Suffering a bit of insomnia tonight, so made the big mistake of looking at some Series 11 reviews on You Tube. Overwhelmingly negative, and relatively few measured opinions. The apposite epithet, as Mr Ainley's Master would say, would be "hate-filled", I'm sad to say. All of the ones I looked at, around 8 or 9, went on about the preachiness of the new Doctor, bad writing by the showrunner, bad writing by the guest writers, political correctness and so forth. The latter issue was the most prominent. I had never heard of the acronyms SJW or NPC until tonight, and I can't say I fully understand them, not being someone who even cares about social media let alone uses it, beyond this blog.
The videos I saw seemed to come from some righter than centre region, complaining that the show has a bias towards some lefter then centre region - evidence being such things as the Doctor's current companions ticking all the ethnic demographic boxes, white males being vilified etc.
I would like to think that you will never have seen anything like that here.
Readers with long memories will know that I was quite negative about the idea of a female Doctor back when Matt Smith announced his departure. I had mellowed my views by the time Peter Capaldi had left, and I am on record as welcoming Jodie as the new Doctor. I did add the caveat that I didn't care what face he / she wore so long as the stories were good. If you have read my reviews of this last season, then you'll know that I have been terribly disappointed on that score. We've had a couple of very fine stories (with weak elements that have dragged them down somewhat - the historicals that should have been purely historical in my opinion, or had far stronger alien presences, for instance). I really liked the second half of the season more than the first - mainly because Chris Chibnall was writing less. The finale was just another episode and nothing remotely special - mainly due to what had gone before.
Throughout my reviews I have not been kind to Mr Chibnall - but that's because, as a long term fan, I don't believe he he has been kind to me. In my view he has given us very weak fare indeed, as shown up by the far superior contributions from the other writers.
I could be one of those commentators who give a list of 10 things which he and the BBC need to do to "fix" the programme. But I won't. I rarely rant. (Rarely, note - not never).
The problem with current Doctor Who fandom - if You Tube can be used as an indicator (and it must be, what with the numbers involved) - is a divisiveness, or polarisation, not seen since the tail-end of the JNT era, when fanzines like DWB were calling for his severed head to be displayed atop Television Centre, just about. Oh! the irony that one of the torch-wielding mob, immortalised on VT, is one Chris Chibnall of the NW England DWAS fan group... That clip is going to come back to haunt him big time.
I think that the hate in the past was a product of insecurity. This was the greatest TV programme in the universe, and someone was messing about with it and putting it at risk. Fans would do whatever it took to protect it. Somehow I don't see quite the same thing. A lot of the videos I have just looked at aren't saying they hate the programme per se. Underneath all the negativity there is a genuine love, and feelings of betrayal. They're saying that they don't like its current incarnation and cancelling the show would be better than another year of what we just had.
13 years in: close down, wait a while, regroup, then relaunch. That's actually what the naysayers are saying, if you cut through the vitriol. Either that or give us some adventure and excitement, just for once, why don't you?
Which brings me to the title of this post. Back in 2003 / 4, poor Rob Shearman didn't know from one week to the next whether his story would be allowed to have Daleks in it, so he called it "Absence of..." and Russell T Davies came up with what would later become the Toclafane. For some reason, fandom has got it into its collective head that the New Years Day Special will feature at least one Dalek. It's a withered branch dangling above a drowning man, it would seem. If January 1st has a classic monster, explosions and lots and lots of running, I suspect that a huge amount of the negativity will start to evaporate. Chibnall was just easing himself into the role etc. Experimenting a bit.
Daleks are back, and all's right with the world. Series 12 will be more like this, so lots to look forward to...
The problem is - what happens if the Daleks are a no-show? If it turns out to be that f***ing P'tang again, I might start up a You Tube channel of my own...
No comments:
Post a Comment