Doctor Who and Rogue

Back during Davies’ first run on the show, the late season episode by a new writer was practically a genre into itself. It was kinda the try-out slot? But what’s that look like here in ’24, given that the seasons are so much shorter now, and that this is the first episode not written by someone who also wrote for 2007’s series three since 2020? Because this is the one written by Loki Season 1 director Kate Herron, and the immediate reaction is to wish the people behind Loki had let her do more than just direct.

Riffing on Bridgerton is the sort of thing that seems inevitable for Who to do, and lavish costume drama is the thing the BBC does best, so it looks great and everyone knows exactly what vibe to hit. British actors don’t always know how to hit “campy alien planet”, but they can all do “sinister Pride & Prejudice” in their sleep. The twist, that it’s aliens who are literally fans of Bridgerton who have gone back in time to cosplay is properly brilliant, the sort of thing you kind of can’t believe Doctor Who has never done before.

However, none of that’s what anyone wants to talk about with this one. Back in November I talked about the sense that Davies had unfinished business, a list of things he didn’t get a chance to do last time. It’s clear that very high on that list was “get the Doctor to kiss a man.”

So I don’t bury the lede here, I liked it, I thought it worked. Maybe more importantly, my kids loved it, by far their favorite episode of the season so far. Part of the remit of this season was to pull the “under 16s” in, and seems like mission accomplished. One of my kids is an absolutely huge Hamilton nut, and the fact that the Doctor was locking lips with King George? To great to even comprehend.

Personally, using the Doctor as a romantic character has always bugged me a little, mostly because they’re an ancient space entity, and it’s hard to imagine that working between a human whose a regular amount old, and an ancient alien from the dawn of time whose either thousands or billions of years old depending on how you read the end of “Hell Bent”? But this is where I argue against myself, because what’s so great and unique about the Doctor as a character is that sure they’re an ancient borderline-lovecraftian space entity, but they want to be just a regular guy when they grow up. And part of being a regular guy is occasionally smooching someone. And since that seal was broken two decades ago now, so yeah, lets go all-in on it. If you’re a billion years older than the other person, and a different species, and you can change your physical form almost at will, gender is where you’re going to draw the line? No, I don’t think so.

Speaking of unfinished business, this really felt like the original pitches for what became “Girl in the Fireplace” and the Captain Jack character from “The Empty Child” stripped back to their basics, mashed up, and handed to a different writer. Doomed time travel–centered love affair with an extremely gay Han Solo? Check and check.

Hope thats a thread that gets picked back up on.

And a couple of stray observations:

One of the many things I like about Davies, besides just being a great writer, is that he’s both a huge fan of the entire history of the show, but isn’t precious about it, and backs that up with an impish sense of humor. I’m slightly in awe of the level of trolling that went into slipping Richard E. Grant’s “Shalka Doctor” into the past Doctor montage. They even went and did a special photoshoot with a scanner to get the image! Doctor Who’s relaxed attitude towards it’s own continuity is something we’ve covered before, but that’s a whole lot of effort to go out of your way to make the show’s continuity even weirder for weirdness sake and I am here for it.

This episode got kind of a weird reaction, for reasons both obvious and not. I don’t spent a lot of time in fan spaces these days, but I dip in occasionally. Most of the sort of people who, shall we say, pronounce woke with the ‘hard r’, checked out somewhere around Christmas, and the chatter around most of this season has been pretty positive, all things considered. But this episode seemed to be the one that blew some fuses, there was a whole lot of “this is just too different!!!1” posts after this one, with increasingly less euphemistic ways to describe what, exactly, was different and why that was bad. Lots of “think of the children”.

Beyond that, this seemed to be the point where a lot of pent-up handwringing burst to the surface. Doctor Who fans can be a weirdly pessimistic lot, which is sort of justified because the show already got cancelled once? But lots of shows get cancelled, very few come back and then run for another two decades, so maybe unclench a little, guys.

This was also the point where it became clear that the ratings for this season were “good”, but not “great”, and with only the two-part finale left for the year, this seemed to be the point where everyone started armchair diagnosing “what went wrong.” For the record, nothing went wrong, it’s doing pretty well, considering the state of media here in ’24, and all the players involved seem happy. Outside the various weird internet fan corners, the show’s gotten a positive reaction. It’s one of those weird fan things where the hard-core fans are convinced that no one but them could possibly like this, despite the fact that by all appearances, the general public likes it just fine.

But okay, if this is where everyone does their bit about what’s been bugging them, let me tell you mine. As much as I enjoyed this, it really felt like there was a beat missing. This has been sort of bugging me all season in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but this episode sharpened it up for me—this is not a Doctor who ever really manages to size control of a situation, who never seems to get his feet under him.

This is a combination of the way Gatwa plays him, but also the way Davies is writing him as someone who largely inspires others to act rather than act himself. This is very similar to how Eccleston’s 9th Doctor worked, but that was back in 2005, and the approach really hasn’t been tried since.

Since Dungeons & Dragons gets a shoutout here, I’ll use that as the example of what I’m talking about: The Doctor has always been the exemplar of the maxed-out charisma hero. It’s not that he’s stronger or braver or even smarter than others, it’s that he can size control of a situation mostly by sheer force of personality, talk himself from being the chief suspect to running the whole murder investigation himself. The sort of character who swaggers into a room and rolls a whole series of nat 20s on persuasion checks. And as part of that there’s a move the show likes to do, where the Doctor acts like he’s thrashing around like an idiot for the first half of the show, and then somewhere around the midpoint decides he’s tricked the bad guys into telling him enough things, puts his “parent voice” on, and mixing a metaphor, grabs the wheel of whatever’s going on, and stays in the driver’s seat for the rest of the story.

And Gatwa’s Doctor, so far, just doesn’t do that. This one comes close, which is why I noticed it—the Kylie song and past Doctor montage scene, ending with the Doctor explaining who he is, looks like it’s one of those “okay, enough screwing around” turns, but then afterwards he goes right back to being back on his heels, and largely fails to resolve the story, with Ruby and Rogue making all the actually valuable decisions.

Especially combined with the theme of being scared a lot, it adds up to a fun but strangely ineffective version of the character, which I don’t think is the intent? As part of this soft reboot/revival, it’s as if they haven’t rehabbed all the old pieces yet, and havn’t quite redeployed all the tools in the toolbox. To be clear: I don’t think this is a problem, but it’s an aspect of the character that I miss, and I hope floats back in next year.