The Chibnall Era - One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

 

The Power of the Doctor has aired. Chris Chibnall has stepped down as showrunner, and Jodie Whittaker is now an ex-Doctor. We can now look at the Chibnall era in its entirety and examine its highs and its lows. There were a few of the former, but - in my opinion - far more of the latter.

This isn't going to be a hatchet job. If there's something I disliked, I'll make sure to say why. I'll also say what I think Chibnall got right.

But before we look at the 13th Doctor's introduction, we ought to place the era in the context of Chibnall's previous contributions to the series. After all, he wasn't just parachuted in from nowhere.

Did his earlier work inspire confidence in his elevation to showrunner status?

Famously, Chibnall had been a member of a DWAS local group and had appeared on TV slagging off the Trial of a Time Lord season. His TV career took off with the cosy nostalgia drama Born and Bred, about two generations of country doctors. He then contributed to Life on Mars. In 2005 he was developing a series about the magician Merlin. His ideas were not taken up, and the series Merlin which was produced had nothing to do with him. He did eventually get to cover the Arthurian story with Camelot, which ran for just one season. He claimed to have been too busy for a second series. 

His first brush with Doctor Who was on the first series of Torchwood, on which he was made head writer and co-producer.

The first series was a very hit and miss affair. It attempted to link itself with the parent programme with the episode Cyberwoman, which Chibnall wrote himself. It was not widely liked. The series featured a Captain Jack who bore little similarity to the witty charmer of Doctor Who. The supporting characters were unlikeable. Even Gwen Cooper - our identification figure - cheated on her loveable boyfriend with the often unpleasant Owen. The stories were for the most part derivative of other things.

The second series was much better - and it had a lot less input from Chibnall. He wrote the opener and the final two-parter, and was no longer producer.

Chibnall went on to write for Doctor Who under RTD and Steven Moffat, mainly for the first half of Series 7. The problem with these episodes is that we don't always know how much was Chibnall and how much was the showrunners. Ideas such as that for Dinosaurs on a Spaceship were handed down by the showrunner, and we know that both RTD and Moffat rewrote other's material, sometimes heavily.

Beyond Doctor Who, Chibnall's big hit was Broadchurch. This whodunnit was hugely derivative. All Chibnall had to do was have a murder, then populate the plot with lots of people who all had means, motive and opportunity. You could have prolonged it for months just by adding new suspects.

The first series was popular, but the second was laughable. It was based around the trial of the killer from the first series, and bore no relation to any British court proceedings. At one point we see the victim's mother turning up at court just a couple of hours after giving birth. She was played by Jodie Whittaker, who featured in all three series. Chibnall had either done no homework - creating a courtroom drama based on ignorance of court procedures, or he had researched and simply ignored it all. The third series concentrated mainly on a new crime, but again simply followed the same structure as series 1 of filling the plot with suspects.

When Moffat announced he was standing down, there were two names fans thought might replace him. The obvious one was Mark Gatiss, who had worked so closely with Moffat on Doctor Who and on Sherlock. The problem with him was his lack of showrunning experience, his busy acting schedule, and the fact that some of his stories were right old duds. The other name bandied about was Toby Whithouse. He had real showrunner experience (Being Human), only very rarely acted, and had a much better hit rate when it came to stories.

The person chosen, however, was Chibnall - showrunner on the worst Torchwood season (until Miracle Day) or crime dramas, with only a handful of middling Doctor Who stories under his belt.

There were warnings signs right from the start. Chibnall was given lots of notice, yet failed to deliver a script for that year's Christmas Special. Moffat was forced to junk the ending to The Doctor Falls and come up with a hurried festive replacement - Twice Upon A Time - for fear of losing the prime Christmas night slot.

The debut of the 13th Doctor would have to wait until the Spring, but we then learned that that Doctor was to be the series' first female one. This was an overdue development, now that Moffat had paved the way with the female Master (Missy) and the male Time Lord General regenerating into a female incarnation. So Chibnall's biggest innovation wasn't all that original, other than it was now the main character who was changing gender.

Series 11 got underway with a good episode - that's 'good' rather than 'great'. We had been promised 50 minute episodes, and had been told about all sorts of technical changes re: camera lenses etc. All very well, but it was the stories which fans were most interested in. The first series was lacklustre in content but looked nice.

