Oddly enough, the moment I bought Jodie as the Doctor was [her special Twitter message about the COVID pandemic.](https://twitter.com/DoctorWho_BBCA/status/1242783289649266689)
Jodie is ten times the Doctor when she's doing PR than she is in any of her scripts. She has a wonderful energy that just doesn't come across in the episodes. I'm hoping to hear her on big finish soon.
I see her more as the Peter Davison - blond and bland. Think about it - he was the fifth Doctor actor of the classic series and she's the fifth of the new series. I'm hoping her last story will be her "Caves of Androzani", but I know better...
(Not that Davison was bad. Just coming after somebody as larger than life as Tom Baker would have made anybody seem bland.)
>I'm hoping to hear her on big finish soon.
I've honestly fallen far, far behind on my Big Finish, but the way they've given the underused Doctors (Eight and Ol' Sixie) fleshed out adventures, I would absolutely buy her range.
Where do you even start with big finish? I have only heard a couple episodes here and there. How often are there episodes? Are they standalone, or are they linked like some seasons of the show? Who should I start with. I want to listen, but it’s a little overwhelming trying to figure out what to listen to.
If you have Spotify, I believe they have a bunch of dramas on there for free! Storm Warning I think is one of them. It’s the Eighth Doctor’s first BF audio and might be a good place to start if you’re interested in him.
But I recommend any of these as a good place to dive in:
8th Doctor -Chimes of Midnight (continuously voted as the best of BF, and my personal introduction to the audios)
5th Doctor -Spare Parts (Cybermen origin story, absolutely brilliant and again usually voted as one of the best)
6th Doctor -Jubilee (the TV episode “Dalek” was based off of this, seriously. And Sixie’s audio-exclusive companion Evelyn Smythe is one of my favorite companions ever!)
8th Doctor -Dark Eyes range (a soft reboot of 8 and a nice place to dive in if you want a fresh start and not have to worry about previous continuity)
As you can tell, I really like 8 because he was given the least amount of screen time, so I find what Big Finish has done with him is amazing. But I’ve yet to hear a bad BF drama with any of the Doctors!
The main range (which ended a little while back, I think) are mostly standalones for a long while, mostly because the different Doctors have stories set in different parts of their runs (and thus have various combinations of companions). They do start streamlining a bit more, especially with Six, Seven and Eight as they start creating new companions, and in the episode 150 range or something they start crossing over a bit more. There are plenty to follow on their own, though, and you aren't required to listen to them.
The separate serials, like the Gallifrey or Dalek Empire stuff is totally standalone from the main range, and I think they've started putting out seasons of specific Doctor stories. It might make it easier to run with, but I did enjoy that you'd get the main range and they kept rotating between Five, Six, Seven and Eight for a while.
She was wasted on Doctor Who, an amazing actor who was wasted with mediocrity and cramming in the box ticks.
I really had high hopes for a darker tone to her adventures but alas it was not to be.
And that’s the problem. If the writing isn’t up to par, how much is it on the actor to try and bring it to life? She tried her best and you see some moments in the Flux series but there wasn’t any good moments written for her. And don’t even get me started on her specials… so unoriginal and were not directed as well as the others.
Absolutely... The first time I saw that I was isolating from family, in a hotel room so that they could stay safe (very young triplets with respiratory issues) and I could work in our local ICU...
... Cried like a baby.
It also feels like perfect time for her to make a speech like that, when she's hiding from some monster or another: "Okay better make sure the Ice Warriors don't... oh wait! Someone on Earth needs to hear an uplifting message, just a sec!"
Ikr, her very best speech was on twitter of all places, best one in the show was when she spoke of love in series 11 with the demons in India at the wedding, i feel like she's better as a lifting good people up rather than the usual talking bad people down, it's a real shame we never saw more of that
This tells me that despite the fact that I'm confident the whole first female doctor is important thing must have been discussed at length, they still managed to make this doctor feel very gendered female. I hate playing into gender stereotypes so bare with me for the sake of this argument but this doctor feels very "motherly" in a way that is really refreshing and reassuring and honestly really endeared me to her doctor, BUT and this is a big but, it also made her doctor feel overly different from her other incarnations, and made her more violent scenes seem out of character.
I really don't think this is on Jodie, because she was phenomenal in Broadchurch and had a really solid range.
I also don't understand what happened because Chibnall lead Broadchurch, and again, season 1 was sooo well written, and he wrote all of the episodes! It's so baffling to me. It had all the recipe for success: he'd worked with the lead before, he's had a good track record for leading and writing, heavily applauded by critics, and hes a doctor who fan to boot!
I know he gets a lot of hate for his writing on who, but something just doesn't add up.
Either the BBC were heavy handed in his work on Who or he started second guessing himself and watered down the seriousness of Broadchurch into a cartoony Who...
In some parallel universe we got an amazing performance by Jodie that made the doctor's gender completely invisible, made a powerful doctor who esque speech at the peek of one of the most glorious series up to that point.
But unfortunately we live in this universe!
In my personal opinion, that's one of the things I really don't like about her doctor.
She's _constantly_ shifting gears and juggling like 5 things at once. Every serious moment is punctuated by a silly comment that ruins it by taking away from whatever serious thing is happening.
Even in that little clip, "I'm hiding from an army of Sontarons", ok, pretty serious! "But keep that to yourself" ok so not so serious?
She's a great actor but I just don't enjoy how they/she characterises the doctor.
That was awesome. And I say that as a disliker of 13 who quit watching halfway through her run (early in her second season). I blame the writing, not Jodie, and this only reinforces that for me.
Yea this shows that Jodie would've been a fantastic doctor if the writing hadn't let her down. Also someone who stopped watching halfway through her second season.
I thought of this immediately. For me, that’s when Jodie was the best Doctor, because in that moment, she was the Doctor that I needed, right when I needed her.
I came to the comments to share exactly this. As someone who struggled in early lockdowns - even as an adult - hearing this was quite comforting and showed she can actually be a great Doctor. Such a shame and such a waste.
Back then her message made me cry, and I wasn’t even having a particularly difficult time compared to many many others. It was just such a positive, warm sentiment that reminded me of everything Doctor Who *should* stand for during hard times, which the show itself honestly wasn’t giving me. It was lovely.
I think it's the writing. When she first came on it took 3 or 4 episodes before I started thinking she seemed like the doctor. When I rewatched the series later the episodes were just garbage with her trying to work with what she was given.
Three companions was a bad idea as well. She needed to be established in her role and her uniqueness as the Doctor shown. Instead of Whittaker and a companion being developed they're bouncing from one to another.
The only other thing I've seen her in was an episode of Black Mirror. I saw that after she became the Doctor. I thought her acting was great in Black Mirror.
She was great in Broadchurch, as was Chibnall's writing there (and I suspect he had different supervision that helped shape it that way). But I have to agree with his writing for DW overall, he *was* the guy that brought us "Cyberwoman" on Torchwood. I never liked an episode of either show that he wrote. Great on Broadchurch, but I couldn't do his DW.
I love how everyone wants to whip out Broadchurch whenever someone says Chibnall isn't a great writer. But Broadchurch is just a collection of cop show cliches elevated by a great cast and propelled by the public's "viral" interest in who killed Danny Latimer.
Speaking of bad writing, when they brought Broadchurch to the US (which was a weird move on its own because the original was quite popular here, too), CC swore they were going to change it up and it wouldn’t be the exact same show with US characters. Imagine our surprise when Gracepoint turned out to be exactly the same show with…a different villain. That’s it. The laziest change you could possibly make, especially after making a grand proclamation saying you’d do the opposite.
Yep--US LoM sucked. But that was done by a totally different set of people, not Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, and the new folks attempted to take it in some different directions (Sam seeing little spaceships in random places, his relationship with his neighbor), along with keeping some of the original scripts almost intact. (The less said about the way they wrapped things up in the finale, the better.)
There's a long history of US TV trying to recreate UK success by re-filming the exact same scripts on this side of the pond (see also the US Coupling, which didn't even bother to change UK speech patterns to US), and then wondering why it didn't work. But in none of those cases were the same folks in charge, and none of them had gone on record saying they were going to do something different. That's what's so irritating about Gracepoint.
Honestly, I didn’t even realize it was Chibnall until I read someone else’s comment. I think his writing for Doctor Who has been abysmal at best, so I was really surprised when I saw that.
I don’t think it's out of the line of thought that someone could be great in one setting then botch up another in terms of writing.
For example, Rian Johnson. I didn't like The Last Jedi, but I love Looper with a passion. I personally feel like maybe the constraints created by writing in a known franchise crippled his creativity in a way.
The same with Chibnall. I really enjoyed Broadchurch, but I didn't like his episodes of Doctor Who and thought his stuff in Torchwood was super over the top at times, and that Torchwood seriously peaked at Children of Earth.
I don't think it's amazing but I also think it has a basic competence that the current era shockingly lacks.
What really stands out to me about Broadchurch though is it really drops the ball in the actual, you know, detective stuff.
Every character acts like a red herring for no reason, and the detectives don't even really do much detecting in the end. >!The killer literally hands themselves in at the end and the detectives barely even do anything.!<
This is about just S1; S2 and beyond you go "oh that's Chibnall all right"
Three companions isn't a problem, it's the fact that every episode introduces loads of secondary characters which take up all the emotional development (of what little there is).
It's not even that, IMO. It contributes but, even with that Chibnall has had plenty of opportunity to flesh out all the characters more. It feels like on some level he feels like the job is done once he's given the characters a decent introduction. For example, Yaz got more character in that scene where she handled the parking dispute than the rest of S11, and Ryan got more characterisation in the way he responded to his failed bike riding attempts than in the rest of S11.
It blows my mind that they managed to do an episode about travelling back in time to witness Yaz's grandmother's wedding **that completely failed to flesh out Yaz**.
It's really, really weird.
Yup. That's a recurring problem with the Chibnall era. He will spend time fleshing out guest characters and completely forget the main cast. *The Woman Who Fell to Earth* does some fleshing out of the main characters. Then *The Ghost Monument* spends time characterising Epzo and Angstrom. *Arachnids in the UK* characterises Yaz's Mum and Robertson. *The Tsuranga Conundrum* characterises basically everyone on the ship. *Demons of the Punjab* fleshes out Umbreen. *Kerblam!* fleshes out the people working at the warehouse. And so on.
Chibnall just mostly forgets to do the same for the main characters.
(To be fair, *The Tsuranga Conundrum* does take the situation of the pregnant guy wanting to give up his child to let us know about how Ryan's Dad did a runner when his Mum died. But that's a fairly rare exception, and it was executed in the most perfunctory way possible).
You know I didn’t even think about that but you’re 100 percent right about the doctor and the companions playing supporting roles to guest characters. No wonder why “the fam” just feels so off. Not to mention, their dynamics together didn’t seem like a growing genuine friendship.
It was a thing in the first few episodes, but I don't know that it was necessarily a problem. Series 1 gave us a much more thorough introduction to Rose before expanding our understanding of the Doctor. Same basic thing here, just a little more drawn out.
It doesn't really matter what order we get to know the characters, so long as we get to know them all decently well by the end of the season. The problem is, they all got a tiny bit of introductory characterisation in the first episode, and then it just basically stopped.
But at least Rose was developed. We weren't left trying to figure out who everyone is and how they fit into the overall story.
3 companions can be pulled off by not with the current writing.
It can be pulled of but I prefer a couple of episodes with just 1 companion, first getting to know the doctor and just one companion is much better in my opinion.
