Doctor Who The Hell Cares Anymore

****Warning: The following contains spoilers for Jodie Whittaker’s run of Doctor Who. Reader discretion is advised****

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of posts where I pontificated on the possibility of a female Doctor and, while I understood the backlash surrounding the character’s gender swap, I considered it the show’s only possible move.

By the time Moffat announced he was leaving the show, Doctor Who had devolved into a paint-by-numbers soap opera with worn-down concepts. Characters were flat and one-dimensional, consequences were nonexistent, and the show was slowly rending itself apart with retcon after retcon after retcon.

I didn’t want The Doctor to be a woman because of representation, I just thought this was an excellent opportunity for the show to be reinvigorated.

I was excited for the chance to start over. It had been so long since I actually wanted to watch Who. Moffat’s flagrant disrespect for his predecessors and the intelligence of his audience had driven me nearly to the breaking point.

Chibnail would breathe new life into this stale show.

So…..how is Chibnail’s era of Doctor Who?

If you thought constantly bringing characters back from the dead and undoing series cannon for jokes is bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Princess!

Because we’re taken’ that bullshit and dialing it up to 13, baby!

Not only are we supposed to believe that The Doctor’s first incarnation was a girl—

Yeah, not only was she a girl in her first incarnation…..

SHE’S NOT EVEN A TIME LORD!!!

According to series 12, The Doctor was a little girl that fell out of a portal and was experimented on so Time Lords could develop regeneration. Uh huh. They are seriously suggesting The Doctor’s first form was a female.

It wasn’t enough that The Doctor is a woman now--oh, no–we now have to go back in time and rewrite the entire frigging series so we can show how woke we are. I’m not going to lie, Doctor Who has always been a bit preachy, but are you kidding me? Are you actually kidding me? 

The question I cannot get an answer to is why? Why did The Doctor have to be a woman in previous incarnations? Why did they have to spit on Hartnell’s Doctor, on all the years that came before? Why is it not enough that she’s a woman now?

You know what makes this even worse?

It’s not even an original story. 

The entire premise is lifted directly from a Doomsday comic.

Originally known as “The Ultimate”, Doomsday was born in prehistoric times on Krypton, long before the humanoid Kryptonian race gained dominance over the planet about 250,000 years ago. It was at that time a violent, hellish world, where only the absolute strongest of creatures could survive.^[4][5] In a cruel experiment involving evolution, intended to create the perfect living being, the alien scientist Bertron released a humanoid infant (born in vitro in a lab) onto the surface of the planet, where he was promptly killed by the harsh environment. The baby’s remains were collected and used to clone a stronger version. This process was repeated over and over for decades as a form of accelerated natural evolution- Wikipedia 

Uncanny, wouldn’t you say?

The Doctor—the most infamous Time Lord in all of Gallifrey—isn’t even a Time Lord.

Doctor Who has taken many a dump on its own lore, but this….this.…

This is like finding out Harry Potter wasn’t actually a wizard but a house elf that was enchanted to look human.

This creates so many problems I can’t even list all of them or this post will be as long as War and Peace.  Here’s a link if you’re interested in some of the major plot holes this revelation has created.

I once thought that the constant rotating door of writers of this show would ensure its survival. With new voices being brought in, new show-runners taking the show in unique directions, it would be revitalized but this isn’t the case. From what I can tell from Moffat and Chibnail’s eras, the head writers simply have too much ego.

They want their run to be the definitive era of Who and they don’t care if they have to destroy all the hard work of previous generations to do it.

Moffat retconned the destruction of Gallifrey, completely undercutting all the character development The Doctor went through during Davie’s era. Now, upon watching series 1-7, the scenes where The Doctor talks about being the last don’t land with nearly as much impact because we know he isn’t. Or wasn’t.

Chibnail, in his turn, has destroyed all the emotional tension of Moffat’s era surrounding The Doctor’s death because now we know he (she, they, whatever) was never actually in any danger to begin with because The Doctor is immortal! 

Oh…and I guess River’s ultimate sacrifice was completely meaningless as well.

Come to think of it, doesn’t this mean that every person—every single solitary person—that has ever died for The Doctor died in vain?

This suddenly got a lot worse didn’t it?

The offenses didn’t start here. Chibnail gave us perhaps the most boring incarnation of The Doctor ever created, a bloated Tardis crew with no real character development or intrigue, lackluster stories as well as preachy messages so on the nose they make you sneeze.

The show has become so mired with contention Antiques Roadshow beat the season finale in the ratings.

Let me repeat that: Antiques freaking Roadshow beat Doctor Who in the ratings. 

Simple: People stopped caring.

Now that the novelty of The Doctor being a woman has worn off there is nothing to drive people to this show.

I don’t even blame political correctness as many are wont to do.

I blame laziness and ego.

You can’t save a bland story by tacking on a “save muh planet” message onto it. It doesn’t matter if your cast is diverse if they are underdeveloped planks of wood. Nobody cares if The Doctor is a woman if she’s annoying and doesn’t bring a new spin on the character. She’s not even The Doctor. She isn’t funny or clever. She’s like a side-character in her own TV show, clever when it’s convenient and utterly useless when it’s not. Super inspiring guys!

Ratings are in free-fall.

The fanbase in the United States is basically nonexistent.

But they refuse to listen to any manner of critique, choosing the same path as many creators are these days and blaming the fanbase for not liking their product.

If you don’t like Doctor Who in its current state, it isn’t because the writing is bad, it’s because you’re a bad person.

You are an alt-right troll that doesn’t like progress.

I thought Chibnail’s era of Doctor Who would be a breath of fresh air, but it’s more like a fart; a loud, smelly fart right in our faces.

No doubt there are people who will bend over backwards to defend the changes to the cannon. For whatever reason that appears to be an unavoidable reality with this show. It doesn’t matter how many dumb decisions are made, people will always clammer to defend it with paper-thin arguments that should win them a gold metal for mental gymnastics.

I’ll leave them to it.

I give up on this show.

For good this time.

I just don’t care anymore.