Chibnall decided to give the new Doctor three companions - arguing that the original TARDIS crew had comprised four people, and so had Peter Davison's first season. What Chibnall had completely ignored was the fact that back then we had the series on more than 40 weeks of the year in the Hartnell days, and the phrase "overcrowded TARDIS" had always been used to describe Davison's first year. There are simply far too many people in the Whittaker TARDIS for the plot to sustain. Add to this Chibnall's insistence on giving the Doctor temporary episode-based helpers on top and you have full-time companions being left with very little to do. Only Bradley Walsh's Graham stood out, thanks to his comedic role. Ryan was under-utilised throughout. It was a good thing to give him a disability, but the writers then conveniently ignored it most of the time. The worst character was Yaz, who was universally thought redundant to the series and not particularly well played.

Chibnall was also flagging up his insistence on diversity on screen by having one white companion, one black companion and one Asian companion. A bit of a stretch. The first episode ended with a trailer for forthcoming stories. We wanted to see action and monsters, but instead were given a list of guest actors who would be appearing. The unfortunate impression given was that Chibnall was saying: "Just look at all the minority actors I've employed"...

The whole "Fam" thing is particularly annoying. The Doctor has never regarded their companions as a family. Family members don't walk out after one or two series and be replaced by other equally short-lived members.

There had been very little publicity for the series, with the BBC actively stamping down on "spoilers". The ironic thing about this was the fact that the series was entirely lacking in anything worth spoiling. Chibnall elected to have no links to the past in his first series. No returning monsters or characters.

The opener was not bad, and got very good ratings. At the time I pointed out that these would probably be very high as people would have been curious about the programme's first ever female Doctor. I wrote in the review that it would be the ratings for episodes four or five which would be the indicative ones. This proved to be correct. The first lot of ratings were artificially inflated - casing the drop to the on-going figures to be a noticeably steep one. Trumpeting the opening ratings proved to be a big mistake - drawing attention to the following slump.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth had just short of 11 million viewers, whilst Legend of the Sea Devils had around 3.5 million. There were no peaks in the interim.

Two stories were regarded as highlights - recent history episodes which dealt with race / religion issues. These were Rosa and Demons of the Punjab. Both were written by people other than Chibnall. In the case of Rosa, we had a very weak, badly conceived villain, and a situation where the Doctor could not possibly influence any of the events depicted. You can't have a white woman being in any way instrumental in the actions of a black woman. As for Demons, the Doctor and companions might as well never have bothered to turn up. Both stories are simply not good Doctor Who.

Chibnall's own contributions to the series are the weakest of the lot, taking up the bottom half of most series polls. My own personal hated episode is the P'ting one, which is atrociously written. The only decent character gets killed half way in, and we are left with a bunch of underdeveloped ones. The thrilling exit from the dangerous region of space is depicted by watching a woman waving her hands about in a white room. No external CGI shot. It's one of the biggest problems of Chibnall's tenure - his failure to grasp "Show - don't tell". The Ghost Monument is a perfect example of this. We are told about all the hazards of this planet, but don't ever get to see any of them. 

This episode introduces the new TARDIS interior - the worst design since 2005.

The giant spider story ought to have been a big hit, but it was saddled with a heavy-handed Donald Trump caricature. The Doctor, who has professed to be a pacifist (a thoroughly stupid idea in an action-adventure series) kills the spiders by locking them in a room to suffocate to death, if they don't eat each other first, and she then stands around and watches the big spider slowly die. The supposed villain of the piece puts it out of its misery whilst she just stands there.

Kerblam! - another popular episode - basically sees the Doctor side with a big faceless corporation, making the man who is fighting to win work for people the villain. It's supporting Amazon over the workers struggling to form a union, to protect themselves from exploitation.

Series 11 limped to its conclusion with The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. It opens with the battle already finished - and that's the Chibnall era in a nutshell right there. It's not worthy of being a series finale, and most of us regard the following New Year Special as the proper finale to the first year.

The New Year Specials are, for the most part, Chibnall's better instalments. The only problem I have is the overuse of the Daleks. Every one is a Dalek story. There is also a considerable amount of padding in these episodes. Ryan's reconciliation with his father really kills the momentum. In Revolution of the Daleks we have a lengthy set-up with a character who is about to get killed and play no further part in proceedings.

