A Rose by any other name: is there hope for 'Doctor Who'?

CREDIT: BBC, Disney

Believe it or not, I started writing under this headline for a completely different blog post. I felt compelled midway through the latest series of Doctor Who to share my concerns away the show was handling its companions. Obviously, I wanted to compare Belinda and Ruby to well-written characters like Rose, in an effort to unpack just why the newer characters feel so 2D. The just-aired finale to the latest season renders any reference to Billie Piper quite ironic, but I still feel compelled to write. Because despite having its original 2005 team back behind the steering wheel - a team that has curated some of the best television this side of the millennium - this is a show that feels totally devoid of soul, and I want to figure out why.

My original post was going to consist of a plea to the universe (or, RTD) to consider the fact that the original run of New Who was as strong as it was because of its keen focus on the lives and character of its companions. Billie Piper defined what Doctor Who was (and could be) not just by way of her phenomenal performance, but because of the support she had from scripts that had a keen interest in maintaining the continuity and constitution of her character.

Series 1 in particular thrived on the tension between not just Rose and her community, but on the tension between life on the TARDIS and the impracticalities of balancing it with home. One wrong move from the Doctor could (and did) cause major emotional turmoil for those left behind in her Peckham council estate. Maybe the Doctor had returned her to the wrong date, meaning she'd been missing for 12 months. Or maybe the Doctor would begin to fall in love with his new friend, and maybe Rose would reciprocate those feelings (in spite of her actual boyfriend and childhood sweetheart who often joined them on their excursions). You never got the sense that New Who was disconnected from these domestic mundanities, in fact it was defined by them.

New Who was never truly about the Doctor at all. It was about the teenager who fell in love with him. It was about the nurse who repeatedly sacrificed her safety to help him succeed. It was about the Temp who felt important by his side and softened his grief with nihilism and wit. It was only really when David Tennant departed the show that Davies truly leaned into the classic series' lore on Time Lords and Gallifrey, and by that point it had felt earned, because we cared for and loved the Doctor so much by the time of his 10th variant's death that there was enough emotion for fans to latch onto as they were hoisted into the sludge of dense BBC mythology.

CREDIT: BBC, Disney+

So when Doctor Who lost its way under Moffat's later seasons and Chibnall's didn't make things much better, a generation of little Who-fans (now grown up) were elated to hear of RTD's return. Finally, the team who turned a dead IP into one of the UK's strongest exports were back in the saddle to make things better. Finally, we can return to the grit and charm of RTD's scripts, the heart-wrenching storylines and disturbing concepts. Finally, we can strip everything back to the fact that people don't watch Doctor Who because they care about his childhood or home planet's government, but because they see themselves in his companion-of-the-week and in that companion's coveting of adventure and of escape.

What's that, sorry? You can't hear me over the sound of every Zillennial's hopes shattering into pieces?

I'm sad to say it but, after tonight's finale of New New Who series 2 (try saying that after a banana daiquiri), something worrying has become clear; this returning team of producers and writers that managed to bring back Doctor Who before have absolutely no idea what made their first reboot quite so popular. Let's try and diagnose the problem together...

Behind every good Doctor is a great companion, and behind every great companion is a world they love but can't wait to escape from. Our world. Whether a struggling retail-worker from SE15 or a disillusioned runaway bride, all of New Who's companions felt like people we'd pass on our way home from the shops. It was crucial for us to view the fictional Earth in Who as indistinguishable from our own. It's what helped us as viewers to truly identify with them (and project ourselves into the adventures on screen). It's what made questions like 'How would the world's media react if a spaceship crashed into Big Ben?' so fascinating. And this realism is also what gave smaller moments their huge stakes, i.e. when Rose went missing for a year, or when the Doctor gifted the Nobles a winning lottery ticket.

CREDIT: BBC

Small moments like these were the show’s heartbeat. The Doctor forgetting he'd taken off in the TARDIS with Jackie still inside. Mickey finding his Gran in a parallel universe. Martha convincing Chan Tho to swear. Cassandra recommending surgeries to Rose. Harriet Jones' propensity to self-ID. None of these moments serve the plot. None of these moments exist to serve a greater story or narrative. They're just fun. They make the world feel alive and bustling and real. And they don't exist at all in the New New series.

For all of the cash that Disney+ has pumped into Doctor Who in its latest incarnation, we have been lumbered with a show that's limited to just 8 episodes a season (down from the previous 13). This slashed runtime has left us with rushed storylines, and character development has been completely sacrificed (or relegated to exposition). Ncuti's Doctor's first companion, Ruby, became the Time Lord's best friend by episode 2 of the show (which the show credits to a whopping six months of adventures we are never invited to see).

