Thoughts on Doctor Who Series 14

Hello readers! It is once again time for me to critique Doctor Who and confront my conflicted feelings towards its existence. I don’t count myself as a Doctor Who fan, but I am fascinated with its concept, and the bizarre but enduring niche it has carved in the TV ecosystem.

Doctor Who is now on its 40th series since 1963, and is still bafflingly mainstream despite its quirkiness. In fact, the show has lingered on our screens for so long that its quirkiness has become normal. Everyone in the UK knows what a Dalek is. We don’t bat an eye when the “regeneration” of the Doctor makes headline news. London estate agents can happily describe a one-room, no-oven, toilet-by-the-bed studio apartment as a TARDIS without fear of being misunderstood. But despite being a cultural phenomenon that has rooted itself into the British psyche, episodes of Doctor Who are typically viewed with ambivalence or disappointment, if they are viewed at all.

A British staple that refuses to die (because it canonically can’t)

Doctor Who gets generally favourable reviews from critics, while being widely derided by the general public. However, despite our apparent apathy for the show, or our yearning for the “good old days” (which depend entirely on when we were born), millions of people tune in every week. There is no other show quite like it. Doctor Who stands apart from other science fiction because it is family entertainment. It is meant to have something for everyone, from eight-year-olds desperate to buy TARDIS toys, to eighty-year-olds reminiscing about the original theme tune, to twenty-two-year old treasurers of university Doctor Who societies, to thirty-eight-year-olds out-bidding eight-year-olds to buy TARDIS toys. This isn’t just a show for children. But it also isn’t just a show for adults. At its best, it caters for everyone, and at its worst, it caters for no one.

But we still continue to watch it and whinge about it. Maybe our expectations are too high? Maybe we feel happier complaining than admitting how much we love this unpredictable mess? Maybe we are all in an abusive relationship with the BBC, who keep gaslighting us into thinking things will be different next time around? Or maybe this is just a show for children and we should stop expecting greatness.

So, with that glowing introduction out of the way – was Series 14 any good?

My spoiler-free take:

It was alright. This series was meant to be a mini reboot for the franchise, with a new Doctor, a new companion, a shiny new TARDIS, and a shiny new partnership with Disney. Still, it wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. I would say that this series was nothing to write home about, but apparently I managed a few thousand words.

If you aren’t already a Doctor Who fan, or you aren’t under the age of 18, I don’t think Series 14 is worth watching. The formula might have been shaken up a little, but it is nowhere near enough to engage the average viewer.

Series 14 continues Doctor Who’s tried-and-tested strategy of outputting a staggering variance in episode quality. The most dreadful and inspiring stories ever to grace British television are thrown at us in quick succession, meaning that every episode feels like a lottery. Each week we must open the navy blue loot box. It doesn’t matter how many times we get burnt – we keep coming back, just in case we get something good. At this point, the show should be subject to gambling laws.

On a happier note, I think Ncuti Gatwa is great. His Doctor is energetic and joyous, but he can turn desperate and furious in an instant. The result is a mesmerising character, riding the line between fun and unhinged. Millie Gibson is also fantastic as the new companion, and the pair of them have a great relationship. Again, not great enough for me to recommend that you push this series to the top of your watch list – but if you fell off the Doctor Who train a few years ago and have been debating whether to get back on board, maybe give it a go. This latest series is reminiscent of the 2005-2010 era.

Also, I guess you don’t need to watch every episode…

There are eight episodes in this series – nine if you include the Christmas special, which was Gatwa’s first full episode – and in my view, only five of them passed the critical threshold of doing more good than bad. Although the storylines have drastically improved since Chris Chibnall stood down as lead writer, none of these episodes could be classed as excellent television. Most were a mixed bag, and some split public opinion like marmite.

The main problems dragging down the quality are poor pacing, cringe-inducing dialogue, and the repeated, unsubtle belittling of tech-reliant younger generations. The main achievements were an enjoyable dynamic between the Doctor and companion, light-hearted silliness, and the courage to push boundaries, even if pushing the boundaries sometimes had disastrous consequences. The Disney budget has been put to good use on the special and practical effects, and I’d like to see more quirky puppets in future, because they bring the exact level of stupidity and self-awareness that Doctor Who needs to stay afloat.

To sum up: I would only bother watching if you’re a Doctor Who fan who has become disenfranchised in recent years, or if you’re looking for something a bit weird and silly. Don’t bother if you’re looking for hard-hitting drama or philosophical science fiction.

SPOILER WARNING!

From here there will be spoilers! I am about to unleash a level of analysis that this show frankly doesn’t deserve.

What made the good episodes good?

