Doctor Who: Thirteenth Doctor
Year: 2018 - 2022
Created by: Chris Chibnall
Starring: John Bishop, Tosin Cole, Sacha Dahwan, Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh & Jodie Whittaker
Episodes: 30 (4 Series)
BBFC: 12
Published: 19/12/22
Created by: Chris Chibnall
Starring: John Bishop, Tosin Cole, Sacha Dahwan, Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh & Jodie Whittaker
Episodes: 30 (4 Series)
BBFC: 12
Published: 19/12/22
Peter Capaldi’s run as The Doctor proved to be a divisive switch up for Doctor Who with its significantly darker tone than that of Matt Smith’s era, as well as by casting a more mature actor for the first time in the show’s revival and chose to modernise many elements of the show by including a greater diversity of characters such as Pearl Mackie’s Bill. For some it was a dark time for Doctor Who, but for others like me it was proof that there was still life in the old dog yet and that the showrunners were prepared to go to extreme lengths to prove it.
But few could guess the even more radical direction the show was going to go in for the era of the Thirteenth Doctor, when the BBC shocked the world by casting its first ever female in the title role. Whilst that was only the tip of the iceberg of the radical changes that new showrunner Chris Chibnall would introduce, it certainly caused quite a stir amongst the fanbase.
Having reluctantly accepted his regeneration, the Twelfth Doctor transforms into Thirteen (Jodie Whittaker) and the resulting damage to the Tardis leaves her stranded-on Earth in the modern day. Aided by new companions Ryan (Tosin Cole), Yasmin (Mandip Gill), and Graham (Bradley Walsh), The Doctor saves the lives of their families and recovers her Tardis. Together with her new companions they travel through space and time to save the galaxy from various threats.
Series Eleven is very much back to basics for Doctor Who following the ever-increasing complexity of the story and mythos dating back to David Tennant’s Era as The Doctor. Each episode is a self-contained story and can be watched mostly independent of each other as the story threads that bind them are sparse at best. What Season Eleven does is focus a lot on the companions and how the adventures they go on impact them personally, an avenue that has been well explored in Doctor Who in the past, but this feels significantly more like classic Doctor Who, you know, the show that ran from 1963 to 1989. Because there’s far less focus on overreaching narratives and a decade's worth of lore, Series Eleven allows each episode's themes to be fully fleshed out and be important in their own right, however because of this self-contained episodic nature there is no opportunity for the show to actually tread new ground. It’s all stuff we have seen before, either in the revival era or just a rehash of classic Doctor Who episodes with a modern gloss.
But few could guess the even more radical direction the show was going to go in for the era of the Thirteenth Doctor, when the BBC shocked the world by casting its first ever female in the title role. Whilst that was only the tip of the iceberg of the radical changes that new showrunner Chris Chibnall would introduce, it certainly caused quite a stir amongst the fanbase.
Having reluctantly accepted his regeneration, the Twelfth Doctor transforms into Thirteen (Jodie Whittaker) and the resulting damage to the Tardis leaves her stranded-on Earth in the modern day. Aided by new companions Ryan (Tosin Cole), Yasmin (Mandip Gill), and Graham (Bradley Walsh), The Doctor saves the lives of their families and recovers her Tardis. Together with her new companions they travel through space and time to save the galaxy from various threats.
Series Eleven is very much back to basics for Doctor Who following the ever-increasing complexity of the story and mythos dating back to David Tennant’s Era as The Doctor. Each episode is a self-contained story and can be watched mostly independent of each other as the story threads that bind them are sparse at best. What Season Eleven does is focus a lot on the companions and how the adventures they go on impact them personally, an avenue that has been well explored in Doctor Who in the past, but this feels significantly more like classic Doctor Who, you know, the show that ran from 1963 to 1989. Because there’s far less focus on overreaching narratives and a decade's worth of lore, Series Eleven allows each episode's themes to be fully fleshed out and be important in their own right, however because of this self-contained episodic nature there is no opportunity for the show to actually tread new ground. It’s all stuff we have seen before, either in the revival era or just a rehash of classic Doctor Who episodes with a modern gloss.
