Hey. It's been four years. Did you miss me?

Let me start by stressing that I am the worlds biggest Doctor Who apologist. I have seen every single episode ever broadcast, most of them at least twice, including reconstructions of all of the lost episodes. I adore every single era of the show, each for its own reasons. There are very few stories that I have no desire to ever watch again (I'm looking at you, Sleep No More and Orphan 55). I can find the positive in watching virtually any story, from An Unearthly Child right up through The Reality War. Certainly there are some eras I might prefer over others. I wouldn't go so far as to say they are bad (except, again, Orphan 55), but I can comfortably say that perhaps some are less to my taste than others. And let's be honest - Doctor Who is the SNL of science fiction shows. It is always "currently bad", it was always better back when so and so was the Doctor or so and so was the producer/showrunner, and it was also "currently bad" back when that previous era was airing. So here we are.

Anyway, before I can coherantly express my thoughts about the current RTD2 era of the show, I have to talk about the previous Chibnall era. When he took over the show, viewership had dwindled considerably from the heights of the David Tennant and Matt Smith global phenomenon. The reasons for that are many, and very few of them in my opinion have to do with the quality of the show itself, but that is neither here nor there. When Peter Capaldi left as the Doctor, and Steven Moffat left as showrunner, Chris Chibnal was faced with a very real problem on how to revitalize the show. His pitch, it seems, was to take big swings and really shake things up. He cast the first female Doctor. He took what had been largely a skiffy fantasy show and made a giant tonal shift in the direction of hard science fiction. He made the express decision to go a full season with no returning villains or monsters. He replaced the distinctive symphonic bombast of Murray Gold with the electronica sound of Segun Akinola, marking the biggest shift in musical style since Tom Baker's final season when Peter Howell shook up the audio landscape with his heavily synthesized scores. Visually, the cinematography in the Chibnall era took on an entirely new look very distinct from the previous eras. Character-wise, Chibnall replaced the single companion with an entire group for the first time since Peter Davison's very crowded TARDIS crew in the 1980's. Any one of those things would have been a big change, but put them all together and you have a show that was virtually unrecognizable from its previous incarnation. The transition from Peter Capaldi's final story The Doctor Falls to Jodie Whittaker's first story The Woman Who Fell to Earth is not unlike a car cruising down the freeway at full speed, and then suddenly dropping the transmission into reverse. It wasn't just a change of pace, it was a wholesale destruction of what was there before and a replacement with an entirely new transmission and engine to drive the show forward. Jarring is not quite the word.

As I say, it was a big swing. And if it had connected, then Chibnall would have been the hero. Unfortunately not only did it not connect, but by the time course corrections started to be made the situation was complicated by the arrival of a global pandemic that completely knocked the wind out of its sails.

And that brings us up to RTD2. While everyone was in lockdown, Russel T Davies started talking to David Tennant and Catherine Tate about the good old days and wouldn't it be fun to do it again. A few drinks later, and it evolved into "well, why COULDN'T we do it again....?" And hey, look, the good people at the BBC were certainly not going to say no when the powerhouses from the modern golden age of the show offered to come back for the 60th. I don't blame them.

The general problem I have with the current era of the show, though, is that at this point RTD seems to be focused only on three things:
1. The Shocking Reveal
2. The Nostalgic Hit
3. The Mystery Box

Nowhere in there is the compelling desire to tell a good story with interesting characters.

And so what have we gotten in the past two years? Let's tally it up.

Whittaker regenerates into Tennant - The Shocking Reveal and The Nostalgic Hit
Donna Noble - The Nostalgic Hit
A cameo by Wilf, his last screen appearance - The Nostalgic Hit
Beep the Meep - a deep cut Nostalgic Hit
The Toymaker - a slightly less deep cut Nostalgic Hit
Bigeneration - The Shocking Reveal
Ruby's Mother - The Mystery Box
Mrs. Flood - The Mystery Box, with a side of the Nostalgic Hit with her recognizably wearing costumes from previous companions
Susan Twist - The Mystery Box
Sutekh - The Shocking Reveal
Earth Destroyed on May 24th 2025 - The Mystery Box
Conrad - The Shocking Reveal
Susan Foreman - The Nostalgic Hit
The Rani - The Shocking Reveal, The Nostalgic Hit, and the Mystery Box all rolled up in one.
Omega - The Nostalgic Hit
Poppy - The Mystery Box and The Shocking Reveal
Jodie Whittaker shows up - The Nostalgic Hit
Gatwa regenerates into Billie Piper - The Shocking Reveal and The Nostalgic Hit

I am sure there are more I have forgotten, but you get my point.

