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| Ncuti Gatwa and Jodie Whittaker |
After over six decades, the BBC has put Doctor Who "out to tender," meaning they are accepting proposals for an outside producer to take up the reigns while the program has been suspended. This hiatus has happened once before when the Doctor was in limbo from 1989 to 2005. I can't be too upset because 63 years is a remarkable run for any TV program and there is plenty to rewatch and read in past episodes, countless books and comics.
What does gall me is the carping from fans who claim the show's downfall in ratings was due to its "woke" attitude and the recasting the Doctor as a woman and then a black gay man. There was even a comment on FB that Peter Capaldi was the last "good" Doctor, i.e., the last white male Doctor. He went on to say that Jodie Whitaker should have been a companion like Romana, and Missy, the female version of the Master, should have been the Rani, another renegade Time Lord who happened to be a woman. This fan was saying the Doctor should only be a white British dude. This attitude springs from not wanting to see women or other minorities in traditional white straight white male roles. This poster evidently has a problem with women being the central figure, rescuing the guys instead of the other way around. This Doctor is an alien and this whole show is a fantasy, so what's the big deal about a woman or a black man assuming the role?
The other main complaint is the Whitaker and Gatwa episodes seemed to be pushing a liberal "Woke" agenda. As if the Doctor was never about inclusiveness and diversity before. I will agree that many of the Whitaker stories were hitting us over the head with their messages on racism, homophobia, climate change, and autocracy. The writing wasn't particularly strong. During the whole "Flux" season I had no idea what the hell was going on.
But the Gatwa episodes were much better overall. I think because Russell T Davies took over as the show runner from Chris Chibnall. His sense of story structure was much stronger. There was still a social consciousness but it did not overwhelm the plots. In Dot and Bubble, the fact that the Doctor is black and the racism of the people he's trying to save is subtly brought up and not explicitly stated until the very end. Boom was my favorite episode of these seasons. The Doctor is confined to a single spot--a landmine on a war-torn planet which will explode if he moves off it--for nearly the entire segment. It was a clever, tight script.
The future of Doctor Who is in doubt now. But I have confidence it will live on in some form and continue to fascinate millions of Whovians.