Series Twelve then returns to the early revival style of having mostly self-contained episodes that are all building to a grand finale. In this case, the return of The Master (Sacha Dhawan) and once again returning to the destruction of Gallifrey. Similar to Series Eleven, much of Twelve feels like it’s re-treading old ground. It relies on stuff we’ve already seen before and whilst it tries to justify it by putting a modern spin on the events, as well as providing considerably higher production values, ultimately it falls flat and is mostly forgettable.
Series Eleven and Twelve both put education back into focus for the first time in the revival. Classic Doctor Who was always a careful balance between far flung sci-fi and educational history, and Chibnall’s ambition to bring that back big time is a gamble that I personally feel doesn’t pay off in the modern TV landscape. Whilst I appreciate that he wanted to make Doctor Who about more than just aliens and time travel again, the only way to make these stories work is to fragment them and isolate them in the way he has needed to do, which in the modern landscape of long form television doesn’t give me any desire to come back week after week and see where the story goes next.
I have briefly mentioned the heightened production values and I must say that the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who has finally been given the budget the show always needed, with some genuinely good special effects and a bump up to 4K HDR from Series Twelve onwards. This means the show looks better than it ever has before, sets, costumes, practical and digital effects are all given so much more polish and depth than they have ever been able to have before. However, it appears that the effects budget in Series Eleven and Twelve went mostly on the opening episodes and ran dry come the finale’s, despite the finale’s requiring so much more work because of their bigger and higher stakes nature. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem for Series Thirteen and the 2022 Specials, but it is quite obvious where the money ran out at times because it sticks out like a sore thumb. At least with earlier series they had to make do with bits of old washing machines and some duct tape, so it always looked a little shonky, but it was consistent. Here though, once that budget started to run thin you really notice the dip in quality.
Before moving on to Series Thirteen and the 2022 Specials, I just want to talk about Whittaker and her companions so far. I think it’s a great idea that Chibnall elected to have the Thirteenth Doctor be a woman as it really shakes up how the show processes particular things, and it adds an entirely new dimension to the character. Whilst many will decry it as pandering to the woke snowflakes, I feel that giving The Doctor a new perspective, one that they’ve never had before, is really beneficial to keeping the show fresh (ironic considering how many of the storylines in Series Eleven and Twelve are repeats of things seen before). However, Whittaker herself does not shine like the star I hoped she would. A beloved staple of British TV, Whittaker was the ideal choice for the first female Doctor, yet she is never given anything interesting to do with the character. Where David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi were given real meat on the bones of the character to work with, Whittaker feels like she’s been given a mannequin that has a permanent child friendly grin on it. Most of this is because the focus is directed to the companions, but it means that despite being the title character, The Doctor is the least interesting person in the show. It also feels like a regression to the early days of Smith’s Era as The Doctor where everything was so child friendly and silly, whilst Smith underwent a significant arc to shift into a darker and more damaged Doctor over time, Whittaker remains steadfast a goofy comedy sidekick in the show where she is supposed to be the leading lady; a jarring shift from Capaldi’s grim and gritty take on the character.
So, with the focus being on the companions, they’re the best yet right? Well...no. See where great companions from previous series like Clara, Rose, and Amy/Rory succeeded was in the multi-series character arcs. These were characters with baggage and by the end of their time in the show it was genuinely sad to see them leave, regardless of whether they got a happy ending or not. But with Ryan and Graham in particular you never get an opportunity to connect with them or see them grow. You learn a lot about who they were before The Doctor came, but they don’t change an awful lot whilst they’re with her. They’re both not particularly good actors either. I haven’t seen Tosin Cole in anything else, but he genuinely felt lost a lot of the time. Bradley Walsh meanwhile is a great TV presenter, but a horrendous actor and I didn’t buy his performance for a second. This probably explains why neither character returned for Series Thirteen, they overstayed their welcome past their first episode, and there was nothing really going for them. Yasmin on the other hand is the only companion given any kind of development, but it’s superficial at best. She and The Doctor begin to form a romantic relationship, and whilst in the context of Whittaker Era modernism exploring non-hetero romance this is fine, the fact that this had already been done before with both Rose and Clara in a much better way kind of makes it seem pointless. Mandip Gill does deliver a decent performance as Yasmin though, and she’s a likable character so I’m glad she got to stick around for the whole of Whittaker’s run as she does make a good companion to her specific Doctor.
