Why the Female Doctor Who is a flop.

My point is this....

There is plenty of great science fiction with strong female leads and even feminist world views. I offer Orphan Black as my personal favorite example. The key is well-developed interesting characters solid stories and great writing.

The current iteration Doctor Who has tepid stories, mediocre writing and superficial characters. The only thing going for it is that a woman plays the lead character. You can't sustain success on a gimmick. They are going to have to find some writers. Rather than the story being central to the show, it feels like the writers are starting with a middle school social studies curriculum... and then writing the story around it with all the needed one-dimensional characters to support the lesson plan.

I haven't started discussing show runners Chibnall's slash and burn attitude toward show cannon. He is destroying canon by making drastic changes to the overall Doctor Who lore that will be hard to undo without a complete reset.

The ratings will continue to plummet.

You don't know anything about Doctor Who lore. The ratings are fine, the show is in far better shape than it was when Colin Baker was miscast.

It will continue. You don't have to watch it.

I don't watch Star Wars because it's rubbish, but I don't need to start threads about it.

You've just cobbled together a load of crap from disaffected misogynists like you.

This is how it was reviewed over here. And over here is where opinions matter because it's ours not yours.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/doctor-who-spyfall-part-2-review-jodie-whittaker-lenny-henry-a9268026.html

Like I said, if you don't like it don't watch it, Doctor Who did well for years long before you lot had even heard of it.

I'm still champing at the bit over The Wheel In Space, not that I'd expect you to know anything about that.

A few more thoughts on the first two episodes.

1) Jody Whittaker is waving her sonic screwdriver around quite a bit, I think far more than previous Doctors. This has always been a plot device (magic wand)... they are overusing it.

2) The "Great women of History" tour is a little random. They kind of tied Ada Lovelace into the plot ("you were the first") but she didn't do anything to help the Doctor or play any important part in the story. Noor helped with the communication... so I will give them that one.

3) They seem to be completely erasing all of the work done on the Missy Character (a brilliant incarnation of the Master played by Michelle Gomez). This upsets me... I loved Missy and she had a bit of a redemption story.

4) I am reserving judgement on the Destruction of Gallifrey story arc. I don't know where they are going with it... hopefully this is an interesting story that doesn't rewrite canon.

The more I think about the "mind wipe" of Ada Lovelace in the second episode, the more it disturbs me.

After the Doctor returns Ada Lovelace to her home time, she decides to erase her memory. Ada strongly protests to this violation, saying "No" clearly. The Doctor proceeds to wipe her mind, and leaves Ada slumped unconscious on a chair.

This scene is very reminiscent to a very painful and controversial scene where the 10th Doctor (played by David Tennant) wipes the mind of Donna Noble, a long time companion. Noble also protests loudly before being wiped.

This felt very different. The scene with Donna Noble was designed to be morally ambiguous and heart-wrenching. It is a tragic situation with no good ending, the Doctor has to either wipe Donna's mind, or let her die with her memories intact. Donna chooses to die, but to keep her memories. The Doctor denies her this wish.

In this episode with the current Doctor, the violation of a mind wipe without consent is played as an afterthought. The Doctor does this with hardly a thought, no regrets and no moral ambiguity. The Doctor says something trite about having to invent computers on her own.... and over the protests of an unwilling patient wipes her mind.

This scene was almost certainly written to make the writers feel better about themselves. After the Doctor meets Rosa Parks last year... there was criticism that the episode stole Rosa Parks "agency", meaning that if meeting Doctor who was part of her act of heroism, then the story implied that she didn't do it on her own.

This is a problem when you use heroic civil rights figures as props in a science fiction show. I personally thought the Rosa Parks episode had the right intentions and was done with respect (there was one scene in this episode I thought was very effective).

In this episode Ada Parks was used. The Doctor grabbed her, was fascinated by her enjoyed her companionship, and then left her back where she started. It was a one way relationship; the Doctor benefited and Ada was nothing more than a temporary plaything.

I think this was worse resolution.... and the callous disregard for Ada's wishes to not have her mind wiped is not a good side of the Doctor.

My God!!! Episode three, Orphan 55, was spectacularly awful. The worst yet of the Whittaker era. Obviously SPOILERS (but, I am watching these so you don't have to... so better if you keep reading).