And any of these can be great in the service of an interesting story well told. But RTD doesn't seem to be interested in that. In the entire 15th Doctor era there is only one story, 73 Yards, that I enjoy unambiguously from start to finish. It is a clever idea, a fresh story that is never predictable in its execution and is genuinely creepy throughout. I can't even think of a close second among the 18 stories in the 15th Doctor era. 

But the rest? Certainly enjoyable to varying degrees on their own terms. I love Ncuti Gatwa as an actor, and I love the joy and exuberance he brought to the role of the Doctor. But the Doctor is supposed to be very clever, and to solve problems in clever ways, but it seems like in the majority of these stories it is not actually the Doctor who solves the problems. If the problem even gets solved at all. 

Worse, all of the characters seem to be broad stereotypes instead of fully fleshed out protagonists and villains. 

When Sutekh is pulled out of nowhere to suddenly be the Big Bad, it's not like RTD had a really interesting Sutekh story he wanted to tell. He just wanted a Shocking Reveal and a Nostalgic Hit, so we get about fifteen minutes of a CGI Egyptian Dog Monster as a resolution to the Susan Twist Mystery Box. And at the same time, the Ruby's Mother Mystery Box is resolved in a wholly unsatisfying way. 

When RTD brings back the Rani, it's not that he had an interesting Rani story to tell. He just wanted that Shocking Reveal and Nostalgic Hit, resolving the Mrs. Flood Mystery Box. Her overarching plot strung across the sixteen preceeding stories makes no sense, nor does her perpetual breaking of the fourth wall.

When RTD brings back Omega, it's not becuase he had an interesting Omega story to tell. he just wanted that Shocking Reveal and Nostalgic Hit. Here he is, the original Time Lord, the central threat of the very first Multi-Doctor story, and he is reduced to a cheap CGI monster slowly coming through a portal for a few minutes before being summarily dismissed. 

And when Gatwa regenerates into Billie Piper, it is literally just RTD repeating himself from two years earlier with another Shocking Regeneration Reveal. I do not for a minute believe that Piper has signed on to play the Doctor across multiple new seasons (should they be commissioned). It seems inevitable that, much like David Tennant, she will feature in one big Event storyline to hook in viewers before the real regeneration happens. 

Which is a shame, because I think Piper would make an EXCELLENT Doctor. 

On top of all that, my other problem with this current era is that RTD has seemingly lost the ability to convey a social message deftly and with subtlety. Doctor Who has always been a progressive show, back from the very beginning. It was "woke" decades before "woke" was a thing, and has always advocated for social justice, kindness, and diversity. It is not without its missteps (I'm looking at you, Talons of Weng Chiang), but at its core it is ever and always a leftist show with a leftist agenda. Which is good by me, I'm a card-carying bleeding heart liberal, but I recognize it for what it is. Where in the past the show has woven its messages into the context of the story being told, with a heavy emphasis on "show don't tell", in the RTD2 era there is no longer anything even vaguely resembling subtext. There is only text. Right out of the gate we get "Davros is not in a wheelchair, and retroactively was never in a wheelchair, because saying people in wheelchairs are evil is bad." Where before the Doctor might have an empassioned monologue that underlines the thesis of the story, now the Doctor just gives a short speech that says, "Racism is bad, m'kay?". And then he cries. It's like Russel T Davies has lost all of the tools in his toolbox except the sledgehammer. It's a real shame.

Twenty years ago RTD brought back Doctor Who with fresh ideas, interesting stories, and great characters. When he brought back villains, it was judiciously and with the backing of story worthy of their return. He was in his early 40's, and was hungry to take a show he had loved in his youth and bring it into the twenty first century. You know what we need now, in my opinion? Some young and hungry screenwriter, who loved the David Tennant era as a teenager, and who has a fresh vision for Doctor Who in this new age of AI and globalism. Someone interested in telling new stories, with new villains, and who isn't trapped in a deadly spiral of nostalgia. 

But anyway, yeah. I love Doctor Who. I even love the current era of Doctor Who, no matter how much I might complain about the parts that just don't speak to me anymore. I am also old and crusty, and not anywhere near the target audience. I look forward to Gen Z or Gen Alpha or whoever to come along and take my beloved show on new adventures while they leave me entirely behind in the dustbin of history. Nothing would delight me more. Mostly I hope that Reality War is not the last episode of Doctor Who ever, or in my lifetime. To badly quote the Tenth Doctor: I don't want it to go.