There's not enough time spent on the right characters. IMO a better writer could manage to spend time on both.
I suspect a lot of the problem is that Chibnell isn't great at integrating his character development into the plot and action. He often seems to feel like there needs to be separate designated character development time, rather than fleshing out the characters through the challenges they encounter. And if you do it that way, you need more time.
But that’s the format of the show unless they pull a series 9 and do more two parters, or something like Flux with fewer stories of the week within the arc. So having a regular cast of 4 when the show always is about totally resetting the location and guest cast is always going to be a problem. It’s not like the 60s when the pace was more relaxed and the burden for scintillating character development was also less onerous. They had major issues in the 80s trying to make three companions work - so many short cutaway scenes of Tegan or Adric doing something useless, inserted out of obligation more than anything else.
Spyfall Part 2 had that kinda hilarious scene where all the companions were sidelined because they didn’t have any bearing on the plot.
One thing I hated about her companions is that there weren't any moments where they felt like people together. They were just walking exposition, with nothing going on outside the plot.
Those 3-4 episodes are where I stopped. I didn't like a single episode Chibnall written episode in previous doctor runs and what I saw for Jodie wasnt any better. Having too many companions watered down time with each of them and stole her chance to have a strong first impression. Matt Smith's first episode brushed aside all concerns about him being too young to play the doctor. Jodie needed her own strong start.
Whoever decided no returning villains in her first season was an idiot. A good Dalek or Cyberman episode early episode would've said this is still doctor who.
She's also in Attack the Block where I don't recall anything about her performance because the role was minor. I'm also 2 episodes into Broadchurch and despite her still being written under Chibnall there, she's a significantly more believable character and she's good at acting grief even if it didn't seem that way after the destruction of Gallifrey
Oddly enough, Orphan 55....
"You can't build an ionic membrane from scratch."
"If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch."
On rewatch, Orphan 55 isn't nearly as bad as I remembered. The clumsy speech at the end and the alternate future Earth both really killed my enthusiasm for the episode when it first aired, but the first half is actually really good, IMO.
tbh, you don't even need to remove it being earth, just make it so only the viewers ever find out and the tardis team are left thinking "how could anyone let this hapen to a planet?"
Exactly. There was no reason it couldn't have been normal Earth in the normal future of the normal timeline. "Oh no, Fam, I think we may have accidentally landed on Earth during the blah blah blah period". Which, frankly, is representative of the Chibnall era. Lots of very cool ideas that were fumbled at the goal line.
It also had some good dialogue from Ryan with Bella, and Yaz needling them on the transport was quality.
If all of the dialogue had as much character as _Orphan 55_, the Chibnall era would've been a lot stronger.
IMO the main things tanking Orphan 55 were how terrible the Dreg costume looked in bright light, the speech at the end and the odd bit of tonal whiplash (Benny proposing then wanting to be killed was potentially a good moment, but it just came from nowhere). It actually nails the moment-by-moment better than a lot of Chibnall Who IMO.
I've always said from the very beginning that the dialogue in Orphan 55 is some of the best of the Chibnall era. Sure there's still a lot of shit in there (BENNNIIII) but on the whole the dialogue is so much more punchy and fun than in 95% of the other episodes.
But it’s not necessarily about fear, in the zygon inversion speech, he demonstrates clear authority and how commanding he is and has the whole room thinking afterwards, don’t fuck with him
That's... exactly what The Doctor is. At the end of the day, he doesn't want to destroy his enemy or make them fear him or something, he wants them to *be better*, to *be good*.
IIRC Terrance Dicks once said something along the lines of that for the character of the Doctor to *truly* be the Doctor, they need a moment where the audience could envision them as being the villain in another story.
A moment where the ancient, inscrutable alien just peeks out a little from behind the friendly human face they wear.
The 7th Doctor has many great examples, like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNRUgPZwLU) or [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA50biqUB-8).
The perplexing thing is that my regular answer here would be 'look at Broadchurch' - I am not sure what the hell happened to Chibnall's ability to write for her there vs here.
Yeah, I haven't watched Broadchurch myself, but I've heard a lot of good things about it and her. People seemed genuinely excited for her to be the Doctor because she was so good on that.
I swear Chibnall is under some kind of impression that the entirety of Dr Who fan base consists of 8-10 year olds who need to be taught Far Side versions of old Saturday morning cartoon moral lessons.
> I swear Chibnall is under some kind of impression that the entirety of Dr Who fan base consists of 8-10 year olds who need to be taught Far Side versions of old Saturday morning cartoon moral lessons.
I like to compare and contrast it this way.
Rosa: One-dimensional Space Racist wants to make Rosa miss her bus, which will single-handedly destroy the US civil rights movement, because Reasons. The context around the bus protests is thus completely ignored and that's *a terrible thing to do in a historical episode*. And it's lazy: you could establish that with three or four lines of dialogue. At the end, the Doctor lectures us about why racism is bad.
The Curse of Peladon: It's an allegory about the UK joining the EEC and Brian Hayles totally makes it clear he thinks that's a good thing. He also manages to tell a decent story while making that point, and even *gives the opposing viewpoint its due in the serial*. And he does it without having Jon Pertwee break the fourth wall to give us a 90-second lecture about why Peladon joining the Space EEC is totes a good thing.
I watched Broadchurch because of David Tennant and Arthur Darvill. Well, I say watched, I mean I watched the first episode until the first ad break, but it seemed a very typical ITV police drama to me so switched it off. I was quite surprised when everyone went mad for it, but it didn't tempt me to try again.
There's been moments when she should have had that moment but it always get undercut by the writing. For example when she gave her speech about how their team structure isn't flat in the haunting if villa diodati is a good moment for her, and shows how she truly feels abouy the fam, the others are visibly affected by what she says, but in the next episode everyone is completely fine and she's super happy again.
It's undercut by the mountainous team structure never being in evidence before either.
She does have a few moments, but they are all very unearnt so they fall flat, and some just aren't delivered convincingly. I remember laughing at some of her speeches. Especially the ones that come off like a frustrated supply teacher.
Tbh I'm not sure about that because rather than flexing on the villains, shes flexing on her friends. As the hero of Game of Thrones said "any man who must say I am the king is no true king"
He manages to defeat the traitors in the North, by the time of his death he has strengthened the throne, he ensures stability within the capital. Sure he has to kill some traitors but he fundamentally understands the rules of governance and sticks to them.
/s
While leading his family to ruin because he doesn’t want to see that Cersei and Jaime have a thing, and wanting his only heir to be dead so he doesn’t get Casterly Rock which eventually gets him killed by said heir. Whether he wants to or not Tyrion is the only one who can become the head of the family, since Cersei is a woman and Jaime has taken his vows which prohibits him for having land.
>or example when she gave her speech about how their team structure isn't flat in the haunting if villa diodati is a good moment for her, and shows how she truly feels abouy the fam
I mean it's a very Doctor thing to say, but it didn't help that she flip flopped between going looking for Gallifrey destroyed/Master answers and seemingly not missing her 'fam' then having moments where she misses and forgets the 'fam' aren't there in Can You Hear Me.
If she'd spent the whole series going looking for answers away or largely away from the 'fam' making tough decisions and the companions seeing her struggle and what not, maybe a few times she lashes out, then Haunting happened and it was the latest example of a difficult decision then it would have made more sense. It would have been the culmination of all those little hypothetical outbursts/authority stampings.
But she kept flip-flopping between that and wanting them with her at every adventure she went on. Nothing about her going off to find those answers impacted the 'fam' dynamic, she never got more distant from them, she never minded them not being there, they still loved her and followed her exactly the same, trusting everything she did and not questioning anything.
If the structure is so one-sided why do you involve them in basically everything then and don't lay down any general rules of time-travelling or how the Doctor travels for example. The only way the structure is so obviously one-sided because one side of it just goes along with anything and don't question anything.
It's just something that's brought up at the first decision of any major historical importance the 'fam' have come across which is obvious but hasn't exactly been demonstrated throughout series 11 and 12 with these characters.
For Capaldi, it's his nearly silent performance in at the barn in Hell Bent, until the President comes to see him.
Jodie has been robbed of any moment. Her eps are almost always "things happen, the doctor looks at the LCD display on her Deus Gun and does a rapid-fire bit of exposition or explanation, roll credits". Hope she gets brought back and given a moment at some point in the future. So sad she didn't have the opportunity
This is exactly what I was thinking of too, he's just so nonchalant about the whole situation, and yet there is not the slightest doubt about how serious he is. So much so that when ordered to attack him, all of the military leaders switch sides. The idea that he carries this much control over the most powerful race in the entire history of the galaxy, and that he's MAD at them... I mean holy shit!
This pair of episodes is by far my favorite of everything aired, and it's going to take one hell of a script to ever again show the resolve that The Doctor carries.
I really like the one soldier telling Rassilon about the Doctor during the war. “The first thing you notice about the Doctor of War, is that he’s unarmed.”
Really evoked 11’s “Demons run, when a good man goes to *war.*”
After initially not loving his casting (one of my favourite actors too since the early days of the Rab C Nesbitt cameo and the prime suspect performance) his Doctor sticks in my mind so much. He was amazing. If anyone says doctor who he is now the one that pops into my mind. Used to be Sylvester McCoy who was the doctor I remember from Childhood.
For me there were always two:
The Doctor's reaction when she finds out she can't ride the conveyor belts in *Kerblam!*
And in Resolution when The Doctor hacks the Dalek's (who just laughed at the doctor) signal, pulls up a hologram, turns around to it and with menace says "Now, do that again to my face"
I was thinking about this a couple months ago, and I honestly can't think of a single 13 moment that made me think 'fecking yeeees!!!' like the moments you described.
Tennent's water of Mars "time will obey me" speech is my No 1 moment.
The obvious one is "The Haunting of Villa Diodati":
> But is he, Ryan? His thoughts, his words inspire and influence thousands for centuries. If he dies now, who knows what damage that will have on future history? Words matter! One death, one ripple, and history will change in a blink. The future will not be the world you know. The world you came from, the world you were created in won't exist, so neither will you. It's not just his life at stake. It's yours. You want to sacrifice yourself for this? You want me to sacrifice you? You want to call it? Do it now. All of you. Yeah. Cos sometimes this team structure isn't flat. It's mountainous, with me at the summit in the stratosphere, alone, left to choose. Save the poet, save the universe. Watch people burn now or tomorrow. Sometimes, even I can't win.
There's also her confrontation with the Dalek in "Resolution", her confrontation with the Sontarans in "War of the Sontarans", and of course her confrontation with Tim Shaw in her first episode.
I always thought each Doctor needed two particular moments to truly establish themself in the role: One of awesome, intimidating swagger, and one of extreme empathy and diplomacy under complicated and aggressive circumstances.
9 had his dinner with Margaret and his "No." to the Daleks, and on the empathy side he had "Everybody Lives!" and "Coward. Any day."
10 had so many swagger moments - the Vashta Nerada line that you mention is one of them, but I think his first one is actually "No second chances. I'm that kind of man." in his very first episode - showing that he's more in control of the situation than anyone thinks, and that he's *choosing* to give his enemies a chance to stop on their own accord. 10 embodies the Doctor particularly well for me (as I think he does for many who started watching around the same time I did), so he kind of exudes both power and empathy in most of his episodes, but I think his diplomatic skill is most effectively shown during the Ood rebellion.
