My eyes are incredibly sore from rolling too much and spewing tears out from crying of laughter, so that much mean that it's Saturday night and Doctor Who just finished airing! Specifically the second part of the Series 9 opener just finished airing, and there wasn't anything special about it other than it's probably the last episode of Doctor Who I will ever watch on broadcast television. I don't care any more.
I wanted to write this last week to be honest, but it would have seemed rash to declare "YAWN" during the first half of a two part episode so I stuck it out. I tried to have a good time too! After an opening scene where two women talk about how amazing the Doctor is for five minutes, one of the first things that happens is the Doctor uses a Dalek weapon to threaten Davros into giving him his chair under the logic that he knew he could drive into the middle of a pack of Daleks with it as it would have defences against Dalek weaponry.
THAT'S FINE! I like the fact the episode admits incredibly early that "logic" is one of the words Daleks don't have in their vocabulary and wouldn't be making an appearance tonight. I appreciate the honesty! Then the episode kept going, I cringed, I laughed (a lot), I got confused, I started looking out the window and sighing when it was revealed Davros had an incomprehensible plan that incomprehensibly the Doctor foresaw and allowed to happen so the Daleks could drown in their own sewer poo. I don't understand what the Doctor and Davros actually did at all or why, and the show doesn't have much more to say about it than "look you know they're both geniuses DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT".
Doctor Who in general doesn't seem to know how to have fun with the fact its main lead is a genius any more. He just knows stuff whenever he needs to which makes it frustrating when he falls for something obvious (like for example, a Dalek begging for its life and pleading innocence on KILLING SOMETHING), it's like Sherlock Holmes' art of deduction but without the part where he brags and explains how he did it.
That's about as far as I can be bothered to make fun of this episode, I made a joke on Twitter about how the scene with the Doctor and Davros crying was like if Wolfenstein ended with BJ Blazkowicz and Mecha-Hitler having a little cuddle which was so good I felt like typing it out again. Other than that I've pretty much already forgotten most of it, and I'm not even angry about it. 3 years ago I would have wrote 3000 words on how every grain of that story made no sense, I probably would have also been crying a lot and proofread it before putting it on the internet. But times change and so must I, and all I have to say in summary of that episode is it was another boring addition to the mythology of an increasingly bad television show.
It's been a heavy criticism of Doctor Who (and my biggest one for several years now) that Doctor Who is too obsessed with itself and its own lore and mythology. Some people have been ragging on it for being a bit fanfictiony even since the Russell T. Davies days, but it's gone completely overboard now. We're at a point where the show isn't just consumed with its own history, it's relying on it for intrigue. This series opener was entirely reliant on the fact that it's DOCTOR WHO and if you watch DOCTOR WHO then you know what the Daleks, Davros and Sacro are so therefore you're excited to see them again...whatever they happen to be doing. Story? Was there even a story? All I remember was a bunch of established characters having pseudo-intellectual conversations about philosophy and their relations/parallels to each other, kind of like The Dark Knight but performed by the cast of The Wiggles.
It's an inherent frustration I have with what Doctor Who is now. I don't think Doctor Who has ever been consistently an AMAZING show, but it does have an amazing concept. Back in the 60s they lucked into the concept of regeneration and accidentally came up with something that would allow the show to continue theoretically FOREVER. What you have then is a television show with a back catalogue of recognisable characters, with a concept that can do any story, any genre, anywhere, you can make up whoever or whatever you want or even include real historical people! On top of that it has a fantastic device built into it where you replace the main leads with new actors and freshen things up every few years and can re-explore things from a different angle. It could attract our best writers from all kinds of backgrounds to present all kinds of fresh stories with enough continuity and canon to tie things together so people keep coming back and every now and then you have a big EVENT happen comic-book style. Then we export that all over the world. It wouldn't be incredible television all the time, but it would certainly wouldn't ever be boring.
Or instead, you give the show to an ageing fanboy, and he concentrates all his energy into making all his childhood fantasies for a Doctor Who fairy tale to come to life. The show now feels like it's exclusively aimed at people who just like this show, and are automatically excited by returning familiar faces or anything that can be added to the CANON(!) Some people have love for these characters and will endure any old shit the Doctor goes through as long as he makes quips about liking custard creams or whatever. But it's so goddamn fucking boring. How do you manage to make all of time and space feels so tiny and insular and lacking in possibilities? Answer: you centre it around one old dude who kind of already knows everything, and he's a real fast learner for the stuff he doesn't. Even the refresh from Smith to Capaldi didn't give the show any new energy this time, we all know what this show is now and nothing's going to change until someone new is in the captain's chair.
Even the current boring companion Clara Oswald (I sat around trying to think of words to describe her and all I could come up with were "fantasy girlfriend") is "important" because she fell into the Doctor's timeline or whatever. God even Capaldi's Doctor doesn't seem to have a personality outside of he's a collection of bits and pieces of other Doctors, he's a fantastic actor but I'm really starting to worry that he was only cast because he's a Scottish and has mannerisms slightly reminiscent of Tom Baker. Now the new series starts with an episode that has no point other than pointing out how 1) the Doctor is cool 2) the Doctor killed people HE'S SORT OF LIKE THE DALEKS AND MAYBE HE ALSO KIND OF MADE THEM WOAH which is the fourth or fifth time the new series has done that now and it's starting to feel like a joke at the expense of people who are still watching.
Basically Doctor Who at this point feels like Batman crossed with a Star Wars prequel. Don't worry you're not missing anything, that wasn't funny or clever or anything, I'm just figuring out a way to end this while simultaneously pretending there was a point to writing it. Let's go with "Doctor Who will continue its transition from Saturday night entertainment to cult show for fans and will still receive tremendous critical and financial success, and maybe it'll accidentally be good once in a while."
Or..."I don't care any more."
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