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Been thinking about Doctor Who, as I sometimes spend too much time doing, and how I wish we'd got more of what seemed promised in this teaser with Jodie Whittaker's Doctor. So calm, so connected, so in control. https://twitter.com/DoctorWho_BBCA/status/1151143757598867456
This promised a Doctor who was more at peace. More aware of her role in the universe and how she connected with it. Calmly, confidently striding through lives and crises (and, then, when unsettled, it's a big deal).
Instead, Chibnall's run has given us a Doctor who rarely seems in control, and actually often seems out of her depth. Both in terms of when she's in a crisis, and also on a deeper 'I've never felt less sure of who I am' level.
The relationship between her and her companions has more clearly been "The Doctor needs our help!", and that feels new. What seemed promised here was the Doctor as an almost mythical saviour.
A larger cast doesn't need to be a problem, but it's led to the episodes feeling a bit manic and rushed at times, and that's led to a rather more hyper Doctor. And I'd love to see more of this nature/cosmic-connected Doctor.
It's not a criticism of Whittaker here, by the way, who I think is fabulous, but is performing the scripts she has. But it's not too late to course-correct, and I've got a couple of small thoughts on that.
My two favourite Doctors are McCoy and Capaldi. Both of whom had first seasons I wasn't very keen on, but final seasons that I adored. There are other similarities.
Both started off playing a far more hyper, silly version of The Doctor. And very against what their characters settled down as. McCoy was the spoon-playing, spoonerism-affected clown, and Capaldi was the mean, manic Doctor, an angry whirlwind.
(Part of this, I honestly think, is that, as Armando Iannucci pointed out about The Thick Of It, Peter Capaldi running is the funniest thing in the world)
Capaldi was mean and manic in his first season, swaggering in his second, and calm and kind in his third. And it's his third that really stays with me. It feels like the role he was born to play.
McCoy went from being the clown to being the small, strange little man that just knew everything. He became the most dangerous and cunning Doctor, the great manipulator.
Part of this was the famous Cartmel Masterplan, a deliberate attempt to add some mystery back to The Doctor. He became slightly more at arm's length, and with hints that he was something more than just a Timelord. Everything he did had a long-term purpose we didn't know.
The thing is, we can have the Doctor at arm's length more. That's why we have the companions. They're our way in, and our understanding - not The Doctor. The Doctor CAN be more mysterious and know more than the viewer. It's how the show started!
Part of this might be a holdover from Moffatt, who spent a lot of time deconstructing the nature of the companion. In most of his run, the companion WAS the mystery. More powerful and more all-seeing than The Doctor.
It was in Capaldi's third season, again, that was reversed. Bill (the best companion in years) was able to reintroduce us to The Doctor. Who wasn't her day-to-day 'oh, sorry I didn't call yesterday' friend, but a background presence in her life.
You can still have the joy, you can still have the energy - but we sometimes need to stop seeing the sausage being made. For Whittaker's third season, I want to see a Doctor who has seen everything and still feels joy and love and tragedy and despair.
Yas is (easily) my favourite of the latest companions, so I'm glad she's sticking around. And the one with the most growth opportunity - her becoming more confident, more assured. That's perfect for this Doctor.
There were suggestions that McCoy's Doctor was training Ace to become a Time Lord. Yas is the first character I could see that happening with in decades. But if not going that far, the idea that The Doctor sees her potential and is going to help.
Is it manipulative? Yes. That's what The Doctor does. Maybe Yas is the one to pull her up on that, teaching her something before she leaves. But that's a relationship and dynamic to explore.
Maybe it's not that, and it's going somewhere else. But as an arc for Whittaker's third season, I'd like it to be that it's becoming clear The Doctor has responded to the revelations of the last season. She has a plan. We just don't know what it is.
She's a little more distant with Yas, but still reassuring. But there's a mystery there. And she's preoccupied with it, sometimes acting wildly out of character. And at times, absent. For a lot of the season, Yas is the main character.
This isn't saying that the Doctor needs to be fully in control. She doesn't. The climax comes when something in the plan has gone wrong. We earn the out-of-control, we don't start with it.
Basically, we need to go hard in the opposite direction of 'familiar and matey' for a little while. The Doctor can be mysterious and a little scary at times. Wrong-foot us a little.
Whatever it is, we need some course-correction. There's time left to make her Doctor great.
By the way, if you love Doctor Who at the moment, and think this is the Whittaker Doctor you've always wanted? Great! If it's just not for me anymore, I'm absolutely fine with that. I want people to love it.
This has been more about what isn't working for me, and how it's more a tone thing than anything. If others agree, great. If I'm out on a limb, that's also great.