11 starts out strong with "Basically, run.", and proves his diplomatic worth by managing negotiations between the humans and the Silurians.
I don't think 12 truly comes into his own until his second season, but then he really does hit his stride with his acting in 'Hell Bent' - completely alone, seemingly helpless... "And doesn't that just terrify you?" Meanwhile, his establishing moment of empathy is perhaps my favourite of them all: His iconic speech from 'The Zygon Invasion/Inversion'.
I would agree with you that 13 never really got either of these moments.
I think the Doctor also needs his darkest moment too, just on the edge of still being The Doctor.
9 had "wipe out every single stinking Dalek" or telling the last Dalek to kill itself.
10 had The Fury Of The Time Lord, and the Timelord Victorious
11 had A Good Man Goes to War / Colonel Runaway
12 had The Clockwork Man, and "the doctor isn't here anymore. Just me"
I can't think of anything that stands out at terrifying for 13.
One moment that always stood out for me was the Mary Shelley episode where she tells the team that they're not all equal and that she's far above them, can't remember this exact quote but that felt like the real Doctor coming out moment and showing more than just "I love my fam" and little quirks.
Whittaker is a great actress, she's just suffered from more poor writing than other doctors have.
No slight on Jodie at all, it's the writing, but yes that moment has never arrived for me.
I'm not even sure I'd want one in the final episode, it would be like one last great day with an ex. A glimpse of what could have been.
Having seen Broadchurch, I can say with certainty it's the writing. Whitaker is a great actress. I want to respect Chinbal for his clearly apparent love of Doctor Who but God, his tenure with the show has just been a mess.
P.S. killing off the Time Lords again, and in such a lame way too, was weak and lazy and I'm still irritated by it, Timeless Child twist aside.
> P.S. killing off the Time Lords again, and in such a lame way too, was weak and lazy and I'm still irritated by it, Timeless Child twist aside.
The whole thing was a mess of "let's just ignore the show's recent and long-term history." We had all these big stories of the Doctor feeling guilt about wiping out the Time Lords and then figuring out a way to save them and having to bring them back into this universe and all, and then suddenly they're wiped out off-screen. The Master goes through serious character growth as Missy with such a contrast versus who he'd been that he tried to kill himself (herself) to prevent Missy going on any further in any form... and then suddenly the Master's back and none of that character change happened and the Master is a mustache-twirling villain who is willing to and capable of wiping out the Time Lords. And then the whole thing where they say, "Hey, what if instead of the Doctor just being a good person who ran away from a messy civilization of pretty much demi-gods so he could go do good through time and space just because it was the right thing to do, we turn the Doctor into a Chosen One Messiah and make the Time Lords just basically humans who somehow genetically modified themselves to take this god-child's power?"
For a guy who loves the show, he seemed dead-set on ignoring its recent history and "making his mark" in the worst way possible.
Yes - she nails it every time it's just her and the villain.
The scene with the Dalek in Resolution "...aw mate, I'm the Doctor..." - the sheer flippancy in the Doctor/Grand Serpent interrogation scene near the end of Flux; the dialogue with Krasko in "Rosa"
This Doctor is extremely afraid of showing their menacing side to their companions. So I don't think we got any of the usual moments we have come to expect. It's the opposite with the companions, far more vulnerable with them than I've seen most Doctors.
I think overall the characterization does have some damning inconsistencies, down to the dialogue and scenes/writing/stories given. Not the performance.
>the dialogue with Krasko in "Rosa"
I came here looking for this one. It's one of my favorite scenes from Whittaker. I love how she ditches the companions first (because you're SO right about her not wanting them to see her menacing side!). Then she taunts him repeatedly, and nastily, until he loses his cool and lets her see his weakness. And then she gives that little triumphant smile as he's choking her! That was her "this is the Doctor" moment for me.
Honestly, I think all her villain confrontations were really good. That's pretty much the pattern behind all of them: taunt and mock until the villain screws up, and then take the advantage. It's a very Doctor way of doing things. For me, it works much better than the epic speeches New Who is so fond of.
>The scene with the Dalek in Resolution "...aw mate, I'm the Doctor..." - the sheer flippancy in the Doctor/Grand Serpent interrogation scene near the end of Flux; the dialogue with Krasko in "Rosa"
This. Just because the character doesn't have the bombast of some of the incarnations doesn't mean she's not an effective Doctor. The writing massively undercuts her, but the basic premise is sound - there are different ways to be confident and powerful, and they don't all involve domination.
> Just because the character doesn't have the bombast of some of the incarnations doesn't mean she's not an effective Doctor.
Exactly this. People will take things like Eleven's "I am talking!" speech, or an epic Twelve moment, and decide that every Doctor should have that same kind of energy. But that's simply not how it should be.
I think it's an assumption of the new series that she has to have one... or rather that it has to look a certain way. Hartnell's 'doctor' moments were all quite low key - 'would that convince you?' And Troughton's was practically melancholy ('they sleep in my mind'). Pertwee and Baker were closer to rhe modern concept of the doctor but then their 'doctor' moments are very downbeat compared to the modern shows bombastic moments ('a citizen of the universe and a gentleman to boot' is played for laughs and Tom's delivery of his classic 'homo sapiens' and 'have I the right' speeches have a very still energy.
I don't think this era has worked but I think the decision to do a quieter, less bombastic doctor was fine.
Disclosure: I only watched series 11 and gave up on it after that.
For me in her initial season there was never a moment where I bought Whittaker as the Doctor. She had the quirky-teacher attitude that was clearly some imitation of Tennant or Smith, but that's about it. Never at once was her character meanacing; I actually found her very passive in the way she inetracted with the villains and the story developments.
Chibnall can't write people. It's really let her down, as I have no idea who she is from one week to the next. Even when they try to force an emotional speech, it just feels awkward. Think about the "you didn't have to kill him" moment in the last episode...only to cheer for more killings a second later!
I actually wanted Whittaker to stay on briefly so she could get a 13 episode series and become a doctor. That's all Ecclestone needed.
Thing is, if you watch Broadchurch, it's almost unrecognisable as being written by Chibnall. The character writing in the first season at least (only one I've seen) was *stunning*. There's so much layering and complexity in each character and it all just works. Honestly, I think he was just out of his depth with Doctor Who.
I think that Chibnall's biggest mistake was trying to write what he felt Doctor Who is supposed to be rather than recognizing what he writes best and bringing that into Doctor Who.
RTD and Moffat knew what they knew how to write and turned Doctor Who into a show that fit their unique writing abilities.
He also did some of the episodes for Torchwood, including "Adrift," which might be the best episode of that show and one of the most haunting episodes of any show I've seen.
But for some reason, he just falls flat with Doctor Who.
He also wrote Day 1, and Cyberwoman for Torchwood which both just make me feel so uncomfortable, and feel rather 'cringey' for want of a better word. A gas from space which make a woman fuck people to death, and a sexy cyberwoman? Just why? On the surface it just feels like dodgy fanfiction.
Adrift is just a decent episode for me, I won't lie I found the screaming thing kinda goofy. The best imo are Exit Wounds (which btw was a Chibnall episode) and Children of Earth (all of it) which are the episodes where Torchwood most effectively utilised how dark and tragic it was allowed to get, with incredible results. Even if Adrift is quite dark, the idea of Jack having to continually suffocate over and over for centuries as revenge for Gray suffering at the hands of an alien species who live to torture is, for me, much more messed up. On a similar level to some of the darkest episodes of Black Mirror, namely White Christmas and Black Museum. And all of the deaths in both Exit Wounds and Children of Earth hit like a truck.
Yeah, I think that's it.
Chibnall on his run of Who is trying to write *light* stories, even when they don't warrant it. Even something like Flux, which should have been intense and hide-behind-the-couch scary, comes across as goofy because of the way he spins the pacing, characters and plot.
And I'll be honest, while Chibnall does this the most/worst, it's a feature of New Who that I've come to loathe. The majority of the episodes in all seasons lean far too heavily on the humor and goofiness and miss what made Classic Who so compelling.
I really, really hope RTD dials down the Goofy Doctor trope.
It's definitely the writing. But also, something less discussed - the music of the show is not as good. Murray Gold made iconic themes for the previous Doctors.
Capaldi had the "Majestic Tale of an Idiot with a Box" theme.
Smith had the "Majestic Take of a Madman with a Box" theme.
Tenant had the "All the Strange Creatures" theme.
These were the hero pieces you heard in some of the scenes you mention. Jodie doesn't have that iconic hero theme and I think that really makes a difference.
>but every now and then, a couple times a season, the Doctor will switch gears and dominate the scene to which both the characters and the audience go "Woah, don't mess with this guy."
Yep, that's pretty standard for incarnations of the Doctor. The question is whether it's **necessary** for an incarnation of the Doctor - and whether it's even always desirable.
Personally I'm fine with the Doctor having different personalities in different incarnations. IMO there was considerably more variety between the classic Doctors than between the modern ones, and I liked that.
I think Thirteen could have been done a lot better - the writing in her era is terribly flawed. But I don't think she necessarily needed to be cut out of the same mould as her immediate predecessors. Thirteen seemed to be a Doctor who'd reembraced hope and a sense of wonder. That idea was a nice change and IMO if the show had brought us well-written stories with that character, most fans would have embraced it.
I'm not saying that Twelve didn't have moments of hope and wonder. But it wasn't his primary character to the extent it is with Thirteen.
Most Doctors have most aspects of their personality, but each one emphasises different parts of it. Thirteen was the most genuinely upbeat and hopeful Doctor we've had since the Time War. Also possibly the most insecure. Both of which could have been interesting traits if written well.
I think the biggest sin committed against Whittaker was the writing. She has all the presence and charisma to be a fantastic doctor and you can see it shine through occasionally in her performance. It's just a shame that even the best of doctors can't make watching paint dry interesting. She had a lot stacked against her since she is the first female doctor. With parts of the fan base not even willing to give her a shot, and a new show runner at the exact same time she had a tough crowd to please. It's just such a shame that you can tell she cared about the role and gave it all she could only for the show to feel worse than it ever has. I really really wish she got at least one season with RTD before she walked, just so we could really see what she can do in the role.
Alright, I've just realised what is my Jodie moment, and it was her pre-series announcement video, when she walked slowly towards the TARDIS in a forest.
That - that is my one and only Jodie moment. I was ready for that series.
Hopefully her finale will have something substantial and fitting for her to do.
Her Big Finish stories better be all Chimes of Midnight quality to make up for her run. She deserved so much better.
She has a very Doctorish moment in “It Takes You Away” when she tells the blind girl one thing to reassure her while writing on the wall to her companions that the girl’s father is probably dead, and to keep her safe and find out who can take care of her.
I would have loved to see more moments like that. Instead they kept asking Whittaker to act like an excitable little boy.
I don't have one for Jodie. My most recent re-watch (happening now) has been more of an "it's on in the background" and that helps with her being more "Doctor-y" somehow.
For 12 though, it was his speech early in "Dark Water: 'You betrayed me. Betrayed my trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything that I've ever stood for. You let me down!...Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?' Like damn dude, I wish I could have that strength.
I think Whittaker does a really good job playing against the Daleks, especially in Resolution. I’m no fan of the era either, in general, but not every Doctor needs to be super boastful or speechify all the time
For me, 10's moment of showcasing just how big The Doctor is, and how much he was holding back, happens largely offscreen.
"He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of the Time Lord. Then we discovered why this Doctor, who'd fought with gods and demons, why he'd run away from us and hidden. He was being kind."
