The Thirteenth Doctor: Jodie Whittaker

[DanaK]

On 1/2/2020 at 1:31 PM, Sakura12 said:

I love Jodie's Doctor. Moffat's era turned me off the show. It was too much world ending stories and villains over staying their welcome that ruined the fun for me. 

I liked the return of smaller stories with the occasional bigger arc. I liked the premiere and am looking forward to where it goes. 

I'm in the middle of Smith's era at the moment (on pause for now since Amazon Prime pitched Doctor Who out the window on Dec 31 in preparation for HBO Max taking it in the Spring). I found I enjoyed the big and little stories, though perhaps I'll tire of Moffat's stuff by the end of Smith's era (particularly killing principals off and then bringing them back and some companions overstaying their welcome). I too love Jodie and 13. I was one of those who enjoyed Series 11, though I don't think I'll mind if the stakes and stories get bigger and there's a bit of a thread running through the season. I totally enjoyed Spyfall. I think the mix of big and small for a Doctor is probably a good balance.

[tessaray]

2 hours ago, whoknowswho said:

What fun?  I honestly watched this episode until Whitaker said she'd "had an upgrade" and I just couldn't. My husband, a very casual watcher, watched the episode, kept asking me questions while this longtime fan (and I'm a woman, so it's not all men who dislike this series's Doctor with her "fam" with the exception of Graham because Bradley Walsh can actually act)  pouted and watched youtube instead.  Every time I looked up at the TV The Doctor had on her O face, or her whacky quirky lip sneer face on.  Nope, I'm done. I was done last series, but like my anger for Game of Thrones I really wanted it to turn out better. It won't.  I'm still angry that they chose a not very talented woman to play The Doctor. Those who say they "love" this series are probably really new fans, not long term, long lasting ones.  I've watched since the 1960s!  There have been a few poorish seasons in the past, Capaldi's era wasn't my favourite but the constant digs at fans just makes me want to kill my TV.

The things that made it fun for me were the locations, the party, the spy theme (and them not being good at it) and the classic Master stuff like the tissue compression.   I've been watching DW since the late 1970s on Iowa Public Television myself. I didn't care for Six until CB started doing Big Finish, so I'm very familiar with not liking certain incarnations.

The first female Doctor was always going to have an uphill battle winning over fans. I thought Jodie was fine in Broadchurch, though I haven't seen her in anything else. (I was pulling for Hayley Atwell if we had to have a female Doctor.) Her first series was boring to me, though that was mostly the showrunner's fault. She did channel David Tennant a bit too much IMO and I'm glad she toned it down a bit from that.

I wouldn't say I "love" this series but I do think TPTB are trying to address some of the last season's weaknesses.  And I'm willing to give them a chance to see how it goes. 

The lovely thing about Doctor Who is that if you don't like the current Doctor, there are decades worth of stories to rewatch.  IPTV is showing Sylvester McCoy right now, so I have the best of both worlds.

 

[whoknowswho]

1 hour ago, DanaK said:

I'm in the middle of Smith's era at the moment (on pause for now since Amazon Prime pitched Doctor Who out the window on Dec 31 in preparation for HBO Max taking it in the Spring). I found I enjoyed the big and little stories, though perhaps I'll tire of Moffat's stuff by the end of Smith's era (particularly killing principals off and then bringing them back and some companions overstaying their welcome). I too love Jodie and 13. I was one of those who enjoyed Series 11, though I don't think I'll mind if the stakes and stories get bigger and there's a bit of a thread running through the season. I totally enjoyed Spyfall. I think the mix of big and small for a Doctor is probably a good balance.

I loved, loved loved Matt Smith's tenure, I loved the convoluted complexities of the stories with Amy and Rory.  Anything Weeping Angels, still terrifies me. (Blink and Tenant I can't even watch it in the dark!)

Some of his series I didn't love, but that's because I loved Amy and Rory and disliked Clara. I sobbed like a baby when Amy said "Goodbye" in Angels take Manhattan. Any problem I had with Stephen Moffat's era was how he paid off some of his complex story lines poorly, or not at all.  While I tolerated some dropped plots, Because Capald's Doctor still had Clara, his tenure was my least favourite. Till last season.

