I have enjoyed Jodie Whittaker\’s Doctor. I think that whenever you try and do something new you are going to upset people who only want to subsist on a diet of same ad infinitum. I hope that the supposed freefall of ratings doesn\’t drive the Doctor Who production crew away from being brave and adventurous. I don\’t think they will bow down to the haters, especially anyone that has the word \”woke\” on their lips as a pejorative term.
I would like to think that some of, if not all of, what makes the show great, is it\’s Britishness. There is also something about The Doctor that has always embraced the otherness out there in the world. Otherness has changed and the Doctor has changed to look at that.
I think what worked best about Tennant\’s run and Smith\’s run and Capaldi\’s run were the interconnected stories that built and ratcheted up the tension, leading to multiple payoffs in the show finale. Chibnall went for a different kind of show, one that was more episodic, and it lost some of that power, while picking up something else instead. Flux gives us that power back, and weaves together Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, and the Weeping Angels, in a story that looks set, given this last episode I have watched, which looks to dive deep into the heart of what Chibnall sees the Doctor as being, and I am excited to see what that is. If people don\’t see that he has taken chances with his version of the Doctor, and taken her in directions that she may never have travelled in as a guy, and the value this added to the series, then I think they have missed something vital in what makes Doctor Who the show that it is.
Whoever Jodie regenerates into, I think the bar has been set equally as high as when any of the previous regenerations passed on the torch.