going to be awhile and sorry if this posts late tonight. It’s been one of those days.

I miss the serialized format

There are three things that got me into serials. Mighty Mouse & The Great Space Chase, which apparently I need to find a new copy of to embed, Flash Gordon–both from Filmation, and Doctor Who. Once I started seeing the serial segments of Matinee At The Bijoux I really got into them. A good serial has interesting cliffhangers that make you want to come back and see how the hero gets out of the situation. Commercial breaks where I would do the same thing helped me decide to become a storyteller so you can imagine the influence when you had a whole week to come up with scenarios for how the hero gets out of it.

The seasonal story arcs started by Russell T. Davies just isn’t the same. Before he got the show on TV, and I’m still convinced he brought back Doctor Who so he could get Torchwood sold (no, I’m not saying he’s a fake Whovian), the official website was preparing their own restart in coordination with Cosgrove Hall, who does the lost episode animated recreations and were also responsible for Danger Mouse and Count Duckula, two shows that aired on Nickelodeon stateside. “Scream Of The Shalka” was in serial format and I was a fan of that. Richard E. Grant also made a good Doctor and didn’t have to kill off the Time Lords or make the Doctor superultraspecial to form the mystery people keep insisting the Doctor needs. We’ll come back to those, but the half-hour serials were one of the reasons I got into the original show and their absence here is disappointing. Speaking of the Time Lords…

Did we really need to keep killing off the Time Lords?

The Ninth Doctor comes off a war between the Time Lords and the Daleks. Maybe they heard the Time Lords tried to stop their creation that one time or maybe the Daleks just wanted to wipe out all of history as well. We don’t know what started the war, but we know what finished it: The Doctor. This gave him a bit of PTSD and drama about being the last one until the Master showed up. Then Steven Moffat gave us The War Doctor out of necessity because Eccleston had such a terrible time in his one season (which he opens up about more and more and the more he says the more I understand why it took Big Finish to bring him back) in a story that ends with the Doctors saving the Time Lords by shunting them to another dimension…though we also know one particular time locked battle they can escape from under the right circumstances.

So the Time Lords were back, proving to be as much of an annoyance as ever…but only because they’re almost evil now. Most of that may be Rassilon’s fault, as they apparently let him out to take charge during the War, but they weren’t the same mild antagonists that also could help the Doctor as much as cause him grief, even when the Doctor finally found Gallifrey. Not that any of that mattered because thanks to Chris Chibnall the Master killed them all off to turn them into mock Cybermen under his control. So now the Time Lords are gone again. I can see why Davies likes him.

I liked the idea of getting to visit the Doctor’s home planet now and then to see what they’re up to and learn more about the Doctor and his upbringing. What people don’t understand about the “mystery of the Doctor”….wait, that should be its own section, and first I want to talk about my biggest issue with New Who.

The God Doctor

You know who wasn’t excited to see David Tennant come back with Davies? Me. One of Davies’ problems was that the Doctor now had to be the specialist of beings, a practical god. Forget the “Time Lord Victorious”, what about when the Master had him strapped to a chair after turning him into a house elf from the Harry Potter franchise? Martha becomes his disciple, getting the whole world to pray think about the Doctor at the same time to break the Master’s spell, like the modern idea that gods need people’s prayers to stay immortal and powerful. I didn’t hate Ten, mind you, though what I saw of Fourteen is rather lame. Granted I haven’t seen enough for a final judgement and I have other issues with his existence that will come up soon.

This wasn’t the only attempt to make the Doctor the most special person ever. In the “Lungburrow” novel, the author decided to make his own take on the “Cartmel Master Plan” and make the Doctor the previously unknown third member of the reason the Time Lords have time travel, known simply as “the Other”, and that Susan was actually HIS granddaughter. This is not necessarily what Andrew Cartmel had in mind and the book answers more mysteries than it creates, which is one of the reasons I don’t like it (the other being that “loom” nonsense but that’s neither here nor there). And of course there’s the “Timeless Child”, which is the source of a whole host of issues, the one important to this category being that the Doctor is now the being responsible for regeneration itself. Interesting how everyone rejected “I’m half human on my mother’s side”, a lame plot idea just to explain why the Master couldn’t access the Doctor’s Eye Of Harmony, but everybody is just fine with all this stuff. There are other reasons they hate the Timeless Child, but being the most important person ever is not one I see brought up.