All the Doctors till now I've connected with.  With Jodie Whittaker I just cannot.  I gave her a season. The faces she makes...I just cant.  I liked her in Black Mirror but there's a difference between being in an episode and carrying a series. Never watched Broadchurch so I can't comment there.  She's just not MY Doctor.  She doesn't seen to have any backstory other than occasional snark directed at hardcore fans. Matt Smith's Doctor used to rage about how old he was, what's he's lost and cost and things and we believed he was an infinitely old, tired, angry, manic and witty lover of fish fingers and custard. Do we know anything about Jodie's Doctor other than she's "an upgrade"? In whose world?

Much of the problem is Chibnall's writing, which till now has been pretty abysmal..

So, it's a failure for me.

[angora]

I find that my issues with the Thirteen era so far have been showrunner/writing-related. I haven't hated any of her episodes, but I find the show under Chibnall to feel very middle of the pack. Both RTD and Steven Moffat did stuff that I love to pieces and stuff that aggravates the hell out of me, but Chibnall, so far, seems to me to range between "eh" and "pretty good."

Unfortunately, I do think Thirteen has been hampered by the writing in different ways. Leaving out classic villains/references/the word "companion" from her first season might have come from a desire to reset and do something new, but it had a side effect of feeling like Thirteen didn't have access to the Doctor's full playground. It lets her bring less of the Doctor's long history to her episodes, and more than any other since maybe Two, it's vital that she feel every inch the Doctor. I liked getting to see her interact with a Dalek last New Year's special, and the classic-Who nuggets featured in "Spyfall" hopefully augur better things on that front.

I also agree that she sometimes comes across as unsure of herself. I'm not sure how much of it is a writing issue vs. a perception issue (would the same sorts of lines/scenes ring differently to us coming from a male Doctor?), but I know Jodie can bring the gleeful confidence when she has an opportunity to do so. More significantly, if the mysteries aren't very complex or the solutions aren't written very cleverly, an episode can pass without it feeling like she really did all that much, and that's never a feeling you should have when watching Doctor Who.

To use a weird example, it reminds me a little of the costumes in the first Hunger Games movie. Reading the book, I loved the character of Cinna and how smart he was in tactically designing Katniss's outfits in the example, creating these unforgettable looks that told a story across several appearances. But in the movie, I thought the costumes looked cheap and generic, and it annoyed me on Cinna's behalf, because this production element of the film was making his character look less cool and capable than he was. I have a similar reaction sometimes to how the writing right now can let Thirteen down a little. If the mystery is unfocused and the Doctor spends a lot of it asking the same questions or coming across as less effective than she can be, it's taking away from letting her show all she can do (although, I have to say, the costumes in The Hunger Games annoy me a lot more!)

Again, I don't dislike this era of the show. Chibnall has yet to have an episode like "The End of Time" or "The Time of the Doctor" that makes me want to tear my hair out (mileage obviously varies, since I know plenty of people love those episodes, but I thought both were overwrought messes that did a disservice to the Doctors they were sending off,) but I'd like to see more for Thirteen's tenure than "pretty good." Because I have a lot of love for Thirteen. I adore her delight for the wonders of the universe, her puppy-ish enthusiasm for her friends, and her fondness for tinkering. She's had some really topnotch moments so far, like her one-on-ones last season with King James and the Solitract ("It Takes You Away," bizarre as that episode is, is definitely my favorite of hers so far.) I just continue to want more for her, and I hope season 12 will bring it. "Spyfall" was a step up for me (though it continues to have some of the same issues,) and I hope we keep moving in that direction.

