Today I am going to tell you about the greatest TV show of all time, and why its most recent season was a complete disaster. That TV show is of course, Doctor Who.
The show follows the exploits of the Doctor and their companions as they travel across time and space to protect the universe from otherworldly threats. This format gives the writers immense creative freedom. The universe is literally their sandbox. One episode can take place on a spaceship orbiting a black hole in the far future, and the next can be in Pompeii on the day before the volcano erupts. This has allowed Doctor Who to become a pioneer of science-fiction, exploring strange new nooks and crannies of the genre that could not be touched on in any other situation.
Some people attribute the poor reception of Season 11 (the most recent) to the performance of Jodie Whittaker, who is the new actress for the Doctor as of Season 11, and also the first woman to take on the role. I disagree. Jodie is an incredible actress and is perfectly suited for the role. I believe the issue lies in the writing.
Season 11 is the first with the new head writer, Chris Chibnall. When he took on the position, he hired a bunch of new writers, none of whom had any prior experience with writing science-fiction, but instead with drama and romance, to write on Doctor Who, one of the most influential pioneers of the science-fiction on modern television.
Doctor Who has always been a very cerebral show that forces you to think. It covers mindbending topics like time paradoxes and aliens whose existence you forget about as soon as they’re out of your field of view (how can you prove they don’t exist?). But behind all the spaceships and aliens, Doctor Who is, like all science-fiction, a commentary on the real world.
The point of science-fiction is to provide the audience with a story disconnected from the real world in order to provide a new perspective of the real world that trancends political bias and gets to the heart of the issue. When science-fiction is done well, the metaphor isn’t obvious at first. It’s implied more than anything, and the audience can still enjoy the story without worrying about the meaning behind it.
This, in my opinion, is exactly why Season 11 was a garbage fire. Instead spinning a story that disconnects the viewer from the real world to hint at societal issues, Season 11 makes the social issue the plot, conflict, and main point of the episode. The story, worldbuilding, and characters become secondary. Watching it was like being forcefed a poorly made cocktail of politics and time travel. Everything was shoved right in the viewer’s face, and nothing was inferred or left to interperetation. The episode that was in segregated Montgomery, Alabama was about racism. The episode that took place during a 17th century witch hunt was about sexism. Everything about the season was cut and dry and hugely disappointing for diehard fans like myself.
I have heard a lot about this show and I've heard that it is pretty good. I, however, have never gotten into it myself and don't feel as though I would enjoy it. From my understanding, Doctor Who is a character who consistently dies between seasons and/or episodes and is reborn into a new body (and thus is portrayed by a new actor each time). While this may be great to some, I feel like I would not enjoy this. I thoroughly enjoy a good movie or TV show, but one of the reasons is because the characters are built upon throughout the story, and the audience feels as though they are forming relationships with the characters. When a new actor takes over a role, it seems as though the audience has to start over with this new actor who replaced the ones that the audience has spent so much time with. Perhaps I would have a different experience if I watched the show myself but that is just how it felt to me after hearing about it. As to your comment about politics being jammed into the show, I tend to agree with you. I am all for people expressing themselves and their beliefs in any way they like. We see this all the time in Hollywood, and I in no way am advocating that people should not be allowed to do this. I do, however, feel like it has driven many people away from the entertainment industry because it seems as though there is no escape from politics these days. I completely agree with you in saying that a comment like this immediately pulls the audience away from the plot of the show that they are engaged in. So, while I value a content create's right to express themselves in these ways, I feel like these comments are really counter-productive as they tend to drive the audience away.
ReplyDeleteIn my original draft I had included more background details about how the show works that would have answered some of these questions, but I ended up cutting them out to shorten the post. Essentially, in the fiction of the show, the Doctor is an alien with the ability to live forever. The catch is that every time they are mortally injured or put into a situation where they would otherwise die, they go through a process called regeneration. Their face and personality change (and of course the actor), but the memories stay the same. These regenerations are not thrown about between episodes or anything. Usually they happen every three or four seasons in a big season finale and serve as a huge turning point for the show. I understand how the point of this could seem confusing to someone who has never seen the show, so I'll try to explain. You have to keep in mind that Doctor Who has been running for a very long time. The first episode was aired in 1963, and that original series continued until 1989, going through 26 seasons and 8 different actors of the Doctor. The show was then rebooted in 2005 with a new 9th Doctor and has continued until today, going through 11 seasons and 5 actors. Most really good shows don't last much longer than 4 or 5 seasons, and those that do tend to become boring and lose their touch. I guarantee you the tenth season of almost any other show is not the best. What has allowed Doctor Who to last so long and maintain a consistent fanbase is because of regeneration. Just before the show starts to feel boring and overdone, a new actor is brought into the main role and everything is new and interesting again. I totally agree with your comment that good TV shows have characters that form a relationship with their audience as they grow, and Doctor Who definitely has that. The change in actors often occurs at a point where the character arc of the current Doctor has reached its end, and would feel forced if it were explored any further. Yes, it is an emotional experience for the fans who have grown close to the character, but it's like any other show when a major beloved character dies. The audience moves on and gets to know the new character, and maybe they even like them better. This is actually, in my opinion, the biggest pitfall in season 11. The new writers were so focused on forcing issues into the show that they neglected to build on the characters. The first episode of the season was actually very promising because it set up some great arcs for a lot of the characters, but as the season progressed, none of the character arcs were explored at all until the finale (the only other good episode of the season). The audience never grew to care for the characters, and as a result, when the characters were in high stakes scenarios there was no tension or anything. It was just boring, because nobody had any reason to care if the characters lived or died. This is not a result of the change in actors, but rather the change in writers.
DeleteAs someone else, like Nate, who's never watched Doctor Who, I would love to hear Gabe's response to Nate's thought: How DOES the show ensure continuity of the CHARACTER while changing up the actor who plays them?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I feel you on the needless, obvious insertion of "issues" into shows. Funny connection, but Glee did that. It started out as just kind of fun and a good story. But by the middle of the second season every episode felt a bit like an after school special. While I agreed with the show's perspective on these issues, I hated feeling like it was being force-fed to me.
That is one of my biggest complaints about current tv shows. Where one second I'm watching an enjoyable show and then the next they turn into public service announcements or some take on a controversial topic in America at the time. Now I beleive shows should be able to address some of these issues, but the way they do it, in which they make their agenda extremely obvious, has to attributed to lazy writing and carelessness.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have not watched Dr. Who, I would have to agree with you and say that forcing content to support a specific agenda is one of the biggest issues in current tv shows. When producers do this, the shows themselves become devoid of all meaningful content and become boring to watch. Now, I'm not saying that the producers shouldn't be able voice their opinions, but rather they should create an enticing plot instead of formulating their content based on their opinions. By creating shows this way, I think they will become more exciting to watch because they are not mindlessly based off of polarizing issues.
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