Doctor Who - The Revival: Series 11 Recap

The latest season of Doctor Who has gotten some flack by some circles of fans. Chances are, these fans were determined to hate no matter what, because Chris Chibnall turned their beloved macho hero into a lady person.  As I said in my review for the opener...I was never one clamoring for a female Doctor. I didn't think it nearly as important as others seemed to.  But in the end it doesn't really matter that it happened.  Whitaker is great casting, she does a great job of capturing the spirit of the character, and I felt that the bulk of the episodes this season were quite enjoyable.

Now were many of the stories truly creative and new stories? Not really.  Some complained that the stories were bland or lacked that epic scope that they claim to love.  Personally, I tired of Moff's constant upping the epicness of the show and the character, so the dialing back of those elements was refreshing.  Sure, maybe only a couple of episodes truly felt like new kinds of stories...but overall it was just good ol' fashioned basic Doctor Who...with the obvious exception of the new lead. 

But I think that is exactly what Chibnall aimed to do.  You can claim he is bland and uninteresting, but I think he knew his lead casting choice was going to put some people off, and his antidote to that was to write the most basic of Doctor Who stories. He didn't reinvent the wheel as Moffat did for the Matt Smith era, but he stripped Who to it's basics (sort of like the Capaldi era), told typical Who stories, and made it easy to swallow the new lead.  If he was telling completely new kinds of stories every week, trying to be experimental on top of changing the gender of the lead, he would've been crucified even more than he was by the so-called fans of the show.

Moffat was constantly criticized during his most experimental phase for weaving complex stories that were often deemed "too clever."  Then he settled down with that under Capaldi, and was then criticized for doing the opposite.  RTD was always criticized for his stories and arcs when he was in charge. I remember it all so well.  As far as I can tell, fans of Doctor Who have been grumpy about the quality of Doctor Who since at least 1985.  I'm sure even earlier, but I think the mid-80s is when I've seen clips of nerds on TV complaining about the dip in quality. Ironically one of those fans is Chris Chibnall.  What goes around comes around. 

Like I said, I actually really enjoyed this season. I thought her premiere episode was among the top tier of Doctor debuts, I think that "Rosa" and "Demons of the Punjab" and "The Witchfinders" perfectly wrestled with humanity's lesser moments in history in very satisfying ways, and I personally found "The Tsuranga Conundrum" to be a lot of fun, as was "Kerblam!" and "It Takes You Away" was wonderfully bonkers.  I didn't really hate an episode this year...I just found the spider one and the second episode to be forgettable.  And while maybe not technically the finale, "Resolution" actually works really well as a wrap up to the season's character arcs, as well as feature Whitaker's first face-off with a Dalek.  A solid 11 episodes! 

Now we go back to waiting.  The show is taking off 2019 and returning in 2020. It remains to be seen if that means still no Christmas episode or anything else throughout this year, but one way or the other I will start planning and writing my thoughts on the last decade, and before we hit 2020, I will publish my Decade Recap, as I did for all previous decades in the show's history!  Until then, see you on the Trek side of things!

NEXT TIME: TBD