My ambivalence is probably showing in this one.
Look, I initially liked the return Doctor Who managed in the 00’s. I sort of drifted away early in Tennant’s run and didn’t look back until I heard Peter Capaldi was announced to be the 12th Doctor. And I was really disappointed with his run. Outside of the Christmas special, there’s really only one genuinely good episode I can think of off the top of my head: Heaven Sent. Which, itself, was clamped between two unappealing Clara-centric episodes. Seriously, Capaldi’s run has one of the most virulently awful episodes of anything I watched that year. I didn’t even watch any of last season; but judging from the little I saw of the last episode, I wasn’t really missing much*. Getting David Bradley to play Hartnell’s Doctor at the end was genuinely smart, however. Especially since I’m pretty sure it’s his time on Game of Thrones this season.
*Seriously, they had, like, magical space lesbians that have a Stargate Ascension when they die or something like that. Screw that noise.
So, after the recent Men’s Final at Wimbledon, they announced the next Doctor; Jodie Whittaker. Cue salt explosion. And I really don’t much care. I’m sure she’s a good actor. I’d probably argue things will get better under Chris Chibnall as a whole; blessedly ending the Moffat reign. If Moffat can take the sound editor on the way out, even better. Seriously that asshole mixes music too hot over dialog; if you want your acting obliterated by the soundtrack, that’s who you want. Seriously, Capaldi’s a great actor, and I feel like he was wasted in the role. A Female Doctor is something Moffat was angling towards for years, which is where my misgivings come from. Fanboys, naturally, fucking hate it (Tumblr on the other hand, loves it because of course they do), and have spent the past several hours bombing the absolute shit out of the BBC’s Twitter. Which I think is pretty funny. Also, I’d watch the absolute shit out of a Rowan Atkinson Doctor (funny how Moffat wrote that one; man is like the Nicholas Cage of scriptwriting). Just putting that out there for next time.
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