The news has been official for a little while, but I haven’t taken the time to write about it before now. It’s been announced that the upcoming series 13 of Doctor Who will be the last full season for both showrunner Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor. Series 13 itself will be truncated due to the pandemic, and Chibnall and Whittaker will make their final bow next year with a few concluding specials.
Obviously, there are certain toxic fans who are rejoicing at this news, who see it as the end of “woke” Who and hope for the return of a “proper” Doctor. Others welcome it because they simply haven’t been enjoying the show as much of late, even if they might have wanted to. Others are disappointed by it, feeling the last two seasons have been a breath of fresh air and wishing there could be more.
My feelings are slightly mixed, mainly in that I’m all right with Chibnall leaving but wish we could keep Whittaker a while longer. Chibnall’s writing was the element that I was wariest about going into the Thirteen era, as his episodes previously writing for Who and Torchwood mostly ranged from “not that great” to “pretty good,” and that’s not really the tone you want the showrunner to be setting. And to be fair to him, I’ve liked some of the things he’s done. I like that he’s brought new writers into the series and has branched out into exploring parts of Earth’s history that the show hasn’t paid much attention to. I think he set up an interesting initial dynamic with the three companions.
Unfortunately, his time on the show, for me, has been marked by squandered potential. While the Thirteen era doesn’t really have any serious clunker episodes, it doesn’t really have any masterpieces either. It’s been decent, again ranging from “not that great” to “pretty good.” But besides the simple fact that, as a Who fan, I want more than that from Who, it was inevitable that the first ever female Doctor was going to be scrutinized harder than her predecessors, and any dropping of the ball on Chibnall’s part, in some circles, was going to be viewed as Thirteen and/or Whittaker’s+ fault. Thirteen deserved the show’s A-game, and for the last two years, we haven’t really been getting that.
Which is such a shame, because I do very genuinely love Thirteen. I think Jodie Whittaker has been a great Doctor who hasn’t been given enough chances to shine. She’s delightful, fun, and winning under ordinary circumstances, and when she’s really given strong material to work with, she’s spectacular. I so wish we could have more of her than what we’re getting. And by the way, “three seasons and the odd special is the standard” might be true, but Thirteen is still behind her most of her predecessors in terms of episodes/stories. Though their numbers vary a bit, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve all have at least 40 episodes each; by the time her tenure is over, Thirteen will only have 31. That’s a bummer.
And more than just wanting more in general, I wish we could specifically get more of Thirteen under a different showrunner (to be fair, I wished the same for Eleven and Twelve too, especially Twelve.) Her time on the show has been hampered by the writing, and I’d have liked to see another showrunner’s interpretation of her, along with what more Whittaker might’ve been able to bring to the role with different writing.
I hope that the woefully-short series 13 makes the most of Thirteen’s remaining time on the show and I hope that, when it’s all said and done, Thirteen won’t be viewed by the BBC as some kind of “experiment” that didn’t pay off. I want the show to continue to try new things, and I don’t want Thirteen, or Whittaker herself, being viewed by the higher-ups as the “problem” of this era in any way.
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