[DanaK]

@angora I’ve seen one or more people say elsewhere that 13’s propensity for talking out the problem before coming up with the solution instead of just presenting the solution like other Doctors did may make a number of people feel she knows less and is less confident. I find that an interesting theory. Perhaps it’s too much information for some viewers. I find it interesting, though perhaps too talky at times, and the talkiness does seem to be a problem for some

[angora]

I don't mind talkiness - the Doctor has always been a talker! And really, plenty of Doctors work things out aloud, getting excited when their brain catches up to their mouth halfway through. The scenes that I notice more are the ones where the Doctor seems to be spinning her wheels. The first that comes to mind for me is in "The Ghost Monument," where, as they're trekking across Desolation, the Doctor repeatedly wonders why the planet is so dead. Each subsequent instance of her asking more or less the same question doesn't add anything new, and the answer is given to her rather than her working it out, when they find the message from the dead scientists scrawled on the floor. For me, that's the type of thing that can make her come across as less effective sometimes, and it frustrates me, because it feels more like a writing weakness than anything else

But I'm also sure that I'm hypersensitive to stuff like that with her. It's a tricky thing to balance. I absolutely want her to have room to fully be the Doctor, which at times means being overwhelmed or despairing or suddenly realizing that they just got something dreadfully wrong, but 1) I know she'll be judged harder than her predecessors and 2) just like there needs to be room for big mistakes, there needs to be room for big, impressive wins as well, and that needs clever writing to back it up. I really want her to have writers who can create those moments for her.

I'm additionally aware that I can be overly-protective of Doctors at times and want all the things for them, hehe (I spent most of season 8 wishing Twelve could have a companion who would just tell him he's a good man already!)

[Llywela]

4 hours ago, angora said:

I also agree that she sometimes comes across as unsure of herself. I'm not sure how much of it is a writing issue vs. a perception issue (would the same sorts of lines/scenes ring differently to us coming from a male Doctor?),

For me, it's the other way around - would she be written to sound so uncertain if she were a man? It drove me mad last season how often she used the word 'presumably'. Presumably this, presumably that, never committing herself to being certain about anything - compare that to David Tennant confidently making up an explanation that sounded cool rather than admit he didn't know. And she is, as you say, made to repeat herself a bit much. Of course, all Doctors have their personality quirks, but the uncertainty stands out for me because the Doctor is more traditionally full of confident swagger, so it seems a bit pointed to take that away from the character in the first female regeneration.

Mostly, though, I think she is suffering because she hasn't been allowed to form strong one-on-one relationships with her companions. She always treats them as a group, addresses them as a group, has them trailing after her like so many ducklings. Even when she does split off with one of them into a sub-plot, she is all business, doesn't really spend much time chatting with them, bonding. Which makes it harder for us as an audience to bond with her. And maybe that's been a deliberate choice - it is clear that she hasn't wanted to reveal too much of herself to this group, and it also seems clear that some of that wall she's put up is going to be torn down this season whether she likes it or not. But it wouldn't be the first time a long-term Plot choice made by the showrunner has hurt the character and prevented viewers from truly bonding with them.

[VCRTracking]

So I watched. "Last Christmas" from 2014 and I'm now headcanoning that Twelve after just finding out the Master is now "Missy" and meeting Shona,  a quirky, petite Yorkshire girl who likes being in a group of people even if she just met them and has a short blonde bob, thought in the back of his mind "If I were a woman(again?) I'd want to be like her..."

Edited March 3, 2021 by VCRTracking

[ombre]

On 1/4/2020 at 2:26 AM, Llywela said:

Mostly, though, I think she is suffering because she hasn't been allowed to form strong one-on-one relationships with her companions. She always treats them as a group, addresses them as a group, has them trailing after her like so many ducklings. Even when she does split off with one of them into a sub-plot, she is all business, doesn't really spend much time chatting with them, bonding. Which makes it harder for us as an audience to bond with her. And maybe that's been a deliberate choice - it is clear that she hasn't wanted to reveal too much of herself to this group, and it also seems clear that some of that wall she's put up is going to be torn down this season whether she likes it or not. But it wouldn't be the first time a long-term Plot choice made by the showrunner has hurt the character and prevented viewers from truly bonding with them.

This feels spot-on to me. I haven't loved JW (and I fully expected I would). I've satisfied myself with the idea that it was conceived as a kid-friendly show and has returned to those roots and that's fine that it's now focused on a different audience. But I think this dynamic is a big part of that change - so often kids see a leader (parent, teacher, whatever) who is one person interacting with a group of people. Gives an impersonal edge. If they were to start to write plots where she was in a squeeze with this character or that one, it might go differently. But the writing has been generic, so they haven't been playing creatively with the possibilities of the group dynamics. Which. Is a bummer. 

