Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: bbc, chris chibnall, david tennant, disney, doctor who, jodie whittaker, steven moffat

Doctor Who: The Moral Failings of The Thirteenth Doctor's Era

The Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who was disappointing for its unrealized potential, despite having a fresh and likable lead in Jodie Whittaker. It's not her fault. She was more than capable of pushing the envelope as an actor, judging from her work on shows prior to becoming the Doctor. Instead, her three seasons were plagued by a disappointing timidity where the Doctor just didn't do enough, as if afraid of challenging the status quo.

Doctor Who tends to reflect its times, and the Thirteenth Doctor came at the unfortunate time of the start of the Brexit era. The series, under showrunner Chris Chibnall, felt reluctant to be too radical or rock the boat with the Doctor. Doctor Who has always had a progressive bent – since the 1960s, the Doctor has commonly arrived in a place where a despotic, oppressive government ruled over, and they would end up helping the rebels overthrow it for breakfast. This became the default mode of the Doctor during the 1990s Virgin novels. Under Chibnall, that impulse went away.

In "Demons of the Punjab," the Doctor visited the tragedy of the partition of India and basically did nothing to change anything. The aliens turned out not to be bad but were there to mourn impending deaths from history. The Doctor didn't make any effort to save Yaz' (Mandip Gil) grandmother's husband and let him get killed by his separatist fanatic brother. All in the name of preserving history. In "Rosa," she and her companions choose to let Rosa Parks get discriminated against by the racist South in order for the Civil Rights movement of America to happen in America. Back in the present day, she does nothing to thwart villainous billionaire Robertson (Chris Noth), whose greed and cowardice keep getting people killed, including unleashing an army of Daleks that assassinates the British Prime Minister – any other previous Doctor would have destroyed his ability to cause havoc by, say, destroying his business empire and leaving him impoverished to neutralize him. The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) destroyed Harriet Jones' (Penelope Wilton) career as Prime Minister for firing on the Sycorax ship as it retreated from Earth, yet the Thirteenth Doctor was content to let a craven billionaire carry on causing damage and death to untold lives.

The worst instance of the series' moral and political cowardice occurred in "Kerblam" despite it being one of the better-written episodes. Here the show depicted a satirical version of Amazon where workers were worked to the bone, driving one of them to become a terrorist who tries to blow up the customers. The Doctor kills the rogue worker and sides with the middle managers of Kerblam, who preside over the terrible working conditions that have destroyed the lives of the workers. Under any other writer and showrunner, the Doctor would have brought the whole Kerblam business to its knees. Yet the Doctor decides to let Amazon – sorry, Kerblam continue to work its workers to the bone just so its customers, of whom the Doctor is one, can continue to get their packages on time. The Kerblam AI murdered an innocent woman, and the Doctor didn't even eradicate it, which every other previous Doctor would have done without hesitation. Instead, she lets it carry on as usual.

Under previous showrunners Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat, the Doctor burned with rage against social injustice and cruelty, yet under Chibnall, she might defeat an invading alien army like the Sontarans but did nothing but huff at the continued moral cruelty and evil of the human leaders and leave them in place. During "Flux," the Doctor finally confronts her adopted mother, Tecteun (Barbara Flynn), who subjected her to cruel experiments to extract her regeneration ability and exploit it to give the Time Lords their power yet says nothing to address the evil and abuse that Tecteun perpetrated. She just glared at her while Tecteun stood around smug and bored. Chibnall's writing here was so mediocre that Tecteun didn't stop looking bored when the Big Bad showed up and killed her. The end of Chibnall's era sees an end to the moral laziness and weakness of the show that seemed to be in line with the Brexit era. Davies is a fiercer political writer with an activist's drive to expose social injustice, which is what traditionally drove Doctor Who. Let's hope he brings back the show's moral and political conviction.

Doctor Who returns next year on Disney+.

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