The protagonists hurl themselves from episode to episode where even self-contained story arcs (like that of Jonathan Groff’s ‘Rogue’ in the rake’s eponymous romp) are bafflingly compressed. That 'Rogue' episode feels particularly egregious, given we're supposed to believe that our Time Lord has fallen hopelessly in love with Groff’s character 30 minutes into the episode, and consider him a long lost love when he re-appears at the end of series 2.

Long gone are the days of feature-length two-parters, which were reliable highlights of every New Who season. Two-parters like 'The Satan Pit', 'Human Nature', 'Doomsday' and 'The Empty Child' are some of the most gripping television stories I've ever seen. These day's we're lucky if we even get to see all of the Doctor's adventures, with multiple episodes in the most recent season hinging entirely on off-screen exploits. There's not even enough time for the plot, let alone those quieter moments.

So where has all of the Disney money been channelled? How could the BBC of 2005 afford 13 episode seasons and a Christmas special with guest appearances from the likes of Kylie Minogue, while New New Who struggles to get 8? The answer is CGI. And I mean, wouldn't we all rather the Doctor gets to fight off an uncanny abomination at the end of each series instead of rebuild the franchise on character and heart? Wouldn't we all rather watch the brilliant Ncuti Gatwa waste his energy on procuring tears than give him a script which feels actually intelligent?

There's also been more money channelled into sets and costumes - but not in ways that help the world on-screen to feel real. The Doctor and his companions no longer have a standardised wardrobe, and now don new apparel every episode. It's a fun concept, but the Doctor's unchanging wardrobe used to serve his character as much as it served the then-budget. He's meant to feel like an outsider. He's meant to be wearing converses in Victorian Britain. He's meant to not fit in. Likewise, he's meant to feel like a real, worn out hero. His TARDIS is meant to feel like a rattly bit of ancient kit. But Gatwa's TARDIS and costumes are all eerily clean and fresh, as if newly unwrapped from an ASOS bag. There's no sense of mystery or intrigue anymore. Everything just feels a little bit hollow. Instead of investing these extra resources into the show in a way that makes it feel actually richer, this money has been splurged on flashy shit that benefits nothing besides the trailers.

CREDIT: BBC, Disney+

To add insult to injury, the ethos of New New Who just seems to be that nothing actually even matters anymore. Series 1 asked us to get invested in the heritage of Ruby Sunday. We're shown the Doctor scanning her DNA for clues. We're told by the show-runner himself to expect a monumental reveal. The god of music tells us she holds within her a secret song. And we're promised her background will itself be the answer to defeating Sutekh, the god of death. So how can you blame fans for discontent when the answer to this eight-hour tease is that Ruby's parentage is - and I quote - "important because we think [it's] important." Not because RTD directly told us that she is, but because we foolishly believed him.

And then there's Belinda - another mystery box companion who we meet in Series 2. The Doctor is baffled by Belinda because he's seen her face before (he previously interacted with one of her great great grandaughters, who happened to be played by the same actress as Bel). The whole conceit of Belinda's story was that she needs to get back home. She doesn't want to be travelling in time or space, she just wants to get back for her next shift in the hospital.

Because of standard Doctor Who shenanigans, it takes a whole series to achieve this goal. But when she does return home, this once strong character is re-written in-show by a magic incel. She literally transforms into a teary, helpless, two-dimensional mother (the incel wished her to have a baby for some reason) whose sole personality trait has become her newfound motherhood.

This was a really cool character who used to stand with the Doctor and aid him in his missions (providing medical care to allies and risking her life, as was the case in ‘Midnight’). But she spends her season's finale - the culmination of her character arc - sniffling and voluntarily hiding in a metal box to save her not-real toddler. She does absolutely nothing of value and is completely shunned from the plot.

And when the Doctor does reset the timeline, (freeing Belinda from a life she never originally had nor showed any signs of wanting), he undoes it, re-conjures the fake child, and we leave her retconned as a completely changed character. We leave her in a random house she didn’t own when the series began (what happened to her roommates, please?) and she’s apparently living life struggle-free, happily juggling raising a toddler as a single mother with night shifts in A&E. It’s farcical stuff, and we’re meant to be happy for her? I think? Belinda starts the series having her life upended by one incel, and she ends the series having her life upended by a different one. And that’s her happy ending? Justice for Bel!

This uncaring approach to characterisation has also impacted returning characters who I assumed would at least stay unscathed by this new lax approach to scriptwriting. Donna Noble, a beloved companion of old, was last seen getting her memory wiped by the Doctor. She'd absorbed too much space dust (or something) and her brain was overheating. The result was that if she was to ever remember her time with the Doctor, her head would explode and she would die. It was a tragic fate that somehow made sense at the time, and fans across the world wondered how she'd survive re-meeting the Doctor in New New Who's first three special episodes. The answer to this 10 year question, was that she "just did". I repeat... the answer to the question of 'How will Donna survive re-meeting the Doctor?' was that she "just...did," because "that's what women do!"