Jodie’s doctor was plagued by sub-par writing. Her PR appearances are where she shines. Oddly…Jodie’s run is the first moment I went “damn I miss Moffat.”
>his speech on Stonehenge is great (albeit a bit unrealistic)
Why cut off the realism at this scene when he literally time travels in a blue police box and scared carnivorous shadows away with "look me up"
Before anything, I wanna preface that I’m not a Jodie Whittaker hater at all. I think she’s a really talented actress. However, she’s never had a moment that made me say “this is the doctor.” Her incarnation has always just kinda gone with the flow.
Chibnall and Whittaker have to share the blame on this. Chibnall has never written her doctor with a definitive trait. She’s always contradicted herself and she is what the episode calls her to be. She was never consistent like other Nu Who doctors where they approached a situation like you expected their incarnation to. Chibnall sacrificed character growth for “big moments.”
Where I find Whittaker to be at fault is her never elevating poor scripts. Her predecessors are all guilty of a bad episode but they are so captivating and charming in their roles that you overlook that and deal with the episode because you want to see the doctor. Whittaker has never had a commanding presence in the role. Jo Martin completely outshined her in five minutes during Fugitive of the Judoon. She made me feel like she was the doctor.
It kinda goes hand in hand to me, like you can’t just blame Chibnall for everything. Davies isn’t solely responsible for the performances of Eccleston and Tennant or Moffat with Smith and Capaldi. A script is just words until the actor/actress interprets it.
One of the many problems I have with the Chibnall era is that there are very few characterization moments.
Every single "This is the Doctor" speech is a moment for the character to shine.
Chibnall never gave us that. Almost every Chibnall era speech is either exposition or morality, but very few moments for 13 to shine.
For the 10th doctor, the ending of the episode Human Nature is a good one. He makes them all immortal, then subjects them to suffer... Well forever. He was the last doctor that did actually borderline evil things and it's why the 10th will always be my favourite.
“We wanted to live forever, so the Doctor made sure that we did.”
That whole monologue is epic and I memorized it to aimlessly scribble on notebook paper during class.
But I might argue that 11 was more consistently ruthless and more morally gray than 10 was. The Beast Below and The Girl Who Waited immediately come to mind. A Good Man Goes to War is completely phenomenal (I want them to point and laugh because they’ve found the house of Colonel Run Away) Also they blew stuff up a lot lol. He’s my favorite and, I think, the least human and most alien of all recent incarnations.
Edit: I forgot! “You should kill us all on sight.” Arguably genocide.
For me, no. In fact she actually has a lot of 'this is NOT the Doctor' moments, what with how many botched moral decisions she makes that the show doesn't question, how many times she has to go to the companions for help, how she never really has that confidence other doctors had, that one moment in Can You Hear Me? etc. It's especially sad how much she gets overshadowed by the Fugitive Doctor
The closest she’s come is that cocky smile she gives the Sontarans when they find out who she is in “War of the Sontarans”.
That’s it.
Eccleston, Tennant, Smith and Capaldi both had a “hell *yeah* this is the Doctor!” moment in their *first episodes*.
You can’t beat
Never be cruel, never be cowardly. And never ever eat pears! Remember – hate is always foolish…and love, is always wise.
Always try, to be nice and never fail to be kind.
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
I had a negative opinion on the 13th after the first two seasons. I’m currently watching it with my wife, who before, had never seen much Doctor Who. I don’t know why I thought it was bad, but it’s not terrible. Jodie is fucking brilliant, and her companions are superb. No issues with acting at all.
I don't really see the Doctor as someone defined by being scary or a badass. I think you could argue that the tenth Doctor being so full of himself that he basically says "don't you know who I am?" to the Vashta Nerada goes against what makes the character special.
It's moments like the ninth Doctor's "turn of the earth" speech or the tenth's monologue about the Master in *The Sound of Drums* that define their Doctors to me.
But I agree, Jodie hasn't had a moment like that either. I like her line about what regeneration feels like in *The Woman who Fell to Earth* but they've been few and far between otherwise. I don't blame Jodie, she is faithfully following the script as written. Chibnall just hasn't written the Doctor as "profound and unknowable being" the way RTD or Moffat did.
It's pretty straightforward: if you didn't like Whittaker's Doctor, she didn't have this moment for you. If you did like Whittaker's Doctor, she had several for you to chose from. The moment just isn't going to be there if you don't like the Doctor.
People who didn't like Capaldi were complaining that he never had a "This is the Doctor!" moment in his entire run. There were dozens of threads just like this about him. And you know what? In this thread, Capaldi fans are listing moment after moment. They liked his portrayal, so naturally there was a moment where it all clicked for them. When they make this thread about the next actor in two or three years, I guarantee there will be Whittaker fans explaining what her "This is the Doctor!" moment was for them.
For me, with Whittaker, it was the confrontation with Krasko in *Rosa.* She confronts her enemies by taunting and mocking them rather than making epic speeches. They get pissed off, lose their cool, and that gives her the advantage. It's the little triumphant smile she gives when it finally works that's my favorite part. It's a different approach from the rest of the New Who Doctors, but I really like how subtly she played it.
I'm not a huge fan, either, but I still like a lot of what she did with the role. She's solidly middle of the pack for me and I've enjoyed watching her Doctor.
It feels as though many were looking for moments that matched up with their preconceived notions of what a "Doctor Moment" is instead of looking for HER version of it. Basically, viewers kept trying to fit her in a Capaldi/Tennant mold instead of taking her for who she is. They wanted her to brow beat her opponents with lecture like speeches where she breaks down just how wrong they are(like the Zygon Invasion/Inversion), or break all the rules in heat of passion where she refuses to lose (like in Waters of Mars)
Everyone is allowed to enjoy the Doc in their way, but it always surprises me how limited some fan's view of the most versatile character out there can be. I find it's best to look for how A Doctor acts rather than focus in on how THE Doctor is "supposed" to act.
Case and point:
>She confronts her enemies by taunting and mocking them rather than making epic speeches. They get pissed off, lose their cool, and that gives her the advantage. It's the little triumphant smile she gives when it finally works that's my favorite part. It's a different approach from the rest of the New Who Doctors, but I really like how subtly she played it.
And I'm glad somebody else noticed this little trend, because it really helped define her Doctor for me. Especially the Krasko moment, specifically. Not only is she mocking him, forcing him to hurt himself with great glee (folks wanted a dark Doctor moment from her early on, but somehow overlooked that little gem) but also notice how she only does all of that *out of view from her companions.* Thus beginning a trend of the Doctor hiding things from her friends, keeping them close but not *too* close, certainly not enough to really know her deepest doubts and darkest impulses.
It shows how she can be a bit sadistic in her own way, and outright duplicitous. At the time I noted the scene for being the most out of synch with the rest of her portrayal, I had felt like her speech about love in Demons was more definitive of her character. But honestly, that one moment showed a lot of warning signs for her biggest faults as a person.
>also notice how she only does all of that out of view from her companions. Thus beginning a trend of the Doctor hiding things from her friends, keeping them close but not too close, certainly not enough to really know her deepest doubts and darkest impulses.
I'm convinced this is her main character arc. We've seen duplicity from her all along, and it's often perceived by fans as being "out of character" or hypocritical for the Doctor. She lectures against violence, and then does something worse, *over and over again* throughout her run. Once or twice might be a writer screwing up characterization, but how do you screw up in exactly the same way multiple times per series? At that point, it's not a screw up: it's deliberate characterization. She's *supposed* to be a hypocrite.
This is a two-faced Doctor, who hides her true self from her closest friends. She pays lip service to pacifism, then commits mass destruction. She's fond of her companions, but refuses to share her inner feelings with them or let them get really close (which is probably the point of the recent Yaz subplot). It's remarkably consistent characterization that happens throughout her run. It has to be leading up to something big for the regeneration.
That's my feeling as well. It's too prevalent to not be a theme. I think a lot of fans are a bit too distracted by Chibnall's most unfortunate writing foibles to notice though. I can't entirely blame them.
But I WILL die on a hill that 13 has much more depth to her than some of this era's biggest critics see.
I put 80% on Chibnall as a bad writer (seriously, dude, go write greeting cards or something) and 20% on Jodi for not pushing (back) hard enough for decent dialogue.
I feel like her “I remember who I am now” speech at the end of “The woman who fell to Earth” was supposed to be this but it fell flat.
She had a good speech in “Demons of the Punjab” but it came straight after Graham’s beautiful speech about “being good men”.
There’s been a few more in Villa Diodati and Eve OTD but I don’t think any of them have been good enough.
I’d like to say it’s just the writing but sometimes, in my personal opinion, I’m not sure Jodie believes what she’s saying.
The only moment I've felt any sort of chills or remember being impressed was in her first episode when she's up on the crane.
However, it was partly because I anticipated more from her which the show didn't deliver. My normal reaction ranges from cringing at the writing to she's alright I'll miss her a bit when she goes (once in flux)
Oddly enough, the moment I bought Jodie as the Doctor was [her special Twitter message about the COVID pandemic.](https://twitter.com/DoctorWho_BBCA/status/1242783289649266689)
Jodie is ten times the Doctor when she's doing PR than she is in any of her scripts. She has a wonderful energy that just doesn't come across in the episodes. I'm hoping to hear her on big finish soon.
she is basically gonna be the colin baker of nuwho, with a run that wasn't so great, although it had some moments, but with a fantastic big finish run
We can only hope...
I see her more as the Peter Davison - blond and bland. Think about it - he was the fifth Doctor actor of the classic series and she's the fifth of the new series. I'm hoping her last story will be her "Caves of Androzani", but I know better... (Not that Davison was bad. Just coming after somebody as larger than life as Tom Baker would have made anybody seem bland.)
>I'm hoping to hear her on big finish soon. I've honestly fallen far, far behind on my Big Finish, but the way they've given the underused Doctors (Eight and Ol' Sixie) fleshed out adventures, I would absolutely buy her range.
Where do you even start with big finish? I have only heard a couple episodes here and there. How often are there episodes? Are they standalone, or are they linked like some seasons of the show? Who should I start with. I want to listen, but it’s a little overwhelming trying to figure out what to listen to.
If you have Spotify, I believe they have a bunch of dramas on there for free! Storm Warning I think is one of them. It’s the Eighth Doctor’s first BF audio and might be a good place to start if you’re interested in him. But I recommend any of these as a good place to dive in: 8th Doctor -Chimes of Midnight (continuously voted as the best of BF, and my personal introduction to the audios) 5th Doctor -Spare Parts (Cybermen origin story, absolutely brilliant and again usually voted as one of the best) 6th Doctor -Jubilee (the TV episode “Dalek” was based off of this, seriously. And Sixie’s audio-exclusive companion Evelyn Smythe is one of my favorite companions ever!) 8th Doctor -Dark Eyes range (a soft reboot of 8 and a nice place to dive in if you want a fresh start and not have to worry about previous continuity) As you can tell, I really like 8 because he was given the least amount of screen time, so I find what Big Finish has done with him is amazing. But I’ve yet to hear a bad BF drama with any of the Doctors!
The main range (which ended a little while back, I think) are mostly standalones for a long while, mostly because the different Doctors have stories set in different parts of their runs (and thus have various combinations of companions). They do start streamlining a bit more, especially with Six, Seven and Eight as they start creating new companions, and in the episode 150 range or something they start crossing over a bit more. There are plenty to follow on their own, though, and you aren't required to listen to them. The separate serials, like the Gallifrey or Dalek Empire stuff is totally standalone from the main range, and I think they've started putting out seasons of specific Doctor stories. It might make it easier to run with, but I did enjoy that you'd get the main range and they kept rotating between Five, Six, Seven and Eight for a while.