The Doctor doesn’t have to be the most special being in the universe. He can simply be what he always was: a guy who got bored, wanted to see the universe, gained a new perspective from two Earthlings, and ended up helping people all around time and space, picking up a few enemies along the way. That used to be just fine until the Master Plan, which started the trend of…

The Doctor needs that sense of mystery

As Classic Who went on we learned more about the Doctor…or did we? We learned about Gallifrey and the Time Lords, and the society they created. We learned how the TARDIS works…if “dimensionally transcendental” qualifies as an explanation. The Doctor talked about his childhood once or twice. Otherwise, what do we know about the Doctor? If Susan being “the Other”‘s granddaughter is nonsense, then she’s the Doctor’s. Was he married? What happened to Susan’s parents, the Doctor’s kids and possibly in-laws? Why was it just an old man and a teenage girl who claimed responsibility for naming TARDISes once running around the universe until the schoolteachers were kidnapped? There’s still a ton we don’t know about the Doctor himself, though as a series goes on it’s not surprising that we would learn more about his personal lore…if this show stuck to it’s own continuity. They didn’t have a good lore bible…or we have TWO Loch Ness Monsters in Scotland.

That didn’t stop Cartmel from introducing his “Master Plan” of adding mystery to the Doctor. The plan mainly consisted of him saying “I’m not just another Time Lord” once as if that couldn’t be written off and it was more like a “Master Suggestion” than a full on plan, but that’s where the ball rolled. “Scream Of The Shalka” tried it by having the Doctor and an action figure sized Master trapped in a robot version of his body tied to the TARDIS console as the mystery to be solved as they were on the run from the Time Lords…again. The Time War added mystery to the Doctor as well. Then there’s “the question that can never be answered”, playing on the name of the show, and of course the Timeless Child now making us wonder where the Doctor came from. I think we take the name of this show way too seriously. Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room…

The Timeless Child

I’m the only one who seems to be bothered with yet another mystery or making the Doctor the most important person ever, but that’s only two of this revelation’s problems. The one most critics brings up is how it hurts the original Doctor we the audience met. The First Doctor was so important, being the first one to live along enough to gain wisdom with his knowledge, that even the others treated him with respect. Even Twelve in his own way had nothing but respect for his original self, and a lot of that comes to what William Hartnell brought to the role, making the character popular all over the UK. Saying he wasn’t the first takes away from his position in the franchise. We don’t even know that the little black girl who dropped into the scientist’s rock garden was the first incarnation but she kicked Hartnell out of his place in continuity (or what passes for it) and that’s a shame.

I’m not sure what else to say because pretty much everybody hates the Timeless Child, or at least hates THE DOCTOR being the Timeless Child. As an explanation for where regeneration comes from, it does track given the Time Lords’ history, but being the Doctor feels wrong on many levels. Of course Davies, who was brought in to “save the franchise”, doubled down on the one thing universally panned by everyone in the fandom regardless of political leanings. I don’t think this is how you bring people together. There’s also the issue that…

Does this ever get old?

The whole numbering system is fubared now!

The War Doctor was a product of necessity, but that’s not even when it started. You can start the blame at the Meta Crisis Doctor, where Ten used his regeneration energy to clone his severed hand, cut off during the latter stage of his regeneration so it grew back, into a full human Doctor. (Where did the human part come from if we’re ignoring “half human on my mother’s side”?) Of course that didn’t matter until Eleven noted that this counted as one of his 13 lives so Moffat could come up with a less stupid way and now confusing situation to explain why the show could go on after the next actor left. Now the First Doctor wasn’t the first Doctor and we don’t know how many regenerations the Timeless Child went through under experimentation or if little black girl was even her first form. Time Lords regeneration at different age groups each time. Nucti could be Doctor 5435 1/2 right now and we wouldn’t know it or know where the fraction comes in. No, I don’t care about that one scene in “The Brain Of Morbius” because that was a mistake on the writer’s part to put in an Easter Egg with the stage crew. Nobody else cares, either. This one addition to add mystery back to the Doctor screwed up so much of what little Who lore has stayed consistent. Then there’s the whole “bigeneration” thing that’s so stupid I’m not even going to mention it again. It’s not just New/Neo Who’s Doctor that I’m bothered with. Even his Companions suffer in this series. For example…

Don’t be the black one in interracial romances!