CREDIT: BBC, Disney+

I'm sorry if I'm labouring the point, but even when we finally meet a new companion like Belinda who is interesting and has agency of her own, she's quite literally re-written at the end of their series into a version of their character that we-the-viewer don't even recognise. There's nothing to hold onto here. There are no consistent, three-dimensional companions anymore that we can reliably identify with. This isn't even a version of Earth that we're able to latch onto, or imagine ourselves in. I mean, this version of UNIT now has a London skyscraper that spins and has laser cannons poking out of it. A London skyscraper that's half office-block and half twirling nuke. In the middle of one of the most densely packed cities on the planet. And it can fight giant animate dinosaur skeletons (which, by the way, have no reason to exist in the plot other than to look cool). Because why the fuck not! Nothing fucking matters!!!

While claiming to be a totally fresh jumping on point, New New Who is continuing to extend its over-reliance on historic motifs and storylines as it trundles forth into series 3. Ncuti has left the TARDIS and in his place is Billie Piper, marking the first time the Doctor has taken on the face of an old companion. Beyond the implications for the character (would it not be sort of horrifying to wake up in the body of an ex you accidentally sort-of killed?) I don't actually think this is a creatively bankrupt choice. Once you get past the gimmick of the casting, Piper's brilliance and warmth could serve as a good antidote for an abysmal opening run for this re-imagined show.

The issue, though, is that it doesn't even seem like she'll be playing the Doctor at all. The end credits of the latest episode notably refuse to confirm Piper is the new Doctor, and hints from RTD and Piper (stating we don't yet know exactly how Piper is returning to the show or who she will be playing) give me massive concern that this literally is nothing more than a gimmick. That this will be a fun headline with no real intention to add value to the show. That Piper is only here for a Christmas special before we have a chance to honour the talent she could bring to the series, or to honour the in-universe implications of Rose's pseudo-return. My fear is that this will be yet another instance in which Davies opts for style over substance in the new version of this show.

I'm hoping against hope that these teases will end up being nothing more than a misjudged misdirect, but I'll be honest, I'm not sure how much longer I can stick with such a senseless show. I was a sitting duck when it came to being baited by New New Who. I lived through the majesty of RTD's first run. I collected Doctor Who trading cards as a child. I spent my playtimes trying to master how to draw a Dalek. I would sit in the back of the car pretending to be a Slitheen or quoting the Lady Cassandra. I watch the re-runs even now, floored at how well the stories hold up and how engaging I still find them, even now as an adult. I should have loved these two new seasons. But if I'm honest with myself, I'm not even sure how much 7-year-old me would have been able to enjoy this New New Doctor Who.

CREDIT: BBC, Disney+

And listen, I know. I'm older now. This is a new version of the show. I need to let the past be the past and accept that this is something new, something different. Except...I'm being bombarded with messages from the series itself that suggest otherwise. Murray Gold and RTD are back and trying to get me on board. Tennant popped up alongside Tate to lure me in. And now even Billie Piper is on deck! I'm struggling to believe that I'm not the target audience for this, but I'm old enough now not to accept this incoherent husk of a show I once adored.

The viewing figures back my concerns. Some have clocked out 'because the show has gone woke' (even though it always was - and all the better for it). But the majority of the show's decline can be traced to just how little it rewards both new and old viewers for the time they sink into the show. There hasn't been a single interesting or pertinent reveal, twist or arc in the entirety of this new new run that would win over brand new viewers, and none of the new stories or arcs it has given returning favourites like Donna or Mel have felt even considered, let alone satisfying to watch unfurl. Even though every now and again New New Who comes out with a surprisingly sturdy episode, what exactly is our motivation to continue tuning in? And I haven't even touched on the show's pivot away from satisfying sci-fi storytelling and toward more fantasy fuelled plot-lines, which have conveniently enabled writers to illogically solve or create problems for its characters at will without respecting in-universe lore and reason (e.g. how Donna "just...did!").

Yet in the very few seconds Piper's Doctor is on screen, she radiates enough warmth and fresh energy to win me back over. Am I doomed to this life of failing to learn my lesson? I feel like a mouse who keeps choosing the wrong exit in a maze, constantly crawling in the hope of finding cheese. But here I am, still in pursuit. Perhaps it's because it really used to be that good. Perhaps it's just stupid nostalgia. But against all available logic, I hope against hope that RTD can get his game back. I suppose I still have hope for Doctor Who.

Written by James Green