Doctor Who – 8 Reasons to be Concerned about Series 11

(Image Source: BBC)

Series 11 of Doctor Who is now almost here. I don’t remember Doctor Who fans ever being as divided as we are now, generally the issues of Jodie’s casting has overshadowed some other significant changes which we will see in the new series which are also cause for concern.  

So I’ve put together a list of 8 reasons to be concerned about the new series.

1. New Showrunner

(Image Source: Digital Spy)

This is the big one, most of this list stems from this one change because the most obvious difficulty facing the new season is the fact that after 6 seasons and 8 years, Steven Moffat has decided to step down as showrunner. Whilst this is not a bad thing necessarily. In fact, I think most fans would agree that Moffat seemed to be running out of ideas in the last few seasons.

But Chibnall’s Doctor Who CV is far from inspiring. He has penned a number of forgettable stories such as ‘42’ and ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’. I would say the best story he has written for Doctor Who to date is Series 7’s ‘The Power of Three’. It was pretty decent, but still very far from a classic.

Compare that record to Moffat’s when he first took the reins. He had penned ‘The Empty Child/Doctor Dances’, ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, ‘Blink’ and ‘Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead’. For me, every one of those stories were amongst the best in their respective series. Whilst many have criticised his work as showrunner, nobody could argue he wasn’t a good choice at the time to replace RTD.

A change of showrunner is as significant a change that Doctor Who can face. Moffat knew this when he took over. At every turn he tried to make the transition as smooth as possible, he even had a version of Series 5 which starred David Tennant if he could convince him to stay on for another year.

Chibnall has taken a different approach, opting for wholesale change for its own sake and some of his changes will also be included in this list.

2. New Lead Actor

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock. You will already be aware that Jodie Whittaker has been cast to play the Doctor in Chibnall’s first series. As far as I can tell, Jodie Whittaker is a good actress, even if I haven’t seen her play a character as complex as the Doctor before, I’m sure she will give a different spin on the character and as all Doctors do, she will have her fans.

But whilst changes in lead actor and showrunner have gone hand in hand previously, it is always a risk and the more changes that are implemented together, the more difficult it will be to convince people this is still the same show that they know and love.

3. New (& Multiple) Companions

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As well as a new Doctor, there will be new companions travelling in the TARDIS in Series 11 as well. Companions tend to change fairly regularly so this is nothing we’re not well used to by now.

However, this will be the first time since 2005 that multiple travelling companions have been introduced together. The formula in the last 10 series has been simple and well established, the Doctor and one companion (who would generally be a young woman). Once these characters had been established and the audience had grown accustomed to their relationship, then others could be introduced; Jack Harkness and Rory Williams spring to mind.

So introducing a new Doctor and three new companions all in the one episode will be a significantly more difficult challenge for Chibnall to grapple with than other showrunners have attempted.

4. No Familiar Enemies

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With so many changes happening in the show for Series 11, one might have thought it sensible to make sure a dalek or two ended up on screen, if nothing else to remind the audience that this is in fact Doctor Who we are watching.

But no, Chibnall has been clear, no daleks, no cybermen, no Master. This series will be all new and he has decided to double down on that. To me that seems an unnecessary risk, many are sceptical of Chibnall’s ability to deliver a good show on the basis of the mediocrity of his previous Doctor Who work. The Master, the daleks, the cybermen, they’re crowd-pleasers and Chibnall may need some of that if his show doesn’t take off as planned.

5. New Writing Team

Another strange decision is Chibnall’s choice of writers. There will be no returning writers from the Moffat or RTD era in series 11.

To me, the writing is the most important element of Doctor Who. So the fact that with the exception of showrunner, Chibnall, the rest of the writing team will have contributed a combined total of zero Doctor Who stories before this series is a really worrying sign for me.

I don’t want to criticise the new writers individually because it’s important to blood new writers regularly and I will judge the new writers on the quality of their stories. It is the decision to only have new writers which seems like another unnecessary risk from Chibnall. Surely a continuation of the formula from RTD and Moffat which was a combination of returning and new writers would have been the more sensible way forward.

It all contributes to an impression that Chibnall is giving that everything is changing and that it is change for change’s sake, rather than to evolve and develop the story.