I seem to be the only person who has noticed this. Every time a white and black character on this show…and in the spinoff shows…get together, the black person dies more often than not. There are exceptions. Mickey just got tossed into another dimension but dodged the bullet by marrying another black person after Rose dumped him. Even Mickey’s gay alternate universe counterpart (according to a deleted scene), Ricky, was dating a white dude before he was killed by the Cybexmen. Martha’s love for the Doctor was unrequited, so she got to live long enough to only marry her own (I’m being harsh on purpose) by marrying Mickey. I’m convinced they’re the only reason they lived. Donna’s first fiance was evil but I’m still listing him and warning her current husband to keep an eye out. Having a Doctor there won’t save you.

It didn’t save Jimmy Pink. It didn’t save Graham’s wife, Grace. Ianto over on Torchwood didn’t know the Doctor so it wouldn’t have helped his Cyberwoman girlfriend. Sarah Jane’s fiance thanks to the Trickster? Also dead. It’s not a hard pattern but outside of Donna’s current husband, show me an interracial romance that doesn’t end with a dead person of color. Seriously, I want to know if there is one. Interspecies is fine. Marry a cat man or have a lesbian romance with a lizard woman and nobody cared. Your own species with a melanin variation? PREPARE TO DIE!

Not that New Who Companions fare any better

Let’s go over the list, shall we?

• Rose Tyler: playing musical dimensions, she at least gets to live out Davies’ slashfic by ending up with the Metacrisis Doctor after treating Mickey like garbage
• Mickey Smith: also plays musical dimensions until ending up with Martha, having lost one girlfriend to the Doctor and picked up his fangirl as a consolation prize
• Captain Jack Harkness: Only here to push a different show, learns immortality isn’t all its cracked up to be (has there EVER been a happy good guy/girl immortal in fiction?), ends up on Torchwood until the actor playing him flashes his junk at everyone
• Adam Mitchell: At least it’s his fault he got kicked off, unable to live a normal life because the Doctor left the brain door able to be opened by a finger snap. Finally got redeemed in the comics after going mostly evil until meeting the Master and learning what evil actually is.
• Martha Jones: All that was two Doctors over two seasons and some cameos. Martha ran around with a crush on a dude who…you know, I never really understood why Ten took her along given his treatment of her sometimes, unless he was just that clueless she was into him. Finally found the guts to walk away (you go, Martha!)…to be Mickey’s consolation prize. Then again, getting to marry the hottest of the New Who Companions after she gained a strong sense of self isn’t a bad thing. You go, Mickey!
• Donna Noble: In one of the most dramatic sendoffs, undone in the biggest handwave since Tony Stark’s comic reveal as Iron Man, Donna becomes an almost Time Lord, only be forced to lose her memories and all the good that came of it or else she’d die. Until she wouldn’t because “male presenting Time Lords” are all idiots or something.
• Amy and Rory: After a bunch of one-shot Companions, including a cat burglar the Doctor gives a flying bus as if to prove Ten WAS an idiot after all, Eleven disrupted their lives a lot. First he ruins little Amy’s childhood by telling her he’s come back to take her for a ride and overshoot by over a decade. There’s the whole love triangle with Rory that only got resolved when he was erased from time only to come back as an Auton Centurion who waited thousands of years for her to come out of a metal box, becoming the most badass simp ever in the process! Then when she finally chooses her man, they both end up trapped in another point in history thanks to the overused Weeping Angels. I didn’t even get into the near divorce, the origin of River Song, and the other stuff they got into. They were some of my favorite New Who Companions but they really got screwed over.
• Clara Oswald: After her own specialist person ever arc as “The Impossible Girl”, she dies trying to be the Doctor, get saved…sort of, and is now running around time and space with another immortal who hates her immortality (see what I mean?) until she finally will be forced to take her place in her own death or something. That’s after losing her boyfriend for being the black part of their interracial romance.
• Bill Potts: After my time and I don’t hear a lot about her outside of being lesbian, obnoxious, and dead except for that time she was resurrected briefly as a glass person.