Series Eleven and Twelve both put education back into focus for the first time in the revival. Classic Doctor Who was always a careful balance between far flung sci-fi and educational history, and Chibnall’s ambition to bring that back big time is a gamble that I personally feel doesn’t pay off in the modern TV landscape. Whilst I appreciate that he wanted to make Doctor Who about more than just aliens and time travel again, the only way to make these stories work is to fragment them and isolate them in the way he has needed to do, which in the modern landscape of long form television doesn’t give me any desire to come back week after week and see where the story goes next.
I have briefly mentioned the heightened production values and I must say that the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who has finally been given the budget the show always needed, with some genuinely good special effects and a bump up to 4K HDR from Series Twelve onwards. This means the show looks better than it ever has before, sets, costumes, practical and digital effects are all given so much more polish and depth than they have ever been able to have before. However, it appears that the effects budget in Series Eleven and Twelve went mostly on the opening episodes and ran dry come the finale’s, despite the finale’s requiring so much more work because of their bigger and higher stakes nature. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem for Series Thirteen and the 2022 Specials, but it is quite obvious where the money ran out at times because it sticks out like a sore thumb. At least with earlier series they had to make do with bits of old washing machines and some duct tape, so it always looked a little shonky, but it was consistent. Here though, once that budget started to run thin you really notice the dip in quality.
Before moving on to Series Thirteen and the 2022 Specials, I just want to talk about Whittaker and her companions so far. I think it’s a great idea that Chibnall elected to have the Thirteenth Doctor be a woman as it really shakes up how the show processes particular things, and it adds an entirely new dimension to the character. Whilst many will decry it as pandering to the woke snowflakes, I feel that giving The Doctor a new perspective, one that they’ve never had before, is really beneficial to keeping the show fresh (ironic considering how many of the storylines in Series Eleven and Twelve are repeats of things seen before). However, Whittaker herself does not shine like the star I hoped she would. A beloved staple of British TV, Whittaker was the ideal choice for the first female Doctor, yet she is never given anything interesting to do with the character. Where David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi were given real meat on the bones of the character to work with, Whittaker feels like she’s been given a mannequin that has a permanent child friendly grin on it. Most of this is because the focus is directed to the companions, but it means that despite being the title character, The Doctor is the least interesting person in the show. It also feels like a regression to the early days of Smith’s Era as The Doctor where everything was so child friendly and silly, whilst Smith underwent a significant arc to shift into a darker and more damaged Doctor over time, Whittaker remains steadfast a goofy comedy sidekick in the show where she is supposed to be the leading lady; a jarring shift from Capaldi’s grim and gritty take on the character.
So, with the focus being on the companions, they’re the best yet right? Well...no. See where great companions from previous series like Clara, Rose, and Amy/Rory succeeded was in the multi-series character arcs. These were characters with baggage and by the end of their time in the show it was genuinely sad to see them leave, regardless of whether they got a happy ending or not. But with Ryan and Graham in particular you never get an opportunity to connect with them or see them grow. You learn a lot about who they were before The Doctor came, but they don’t change an awful lot whilst they’re with her. They’re both not particularly good actors either. I haven’t seen Tosin Cole in anything else, but he genuinely felt lost a lot of the time. Bradley Walsh meanwhile is a great TV presenter, but a horrendous actor and I didn’t buy his performance for a second. This probably explains why neither character returned for Series Thirteen, they overstayed their welcome past their first episode, and there was nothing really going for them. Yasmin on the other hand is the only companion given any kind of development, but it’s superficial at best. She and The Doctor begin to form a romantic relationship, and whilst in the context of Whittaker Era modernism exploring non-hetero romance this is fine, the fact that this had already been done before with both Rose and Clara in a much better way kind of makes it seem pointless. Mandip Gill does deliver a decent performance as Yasmin though, and she’s a likable character so I’m glad she got to stick around for the whole of Whittaker’s run as she does make a good companion to her specific Doctor.