If Series 11 had been seen a weak, it was then followed by an entire year off. The impression given was that Chibnall needed the time to write more episodes. This failure to capitalise on the first series had a knock-on effect in the ratings. They had been dropping steadily since the first instalment, and those who left decided not to come back after such a long gap.

Series 12 went the opposite way to Series 11, in that it embraced characters from the past. It very quickly delivered a regenerated Master, only 12 episodes after Missy. The casting of Sacha Dhawan is another of the positives of the Chibnall era. A good opener was followed by another dip in quality - beginning with the second half of the two-parter. The Doctor uses the Master's ethnicity against him - allowing him to fall into nazi hands just because he is Asian in appearance. She swans off with two temporary companions - meaning that the three real ones are left with nothing to do. The human villain simply runs away at the end, never to be seen again.

Orphan 55 was this year's Tsuranga Conundrum. A whole load of underdeveloped characters, badly acted. A Planet of the Apes rip-off twist, and a dreadful preachy speech from the Doctor at the end. Messaging in drama is all fine and good, but you have it emerge out of that drama and make use of allusion. Hitting the audience over the head with it just turns people away from the very message you are trying to impart. Something similar happens with Praxeus. It's noticeable that these two episodes, the ones which dealt with environment issues, were the lowest ranked in most series polls.

The thing Series 12 will forever be remembered for is the introduction of the Timeless Child, and the fact that there had been Doctors before Hartnell. This originated in a scene from The Brain of Morbius, which never needed any sort of explanation in the first place. One backstory is simply replaced with another, which insults everyone who brought the series into being. 

Bottom line: this alienated many, many fans - and it was neither wanted nor needed.

Ratings continued the slow, inexorable decline from the very first appearance of the 13th Doctor.

The series ended with Gallifrey being destroyed. No big deal, it is always being destroyed these days - ever since the novels. JNT had almost commissioned a Pip & Jane Baker story that would have destroyed the Time Lords. That's the same Pip & Jane Baker whom Chibnall had slagged off on national TV back in 1986.

We then learned that Chibnall's third series was to be his last, and that Whittaker would be leaving as well. This was presented as a deliberate choice on their part - something they had agreed since Day One. I, frankly, think this a lie. I think Chibnall was pushed out by an unhappy BBC and she went with him out of loyalty. I do not believe for a minute that someone who professes to be a fan would walk away from a series in the run-up to its 60th Anniversary. Some claim that his getting the BBC Centenary Special shows faith on the part of the BBC, but I think it's simply a matter of timing.

Had he really only intended three series then I think he would have plotted them better. Would he really have launched with such a weak first season if it was part of a three year-only plan? 

We know that Flux had to be thrown together under the shadow of Covid, as with the two specials which followed. They were basically remnants of the series there would have been had Covid not got in the way.

Another pointer to Chibnall's claim being a lie is "Thasmin". Had he really only planned a three year stay surely he would have made a better job of this? It is clear that he never plotted out this relationship at all, but simply added it in very late in the day - after finding out that fans had formulated it.

The final series came in the form of a single story - Flux. This got off to a great start, but rapidly went downhill. The best episodes were those involving aliens he had not created - Sontarans and Weeping Angels. In the latter case, once again it was not one of his solo efforts, but the work of a collaborator. One good thing was to rehabilitate the Sontarans after Moffat had made a joke of them. That was until he totally undermined himself with the stupid chocolate addiction scene in the weak final episode. Swarm and Azure are simply dismissed with the click of a finger, after all that set-up.

John Bishop's Dan was a welcome addition, as we were all dreading Yaz as lone companion.

It was rather a shock to see Dan leave only 10 minutes into his final episode - the BBC Centenary Special.

When I reviewed this I said that it would be remembered for three things - the appearance of the old Doctors, the appearance of the old companions, and the regeneration into David Tennant.

The Power of the Doctor did sum up a lot of what is right and wrong about the Chibnall era. We applaud the casting of the first female Doctor, and Sacha's casting as the Master. It looked very good. We were happiest when it came to the nostalgia elements. The actual plot, though, wasn't brilliant.

We've had some very good actors - including Whittaker herself - badly served by the writing, and the least effective of the writers was the showrunner himself. By aligning herself so closely with Chibnall, she will be tarred with the same brush, and people will talk of her era in the same negative way as his (though it will be him they are really referring to). It would have been interesting to see her work under RTD.

A few good things came out of the era, but the missteps far outweighed the positives.