In my view (and please disagree), the enjoyable episodes were:

– The Church on Ruby Road (goblins, pop song, Davina McCall)

– The Devil’s Chord (Maestro, Beatles, musical number)

– 73 Yards (Wales, no Doctor, boot-strap paradox)

– Dot and Bubble (Zoom meeting, giant slugs, racism)

– Rogue (Bridgerton, Jonathan Groff, angry birds)

The best episodes in this series were silly and self-aware. Attempts at handling anything serious fell flat (with a few exceptions). Gone are the days of dark graveyards filled with Weeping Angels, isolated castles with Bloodborne-esque flesh creatures, or pocket-watch sized prisons housing sentient nightmares. Now we have chart-topping goblins and drag queen villains – like nothing we’ve seen before.

Clearly, this change in direction won’t work for everyone. I’m not fully on board with this new era; I’m just watching the hype train speed past, more interested in its internal workings than the journey. I think that anyone who tries watching this series through a serious lens will be disappointed. But if you put your brain in power-saving mode and bask in the stupidity, it can be an amusing romp, like nothing else on television.

Take The Devil’s Chord as an example. A drag queen villain won’t be to everyone’s taste, but if you lean into the melodrama, the adventure becomes fun again. The episode is obviously stupid: it predicts a nuclear winter when people lose the ability to write music. And the tuneless Beatles song about Paul McCartney’s dog genuinely made me chuckle. Yes, the Beatles save the day by working out a “chord” that isn’t even a chord – but the lack of logic doesn’t matter if you wrap yourself up in the spectacle and the fun.

The episode which pushed boundaries the furthest was 73 Yards, because the Doctor was barely involved. He vanishes a couple of minutes into the story, and we instead follow Ruby over the course of an entire alternate life, living without him. It doesn’t really feel like science fiction; it leans into Welsh folklore and cheesy horror, but the concept is bizarre enough to keep you enthralled.

Something similar happens in Dot and Bubble – the Doctor and Ruby are side characters, and the narrative follows a vain, shallow protagonist who becomes increasingly unlikeable as the episode progresses. Some people hated this concept, and found it hard to stay engaged when they couldn’t root for the main character. Personally, I was amazed that Disney endorsed such a risky narrative formula. I was keen to see how the story would conclude, and I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve never seen an ending like it.

As for Rogue, we were back to classic Doctor Who shenanigans, with shape-shifting bird aliens in ridiculous prosthetics. This episode was very silly indeed – but amidst the silliness, Rogue (Jonathan Groff) becomes the Doctor’s first male love interest, pushing the show in a brand new direction yet again. This series was certainly bold.

What made the bad episodes bad?

In my view, the mixed-bag episodes were:

– Space Babies (does what it says on the tin)

– Boom (flesh cylinders, army vicars, sentient ambulance)

– The Legend of Ruby Sunday (baffling chaos, giant alien rat)

– Empire of Death (Mr Stark I don’t feel so good, naughty dog in the time vortex)

The first two on this list weren’t entirely irredeemable. I appreciate that Space Babies was trying to be whacky, and it managed it – but not in a good way. Yes, we are now in an era where you can animate a baby’s mouth to make it speak. But the Doctor Who creators were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should – and the results are chilling. The babies always have that glassy-eyed, no-idea-what-is-happening expression, and yet they are meant to be conversing with adult dialogue, leading us towards the uncanny valley. It’s not pleasant.

In another questionable decision, somebody let Steven Moffat back in the writers’ room. He gave us Boom, an episode where the Doctor stands in a pit for 45 minutes. This obvious attempt to break the formula is nowhere near as intriguing as 73 Yards or Dot and Bubble. There is no silliness. No homages to camp horror films. No racists walking into the gaping maws of giant yellow slugs. Instead, we get dialogue riddled with a terminal case of Moffatitis, with the Doctor spewing such witticisms as “faith is the magic word that keeps you never having to think for yourself” and “everywhere is a beach eventually” – the sort of thing that might strike you as profound if you are fourteen. This is everything I don’t miss about Moffat. I like the concept, hate the execution.

As for the last two episodes: they were a mess. The first one tried to build tension to reveal an enemy that most of us had never heard of (No? Sutekh? From the novels? From the limited radio series? Sutekh, our favourite character?) and the second one tried to reverse a dusty, universe-ending catastrophe by sharing an inexplicably long conversation about a spoon with Claire from Fleabag. The pacing was all over the place. Felt as if the episode needed a go with the defibrillator to bring it back from the edge.