I can’t imagine Thirteen’s crew fared any better, with Graham also losing his wife to being the black one and seeing that scene where the Doctor can’t be sympathetic about his worry about his cancer returning, thus showing she’s somehow MORE socially repressed than I am! No wonder nobody liked her Doctor. Remember when Adric’s tragic passing and whatever the hell finally happened to Peri was the worst long term Companions had to deal with? Even Nyssa stayed behind to cure space cancer or whatever after she was cured. So whatever Tales From The TARDIS told you, not every Companion has a happy ending. Speaking of the TARDIS…

I never really liked ANY of the New Who consoles

This is totally a me thing, but what the TV movie started, a complete alteration of the classic console room (the last one in Classic Who, introduced in “The Five Doctors” is still my favorite), has led to some butt ugly TARDIS console rooms. Davies’s “coral TARDIS” only lost worst TARDIS design because of Chris Chibnall’s death trap that gives you cookies if you survive walking around in it. Steven Moffat’s second TARDIS was okay, especially after Capaldi’s Doctor was given some decoration (something missing after the First Doctor’s TARDIS, where everyone else got a coat rack if that). It’s my favorite of the New Who TARDIS rooms if only because it doesn’t look like he slapped the part together from a junkyard anymore. I guess losing Amy and Rory had that upside.

And now I finally have an opening on this site to discuss the Neo Who TARDIS. I see they’ve done up the place. I don’t like it. If Davies’ first TARDIS is the coral TARDIS, I’m calling this the walkway TARDIS. So many walkways, and not much else. 15+ is getting a jukebox. That’s it. One jukebox. At least the coatrack was useful. At least the Doctor finally bought a decent lightbulb again, but even that they overdid. I’ve seen a better TARDIS design by a fan. Try to find the Interocitor TARDIS if you can. (Named for the defunct website; the TARIS itself wasn’t a This Island Earth reference.) Now that’s a TARDIS!

Okay, one last complaint and I’ll get to the “ish”.

I know it doesn’t fit the category. Nothing I had did and I just really like this scene.

All the “modern” writing issues

Look, I don’t usually go on about “them durn Ess Jay Double Yous” because activist writers are symptoms of a larger problem that started when studios stopped caring about proper adaptations and let anyone do whatever they wanted. So they took scripts they couldn’t sell, changed a few names to make it sound like the thing they’re adapting, and off they went. Now I don’t even think they put that much effort, and just make whatever they want. Marvel Studios now doesn’t want you if you know anything about Marvel Comics. Not every complaint in this catch-all is politics mind you. I have noticed that they kill off the US President or take pop shots at Trump that one time when the Doctor thought letting an army of mutated spiders suffocate in a panic room was kinder than shooting them. Most of is “current day” worldviews, or what the Critical Drinker refers to as “The Message”. Yes, Classic Who had a few “message” episodes but most of them were weak to crap to “The Happiness Patrol”, which is an undiscovered level below crap. So some of you may want to jump to the next category unless you have an open mind and actually listen to a complaint before jumping off the deep end.

Sex is an odd topic in this series to begin with. Classic Doctor Who never showed the Doctor in any kind of romance no matter what the fanshippers think was going on because it was a show for kids, something I don’t think it is anymore but this is taking too long as it is. One of the reasons I question the show that was made to teach kids science and history is no longer for kids at all is the sexuality. I remember hearing that fans were annoyed by Eighth kissing Grace. Before then the only hints the Doctor had a sex drive is the existence of a granddaughter, presuming a son or daughter, and one brief flirtation with an Aztec woman, all from the First Doctor. None of the later Doctors in Classic Who were shown to be interested in anyone.