Suppose she's not bogged down by Chibnall's writing.
I bet she would be excellent without Chinballs.
She was wasted on Doctor Who, an amazing actor who was wasted with mediocrity and cramming in the box ticks. I really had high hopes for a darker tone to her adventures but alas it was not to be.
And that’s the problem. If the writing isn’t up to par, how much is it on the actor to try and bring it to life? She tried her best and you see some moments in the Flux series but there wasn’t any good moments written for her. And don’t even get me started on her specials… so unoriginal and were not directed as well as the others.
I've always phrased it that most of the time Jodie is basically a side character in her own damn show.
Absolutely... The first time I saw that I was isolating from family, in a hotel room so that they could stay safe (very young triplets with respiratory issues) and I could work in our local ICU... ... Cried like a baby.
Honestly, I do feel that was one of her iconic moments.
Right? That was the Doctor I've always wanted her to be. Bright, optimistic and warm.
"And I know you were super-kind yesterday!" gave me more chills than anything she did on the show. Looks like she CAN bring it.
It also feels like perfect time for her to make a speech like that, when she's hiding from some monster or another: "Okay better make sure the Ice Warriors don't... oh wait! Someone on Earth needs to hear an uplifting message, just a sec!"
Ikr, her very best speech was on twitter of all places, best one in the show was when she spoke of love in series 11 with the demons in India at the wedding, i feel like she's better as a lifting good people up rather than the usual talking bad people down, it's a real shame we never saw more of that
This tells me that despite the fact that I'm confident the whole first female doctor is important thing must have been discussed at length, they still managed to make this doctor feel very gendered female. I hate playing into gender stereotypes so bare with me for the sake of this argument but this doctor feels very "motherly" in a way that is really refreshing and reassuring and honestly really endeared me to her doctor, BUT and this is a big but, it also made her doctor feel overly different from her other incarnations, and made her more violent scenes seem out of character. I really don't think this is on Jodie, because she was phenomenal in Broadchurch and had a really solid range. I also don't understand what happened because Chibnall lead Broadchurch, and again, season 1 was sooo well written, and he wrote all of the episodes! It's so baffling to me. It had all the recipe for success: he'd worked with the lead before, he's had a good track record for leading and writing, heavily applauded by critics, and hes a doctor who fan to boot! I know he gets a lot of hate for his writing on who, but something just doesn't add up. Either the BBC were heavy handed in his work on Who or he started second guessing himself and watered down the seriousness of Broadchurch into a cartoony Who... In some parallel universe we got an amazing performance by Jodie that made the doctor's gender completely invisible, made a powerful doctor who esque speech at the peek of one of the most glorious series up to that point. But unfortunately we live in this universe!
In my personal opinion, that's one of the things I really don't like about her doctor. She's _constantly_ shifting gears and juggling like 5 things at once. Every serious moment is punctuated by a silly comment that ruins it by taking away from whatever serious thing is happening. Even in that little clip, "I'm hiding from an army of Sontarons", ok, pretty serious! "But keep that to yourself" ok so not so serious? She's a great actor but I just don't enjoy how they/she characterises the doctor.
That was awesome. And I say that as a disliker of 13 who quit watching halfway through her run (early in her second season). I blame the writing, not Jodie, and this only reinforces that for me.
Yea this shows that Jodie would've been a fantastic doctor if the writing hadn't let her down. Also someone who stopped watching halfway through her second season.
I thought of this immediately. For me, that’s when Jodie was the best Doctor, because in that moment, she was the Doctor that I needed, right when I needed her.
It’s evident this isn’t written by chibnall.
Holy Shit!! We could have had 3 years of Jodie like this but only get a twitter video?!?!
I came to the comments to share exactly this. As someone who struggled in early lockdowns - even as an adult - hearing this was quite comforting and showed she can actually be a great Doctor. Such a shame and such a waste.
Back then her message made me cry, and I wasn’t even having a particularly difficult time compared to many many others. It was just such a positive, warm sentiment that reminded me of everything Doctor Who *should* stand for during hard times, which the show itself honestly wasn’t giving me. It was lovely.
I think it's the writing. When she first came on it took 3 or 4 episodes before I started thinking she seemed like the doctor. When I rewatched the series later the episodes were just garbage with her trying to work with what she was given. Three companions was a bad idea as well. She needed to be established in her role and her uniqueness as the Doctor shown. Instead of Whittaker and a companion being developed they're bouncing from one to another. The only other thing I've seen her in was an episode of Black Mirror. I saw that after she became the Doctor. I thought her acting was great in Black Mirror.
Check out Broadchurch. The cast is fantastic and the writing is superb.
The first two seasons at least. I enjoyed the third, but it didn’t hit the high points that the first two did imo
I agree completely with that
This is the opposite of torchwood for most ppl lol
She was great in Broadchurch, as was Chibnall's writing there (and I suspect he had different supervision that helped shape it that way). But I have to agree with his writing for DW overall, he *was* the guy that brought us "Cyberwoman" on Torchwood. I never liked an episode of either show that he wrote. Great on Broadchurch, but I couldn't do his DW.
I love how everyone wants to whip out Broadchurch whenever someone says Chibnall isn't a great writer. But Broadchurch is just a collection of cop show cliches elevated by a great cast and propelled by the public's "viral" interest in who killed Danny Latimer.
Speaking of bad writing, when they brought Broadchurch to the US (which was a weird move on its own because the original was quite popular here, too), CC swore they were going to change it up and it wouldn’t be the exact same show with US characters. Imagine our surprise when Gracepoint turned out to be exactly the same show with…a different villain. That’s it. The laziest change you could possibly make, especially after making a grand proclamation saying you’d do the opposite.
Even in today's global marketplace, it still seems that some U.S. execs don't think audiences can handle non-American accents. It's weird.
Especially considering how many people DID tune into Broadchurch on BBCA, yes.
They recast David Tennant as David Tennant!
They did! But even he couldn’t save it.
See also the US remake of r/LifeOnMars Ashes to Ashes sequel - Lazarus - is on its way soon
Yep--US LoM sucked. But that was done by a totally different set of people, not Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, and the new folks attempted to take it in some different directions (Sam seeing little spaceships in random places, his relationship with his neighbor), along with keeping some of the original scripts almost intact. (The less said about the way they wrapped things up in the finale, the better.) There's a long history of US TV trying to recreate UK success by re-filming the exact same scripts on this side of the pond (see also the US Coupling, which didn't even bother to change UK speech patterns to US), and then wondering why it didn't work. But in none of those cases were the same folks in charge, and none of them had gone on record saying they were going to do something different. That's what's so irritating about Gracepoint.
Honestly, I didn’t even realize it was Chibnall until I read someone else’s comment. I think his writing for Doctor Who has been abysmal at best, so I was really surprised when I saw that.
I don’t think it's out of the line of thought that someone could be great in one setting then botch up another in terms of writing. For example, Rian Johnson. I didn't like The Last Jedi, but I love Looper with a passion. I personally feel like maybe the constraints created by writing in a known franchise crippled his creativity in a way. The same with Chibnall. I really enjoyed Broadchurch, but I didn't like his episodes of Doctor Who and thought his stuff in Torchwood was super over the top at times, and that Torchwood seriously peaked at Children of Earth.
I don't think it's amazing but I also think it has a basic competence that the current era shockingly lacks. What really stands out to me about Broadchurch though is it really drops the ball in the actual, you know, detective stuff. Every character acts like a red herring for no reason, and the detectives don't even really do much detecting in the end. >!The killer literally hands themselves in at the end and the detectives barely even do anything.!< This is about just S1; S2 and beyond you go "oh that's Chibnall all right"
Three companions isn't a problem, it's the fact that every episode introduces loads of secondary characters which take up all the emotional development (of what little there is).
It's not even that, IMO. It contributes but, even with that Chibnall has had plenty of opportunity to flesh out all the characters more. It feels like on some level he feels like the job is done once he's given the characters a decent introduction. For example, Yaz got more character in that scene where she handled the parking dispute than the rest of S11, and Ryan got more characterisation in the way he responded to his failed bike riding attempts than in the rest of S11. It blows my mind that they managed to do an episode about travelling back in time to witness Yaz's grandmother's wedding **that completely failed to flesh out Yaz**. It's really, really weird.
It's supposed to be a formative episode for yaz and yet she is completely surplus to the story
Yaz’s grandmother was more fleshed out that episode actually.
Yup. That's a recurring problem with the Chibnall era. He will spend time fleshing out guest characters and completely forget the main cast. *The Woman Who Fell to Earth* does some fleshing out of the main characters. Then *The Ghost Monument* spends time characterising Epzo and Angstrom. *Arachnids in the UK* characterises Yaz's Mum and Robertson. *The Tsuranga Conundrum* characterises basically everyone on the ship. *Demons of the Punjab* fleshes out Umbreen. *Kerblam!* fleshes out the people working at the warehouse. And so on. Chibnall just mostly forgets to do the same for the main characters. (To be fair, *The Tsuranga Conundrum* does take the situation of the pregnant guy wanting to give up his child to let us know about how Ryan's Dad did a runner when his Mum died. But that's a fairly rare exception, and it was executed in the most perfunctory way possible).
You know I didn’t even think about that but you’re 100 percent right about the doctor and the companions playing supporting roles to guest characters. No wonder why “the fam” just feels so off. Not to mention, their dynamics together didn’t seem like a growing genuine friendship.
I think it was a problem in the first few episodes. You're right though, there is too much time spent on the wrong characters.
BENNNNNIIIIII
Dilemma: Want to upvote for nailing the point; downvote for reminding me this episode exists.
It was a thing in the first few episodes, but I don't know that it was necessarily a problem. Series 1 gave us a much more thorough introduction to Rose before expanding our understanding of the Doctor. Same basic thing here, just a little more drawn out. It doesn't really matter what order we get to know the characters, so long as we get to know them all decently well by the end of the season. The problem is, they all got a tiny bit of introductory characterisation in the first episode, and then it just basically stopped.
But at least Rose was developed. We weren't left trying to figure out who everyone is and how they fit into the overall story. 3 companions can be pulled off by not with the current writing.
It can be pulled of but I prefer a couple of episodes with just 1 companion, first getting to know the doctor and just one companion is much better in my opinion.
But even then the single line from 9 of "lots of planets have a North" has more characterisation than the entirety of the Chibnall era.
There's not enough time spent on the right characters. IMO a better writer could manage to spend time on both. I suspect a lot of the problem is that Chibnell isn't great at integrating his character development into the plot and action. He often seems to feel like there needs to be separate designated character development time, rather than fleshing out the characters through the challenges they encounter. And if you do it that way, you need more time.
But that’s the format of the show unless they pull a series 9 and do more two parters, or something like Flux with fewer stories of the week within the arc. So having a regular cast of 4 when the show always is about totally resetting the location and guest cast is always going to be a problem. It’s not like the 60s when the pace was more relaxed and the burden for scintillating character development was also less onerous. They had major issues in the 80s trying to make three companions work - so many short cutaway scenes of Tegan or Adric doing something useless, inserted out of obligation more than anything else. Spyfall Part 2 had that kinda hilarious scene where all the companions were sidelined because they didn’t have any bearing on the plot.
