Hi All,
People have asked me why I no longer review 'Dr Who' given that I am a massive fan of the show and it has recently been on for a series and tonight's special.
Well I don't review Dr Who anymore as the current version is a disaster, from a writing, acting and plot viewpoint and in that regard the viewing public agree with me : the fanbase has been hollowed out to the minority of the minority woke and PC brigade and suffered their ideology onto us, to the extent no-one is watching or interested (a lot of the time, these people act like locusts as they go from show to show ruining them as they go, but unlike the pissed off fans who've kept the show going for years don't stay the course once they've imposed their revolution).
It is one thing, though, to have a female Doctor which many fans weren't happy with and is controversial outside of SW7, to the BBC deciding that William Hartnell was not the first doctor, not a timelord and that instead the first doctor was a female BAME ass kicker who worked for some kind of shadowy intergalactic 'A-Team', run by the doctor's mother, rather than being a grumpy old white man who had potentially racist and sexist views, who decided to escape in a knackered broken time machine to explore the universe with his granddaughter (or was it grandson?). These plot threads would have been better placed in a separate spin off series. In fact if Jodi Whitaker had been cast as a She-Ra to Dr Who's He-Man, i.e. his sister, it might have succeeded in some way or other .But this is part of the 'culture war' the left has brought into entertainment so that 'had' to take over Dr Who rather than create another franchise or spin off, as it is easier for a parasite to take over a body than it is to create a whole new one. Plus owning a show like Dr Who and re-creating it in your own image is like obtaining the crown jewel of science fiction, along with Star Trek and Star Wars.
Take tonight's episode and the unsubtle attempts at a lesbian relationship between the doctor and one of the companions, which is made even more Woke given the interracial aspect and because the companion is a secular muslim (they did an episode where they went to India at the time of partition, good chance to have a PC version of history there) and a person of colour. Unfortunately, unlike Rose and the Doctor there is absolutely no believable sexual tension or a (better written way) signal that like Rose this is unrequited love and the Doctor is afterall a 2,000 alien, who seems to have a very low to non existent sex drive anyway and every companion he has is purely 'platonic' as far as he is concerned.
Now people do counter the political aspect of Dr Who, by saying, like 'star trek' that it has 'always been political'. Well yes this is true and there have been various openly left wing writers of Dr Who in the 'old show': Malcolm Hulke was firmly on the left and was at times a paid up member of the British Communist Party. Hulke's writings on the show have produced classics such as 'frontier in space' and one of my all time favourites 'the Sirulians', which both involve conflict between humans and aliens (or in the Sirulians humans and technically humans, as the Sirulians are also natives of Earth) , but with both sides portrayed in a manner to which you sympathise with both parties and can understand , even appreciate their motives rather than being 'black and white' over the issues, which much modern politics boils down. In fact in these stories you have not only conflict between, but within the two camps, so in Frontier in Space the old Emperor of the Draconians and the Earth President are more cautious than their gun ho colleagues who are advocating war, which is being manipulated by the Master (who in the old series was a much more complex person than simply being a genocidal bat shit crazy lunatic) on the payroll of the Daleks. In the Sirulians, the old Sirulian leader is willing to make peace with mankind; but his subordinate wants war and releases a virus. On the other side the Doctor is desperate for peace, but the Brigadier ends up blowing the Sirulians up ( because of the thousands who died through the virus).
But then this is something that has gone by the by with the politics of the show, i.e. the old fashioned craft of story telling shows , rather than tells. In the modern show we are told what the moral is and that we are told that we have to do something about racism or the environment. Instead in the old show we were shown about the environment or racism, not told about it or even told what to think. It was far more powerful that way than any telling off.
But then that's the new liberal left: there's no space for alternative discussion, hence Peter Davidson getting a backlash over his comments about Doctor Who and male role models. In an ironic way the current Doctor Who is no role model for anyone, given the way the character is written as 'socially awkward', for example the avalanche of complaints that the Graham-Doctor scene when the older companion Graham pours his heart out about his worry about his cancer returning. The so-called doctor, rather than responding with any kind of sympathy or even a basic hug just stands there with a bitchy grimace and body language terms 'I don't give a f'*ck' and she actually says 'I suppose I should say something reassuring' (pouty grimace) and instead turns the conversation back to herself and trying to get sympathy for herself explains she's 'socially awkward' which kills the conversation and incidentally any respect you might have had for the character or the show. I would put a link up, but unsurprisingly the BBC isn't keen for this to be on the internet.
While it is true that the BBC are brining back the old showrunner from 2023, I just don't think that anyone can now repair the damage that has been done to this show and it was damage that they didn't have to inflict. It was damage just to appease a tiny minority who happens to shout the loudest on social media platforms, not people who will actually go and support the show, watch it and buy into the wider media and merchandise. It is no coincidence that the most popular and profitable parts of the franchise- which American tv channels are buying into - is the 'old' and not the current Whoinverse.
