Review: Jodie Whittaker’s Time Lord returns to classic Doctor Who form

Showrunner Chris Chibnall revived an old nemesis, a former ally, and a classic monster

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[Excors]

I've been wishing for the writers to find a way to bring Gallifrey back into the story. In the original series run, episodes involving Time Lord society were always among my favorites, in part because the Doctor was up against his equals; now, his only legitimate challenges involve facing down entire races. In the modern series, the arc involving the Master are also standouts for similar reasons. We also got a glimpse of the alien side of the Time Lords, something the Doctor rarely reveals.

I'd like to see the Rani brought back, too.

The final episode revealed the Time Lords were never the Doctor's equals, but at the same time it suggested there's a whole new group who genuinely *are* the Doctor's equals, living wherever in time and space the Timeless Child came from. I imagine the Doctor is going to want to find them and to discover why they sent her away, which could be an interesting arc for future seasons.

 

[Excors]

I'm afraid you completely disqualified yourself from reviewing this dreadful incarnation when you admitted without any embarassment that "I thought [series 11] was solid and showed a lot of promise".

Whittaker is a terrible doctor, worse even than McCoy, and it fully deserves it's derogatory nickname of Dr Woke.

Complete junk.

I'm afraid you completely disqualified yourself from commenting on this review when you claimed "Whittaker is a terrible doctor".

I'm sure you'd much rather they went back to the good old days of not caring about social issues...oh wait, they don't exist except in the fevered imaginations of grumpy, middle aged guys.

Caring about issues is no excuse for poor writing. Weak flabby story telling full of false jeopardy is why Chibnall started with 11 million viewers and 19 episodes later has 3.5 million. Caring about the script is what the attention should be on.

Those numbers are highly misleading. The last episode was 3.78m overnight but the official viewing figures (which include timeshift and on-demand) will probably be around 5m. Chibnall's first episode was 11m (including on-demand etc), which was the largest audience for any non-special episode since 1979, because it was a new Doctor and that always attracts some short-lived attention, and this one attracted slightly more than normal.

Steven Moffat's last episode (ignoring Christmas specials) was 5.3m, and his last season averaged 5.5m. Chibnall's latest season averaged 5.4m.

Certainly the audience isn't growing, and it's a drop from the 7.5m averages of Russell T Davies and early Moffat, but the numbers don't show Chibnall is driving away hordes of viewers - it's just following the normal fluctuations.