(Shout out to the decision to hire new directors as well here. Another change for its own sake but because I think direction is less important to Doctor Who than its actors and writers, this change didn’t make the list)

6. New Composer

(Image Source: Telegraph UK)

In what was personally a really significant announcement, it was announced that Murray Gold would also be leaving Doctor Who.

Murray Gold has been the composer for Doctor Who since its return in 2005 and I think his scores have really added something special to the revived show.

Who wouldn’t be inspired by “Words Win Wars”, the music to Matt Smith’s combative speech at Stonehenge, or brought to tears by “Vale Decem”, the music that accompanied David Tennant’s final moments as the Doctor.

Murray Gold has added a lot to the show in the last 13 years and losing him only adds to the instability around the new series.

Segun Akinola will compose the score for series 11 and like with my point on the new writers, I’ll give him a chance, it’s losing Murray Gold which is the cause for concern on this point.

7. “Educational” – The New Direction of the Show

Chibnall also wants to bring the show back to its roots. By this he means making it “educational” as Sydney Newman intended it to be when it was first released in the 1960s.

To me Doctor Who has always been slightly educational, including occasional useful information on subjects like history and physics amongst all the historical and scientific fantasy.

So I don’t really think it needs to go any heavier on the educational side of things, I worry doing so would make the show less entertaining.

But if that weren’t enough, what Chibnall means by “educational” actually sounds like teaching the audience to be more woke. 

(Image Source: Twitter)

In series 11, the Doctor will take new companions Ryan and Yasmin to historical events which are particularly relevant to their own ethnic backgrounds.

It has already been well publicised that one story will feature Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist who famously refused to sit at the back of the bus in 1950s Alabama. That story would be good as a standalone historical story. But if it is there to serve an identity politics narrative told through the eyes of new companion Ryan, it is not ok. Similarly, it is rumoured that a story will be set in India and will be relevant to new companion Yasmin and her ethnic background.

Identity politics and popular sci-fi franchises don’t mix well. Ask any Star Wars or Star Trek fan. This information relating to our new companions’ ‘ethnic backgrounds’ and how stories will be tailored to that do not reassure me that this new series will not go down the dangerous road of identity politics.

Which brings me to my final point…

8. Female Doctor

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It had to be included. Despite the fact that I have already written a blog on why the Doctor should not be female, it is clearly a large cause for concern and so needs to be on this list.

I won’t get back into why it shouldn’t happen, but I will say the risk it poses here.

This represents a complete rewrite of the show’s titular character. Despite what the twitter feminists say, the Doctor has always been a man, and I don’t mean he has been portrayed by men, I mean that the character has been a masculine character.

He’s egotistical, stoic, often aggressively angry and very silly. This is by no means an exhaustive list of his masculine traits either, just the first things about the Doctor that sprung to mind and whilst women are perfectly capable of all of these traits, they are more commonly associated with men.

Gender-swapping him, and particularly with the oft repeated justification that he is “a genderless alien” completely changes these fundamentals of the Doctor as a character. If he is to become less human and more feminine then he/she (is ‘it’ the correct pronoun for an alien?) will become a completely different character.

That’s fine in theory, the character has always been evolving naturally but this is a big and in my opinion unnatural step for the development of the Doctor. It will be difficult for men to relate to a character being played by a woman and it will difficult for women to relate to a character that was a man for 55 years.

Of course non-cisgendered people will relate more easily than anyone to this new character and that is great for them. But whilst I don’t doubt there is a large community of these fans, they are not a majority of fans and for a much larger section of fans, the Doctor just became less relatable as a character.

Too Much Change

Chibnall has gone all in on this new series of Doctor Who. It will be his way or the highway, that much is abundantly clear.

I worry though, there is an old philosophical problem, that of Theseus’s ship. It describes a ship which has each of its components gradually replaced over time until eventually every aspect is different from the original ship. The question is, is it the same ship?

My argument in this context would be so long as the changes are gradual then yes it is the same ship that has evolved with time. But if too much of the ship is changed in one go, then it would have to be considered a different ship.

I worry that Chibnall has made that very mistake, he has changed almost every aspect of the show overnight and I think the concern should be that many fans will conclude that Chibnall is indeed steering the ship of this show, it may even be a good show but it is not Doctor Who.