UPPER TIERS: EASTER SUNDAY DOCTOR WHO BLOG

Gyaaaaaah. It’s Sunday, so I’m going to rant about Doctor Who. You don't have to read it.

Happy Easter, by the way. There’ll be spoilers in this. 

I actually really enjoyed the second ep, with some caveats. Some of the acting made my teeth itch. It was otherwise brilliantly realised.

Heck, after some convincing – following her reaction to last week’s ep – even Sanja liked it. 

But, again, I was left with this depressing feeling of… “Who is this made for?”. 

This time there were scenes featuring characters as Doctor Who fans. Literally; the Doctor and Belinda crawled out of a television into the real world, and learned they were characters in a TV show. I love that sort of meta thing in principle, but this early in the Disney era it doesn’t feel like it has earned it. For some this is a brand new show. It felt weirdly unwelcoming to general audiences.

It did help me understand RTD’s overall vision for the show though; this sense that introducing gods, and destroying the rules of reality, allows the show to do almost anything. That’s good – a 62 year-old show needs to reinvent itself.

But how is a new Disney+ viewer, or the casual audience, going to react to the Doctor discussing past episodes, and standing in front of the actual Doctor Who TV show logo? All while Murray Gold lays it on thick and the Doctor cries – again – while a bunch of nerds tell him how much they love him. 

But… again: who is this show for now? The diehard fans? Newcomers? British audiences? International audiences? Young kids? Teenagers? Adults? Doctor Who fans who remember Sutekh from the 1970s? Next week’s looks like scary hard sci-fi. I mean… what?! What’s going on?! Doctor Who has always changed tone and settings, but the pendulum swings are becoming wilder and more bewildering. 

It’s becoming the biggest issue with this era for me; it seems to lack a clear understanding of its audience. Or, indeed, any audience. By trying to be all things to everyone, it invites you in from one moment and repels you the next. It’s so confused. It feels desperate and panicked, and flailing tonally. How much of that is RTD, and how much is the BBC, I don't know.

Last night’s ep was a huge step up from Ep 1, but… looking at the show holistically across the most recent run... it’s all over the place.

RATE’S ENTERTAINMENT

And the overnight ratings are in for Ep 2 and they’re disastrous. 1.58 million. The eighth biggest show of the day, so still top 10, but this is the BBC’s flagship Saturday night show – with a mega-budget – and it simply isn’t holding its own. 

Yes, viewing figures are down across the board. Yes, iPlayer figures and 7/28-day consolidated figures are more important than overnights now, but trust me – I know how it works in TV, and regardless… they’ll be seeing this as disastrous, primarily because of how much Doctor Who costs to make and – this is equally important – market and promote.

Those figures are simply not justifying the expense. No idea how it’s doing on Disney, but I’d imagine it’s a similar picture, if not worse. 

The thing is… it feels so clear what’s happened here, and what has gone wrong. By making the show so confused, RTD has managed to drive away ordinary audiences, he has driven away an older audience who used to like Doctor Who… now who’s left?  

I guess as well, we’re in an era where the culture wars – for the time being – have been won by those who eschew progressive topics. Culturally, much as I hate that we've ended up here, they have the upper hand at this moment in time. Look at the horrible way the Supreme Court’s decision around transgender issues was celebrated this week. 

Last week's episode was about a robot revolution. It looked great. My main issue with it was the tone feeling scattershot. But all people are discussing online is "Planet of the Incels", because it's such a red flag to a certain type of person.

BATTERED DOC

Doctor Who is being battered week after week after week by these people – emboldened by these cultural shifts – on social media and YouTube, accusing it of being out of touch and ‘too woke’. It’s deafening. Because RTD has so firmly planted his axe in the ground, they’ve seen it as a call to arms; the audience is torn along ideological grounds, and it’s killing the show. 

That is also clearly filtering down to general audiences. And again, I’m not talking about me here – just trying to wrap my head around what has happened, and view it with my professional writer hat on. This is me trying to understand why the audience has abandoned it, and the discourse around the show has become beyond toxic. It needs time to let that die down.

There’s enormous push-back now on anything that is remotely seen as progressive, and – because entertainment is an industry that needs its products to do well – that’s why you’re seeing companies like Disney pull back somewhat from all that. It is no longer profitable in the current climate to put a progressive ideology front-and-centre. 

It’s going to be interesting to see Andor next week, which is brazenly  about standing up to fascism, and see how it fares in the public eye a few years on from the triumph of its first season.

I hate it, but... here we are. 

I mean, 18 years ago the Doctor had a black companion – Martha – and nobody batted an eyelid. Rose had a black boyfriend. Bill Potts was black AND gay. Captain Jack was omnisexual. Nobody cared!

And yes, we’ve gone backwards. I’m horrified by it. In recent years the world has been so riled up to oppose all of the progress made, which means that – coupled to RTD’s clumsy messaging – it’s a perfect storm. Doctor Who, at least this incarnation of the show, has become the wrong series at the wrong time and feels utterly detached culturally from a world in which Elon Musk can do a Nazi salute and not suffer any sort of recrimination. 