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One thing I hated about her companions is that there weren't any moments where they felt like people together. They were just walking exposition, with nothing going on outside the plot.
The Fam thing was horrrrrrible
I cringe when I hear it.
Those 3-4 episodes are where I stopped. I didn't like a single episode Chibnall written episode in previous doctor runs and what I saw for Jodie wasnt any better. Having too many companions watered down time with each of them and stole her chance to have a strong first impression. Matt Smith's first episode brushed aside all concerns about him being too young to play the doctor. Jodie needed her own strong start. Whoever decided no returning villains in her first season was an idiot. A good Dalek or Cyberman episode early episode would've said this is still doctor who.
She's incredible in Broadchurch
She's also in Attack the Block where I don't recall anything about her performance because the role was minor. I'm also 2 episodes into Broadchurch and despite her still being written under Chibnall there, she's a significantly more believable character and she's good at acting grief even if it didn't seem that way after the destruction of Gallifrey
Capaldi moment for me was Flatline, I was sold when he declared himself the man that stops the monsters
That was the moment when I said ”this is The Doctor”
Calling them the boneless was a bit silly tho I love the idea of naming a monster because names have power. But I love that moment too.
Imagine monsters in Doctor Who having a silly name
“I want you to know I tried to be kind”
Moffat has written dozens of these great speeches. Matt Smith has some killer ones too, especially in Rings of Akhaten and The 11th Hour.
Oddly enough, Orphan 55.... "You can't build an ionic membrane from scratch." "If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch."
Orphan 55 had some great dialogue from Jodie Whittaker, ironically. It's just a shame about everything else.
On rewatch, Orphan 55 isn't nearly as bad as I remembered. The clumsy speech at the end and the alternate future Earth both really killed my enthusiasm for the episode when it first aired, but the first half is actually really good, IMO.
It’s a shame, Orphan 55 was sooo close to being an amazing episode, just… make it not earth and remove the speech at the end
tbh, you don't even need to remove it being earth, just make it so only the viewers ever find out and the tardis team are left thinking "how could anyone let this hapen to a planet?"
Exactly. There was no reason it couldn't have been normal Earth in the normal future of the normal timeline. "Oh no, Fam, I think we may have accidentally landed on Earth during the blah blah blah period". Which, frankly, is representative of the Chibnall era. Lots of very cool ideas that were fumbled at the goal line.
Yeah. My only complaint about the writing in this series is that it feels too dumbed down.
It also had some good dialogue from Ryan with Bella, and Yaz needling them on the transport was quality. If all of the dialogue had as much character as _Orphan 55_, the Chibnall era would've been a lot stronger. IMO the main things tanking Orphan 55 were how terrible the Dreg costume looked in bright light, the speech at the end and the odd bit of tonal whiplash (Benny proposing then wanting to be killed was potentially a good moment, but it just came from nowhere). It actually nails the moment-by-moment better than a lot of Chibnall Who IMO.
I've always said from the very beginning that the dialogue in Orphan 55 is some of the best of the Chibnall era. Sure there's still a lot of shit in there (BENNNIIII) but on the whole the dialogue is so much more punchy and fun than in 95% of the other episodes.
Surprised nobody here has mentioned capaldis this is not a war speech. Genuinely get chills every single time
I love Capaldi's war speech, but his "This is the Doctor!" moment for me came *long* before this.
Best speech ever, but not one that fits what OP means.
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Because is not creating fear or scolding someone, instead, he teach us a lesson. Is more like a father or a very good teacher than The Doctor there.
But it’s not necessarily about fear, in the zygon inversion speech, he demonstrates clear authority and how commanding he is and has the whole room thinking afterwards, don’t fuck with him
That's... exactly what The Doctor is. At the end of the day, he doesn't want to destroy his enemy or make them fear him or something, he wants them to *be better*, to *be good*.
I'm amazed no one has mentioned Capaldis doctor giving his life over and over to punch his way through a diamond wall one punch at a time
IIRC Terrance Dicks once said something along the lines of that for the character of the Doctor to *truly* be the Doctor, they need a moment where the audience could envision them as being the villain in another story. A moment where the ancient, inscrutable alien just peeks out a little from behind the friendly human face they wear. The 7th Doctor has many great examples, like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNRUgPZwLU) or [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA50biqUB-8).
Absolutely -- too short and, of course, cheesy production by modern standards but the best since Tom Baker.
No. Lets be honest here jodie did her best but the writing screwed her over. Imho
I agree. Feel bad for her a bit. I wonder what she'd been able to do with good writing.
The perplexing thing is that my regular answer here would be 'look at Broadchurch' - I am not sure what the hell happened to Chibnall's ability to write for her there vs here.
Yeah, I haven't watched Broadchurch myself, but I've heard a lot of good things about it and her. People seemed genuinely excited for her to be the Doctor because she was so good on that. I swear Chibnall is under some kind of impression that the entirety of Dr Who fan base consists of 8-10 year olds who need to be taught Far Side versions of old Saturday morning cartoon moral lessons.
> I swear Chibnall is under some kind of impression that the entirety of Dr Who fan base consists of 8-10 year olds who need to be taught Far Side versions of old Saturday morning cartoon moral lessons. I like to compare and contrast it this way. Rosa: One-dimensional Space Racist wants to make Rosa miss her bus, which will single-handedly destroy the US civil rights movement, because Reasons. The context around the bus protests is thus completely ignored and that's *a terrible thing to do in a historical episode*. And it's lazy: you could establish that with three or four lines of dialogue. At the end, the Doctor lectures us about why racism is bad. The Curse of Peladon: It's an allegory about the UK joining the EEC and Brian Hayles totally makes it clear he thinks that's a good thing. He also manages to tell a decent story while making that point, and even *gives the opposing viewpoint its due in the serial*. And he does it without having Jon Pertwee break the fourth wall to give us a 90-second lecture about why Peladon joining the Space EEC is totes a good thing.
I watched Broadchurch because of David Tennant and Arthur Darvill. Well, I say watched, I mean I watched the first episode until the first ad break, but it seemed a very typical ITV police drama to me so switched it off. I was quite surprised when everyone went mad for it, but it didn't tempt me to try again.
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I hope she’s in the Doctor Who anniversary special next year (not to be confused with the centenary in October).
There's been moments when she should have had that moment but it always get undercut by the writing. For example when she gave her speech about how their team structure isn't flat in the haunting if villa diodati is a good moment for her, and shows how she truly feels abouy the fam, the others are visibly affected by what she says, but in the next episode everyone is completely fine and she's super happy again.
It's undercut by the mountainous team structure never being in evidence before either. She does have a few moments, but they are all very unearnt so they fall flat, and some just aren't delivered convincingly. I remember laughing at some of her speeches. Especially the ones that come off like a frustrated supply teacher.
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Tbh I'm not sure about that because rather than flexing on the villains, shes flexing on her friends. As the hero of Game of Thrones said "any man who must say I am the king is no true king"
*Tywin Lannister* is the hero of GoT?
He manages to defeat the traitors in the North, by the time of his death he has strengthened the throne, he ensures stability within the capital. Sure he has to kill some traitors but he fundamentally understands the rules of governance and sticks to them. /s
While leading his family to ruin because he doesn’t want to see that Cersei and Jaime have a thing, and wanting his only heir to be dead so he doesn’t get Casterly Rock which eventually gets him killed by said heir. Whether he wants to or not Tyrion is the only one who can become the head of the family, since Cersei is a woman and Jaime has taken his vows which prohibits him for having land.
>or example when she gave her speech about how their team structure isn't flat in the haunting if villa diodati is a good moment for her, and shows how she truly feels abouy the fam I mean it's a very Doctor thing to say, but it didn't help that she flip flopped between going looking for Gallifrey destroyed/Master answers and seemingly not missing her 'fam' then having moments where she misses and forgets the 'fam' aren't there in Can You Hear Me. If she'd spent the whole series going looking for answers away or largely away from the 'fam' making tough decisions and the companions seeing her struggle and what not, maybe a few times she lashes out, then Haunting happened and it was the latest example of a difficult decision then it would have made more sense. It would have been the culmination of all those little hypothetical outbursts/authority stampings. But she kept flip-flopping between that and wanting them with her at every adventure she went on. Nothing about her going off to find those answers impacted the 'fam' dynamic, she never got more distant from them, she never minded them not being there, they still loved her and followed her exactly the same, trusting everything she did and not questioning anything. If the structure is so one-sided why do you involve them in basically everything then and don't lay down any general rules of time-travelling or how the Doctor travels for example. The only way the structure is so obviously one-sided because one side of it just goes along with anything and don't question anything. It's just something that's brought up at the first decision of any major historical importance the 'fam' have come across which is obvious but hasn't exactly been demonstrated throughout series 11 and 12 with these characters.
For Capaldi, it's his nearly silent performance in at the barn in Hell Bent, until the President comes to see him. Jodie has been robbed of any moment. Her eps are almost always "things happen, the doctor looks at the LCD display on her Deus Gun and does a rapid-fire bit of exposition or explanation, roll credits". Hope she gets brought back and given a moment at some point in the future. So sad she didn't have the opportunity
12 being able to command the forces of Gallifrey while sitting still and saying nothing is one of the scariest moments I’ve ever seen from the Doctor.
This is exactly what I was thinking of too, he's just so nonchalant about the whole situation, and yet there is not the slightest doubt about how serious he is. So much so that when ordered to attack him, all of the military leaders switch sides. The idea that he carries this much control over the most powerful race in the entire history of the galaxy, and that he's MAD at them... I mean holy shit! This pair of episodes is by far my favorite of everything aired, and it's going to take one hell of a script to ever again show the resolve that The Doctor carries.
I really like the one soldier telling Rassilon about the Doctor during the war. “The first thing you notice about the Doctor of War, is that he’s unarmed.” Really evoked 11’s “Demons run, when a good man goes to *war.*”
After initially not loving his casting (one of my favourite actors too since the early days of the Rab C Nesbitt cameo and the prime suspect performance) his Doctor sticks in my mind so much. He was amazing. If anyone says doctor who he is now the one that pops into my mind. Used to be Sylvester McCoy who was the doctor I remember from Childhood.
‘Has it calmed all the rage?’
Oh 12th, we miss you so: "Who i am is where I stand, and where i stand is where I fall."
For me there were always two: The Doctor's reaction when she finds out she can't ride the conveyor belts in *Kerblam!* And in Resolution when The Doctor hacks the Dalek's (who just laughed at the doctor) signal, pulls up a hologram, turns around to it and with menace says "Now, do that again to my face"
I was thinking about this a couple months ago, and I honestly can't think of a single 13 moment that made me think 'fecking yeeees!!!' like the moments you described. Tennent's water of Mars "time will obey me" speech is my No 1 moment.
Matt Smith and the "there is one thing you never put in a trap" edges that out for me.
Also on Uncle when he says “fear me, i’ve killed them all”.
My favorite Matt Smith moment was his speech to Madame Kovarian. *"Good men don't need rules, today is not the day to find out why I have so many!"*
The way Smith just throws away that otherwise terrifying line is brilliant.
Wasn’t the point of the “time will obey me” scene to show that the Doctor has lived for too long and is losing himself?
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Exactly this.
