But fans panned the series. They missed the speeches. They wanted the Doctor to be a superbeing. They wanted an arc, they felt the writing was sloppy, Chibnall must go, Whitaker is the worst! And quite honestly...none of it was new. When I first got into Who, it was the Tennant era. And at that time, all I saw online was how he was the worst (yet I loved him in the role), and how RTD must go. Every one of these fans was clamoring for the days until Moffat could take over, because his episodes are clearly the best. Then he took over, and it seemed like in unison the fandom began to chant "Moff Must Go!" and that Smith was nothing compared to Tennant. And I realized then that it was all silly. These fans just enjoyed complaining. No one is ever happy with any era that isn't the moment they discovered the show.
My brother once compared Doctor Who to SNL. The era in which you discover the show is the best era of all time. You can appreciate that which came before, but none of it hits you as hard as the moment you found the show. And everything that comes after is awful and lame. But there are some that appreciate the whole show, every era, warts and all. My brother dug the RTD days and the Matt Smith half of Moff's run. He lost interest when Capaldi came in. And that 's fine. Obviously, I tend to appreciate it all. I think a lot of the complaints, particularly the loudest, were from Moffat Era fans, who just didn't understand why their show was SO different.
Anyhow, Chibnall has seemingly caved to the fans that decried his era's lack of speeches and big sweeping arc and the Doctor being all important. He has injected all of it into his second year. And in some ways he injected the biggest element almost as if to put up his middle finger to all of them. He brought a big "epic" arc, he brought the Master back, he copied Moffat's biggest twist in the series by revealing a secret past Doctor. He even copied RTD's biggest continuity move by destroying Gallifrey again. Twice! And he added a whole new layer to the show's backstory. As someone who both dislikes when the Doctor is something ultra special to the universe AND doesn't give a hoot about Time Lord backstory...I'm not really that into the ending.
The idea that all the regeneration powers of the Time Lords stems from the Doctor is lame. And funnily enough, I am sure the exact fans who felt the Doctor was too passive or not seemingly the most important person in the room also will complain endlessly and hate this too. The Doctor being THE original Time Lord is not my cup of tea. And this upends so much of the show's long standing backstory that it is hard to make work, even in my "canon is nonsense, Doctor Who canon doubly so" mind, I am struggling for this to make any sort of sense.
But it is something some factions of fandom have been trying to do for decades now. It was the ultimate endgame in the Virgin New Adventures book series, and arguably the possible endgame of the Seventh Doctor had he not been cancelled. RTD always knew how to reign it in just a little, though he certainly played a big part in the deification of the Doctor. I do think he kept it at bay though when it counted. Then we had Moff...and he just basically made the Doctor the coolest guy in the room whenever he could. The only reason it was at all subdued was that he happened to cast two guys that seemed to know the character was not truly a god. Smith saw him as a dweeb, which undercut much of Moff's over the top hero worship. Capaldi KNEW that character from his youth and injected so much of that into his performance, even if occasionally Moff would have him playing an electric guitar on a tank in the Middle Ages.
Beyond all that, I actually LIKED most of this season. "Spyfall" was a snappy double-opener, "Fugitive of the Judoon" was great, "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" and "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" were both really fun as well. Even the lesser stories like "Praxeus," "Can You Hear Me?" and, yes, even "Orphan 55" weren't so bad either. And hell, even with the major reveal that majorly sucked, the two part finale was also mostly entertaining to watch. Just a shame that so much goodwill and enjoyment of this season had to be so utterly undercut in the last act.
NEXT TIME: Dalek New Years…Again!
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