Moving on to Series Thirteen then, and this is where things get interesting although not necessarily better. Series Thirteen is the only series of Doctor Who to be given a subtitle, Flux, and it consists of six episodes that all share an overarching story. This is what you would expect Doctor Who in the modern day to be like, The Doctor taking on one villainous threat over multiple episodes in an attempt to save time and space. Whilst Doctor Who has done the overarching plot and single villain thing before, it’s never been presented in this way where this feels like a five-hour film divided into six fifty-minute episodes. It’s a stark contrast from Series Eleven and even Twelve where each episode was largely self-contained with only the most threadbare connections between them a lot of the time.
The story is that a world ending phenomenon known as ‘The Flux’ is consuming everything, and The Doctor along with Yasmin and new companion Dan (John Bishop) must stop it. With the devious Swarm (Sam Spruell) and Azure (Rochenda Sandall) doing whatever they can to ensure the Flux’s total destruction of everything, they unite a rogue's gallery of The Doctor’s greatest opponents to ensure their success.
On paper this sounds great, and in practice it should have worked brilliantly. But as proven by the mediocre at best quality of the Series Eleven and Twelve storylines, Chris Chibnall simply isn’t up to task of undertaking such a gargantuan and complex narrative. Despite being a single story, it feels at time disjointed and isolated, it also feels like there’s so many contrivances to allow this to be a six-episode story as opposed to a more traditional two-parter special. It’s messy and it’s hard to follow, and honestly it becomes perhaps the worst series of the show since the 2005 revival. I mean it can’t even keep consistent with canon because there’s multiple instances of people not looking at the Weeping Angels and the Angels don’t do anything. The moment I saw that happening I knew that all bets were off and Chibnall was just doing whatever the hell he wanted, and it just wasn’t working.
Series Thirteen is followed up by three 2022 Specials which I guess were envisioned to tie up any loose ends The Doctor had before her regeneration, but they once again regress back to Series Eleven where each one is entirely isolated from the last and each one is a repeat of something we’ve already seen before in Doctor Who. The stakes aren’t higher, the writing certainly isn’t more refined, and whilst the production value for these episodes is incredible, they’re extremely forgettable. The finale, ‘The Power of the Doctor’ was supposed to be a grand celebration of everything Doctor Who because it coincided with the BBC’s One Hundredth Anniversary as a broadcaster, and whilst the ninety-minute special was action packed from start to finish and brought together The Master, the Daleks, and the Cybermen once again for a cataclysmic showdown, it all felt oddly reminiscent of the end of David Tennant’s Era...which is quite ironic when you consider how it ends.
The story is that a world ending phenomenon known as ‘The Flux’ is consuming everything, and The Doctor along with Yasmin and new companion Dan (John Bishop) must stop it. With the devious Swarm (Sam Spruell) and Azure (Rochenda Sandall) doing whatever they can to ensure the Flux’s total destruction of everything, they unite a rogue's gallery of The Doctor’s greatest opponents to ensure their success.
On paper this sounds great, and in practice it should have worked brilliantly. But as proven by the mediocre at best quality of the Series Eleven and Twelve storylines, Chris Chibnall simply isn’t up to task of undertaking such a gargantuan and complex narrative. Despite being a single story, it feels at time disjointed and isolated, it also feels like there’s so many contrivances to allow this to be a six-episode story as opposed to a more traditional two-parter special. It’s messy and it’s hard to follow, and honestly it becomes perhaps the worst series of the show since the 2005 revival. I mean it can’t even keep consistent with canon because there’s multiple instances of people not looking at the Weeping Angels and the Angels don’t do anything. The moment I saw that happening I knew that all bets were off and Chibnall was just doing whatever the hell he wanted, and it just wasn’t working.