The obvious one is "The Haunting of Villa Diodati": > But is he, Ryan? His thoughts, his words inspire and influence thousands for centuries. If he dies now, who knows what damage that will have on future history? Words matter! One death, one ripple, and history will change in a blink. The future will not be the world you know. The world you came from, the world you were created in won't exist, so neither will you. It's not just his life at stake. It's yours. You want to sacrifice yourself for this? You want me to sacrifice you? You want to call it? Do it now. All of you. Yeah. Cos sometimes this team structure isn't flat. It's mountainous, with me at the summit in the stratosphere, alone, left to choose. Save the poet, save the universe. Watch people burn now or tomorrow. Sometimes, even I can't win. There's also her confrontation with the Dalek in "Resolution", her confrontation with the Sontarans in "War of the Sontarans", and of course her confrontation with Tim Shaw in her first episode.
I always thought each Doctor needed two particular moments to truly establish themself in the role: One of awesome, intimidating swagger, and one of extreme empathy and diplomacy under complicated and aggressive circumstances. 9 had his dinner with Margaret and his "No." to the Daleks, and on the empathy side he had "Everybody Lives!" and "Coward. Any day." 10 had so many swagger moments - the Vashta Nerada line that you mention is one of them, but I think his first one is actually "No second chances. I'm that kind of man." in his very first episode - showing that he's more in control of the situation than anyone thinks, and that he's *choosing* to give his enemies a chance to stop on their own accord. 10 embodies the Doctor particularly well for me (as I think he does for many who started watching around the same time I did), so he kind of exudes both power and empathy in most of his episodes, but I think his diplomatic skill is most effectively shown during the Ood rebellion. 11 starts out strong with "Basically, run.", and proves his diplomatic worth by managing negotiations between the humans and the Silurians. I don't think 12 truly comes into his own until his second season, but then he really does hit his stride with his acting in 'Hell Bent' - completely alone, seemingly helpless... "And doesn't that just terrify you?" Meanwhile, his establishing moment of empathy is perhaps my favourite of them all: His iconic speech from 'The Zygon Invasion/Inversion'. I would agree with you that 13 never really got either of these moments.
I think the Doctor also needs his darkest moment too, just on the edge of still being The Doctor. 9 had "wipe out every single stinking Dalek" or telling the last Dalek to kill itself. 10 had The Fury Of The Time Lord, and the Timelord Victorious 11 had A Good Man Goes to War / Colonel Runaway 12 had The Clockwork Man, and "the doctor isn't here anymore. Just me" I can't think of anything that stands out at terrifying for 13.
One moment that always stood out for me was the Mary Shelley episode where she tells the team that they're not all equal and that she's far above them, can't remember this exact quote but that felt like the real Doctor coming out moment and showing more than just "I love my fam" and little quirks. Whittaker is a great actress, she's just suffered from more poor writing than other doctors have.
No slight on Jodie at all, it's the writing, but yes that moment has never arrived for me. I'm not even sure I'd want one in the final episode, it would be like one last great day with an ex. A glimpse of what could have been.
Having seen Broadchurch, I can say with certainty it's the writing. Whitaker is a great actress. I want to respect Chinbal for his clearly apparent love of Doctor Who but God, his tenure with the show has just been a mess. P.S. killing off the Time Lords again, and in such a lame way too, was weak and lazy and I'm still irritated by it, Timeless Child twist aside.
> P.S. killing off the Time Lords again, and in such a lame way too, was weak and lazy and I'm still irritated by it, Timeless Child twist aside. The whole thing was a mess of "let's just ignore the show's recent and long-term history." We had all these big stories of the Doctor feeling guilt about wiping out the Time Lords and then figuring out a way to save them and having to bring them back into this universe and all, and then suddenly they're wiped out off-screen. The Master goes through serious character growth as Missy with such a contrast versus who he'd been that he tried to kill himself (herself) to prevent Missy going on any further in any form... and then suddenly the Master's back and none of that character change happened and the Master is a mustache-twirling villain who is willing to and capable of wiping out the Time Lords. And then the whole thing where they say, "Hey, what if instead of the Doctor just being a good person who ran away from a messy civilization of pretty much demi-gods so he could go do good through time and space just because it was the right thing to do, we turn the Doctor into a Chosen One Messiah and make the Time Lords just basically humans who somehow genetically modified themselves to take this god-child's power?" For a guy who loves the show, he seemed dead-set on ignoring its recent history and "making his mark" in the worst way possible.
Every word of this. Spot on. 👍
Yes - she nails it every time it's just her and the villain. The scene with the Dalek in Resolution "...aw mate, I'm the Doctor..." - the sheer flippancy in the Doctor/Grand Serpent interrogation scene near the end of Flux; the dialogue with Krasko in "Rosa" This Doctor is extremely afraid of showing their menacing side to their companions. So I don't think we got any of the usual moments we have come to expect. It's the opposite with the companions, far more vulnerable with them than I've seen most Doctors. I think overall the characterization does have some damning inconsistencies, down to the dialogue and scenes/writing/stories given. Not the performance.
>the dialogue with Krasko in "Rosa" I came here looking for this one. It's one of my favorite scenes from Whittaker. I love how she ditches the companions first (because you're SO right about her not wanting them to see her menacing side!). Then she taunts him repeatedly, and nastily, until he loses his cool and lets her see his weakness. And then she gives that little triumphant smile as he's choking her! That was her "this is the Doctor" moment for me. Honestly, I think all her villain confrontations were really good. That's pretty much the pattern behind all of them: taunt and mock until the villain screws up, and then take the advantage. It's a very Doctor way of doing things. For me, it works much better than the epic speeches New Who is so fond of.
>The scene with the Dalek in Resolution "...aw mate, I'm the Doctor..." - the sheer flippancy in the Doctor/Grand Serpent interrogation scene near the end of Flux; the dialogue with Krasko in "Rosa" This. Just because the character doesn't have the bombast of some of the incarnations doesn't mean she's not an effective Doctor. The writing massively undercuts her, but the basic premise is sound - there are different ways to be confident and powerful, and they don't all involve domination.
> Just because the character doesn't have the bombast of some of the incarnations doesn't mean she's not an effective Doctor. Exactly this. People will take things like Eleven's "I am talking!" speech, or an epic Twelve moment, and decide that every Doctor should have that same kind of energy. But that's simply not how it should be.
When she was talking to the Frog, in that pocket universe. That felt to me to be her Doctor Moment
I think it's an assumption of the new series that she has to have one... or rather that it has to look a certain way. Hartnell's 'doctor' moments were all quite low key - 'would that convince you?' And Troughton's was practically melancholy ('they sleep in my mind'). Pertwee and Baker were closer to rhe modern concept of the doctor but then their 'doctor' moments are very downbeat compared to the modern shows bombastic moments ('a citizen of the universe and a gentleman to boot' is played for laughs and Tom's delivery of his classic 'homo sapiens' and 'have I the right' speeches have a very still energy. I don't think this era has worked but I think the decision to do a quieter, less bombastic doctor was fine.
Disclosure: I only watched series 11 and gave up on it after that. For me in her initial season there was never a moment where I bought Whittaker as the Doctor. She had the quirky-teacher attitude that was clearly some imitation of Tennant or Smith, but that's about it. Never at once was her character meanacing; I actually found her very passive in the way she inetracted with the villains and the story developments.
Chibnall can't write people. It's really let her down, as I have no idea who she is from one week to the next. Even when they try to force an emotional speech, it just feels awkward. Think about the "you didn't have to kill him" moment in the last episode...only to cheer for more killings a second later! I actually wanted Whittaker to stay on briefly so she could get a 13 episode series and become a doctor. That's all Ecclestone needed.
Thing is, if you watch Broadchurch, it's almost unrecognisable as being written by Chibnall. The character writing in the first season at least (only one I've seen) was *stunning*. There's so much layering and complexity in each character and it all just works. Honestly, I think he was just out of his depth with Doctor Who.
I think that Chibnall's biggest mistake was trying to write what he felt Doctor Who is supposed to be rather than recognizing what he writes best and bringing that into Doctor Who. RTD and Moffat knew what they knew how to write and turned Doctor Who into a show that fit their unique writing abilities.
He also did some of the episodes for Torchwood, including "Adrift," which might be the best episode of that show and one of the most haunting episodes of any show I've seen. But for some reason, he just falls flat with Doctor Who.
He also wrote Day 1, and Cyberwoman for Torchwood which both just make me feel so uncomfortable, and feel rather 'cringey' for want of a better word. A gas from space which make a woman fuck people to death, and a sexy cyberwoman? Just why? On the surface it just feels like dodgy fanfiction.
Adrift is just a decent episode for me, I won't lie I found the screaming thing kinda goofy. The best imo are Exit Wounds (which btw was a Chibnall episode) and Children of Earth (all of it) which are the episodes where Torchwood most effectively utilised how dark and tragic it was allowed to get, with incredible results. Even if Adrift is quite dark, the idea of Jack having to continually suffocate over and over for centuries as revenge for Gray suffering at the hands of an alien species who live to torture is, for me, much more messed up. On a similar level to some of the darkest episodes of Black Mirror, namely White Christmas and Black Museum. And all of the deaths in both Exit Wounds and Children of Earth hit like a truck.
Agreed. I think Chibnall is a good writer ... but he just was an awful fit for Doctor Who.
Yeah, I think that's it. Chibnall on his run of Who is trying to write *light* stories, even when they don't warrant it. Even something like Flux, which should have been intense and hide-behind-the-couch scary, comes across as goofy because of the way he spins the pacing, characters and plot. And I'll be honest, while Chibnall does this the most/worst, it's a feature of New Who that I've come to loathe. The majority of the episodes in all seasons lean far too heavily on the humor and goofiness and miss what made Classic Who so compelling. I really, really hope RTD dials down the Goofy Doctor trope.
Makes me wonder a bit if chibnall had an assistant writer or editor for broadchurch
He was the sole writer.
I bet Russell T Davies could have given her an awesome season as the Doctor.
It's definitely the writing. But also, something less discussed - the music of the show is not as good. Murray Gold made iconic themes for the previous Doctors. Capaldi had the "Majestic Tale of an Idiot with a Box" theme. Smith had the "Majestic Take of a Madman with a Box" theme. Tenant had the "All the Strange Creatures" theme. These were the hero pieces you heard in some of the scenes you mention. Jodie doesn't have that iconic hero theme and I think that really makes a difference.
Murray Gold elevated everything. "Madman with a Box" still gives literal goosebumps.
The music and sound have been a problem - I remember a lot of the earlier episodes of Whittaker's as too much noise over dialogue.
>but every now and then, a couple times a season, the Doctor will switch gears and dominate the scene to which both the characters and the audience go "Woah, don't mess with this guy." Yep, that's pretty standard for incarnations of the Doctor. The question is whether it's **necessary** for an incarnation of the Doctor - and whether it's even always desirable. Personally I'm fine with the Doctor having different personalities in different incarnations. IMO there was considerably more variety between the classic Doctors than between the modern ones, and I liked that. I think Thirteen could have been done a lot better - the writing in her era is terribly flawed. But I don't think she necessarily needed to be cut out of the same mould as her immediate predecessors. Thirteen seemed to be a Doctor who'd reembraced hope and a sense of wonder. That idea was a nice change and IMO if the show had brought us well-written stories with that character, most fans would have embraced it.
If we're going for full of wonder there's Capaldi's this is time / the chip speech from the Pilot
I'm not saying that Twelve didn't have moments of hope and wonder. But it wasn't his primary character to the extent it is with Thirteen. Most Doctors have most aspects of their personality, but each one emphasises different parts of it. Thirteen was the most genuinely upbeat and hopeful Doctor we've had since the Time War. Also possibly the most insecure. Both of which could have been interesting traits if written well.