I'm not saying that it should become some sort of anti-woke version of itself; I'm just saying it needs to be smarter. RTD needs to be smarter.

Incidentally, we lost some subscribers last month because I got “too political” in a post on here (according to exit polls), but when the politics are infecting EVERYTHING – when we’re in a literal ideological, cultural, struggle – I can’t not talk about this stuff. It feels like we’re sliding backwards, downhill into the past, and it terrifies me. 

All the progress I thought we’d made as a society over my lifetime feels as if it’s filtering away, and it’s important to me that we understand why – and that means even looking at our own part in it – in order to prevent it.

Burying our head in the sand, and just doing the same thing over and over, clearly hasn’t worked. What mistakes have WE - those who've supported progressive causes - made?! Because the other lot got MASSIVELY pissed off at us, that motivated them en masse, and now they're revelling in putting us in our place.

Like it or not, Doctor Who is right now on the frontline of that battle, but - because of how clumsily RTD has chosen to fight – it’s losing the war. 

BUH-BUH-CUH

And, let’s be quite clear that Doctor Who represents the BBC, and so it has become a convenient stick with which to beat the corporation.

Another issue that has become wrapped up in politics! I think that the BBC must’ve asked for Doctor Who to appeal to a broad cross-section of audiences; bring in a new one, but not alienate existing ones, because it sees the show as fundamental to the corporation’s own existence. And RTD has followed that brief, while also mixing it with his own world-view.

But… that isn’t the full story I don’t think. It's not just the incels who are fed up with Doctor Who. Something more fundamental has gone wrong both within and outside the show.

I mean, I saw my son this week. He’s transgender, his flatmate is non-binary, they’re about as woke as it gets, but… he was complaining about how on-the-nose the messaging is in this era. He said the woke stuff is too obvious for them and feels clunky and forced.

He described it as “performative”. They’re all for the show being about something, but not the way he feels it’s being done. He specifically hated the non-binary stuff in the 60th anniversary specials. He's transgender for pity’s sake! They have a trans pride flag hanging from their living room window! 

I mean, if Doctor Who losing the LGBTQ+ fans alongside the anti-woke pantheon, then you’re really buggered! Plus my youngest daughter – she was a HUGE Doctor Who fan – can’t watch the new show either because she finds it too aimed at little kids.

It’s a mess. 

NOT BOTHERED

I need to be clear that the inclusive/woke stuff doesn’t remotely bother me. I’m all for it! Yes, some of it seems overly clunky, but I’m only trying to put myself in the heads of general audiences.

RTD used to say that Doctor Who belongs on Saturday night and has to hold its own next to Strictly and Britain’s Got Talent. But would any of those shows call out incels? Would their tone veer from CBeebies-level whimsy to a criticism of gender politics? Imagine what would happen to those shows if they did.

I mean, I thought last night’s ep handled the segregation of the 1950s beautifully; exactly how the show should deal with such subjects. But… I’m sure there’ll be plenty who – because they’re so wound-up to find evil wokery in everything DW does now – will call it out.

Doctor Who is now a commercial proposition, and regardless of whether terrible people exist in the world, I’m not sure it’s Doctor Who is best placed to get on a soapbox. On a Saturday night when people just want something escapist. I get that RTD thinks these things are important – they are! But you catch more flies with honey, and all that. 

A show like this cannot survive if it’s going out of its way to piss people off; it’s commercial suicide for a brand that aspires to the level that Doctor Who now is. That means that – yes, unfortunately – you might need your show to appeal to some people you don’t like, who have views you don’t share. Make it smaller and cheaper if you don’t want them watching. That’s just market realities.

Don’t make a show you say is for everyone and then go… “Except you”.

Doctor Who has always snuck in messages, but they’d be nuanced, more subtle – as good drama and sci-fi should. Not anymore. Subtlety has gone. RTD seems furious at the world’s injustices – I mean, hell… we all are! But he’s a professional writer, and his anger and arrogance is getting in the way of the show’s success, and spilling out in the most on-the-nose way. He’s a brilliant writer. I’ve loved his work, I agree with his politics, but he has got this one all wrong. 

Again: I’m just trying to work out why Doctor Who is flopping so hard, and pushing away… everyone, rather than criticising any wokery in it. I like that Doctor Who has a message, but I’m not everyone. And everyone is who this show is – absurdly – trying to appeal to.

“Except them.’

IS IT DONE?

So is this the end for Doctor Who? Maybe. Maybe it needs to go away for a while, and be missed again. Maybe it needs to be reimagined. But... the BBC need it. To some degree, they're relying on it. It sells internationally - that matters. It has a lucrative back catalogue. But with these sorts of homegrown ratings... that might not be enough anymore.

PS. Please don't cancel your Patreon.