In this episode a bunch of ridiculous, poorly developed characters make the worst decisions ever on a scientifically implausible planet leading to a political sermon aimed at the viewers.

The plot summary. The Doctor and crew are mysteriously teleported to a resort by magical coupons. There they meet an octogenarian couple, a father and son engineer and a couple of people with guns. Ryan flirts with sexy girl. Then some monsters come. The elderly man is taken. They go outside of the resort to a barren lifeless wasteland (with monsters) to find him. He proposes to his elderly girlfriend and asks that they shoot him. They oblige. The boy runs away. The elderly lady commits suicide. The Doctor mind melds the monster leader. The Doctor convinces the monster leader into a cage. It turns out that the planet iSexy girl turns out to be a terrorist. Then they fix the teleport. People with guns and sexy girl stay behind. Doctor and crew teleport back to the Tardis. The Doctor gives a sermon about global warming.

If my plot summary is confusing and jumbled, then I did a good job. This episode was all that... did you get the end part about the sermon? The sole purpose of this episode was to give us a sermon.

Here is just a small part of the stupidity in this episode...

1. The monsters are "apex predators" on a lifeless planet (if you are too slow to understand why this is a problem, look up "predator" in the dictionary).

2. There is no good reason for Ryan's new friend the sexy terrorist to blow up the resort. She seems to be upset with her mom, but heck... she could have just shot her mom and keep the resort for herself.

3. The highlight of this story is an unarmed elderly lady waddling out to face a half dozen monsters.

4. The writers take zero time making us care about either the elderly couple. It is a hallmark card with no depth. The eighty something year old woman throwing herself at the monsters had no point other than to fill space and provide a visual for some melodramatic music.

5. The monsters are intelligent... the Doctor can reason with the leader. But they are too dumb to avoid gun fire, or to ignore the distraction of an old lady.

6. Exposition is the sign of lazy writers. The point they are trying to make is done in 5 minutes at the end... they put the sermon they wanted to make in the mouth of the Doctor speaking past the poor fictional characters who were no longer part of the story.

7. If you took away the Doctors final sermon... you would have no idea what the episode was about.

This is horrible writing. If it weren't for the fact that everyone wants Doctor Who as a woman to be successful... everyone would admit it.

Stop watching it then.

There is something seriously wrong with you. You religiously watch a programme every week just to complain about it.

I don't watch Star Wars nor do I waste my time complaining about how **** it is.

Get a life you sad sad man.

And you religiously read and complain about my threads. So you understand where I am coming from.

Just because Doctor Who this year is uncharacteristically horrible these under Chibnall doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. It is like watching a car wreck... I can't turn away.

I am having fun... hopefully you are too or you wouldn't be here.

This is a programme that I've enjoyed watching since I was a kids. I do not enjoy watching it being rubbished by some pig ignorant half wit who doesn't know the first thing about it.

I've pointed out your ignorance and you've yet to respond.

You didn't like the message of global warming, you rubbished it just so you can continue destroying the planet.

You're so incredibly transparent. I'm just grateful you're completely unaware of most of our programming.

The final sermon in episode three is a textbook example of bad writing. Exposition is frowned upon as lazy, bad writing, in a writing class you are taught the dialog is for benefit of the characters, not for the writer.

The writers wrote a speech about global warming and put it into the mouth of the Doctor. The Doctor recited this speech straight past the other characters (who were standing there uselessly) at the viewers.

Not only does this speech come out of nowhere in the episode... it is out touch with the overall story. Doctor Who is singularly responsible for the destruction of her planet. This is something that she didn't even mention in her little sermon to humans. Doctor Who is not the person who should be lecturing other species about saving their planet.

Her speech also breaks canon (established rules in the Doctor Who universe). This episode should be considered a "fixed point in time" by the existing rules. The good Doctor states that we can change it. Breaking tradition so the writers can use the Doctor to deliver a speech for their own purposes.... not cool.

Good writers can deliver a message without clobbering their viewers over the head with it in clumsy exposition.

Like I said you didn't understand. The Doctor saved Gallifrey, only for it later to be destroyed by the Master.