Series Thirteen is followed up by three 2022 Specials which I guess were envisioned to tie up any loose ends The Doctor had before her regeneration, but they once again regress back to Series Eleven where each one is entirely isolated from the last and each one is a repeat of something we’ve already seen before in Doctor Who. The stakes aren’t higher, the writing certainly isn’t more refined, and whilst the production value for these episodes is incredible, they’re extremely forgettable. The finale, ‘The Power of the Doctor’ was supposed to be a grand celebration of everything Doctor Who because it coincided with the BBC’s One Hundredth Anniversary as a broadcaster, and whilst the ninety-minute special was action packed from start to finish and brought together The Master, the Daleks, and the Cybermen once again for a cataclysmic showdown, it all felt oddly reminiscent of the end of David Tennant’s Era...which is quite ironic when you consider how it ends.
John Bishop was an interesting casting choice for companion, because as far as I’m aware he’s never done any acting before. He’s one of my favourite comedians so I was looking forward to seeing what he could offer, but similar to Bradley Walsh I simply couldn’t buy into the performance. He is given considerably more depth than Graham or Ryan, but really does feel side-lined when stacked up against Yasmin. It also creates this weird imbalance where The Doctor being as quirky and comedy centric as she is during this era of the show, combined with Dan being the comedic sidekick, it means that Yasmin is often the only person in the room taking things seriously and it is such an odd dynamic for the show to have.
For me, Whittaker’s Era as the Thirteenth Doctor is perhaps the worst the show has been since it was revived in 2005, but that is crucially not the fault of her being in the leading role. Many are quick to point the finger at Whittaker for ‘ruining’ the show because she’s a woman in a role traditionally played by a man, but if anything, that’s this era’s strongest asset as it allows things to be looked at from a different perspective.
What ruins this era of the show is Chibnall’s inconsistency with how the show will be delivered narratively, and his inability to create interesting and new story material. It relies so much on updating old storylines for modern audiences that it lacks any genuine creativity. This combined with the shallow or non-existent character arcs for The Doctor and her frankly crowded Tardis of companions make this era entirely inconsequential, hammered home even more by the reveal of who is taking Whittakers place as the Fourteenth Doctor.
With Chibnall stepping down as showrunner, and the return of both Russell T. Davis and a former favourite as The Fourteenth Doctor I am hopeful that the 2023 specials will help bring the show back from the brink ready for The Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, in 2024. Only time will tell, but I have a feeling that the Whittaker Era is going to be remembered for all the wrong reasons and not for the few truly great things it got right.
For me, Whittaker’s Era as the Thirteenth Doctor is perhaps the worst the show has been since it was revived in 2005, but that is crucially not the fault of her being in the leading role. Many are quick to point the finger at Whittaker for ‘ruining’ the show because she’s a woman in a role traditionally played by a man, but if anything, that’s this era’s strongest asset as it allows things to be looked at from a different perspective.
What ruins this era of the show is Chibnall’s inconsistency with how the show will be delivered narratively, and his inability to create interesting and new story material. It relies so much on updating old storylines for modern audiences that it lacks any genuine creativity. This combined with the shallow or non-existent character arcs for The Doctor and her frankly crowded Tardis of companions make this era entirely inconsequential, hammered home even more by the reveal of who is taking Whittakers place as the Fourteenth Doctor.
With Chibnall stepping down as showrunner, and the return of both Russell T. Davis and a former favourite as The Fourteenth Doctor I am hopeful that the 2023 specials will help bring the show back from the brink ready for The Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, in 2024. Only time will tell, but I have a feeling that the Whittaker Era is going to be remembered for all the wrong reasons and not for the few truly great things it got right.