The premise of the final episodes was frustrating. One of the most annoying things you can do with a long-running series is introduce a pointless retcon, and revealing that a giant ratty creature has been clinging to the TARDIS since 1975 is a step too far. Killing all life in the universe came out of the blue, and I’m still not quite sure how they fixed it. Sticking Sutekh on a leash and dragging him through the time vortex like a tired corgi in ragdoll mode wasn’t the ending I was expecting. I think I was numb to everything at that point. I was just glad that it was over.

The series arc

The series is tied together by an over-arching mystery: who is Ruby’s mother? This is why the goblins try to kill Davina McCall. And in the following episodes, whenever we get close to unravelling something about Ruby’s past, it starts to snow, and we hear Carol of the Bells echoing out of the void. It’s intriguing. But when Sutekh is revealed (No? Sutekh? From the hit 1975 serial Pyramids of Mars?) we learn that he is somehow responsible for the snowy effects and the singing. Why? Because apparently he also wants to know who Ruby’s mother is. Following? Me neither.

In the end we find out that Ruby’s mother is just some normal woman who had difficult teenage years and an abusive father. It isn’t clear why Sutekh cares about her (You know, Sutekh? Also known as Seth in that best-selling novel, The Sand of Time?). I quite like the twist that her mother is someone ordinary, rather than a crazy alien blob creature or sentient shade of the colour purple, but the plot felt poorly thought-out, with underwhelming results.

Poor logic

A similar lack of logic is prevalent throughout the series. Many episodes are beset by plot holes and nonsensical non-solutions. Take the goblins. They feed on babies that are associated with coincidence, and to achieve this, they go back in time to manufacture coincidences. But… Can you manufacture a coincidence? The life cycle of these goblins hasn’t been thought through, and although this might not matter in an episode so stupid, it signifies a lack of care and consideration. If you don’t scrutinise the episodes too closely, everything seems fine. But the moment you look closer, things fall apart. Is this an issue? I don’t know. I don’t care enough.

Cryign now

The one consistency throughout this series is that the Doctor cries in every episode. I appreciate him showing an emotional side, but when the episodes are so stupid, or when the pacing has got ahead of itself and the audience aren’t feeling entirely invested, it does feel a little melodramatic. It also takes you out of the moment when you have to fill in your bingo card (which also includes “creaking door stock sound effect”, “Cherry Sunday wants a cup of tea” and “UNIT soldier gets vaporised”).

Anagrams and wordplay

This recurring plot device could also have a place on the bingo card. Shoddy anagrams and wordplay are used excessively throughout the series. A character called Henry Arbinger is revealed to be a “Harbinger” – a joke which is just about acceptable in an episode as camp as The Devil’s Chord. However, this terrible wordplay actually gets a reprise in the final episodes when we meet “Harriet Arbinger”, which is announced with dead sincerity. In the same episode we are faced with Susan Triad, whose initials “S. Triad” are an anagram of TARDIS, before it is revealed that her company, “Sue Tech” is a pun on the much-hyped, much-loved villain Sutekh (You know, the Typhonian Beast? Set? Sadok? Also Satan apparently?).

The Susan Twist twist

Another thread throughout the series was the inclusion of various characters played by the actor Susan Twist. She was first seen in the David Tennant special Wild Blue Yonder, playing a servant in Isaac Newton’s house. She was then a heckler to Ruby’s band in The Church on Ruby Road (“can you play Gaudete?”), and was one of the comms officers in Space Babies, sending a resignation message to the company. After this, she was a tea lady in The Devil’s Chord, the face of the ambulance in Boom, a hiker that Ruby meets in 73 Yards, the mother of Lindy Pepper-Bean in Dot and Bubble, and a portrait in Rogue, before she was introduced as Susan Triad in the final two episodes.

The idea is that versions of Susan were spread throughout the universe by Sutekh as he travelled on the side of the TARDIS (Seriously, Sutekh? The guy who forced John Pennerton to direct the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini to declare war on Faction Paradox in 1764?). By planting her everywhere, he spread the dust that killed all life in the universe – even Claire from Fleabag. I appreciate the effort that went into including Susan Twist in all the episodes, but I doubt that anyone besides the most avid frame-by-frame fans noticed.

In summary…

Series 14 of Doctor Who is a rollercoaster of emotions. Dismay. Amusement. Irritation. Mental surrender. I don’t know if I can recommend it. I don’t know whether it is good, bad, or something else entirely. This show sets its own rules, breaks them, and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Critics give reviews that are entirely at odds with what I’m seeing. For now, I can’t say that I am a Doctor Who fan. I am just fascinated with the way this show is made, how it still exists, and the grip that it has on the British consciousness.

Happy watching, and I’ll see you in the next blog post!