Doctor Who 15.2

Oh dear, all Doctor Who fandom is plunged into war once again.

What I can say about the past two seasons is that I am not in the least surprised by this outcome. Russell T Davis has not been in any way cautious about what he is doing. There have been highly unusual episodes such as ‘73 Yards’ and ‘The Story and the Engine’. There have been episodes that dealt with Culture War themes head-on. There was a magnificent guest-star performance by Jinx Monsoon in ‘The Devil’s Chord’. And there was the totally gonzo idea of doing a Eurovision-themed episode that aired just before the actual Eurovision final.

Inevitably the right wing media has been calling for Davis’s head throughout. It is almost as if he knew this would happen and decided to go all out on the ‘woke’ content for as long as he could.

Alongside this there has been some decidedly wobbly plotting the make up for the fact that Disney has paid to get rid of the wobbly sets. On the one hand, I can see where fans are coming from. Some episodes had plot holes that you could drive a Culture GSV through. But what fans tend to forget is that Doctor Who is, above all else, a show for children. The BBC wants it to be suitable to be shown on Saturday in the early evening so that the family can watch it together. What a six-year-old expects from a plot is very different from what a forty-something long-time Whovian expects.

What Davis does for his older Whovian audience is wallow in nostalgia. I’m not sure that this is a good idea. Obviously the kids won’t have any idea who Omega was. I didn’t either. The whole thing was a bit embarrassing. And, as others have pointed out, very wasteful of the character. But it seems that the nostalgia box needs to be ticked every now and then to keep someone in the production crew happy.

I wasn’t in the least bit surprised that Ncuti Gatwa is moving on. After all, the Daily Malice had claimed victory the week before. They had presumably been tipped off by their allies inside the BBC hierarchy. But hey, Who got away with being outrageously progressive for a whole two seasons and, given how right-wing the BBC management has become, that’s a major victory.

I was not expecting Billy Piper to pop up. I’ll be interested to see what Davis does with her. It may be more wallowing in nostalgia. I hope not.

Next up is the spin-off mini series, The War Between the Land and the Sea. That has already been filmed, so it seems unlikely that the BBC will refuse to show it, no matter how much the gutter press complains. It would probably be a breach of their contract with Disney if they didn’t show it.

Where things go from here is uncertain. There has been much talk of a ‘hiatus’, which is a polite way of saying that the show will be cancelled until there is a significant change in management at the BBC. I hope not, because it is a major source of revenue and employment for Wales. Meanwhile the BBC has promised to produce more drama that will appeal to Reform voters. So look out for a space opera series that features brave troopers whose job it is to kill alien Muslim boat people and queers.