I hated MS. He felt like such fluff in comparison to CE and DT. I loved Capaldi (well. I love Capaldi in anything, so), but can see how that felt like too big a course correction. The weaving back and forth between dour/intense (CE, DT, PC) and manic (MS, JW) would be hard to do well even with a great production/writing team. 

I kinda wonder if it's not time to let DW get a little sleep again. Let the world change a little more and then see what the light this story can shed on a new moment.  As it is... Ho hum, insert [daleks/the master/cybermen] MotW here. 

[Mabinogia]

2 hours ago, ombre said:

I haven't loved JW (and I fully expected I would).

I expected to like her more than I do as well. JW is a very likable person to me. While I hated her character in Broadchurch, I thought she acted the part well. I actually like the energy she brings to the Doctor. I even like each of her companions and all three of them as a group. And her with the companions. but the writing....generic probably is the perfect word for it. I thin think the issue, for me, for what I haven't enjoyed about Thirteen, lie more with Chibnall and his vision for the show more than Thirteen/Jodie. It's a shame because I was really looking forward to a female doctor, Jodie as the doctor, and having more companions, but all of it has been quandered IMO. 

A rest might be best. Give the show a few years off then come back fresh. 

[ombre]

4 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

And her with the companions. but the writing....generic probably is the perfect word for it. 

I've had times in my life when I got to watch how kids watch things and learn how genre works - from excellent classics like The Princess Bride to the eleven billionth iteration of [insert franchise here]. We learn and make sense of the world through repetition, but exact repetition is boring. For kids, just figuring out how genre and story work, even small variations are exciting (and bringing back recurring gags is rewarding and says they are welcome and their experience is valuable). For grown-ups and experienced story-consumers, much larger jumps (even breaking the confines of genre entirely) are where the fun is.  Right now, the story-telling is in the kiddie pool. Which... Is fine? But does say that it's not being *written* for an experienced audience. (of course, it excels in other ways, and plenty of experienced audiences can enjoy other facets of the show! - indeed, some very sophisticated watchers may take joy in the subtlety of the variations. To each their own!)

But then, a show can't be all things to all people. And perhaps in knocking back to writing geared towards a younger audience they are planting the seeds of the next generation of DW watchers and the show will grow with them and we'll all get to keep enjoying it for millenia to come (just with some of us dipping in and out as the target audience dictates)! 

[JustHereForFood]

My inner child must be strong, because I like Jodie's seasons and never got the impression that it was intentionally made for children any more than previous seasons 😃. 

I hope there is no bigger break, since I am already sad from the long breaks inbetween seasons and less episodes. Plus there should be an anniversary in 2 years and I keep a little bit of hope that it could have all modern Doctors in it. The Six Doctors it could be called.

[DanaK]

On 9/6/2021 at 7:47 PM, JustHereForFood said:

My inner child must be strong, because I like Jodie's seasons and never got the impression that it was intentionally made for children any more than previous seasons 😃. 

I hope there is no bigger break, since I am already sad from the long breaks inbetween seasons and less episodes. Plus there should be an anniversary in 2 years and I keep a little bit of hope that it could have all modern Doctors in it. The Six Doctors it could be called.

I really think 13 is more manic, talkative, group consensus type than the previous few Doctors in order to differentiate her from her immediate predecessor as 12 was unlikable for a time (at least to some number of viewers including me), grouchy, secretive, etc. To some I suppose, 13's manic more child-like manner and large amount of talking comes across as dumbed down for children, but I think, as I said above, it was probably more to be the opposite of 12, plus, it may have been partly to match Jodie's personality (or Chibnall hired Jodie in part because her personality matched what he wanted for 13)

As I've likely said before in other topics, I love this era and Jodie and her interpretation of the Doctor, though I sometimes get annoyed with the amount of talking she does. It was my first time watching Doctor Who, and while Series 11 was running, I watched Peter's era via streaming, and was like "yikes, 12 is very mean and I don't like him and I don't really like a lot of these episodes", though I grew to like him somewhat by his 3rd season. If I had started with him in his first season, I'm not sure I would have continued watching his era

Edited September 9, 2021 by DanaK

[ombre]

On 9/6/2021 at 7:47 PM, JustHereForFood said:

My inner child must be strong, because I like Jodie's seasons and never got the impression that it was intentionally made for children any more than previous seasons 😃. 

