The Thirteenth Doctor: New Who’s Problem Child

Don’t worry. I’ll try not to beat this dead horse for too long.

When the thirteenth Doctor’s run began, I really wanted to like it. I figured a new showrunner and a new Doctor ought to have been a breath of fresh air. Instead, it ended up becoming the most disappointing era in the show’s sixty year history.

The issues are plentiful. For each one that the show tried to fix, even more popped up. The largest and most consistent problem of them all being the title character herself.

Now, to be clear, I don’t blame the actress. Jodie Whitaker did do the best she could with the material she was given. Her performance always had plenty of energy and charisma. In the rare occasion the writing provided it, her Doctor could muster just as much confidence and power as any other. With a better script, she could have been a great iteration of the character!

Unfortunately, the writing just wasn’t good. Mainly because the head writer of her era really doesn’t seem to understand what makes the Doctor… the Doctor.

Confidence is a key factor to the Doctor’s appeal. They’re the kind of character who can say or do whatever they like and get away with it purely because they’ve got the right attitude. Whether they’re saying something weird and people are giving them odd looks or someone is pointing a gun at them, the Doctor doesn’t care. They’re confidence is unflinching.

The thirteenth Doctor doesn’t have this confidence. She’s awkward and easily frightened. In social situations, she always acts nervous and embarrassed. Lady is such a nervous wreck that she couldn’t even directly ask her friends to travel with her!

Compassion is another, even more important trait of the character. Yet in this regard, the thirteenth fails again. Such as one of her most infamous scenes, where one of her companions, Graham, a cancer survivor, opens up to her about said cancer. He admits that he’s afraid it will come back. How does the Doctor respond? By telling him she’s not going to help, then awkwardly slinking out of the conversation.

Even on a basic moral level, the thirteenth Doctor is wrong. She is treated as the moral center of the universe, the one who is always in the right. Yet she’ll make moral decisions ranging from questionable to downright evil! For example: in ‘Arachnids in the UK’, her solution to the giant spider problem is to lock the spiders in a cave to slowly starve to death. In ‘Spyfall’, she sends the Master into a Nazi concentration camp for no reason other than she can, even though she already defeated him.

Oh, and she also says something extremely racist when she does that. Chris? What the fuck?

For god’s sake, they even screwed up her no-gun rule. The Doctor has always abhorred violence because they loathe the idea of hurting or killing people. Yet the Doctor has been willing to use guns before, just never on another person. Yet the thirteenth simply detests guns because they are guns and guns are bad.

But she’ll blow up some kid with his own bomb. Or let her companions lock a villain in eternal stasis despite how she condemned said stasis as horrific. And the only reason explaining any of this is that the script was written in one draft, in an afternoon, without a second of thought put behind it.

Wisdom is important, too. All the best Doctors can muster this ancient wisdom behind their eyes, making their version seem truly old and experienced. A great example can be found in the second Doctor, in the ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ storyline. In said example, he comforts one of his companions, Victoria, sharing how he can remember his family even centuries after leaving them. It’s an incredibly sweet scene.

No such scene exists for the thirteenth. She never presents that same ancient wisdom or experience in any of her stories. The closest we ever get to wisdom is her looking directly into the camera and explaining the themes of the story. Such as the end of ‘Orphan 55’, where she explains that climate change is bad.

Thank you, Chris Chibnall. I didn’t know that. How very helpful.

So all the core traits of the Doctor are either missing or completely misinterpreted and surface level. Thus is the groundwork set for the thirteenth Doctor’s character arc. That’s right. She has an actual character arc.

Well, she did. For an episode. Then they abandoned it completely.

In the Timeless Child storyline – AKA the worst plot thread in Doctor Who history – it’s revealed that the Doctor’s past is actually a lot darker and more complicated than we thought. Only the Doctor can’t remember any of it. Upon learning this new truth, the Doctor faces an identity crisis. Who is she, if she lived so many lives she can’t remember?

Problem is: literally none of that matters. The Ruth Doctor just tells thirteen that who she was doesn’t matter, it’s who she is now that matters. Which is something the Doctor has always known. The character arc literally ends with the Doctor deciding that it doesn’t matter.

Chris Chibnall destroyed Gallifrey again for that. Nothing.

It’s a shame just how rough the thirteenth Doctor’s run was. Just about everything with her characterization was wrong and poorly executed. Thirteen could have been a remarkably interesting and unique take on the character. Instead, we got the worst version of the Doctor in the show’s entire history.

But who knows? Maybe she’ll find better writing in the extended media. That’s what happened to the sixth Doctor, after all. If Big Finish gives her some quality audio stories, thirteen might just see some redemption.

However, that’s all in the far future. For now, we need to keep our eyes on the near future. Thirteen’s days are done. All that remains is to see if fourteen and fifteen can revitalize the show.

Luckily, we’ve got David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa in the spotlight, with Russel T. Davies at the helm. If there’s a power team that can save Doctor Who, they would be it.

See y’all for the 60th!