It's not down to you to say what Doctor Who should be about. It's down to us, the fans.

I wouldn't mind if you were honest and admitted not liking it because it's British and there's a female lead, instead you go round the houses cutting and pasting others to try and prove your 'point.'

It's not the first time criticism has been aimed at the programme when there's a change of direction.

Jon Pertwee's Doctor was similarly criticised for spending all his time on Earth, but nobody mentions that now. Some people are just resistant to change.

Please promise me you'll not watch Utopia, there's no way you'll understand all the plot twists in that.

This story followed a long tradition of SF warning of dystopian futures. HG Wells The Time Machine came to mind, not the main bit with the Eloi and Morlocks, but the bit at the end where he travels to the far distant future where there only seem to be giant crab creatures roaming about.

As for established canon, does this look like 2018 to you?

This is a link to the fixed points page in the fandom. There's nothing to suggest Orphan 55 should be a fixed point.

You're just clutching at straws as always.

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Fixed_point_in_time

Why not post a link to the blog you're cutting and pasting from, that way I could talk to the engineer instead of the oily rag.

You've already admitted to knowing nothing of the Doctor prior to Tom Baker so why not educate yourself and watch some of the old episodes, some are missing but many more are still available, and some have been animated.



This is the first appearance of Lethbridge Stewart.

Episode 4: Nicola Tesla

This was a dull, mediocre, derivative episode with a simplistic plot, more story holes and an overacting that would have made William Shatner blush. In other words, this was the best episode of the season!

The story: A group of space scorpions with laser tails lead by the Borg Queen (straight from Star Trek: TNG) wants to kidnap Nicola Tesla to fix their spaceship. The Doctor uses the Tesla Tower to kill them all.

There was not much to this episode...

1. Thank God! no sermon this week.

2. I want to see them develop the "Gallifrey destroyed/ Master" story line. Other than a single offhand line about "dead planets", they did nothing to move along this story.

3. It has been a long standing theme that the Doctor doesn't use guns. Generally this means that the Doctor finds a way to defeat their enemies without killing them. In this case she uses the Tesla (Wardenclyffe) tower to shoot down the ship killing everyone. To refuse to shoot the queen face to face, but then shoot down her ship twenty minutes later is a little weak.

4. For that they had a Tesla Death ray and a Silurian blaster... either of which would have solved the problem, with the same resolution, and left time for a proper tea.

5. The acting of Tesla was kind of interesting. However, the complete lack of ambition was played a little too far... it wasn't believable.

6. The writers really don't like Thomas Edison.

Oh... one more important loose end. Nicola Tesla didn't get his mind wiped this week (after Ada Lovelace got her memories of the Doctor erased last week). Apparently only women need this treatment.

It is obvious what is happening... the woke writers of the series don't want to imply that fictional versions of real life women didn't accomplish great things on their own.

Still, if you are going violate people for the sake of a poorly written plot point, you should be consistent.

Nikola Tesla didn't travel in time. Ada Lovelace saw WW2 and present day, and more importantly she saw the results of her maths. Knowing the end result of something will affect the outcome.

It's ******* basic Max.

I thought the Ada Lovelace scene, with her pleading "No!, No!" was pretty horrific. And it was unnecessary. I don't know if they had Donna Noble in mind when they did this. The Donna Noble scene was both tragic, and played as morally ambiguous. It was a heartbreaking end of a major character. The Doctor know full well the choice he was making.

Ada was side character in a single episode. She wasn't even a necessary part of the story. It was a pointless exercise in bad writing.

This is ground we've already covered before, but that's what I don't like about Dr. Who. There is just too much damn misery.

A show doesn't need to be all happiness and rainbows all the time, but they take the misery way too far way too often.

I'm avoiding the latest His Dark Materials series for that reason too, unless I see some sort of information that they are seriously rewriting the plot to lessen the misery. And the fact that their production company is named "Bad Wolf" certainly isn't an auspicious sign for my hopes for a lessening of the misery.

I mean it's based on the books and the misery is on the written page. Season one was well done and it follows the books pretty well. I'd say you are doing yourself a dis-service not watching.

I do not like books and TV shows that make me feel miserable. The guy who wrote those books is a psychopath.