I should at this point *aaaaaabsolutely* note that I wrote my above posts having seen the latest season only up through the Nicola Tesla episode.  Big changes after that!!!  And a much more interesting season after that!  (Haven't finished it yet - might all come crashing down like a house of cards for all I know, but so far it's been less reset button, more let's-touch-on-facets-of-a-larger-story-through-disperate-smaller-stories, which I find to be a much more interesting style of story-telling.)

And also more chances for each of the characters to act on their own.  But ever since reading @Llywela 's comment above about JW's doctor only interacting with her group of ducklings, it's been harder and harder not to see the dynamics as a classroom.  But seen through that lens, as the season has progressed it's felt like an older classroom.  And it's been fun to see this kind of accelerated growth for the ducklings.  In another thread somewhere someone said that Chibnall is best at writing character and I nearly did a spit-take because I've found evidence of that so deeply lacking.  I wouldn't say that this season has shown that writing character is a strength of his, but at least it's not as bad as the first season.  (But, again, the last episodes might yet change that impression in any number of directions!)

 

18 hours ago, DanaK said:

To some I suppose, 13's manic more child-like manner and large amount of talking comes across as dumbed down for children,

If this is written in response to my comments, a clarification - I didn't mean that JW's performance is dumbed-down-for-kids, I meant that the story-telling had been.  To use the Rosa episode as an example, there are a lot of ways that it could have been told with more complexity.  The villain could have been part of a larger, multi-ep storyline.  Or they could have looked into Rosa's story beyond the mythologized tidbits - the other attempts to desegregate, Parks's work against sexual assault, etc.  Or they could have had history getting screwed up!  Have had Parks fail in that timeline, but had someone else succeed, showing the dynamics of mass movements (picking up after failure and continuing to push on, etc).  They might have needed to come back and fix that in another ep, but it would have been a more interesting statement in that ep.  Instead, it felt like a rote recitation of something you might get in class in primary school in February.  Which is fine - it's just not what I've come to expect of DW storytelling over the past few decades.  (Weelllll.  Okay, it's definitely what I've come to expect of *some* eps.  But not ep after ep after ep!  :D)

[Llywela]

1 hour ago, ombre said:

In another thread somewhere someone said that Chibnall is best at writing character and I nearly did a spit-take because I've found evidence of that so deeply lacking.  I wouldn't say that this season has shown that writing character is a strength of his, but at least it's not as bad as the first season.  (But, again, the last episodes might yet change that impression in any number of directions!)

That was me. 😁 I didn't say it was his strength (although Broadchurch demonstrates that he can write character well, when he actually makes it his primary focus). I said that as a writer he is more interested in characters than he is in wacky sci fi stories, but that when he took the job at Doctor Who he seemed to take it as read that Doctor Who has to be first and foremost about wacky sci fi stories. So he gave each of his characters a strong character story as their base, because that was his instinct as a writer, but then he failed to actually develop any of those stories because for the majority of his run he has repressed that instinct in order to focus instead on wacky sci fi stories, which are definitely not his forte and are not really where his interests lie. Because that's what he thinks is expected of Doctor Who. It's a structural storytelling issue. It matters what the writer thinks their story is about - are they telling a story about characters or are they telling a story about a plot?