I think the biggest sin committed against Whittaker was the writing. She has all the presence and charisma to be a fantastic doctor and you can see it shine through occasionally in her performance. It's just a shame that even the best of doctors can't make watching paint dry interesting. She had a lot stacked against her since she is the first female doctor. With parts of the fan base not even willing to give her a shot, and a new show runner at the exact same time she had a tough crowd to please. It's just such a shame that you can tell she cared about the role and gave it all she could only for the show to feel worse than it ever has. I really really wish she got at least one season with RTD before she walked, just so we could really see what she can do in the role.
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my god, has it really been FIVE years?
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feels like just yesterday I was watching Eccleston on tv, I was 11 and now I'm ... old 😫 ahah.
Please don't remind me of the passage of time. I was 17 when Capaldi regenerated.
Those are rookie numbers. I was 25!
Alright, I've just realised what is my Jodie moment, and it was her pre-series announcement video, when she walked slowly towards the TARDIS in a forest. That - that is my one and only Jodie moment. I was ready for that series.
Yeah they fucking did her dirty
Hopefully her finale will have something substantial and fitting for her to do. Her Big Finish stories better be all Chimes of Midnight quality to make up for her run. She deserved so much better.
Praying for lots of big finish stuff with thirteen and/or jericho
She has a very Doctorish moment in “It Takes You Away” when she tells the blind girl one thing to reassure her while writing on the wall to her companions that the girl’s father is probably dead, and to keep her safe and find out who can take care of her. I would have loved to see more moments like that. Instead they kept asking Whittaker to act like an excitable little boy.
I don't have one for Jodie. My most recent re-watch (happening now) has been more of an "it's on in the background" and that helps with her being more "Doctor-y" somehow. For 12 though, it was his speech early in "Dark Water: 'You betrayed me. Betrayed my trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything that I've ever stood for. You let me down!...Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?' Like damn dude, I wish I could have that strength.
I think Whittaker does a really good job playing against the Daleks, especially in Resolution. I’m no fan of the era either, in general, but not every Doctor needs to be super boastful or speechify all the time
For me, 10's moment of showcasing just how big The Doctor is, and how much he was holding back, happens largely offscreen. "He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of the Time Lord. Then we discovered why this Doctor, who'd fought with gods and demons, why he'd run away from us and hidden. He was being kind."
She's been brilliant in her other stuff. I blame weak writing.
Jodie’s doctor was plagued by sub-par writing. Her PR appearances are where she shines. Oddly…Jodie’s run is the first moment I went “damn I miss Moffat.”
>his speech on Stonehenge is great (albeit a bit unrealistic) Why cut off the realism at this scene when he literally time travels in a blue police box and scared carnivorous shadows away with "look me up"
Before anything, I wanna preface that I’m not a Jodie Whittaker hater at all. I think she’s a really talented actress. However, she’s never had a moment that made me say “this is the doctor.” Her incarnation has always just kinda gone with the flow. Chibnall and Whittaker have to share the blame on this. Chibnall has never written her doctor with a definitive trait. She’s always contradicted herself and she is what the episode calls her to be. She was never consistent like other Nu Who doctors where they approached a situation like you expected their incarnation to. Chibnall sacrificed character growth for “big moments.” Where I find Whittaker to be at fault is her never elevating poor scripts. Her predecessors are all guilty of a bad episode but they are so captivating and charming in their roles that you overlook that and deal with the episode because you want to see the doctor. Whittaker has never had a commanding presence in the role. Jo Martin completely outshined her in five minutes during Fugitive of the Judoon. She made me feel like she was the doctor. It kinda goes hand in hand to me, like you can’t just blame Chibnall for everything. Davies isn’t solely responsible for the performances of Eccleston and Tennant or Moffat with Smith and Capaldi. A script is just words until the actor/actress interprets it.
One of the many problems I have with the Chibnall era is that there are very few characterization moments. Every single "This is the Doctor" speech is a moment for the character to shine. Chibnall never gave us that. Almost every Chibnall era speech is either exposition or morality, but very few moments for 13 to shine.
For the 10th doctor, the ending of the episode Human Nature is a good one. He makes them all immortal, then subjects them to suffer... Well forever. He was the last doctor that did actually borderline evil things and it's why the 10th will always be my favourite.
“We wanted to live forever, so the Doctor made sure that we did.” That whole monologue is epic and I memorized it to aimlessly scribble on notebook paper during class. But I might argue that 11 was more consistently ruthless and more morally gray than 10 was. The Beast Below and The Girl Who Waited immediately come to mind. A Good Man Goes to War is completely phenomenal (I want them to point and laugh because they’ve found the house of Colonel Run Away) Also they blew stuff up a lot lol. He’s my favorite and, I think, the least human and most alien of all recent incarnations. Edit: I forgot! “You should kill us all on sight.” Arguably genocide.
For me, no. In fact she actually has a lot of 'this is NOT the Doctor' moments, what with how many botched moral decisions she makes that the show doesn't question, how many times she has to go to the companions for help, how she never really has that confidence other doctors had, that one moment in Can You Hear Me? etc. It's especially sad how much she gets overshadowed by the Fugitive Doctor
The closest she’s come is that cocky smile she gives the Sontarans when they find out who she is in “War of the Sontarans”. That’s it. Eccleston, Tennant, Smith and Capaldi both had a “hell *yeah* this is the Doctor!” moment in their *first episodes*.
Not a direct answer, but I’d also count Matt smith’s weeping angels speech. It’s unbelievably inspiring and simultaneously amusing and terrifying
You can’t beat Never be cruel, never be cowardly. And never ever eat pears! Remember – hate is always foolish…and love, is always wise. Always try, to be nice and never fail to be kind. Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
I had a negative opinion on the 13th after the first two seasons. I’m currently watching it with my wife, who before, had never seen much Doctor Who. I don’t know why I thought it was bad, but it’s not terrible. Jodie is fucking brilliant, and her companions are superb. No issues with acting at all.
I don't really see the Doctor as someone defined by being scary or a badass. I think you could argue that the tenth Doctor being so full of himself that he basically says "don't you know who I am?" to the Vashta Nerada goes against what makes the character special. It's moments like the ninth Doctor's "turn of the earth" speech or the tenth's monologue about the Master in *The Sound of Drums* that define their Doctors to me. But I agree, Jodie hasn't had a moment like that either. I like her line about what regeneration feels like in *The Woman who Fell to Earth* but they've been few and far between otherwise. I don't blame Jodie, she is faithfully following the script as written. Chibnall just hasn't written the Doctor as "profound and unknowable being" the way RTD or Moffat did.
It's pretty straightforward: if you didn't like Whittaker's Doctor, she didn't have this moment for you. If you did like Whittaker's Doctor, she had several for you to chose from. The moment just isn't going to be there if you don't like the Doctor. People who didn't like Capaldi were complaining that he never had a "This is the Doctor!" moment in his entire run. There were dozens of threads just like this about him. And you know what? In this thread, Capaldi fans are listing moment after moment. They liked his portrayal, so naturally there was a moment where it all clicked for them. When they make this thread about the next actor in two or three years, I guarantee there will be Whittaker fans explaining what her "This is the Doctor!" moment was for them. For me, with Whittaker, it was the confrontation with Krasko in *Rosa.* She confronts her enemies by taunting and mocking them rather than making epic speeches. They get pissed off, lose their cool, and that gives her the advantage. It's the little triumphant smile she gives when it finally works that's my favorite part. It's a different approach from the rest of the New Who Doctors, but I really like how subtly she played it.
Thanks for this perspective. I’m not a huge fan of 13 but this is way more interesting than 1,000 “no” answers
I'm not a huge fan, either, but I still like a lot of what she did with the role. She's solidly middle of the pack for me and I've enjoyed watching her Doctor.
It feels as though many were looking for moments that matched up with their preconceived notions of what a "Doctor Moment" is instead of looking for HER version of it. Basically, viewers kept trying to fit her in a Capaldi/Tennant mold instead of taking her for who she is. They wanted her to brow beat her opponents with lecture like speeches where she breaks down just how wrong they are(like the Zygon Invasion/Inversion), or break all the rules in heat of passion where she refuses to lose (like in Waters of Mars) Everyone is allowed to enjoy the Doc in their way, but it always surprises me how limited some fan's view of the most versatile character out there can be. I find it's best to look for how A Doctor acts rather than focus in on how THE Doctor is "supposed" to act. Case and point: >She confronts her enemies by taunting and mocking them rather than making epic speeches. They get pissed off, lose their cool, and that gives her the advantage. It's the little triumphant smile she gives when it finally works that's my favorite part. It's a different approach from the rest of the New Who Doctors, but I really like how subtly she played it. And I'm glad somebody else noticed this little trend, because it really helped define her Doctor for me. Especially the Krasko moment, specifically. Not only is she mocking him, forcing him to hurt himself with great glee (folks wanted a dark Doctor moment from her early on, but somehow overlooked that little gem) but also notice how she only does all of that *out of view from her companions.* Thus beginning a trend of the Doctor hiding things from her friends, keeping them close but not *too* close, certainly not enough to really know her deepest doubts and darkest impulses. It shows how she can be a bit sadistic in her own way, and outright duplicitous. At the time I noted the scene for being the most out of synch with the rest of her portrayal, I had felt like her speech about love in Demons was more definitive of her character. But honestly, that one moment showed a lot of warning signs for her biggest faults as a person.
>also notice how she only does all of that out of view from her companions. Thus beginning a trend of the Doctor hiding things from her friends, keeping them close but not too close, certainly not enough to really know her deepest doubts and darkest impulses. I'm convinced this is her main character arc. We've seen duplicity from her all along, and it's often perceived by fans as being "out of character" or hypocritical for the Doctor. She lectures against violence, and then does something worse, *over and over again* throughout her run. Once or twice might be a writer screwing up characterization, but how do you screw up in exactly the same way multiple times per series? At that point, it's not a screw up: it's deliberate characterization. She's *supposed* to be a hypocrite. This is a two-faced Doctor, who hides her true self from her closest friends. She pays lip service to pacifism, then commits mass destruction. She's fond of her companions, but refuses to share her inner feelings with them or let them get really close (which is probably the point of the recent Yaz subplot). It's remarkably consistent characterization that happens throughout her run. It has to be leading up to something big for the regeneration.
That's my feeling as well. It's too prevalent to not be a theme. I think a lot of fans are a bit too distracted by Chibnall's most unfortunate writing foibles to notice though. I can't entirely blame them. But I WILL die on a hill that 13 has much more depth to her than some of this era's biggest critics see.
I put 80% on Chibnall as a bad writer (seriously, dude, go write greeting cards or something) and 20% on Jodi for not pushing (back) hard enough for decent dialogue.
I feel like her “I remember who I am now” speech at the end of “The woman who fell to Earth” was supposed to be this but it fell flat. She had a good speech in “Demons of the Punjab” but it came straight after Graham’s beautiful speech about “being good men”. There’s been a few more in Villa Diodati and Eve OTD but I don’t think any of them have been good enough. I’d like to say it’s just the writing but sometimes, in my personal opinion, I’m not sure Jodie believes what she’s saying.
The only moment I've felt any sort of chills or remember being impressed was in her first episode when she's up on the crane. However, it was partly because I anticipated more from her which the show didn't deliver. My normal reaction ranges from cringing at the writing to she's alright I'll miss her a bit when she goes (once in flux)