Cut to New Who, where Nine and Ten both end up romancing a barely legal shop girl, when Ten wasn’t playing with Madame Pompadour or cozying up to a queen that might or might not be a Zygon. Eleven straight up got married. Companions having romances is fine. While there’s some question as to whether or not Ian and Barbara became a couple, at least on TV, we’ve seen Companions leave because they fell in love with someone on their journey. Apparently the fanship crowd shipped Tegan and Nyssa…White Guardian knows why…and they hinted at that in Tales From The TARDIS, but that’s nothing on all the romances in New Who. Rose was with Mickey, then Adam, then the Metacrisis Doctor. Mickey ended up with Martha. Then you have Amy and Rory, River Song, and a suddenly gay Harry Houdini to go with the suddenly gay Doctor, two regenerations worth apparently. Not surprising that the guy behind a gay sex drama would add sex to something he’s working on. Captain Jack alone would plug into anything with a corresponding port, and I’m not even sure THAT’S a limitation.

As far as the trans Rose 2, I’m going by clips I’ve seen from defenders, detractors, and official sources alike. Okay, Rose mark two is a man that became a woman. Fine, whatever. I don’t know if the “deadnaming” scene had anything to do with her connecting to Beep when Sharon just had to go “oh, he’s so cute and I’ll knock the head off of anyone who says otherwise”, but there’s a compilation of mom, Fourteen And Up, and grandma going on about how beautiful she is (though apparently she can’t act according to Donna) as if they’re trying to convince themselves. I’m still wondering how long the Doctor was gone to have a son/daughter that age. Between this and the gay Doctors I’m wondering if Davies realized Moffat had more gay characters in his run than Davies did and he’s overcompensating. Then again, this is the guy who made Davros walk because he was worried about showing a disabled character being evil. Story and history are two things they don’t seem to care about beyond “hey, remember the Celestial Toymaker”? At least Moffat’s gay characters were just there and not forced into a spotlight to show how queer they are as if that’s the only memorable thing about them. There was the trans horse gag that raises waaaaaaayyyyy too many questions about horses in the Whoniverse, but that’s a whole other discussion. That’s Rose the second’s only defining trait: being trans, and the Doctor isn’t just gay now, he’s flamboyantly gay because that’s the only gay person they know how to write. See also Captain Jack again, and even he wasn’t ballet dancing in a nightclub in a skirt test pattern and talking about getting fingered to a cop who probably didn’t care.

Then if all of this bothers you, why talk about the show and why say you’re “done-ish”?

Because I have a site that discusses storytelling and this is a show I grew up with and one of my writing inspirations. I even made a fan comic with one of my friends where I created my own Eighth Doctor because there was no TV movie yet. My friend, not the one who introduced us to this show, came up with the Companion, a Native American hoping his travels would lead to a way to save his tribe from the “Trail Of Tears”. We’re American, after all. That logo at the top? It may be lame now, but as a teen I created it as part of that comic, as well as one where K9 joined an exploration vessel in hopes of finding the Doctor. I also liked the K9 series from Australia and it’s too bad it doesn’t appear to be canon to its British counterparts like Torchwood, which I didn’t like, and The Sarah Jane Adventures, which I’d like to see more of than I have.

I can always go back and watch the original series  thanks to a few episodes I have on DVD and the Classic Series being available on Tubi (minus K9’s other pilot, K9 And Company, which I also have on DVD thanks to a box set as well as the unrelated Peter Cushing movies) and streaming on a few different ad-sponsored free streaming sites. There’s the novels I haven’t read (I’m not into the Wilderness Years period as it also decided to ignore the original target audience to make a darker Seven), the Big Finish audio dramas, comics in both Classic and New Who that were better done than the show, and probably a bunch of other fan works. I still love this franchise. It’s one of my top favorite fictions, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to like every version. I’ve had the same issue with Transformers and the DC Universe.

Every now and then something in the new material sneaks in with something I like, or made something recent enough that I still see hope if good writers who care about stories and continuing a character’s story instead of sending a message or telling the writer’s/showrunner’s story by altering established characters and lore so they feel better about themselves by “contributing” even if the contribution is unwelcome, then yelling at the fans for not heaping the praise they think they deserve. I have no interest in Neo Who and New Who I’m lukewarm to, but I still love Classic Who and will just go back to the stories I like, that inspired me to become a writer. Almost 5000 words and over an hour past my intended post time means I must care about this franchise or I wouldn’t even bother with any of this. I’m not writing off the franchise, just the Disney+ version I can’t see anyway (why does BBC America still exist?) and wouldn’t want to if I could. The Doctor Who I love is harder to find, but at least for now you don’t need a time machine to do so.