Character-focused storytelling places the characters at the heart of the story, so that the plot is mostly there just as a framework to hang the character development off. It was how Davies operated, for the most part, and I suspect Chibnall's work on the show would be much stronger if he'd also taken this approach, because I think it is what his instincts would prefer him to do (he gave all his companions interesting storylines as their base, after all, he just failed to go on to actually develop them, like, at all). But instead he has taken a plot-driven approach, wherein the storytelling is all about the plot, both at an episodic and seasonal level, with the characters existing only to move that plot forward. Moffat took much the same approach, with much the same effect: all the character work, what there is of it, gets crammed in around the edges here and there and isn't developed effectively, because there just isn't room for it, when all the focus is on moving the plot from a to b.

And that's how I read Chibnall: a writer who would prefer to be writing about characters, but has instead approached Doctor Who as a show that has to be all about wacky sci fi plots. So he made himself write lots of wacky sci fi plots, which are neither his strength nor his main interest as a writer, very much at the expense of the characters he created along the way, and the end result is kind of a half-hearted mess.

And since this is the 13th Doctor's thread, I will add that I also don't think he put enough effort into figuring out how to write a female Doctor. He tried. I can see that he tried. But I can also see all kinds of ways in which he tripped himself up without really thinking about it, all kinds of ways in which he automatically wrote the character as 'female version of the Doctor' instead of just as the Doctor (he just couldn't bring himself to let her be certain of anything, for starters).

1 hour ago, ombre said:

If this is written in response to my comments, a clarification - I didn't mean that JW's performance is dumbed-down-for-kids, I meant that the story-telling had been.  To use the Rosa episode as an example, there are a lot of ways that it could have been told with more complexity.  The villain could have been part of a larger, multi-ep storyline.  Or they could have looked into Rosa's story beyond the mythologized tidbits - the other attempts to desegregate, Parks's work against sexual assault, etc.  Or they could have had history getting screwed up!  Have had Parks fail in that timeline, but had someone else succeed, showing the dynamics of mass movements (picking up after failure and continuing to push on, etc).  They might have needed to come back and fix that in another ep, but it would have been a more interesting statement in that ep.  Instead, it felt like a rote recitation of something you might get in class in primary school in February.  Which is fine - it's just not what I've come to expect of DW storytelling over the past few decades.  (Weelllll.  Okay, it's definitely what I've come to expect of *some* eps.  But not ep after ep after ep!  :D)

I agree. The performances aren't dumbed down, but the storytelling has definitely been pitched a little younger than it was previously.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Llywela

[waving feather]

The problem I have with Jodie's Doctor is they made her too human. I enjoy seeing quirks from other doctors to show that they are not exactly human in their thinking. It makes the Doctor more mystical and intruiging. But most of the things 13 does is what a nice normal human would do. Either that or because she has so many companions at one time that it's hard to see a clearer contrast between the Doctor and their companion like other seasons.

[DanaK]

15 hours ago, waving feather said:

The problem I have with Jodie's Doctor is they made her too human. I enjoy seeing quirks from other doctors to show that they are not exactly human in their thinking. It makes the Doctor more mystical and intruiging. But most of the things 13 does is what a nice normal human would do. Either that or because she has so many companions at one time that it's hard to see a clearer contrast between the Doctor and their companion like other seasons.

What about David’s Doctor (10)? Many considered him too human while Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor was considered pretty alien. I think the Doctor has veered between too human and too alien and points in between depending on who plays them and how the writers want their personality to be

Edited March 12 by DanaK

[waving feather]

9 hours ago, DanaK said:

What about David’s Doctor (10)? Many considered him too human while Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor was considered pretty alien. I think the Doctor has veered between too human and too alien and points in between depending on who plays them and how the writers want their personality to bee

I think 10 was not so human with Rose and Martha. He was more human with Donna but still an oddity. The 2023 specials with Donna, 10 (or 14) was indeed very human but that's understandable with how it ended.

Maybe that's why I loved 12, even though he got mixed reviews. I personally prefer when they are weirder and when their minds don't exactly do the same reasoning that humans do. Both the writing and acting are very important to bring that out. The Doctor should be fond of the human race but not relate to them too much. If the Doctor gets too human, it will be just another sci-fi action adventure show.

I also wish 13 was better at making big impactful speeches. 10 and 11 were particularly good at that. I always applauded how menacing both 10 and 11 could get with their tones in a split second.

Edited March 12 by waving feather