Jodie Whittaker Listened to Her Agent

Jodie Whittaker has quit Doctor Who.

This next season appears to be it for her.

Just to be clear the BBC is officially “not commenting” on her departure. But all of the London tabloids are saying Jodie is out.

No idea who they are replacing her with. Or to be exact “what” they are replacing her with. King-Gamma Chibnall is still in charge of the show and since his reaction to any stimulus is, as mindlessly as an amoeba, to roll hard Left. We can expect a trans-polysexual-surgically-altered-to-be-a-hermaphrodite-who-identifies-as-a-tree sloth as the Doctor’s next incarnation.

Assuming, and this might not be a great assumption, that Chibnall wants to remain the captain of the Titanic now that that the propellers are out of the water.

This show is now a surer sign of career death than any plague spot. No agent will let his up and coming A-list level talent anywhere near this thing.

And to think not that long ago, Doctor Who was a crown jewel for the BBC.

The Doctor and I go back a long way.

I first became aware of Doctor Who in preadolescence.  Believe it or not from the non-canonical Peter Cushing movies.

As silly as Grand Moff Doctor’s movies were, there was something there that fascinated Little Dark Herald. It had the flavor of Thunderbirds and UFO.  It was science fiction that wasn’t Star Trek and since there were only 72 episodes of that, Little Dark Herald was grateful for anything new.

Elder Dark Herald would have recognized the echoes of British Science Fiction reflected in the show.  The vastness of time is one of the most persistent of these tropes.  American science fiction always seems to hang up at the 25th-century mark.  Possibly a reflection of the influence of John W. Campbell.  Or possibly it’s just something in the American psyche that is different from its Brit counterpart.   When you live in a town that is two thousand years old it changes your perspective.

There was no way at all to see the actual BBC episodes in the U.S. until after Star Wars first came out. Then there was a frantic rush by content providers to find anything science-fictiony that was above all things cheap. 

And boy, oh, boy did Doctor Who ever fit that nitch!

However, as cheap as the costumes and sets were, the show was actual science fiction.  I mean with science and everything.

That was different. 

“Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to purée of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I’ll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!” — Harlen Ellison

We were kind of lucky in America because we got to skip the shows growing pains.  From its Quatermass tribute band origins (Hartnell), to its first painful reboot (Troughton), to it’s silly pseudo spy show days (Pertwee). 

We got to miss all of that.  We got to start with Tom Baker (AKA the only real Doctor Who).  

The brilliance of Baker’s performance was that his Doctor was not a funny-looking human.  He liked us but he clearly and obviously wasn’t one of us and in a lot of ways he simply didn’t get us.  Baker brought the alienness of being an alien trapped on Earth to the fore.

The scripting was pretty good too considering the Brits thought of it as “just a kid’s show.”

Heck, Douglas Adams used to write for Doctor Who, The Pirate Planet while being profoundly silly was also very interesting from a nuts and bolts science perspective.  City of Death was actually pretty good all-around without being silly at all.  He also wrote Shada, the unfinished episode.  In some ways looking at these episodes is kind of sad because it becomes obvious that Douglas Adams either ran completely out of creative juice in his twenties.  Adams spent the rest of his life mining these episodes. You can see them in both the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but most especially in Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency.

The original run was good, but it had annoying elements. It always had a Lefty slant for instance. But at least it was Humanist. It was trying to show you the error of your ways, rather than screech that your very existence makes you a Nazi war criminal and demand your utter submission to its political viewpoint.

Baker still holds the record for being the longest-serving Doctor at seven years.  And honestly, letting him stay that long was a mistake.  His imprint on the show was too big for it to move on successfully after his departure.  There was just something missing after he was gone. You couldn’t put a finger on it but none of his successors had it.  Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy all had to define their iterations of the Timelord as a specific reply to Tom Baker’s performance. And maybe it was just a case of a show having been on the air too long. 

Whatever it was, all good things must come to an end.  Production costs (even for a kid’s show) were rising in the late 1980s, but the audience wasn’t growing.  And the truth was some of its creative people had been on that treadmill for way too long.  A few of them since day one in 1962. 

When Doctor Who was canceled in 1989 there were tears but there was also a feeling in the air of, “maybe it’s for the best.”  

It spent the next fifteen years wandering in the wilderness with occasional demi-revivals here and there.  Radio shows were pretty common as well as comics. And there was that godawful American TV movie that was supposed to serve as a pilot.  Thankfully that one was stillborn because it was ghastly.  Americans just don’t get Doctor Who creatively (although, they aren’t the only ones at this point.)

There was also a Comic Relief appearance around the year 2000 that was tragically prescient.  At the end of the skit Doctor Who turns into a woman.

When the property was revived in 2005, the lefty slant didn’t take long in making itself felt again.

Again, I didn’t mind.  I had a childhood friend back,

Christopher Eccelston had a good handle on the part but David Tennet is the one that really took the show forward.  The audience of the new show was established, young sexy English Doctor Who left emo girls panting.   After a good run, Tennent stepped aside along with the producer.  Matt Smith took over.  A bit more geeky but still young, English, and sexy.  And to the temporary delight of fans, Stephen Moffat, who had penned some of the new Doctor Who’s best episodes, was now the show driver.

However, as the new show progressed it became exceptionally Progressive. This is probably a reflection of the BBC going further and further off the deep end.  As the show sank into the SJW swamp a second problem emerged.

I’ve liked Moffat’s work in the past and his first three seasons of Doctor Who were great. But the last two were catastrophic and it’s because of the decisions that he made. There is no putting this failure on anyone else’s shoulders. This one is on him.

As I said, the show has always been Lefty as hell but the eighth season, in particular, turned into an SJW trope factory. Almost every episode was geared towards the preservation of the social justice delusion bubble. It became an unwatchable propaganda mill. I don’t know if that was Moffat himself, it may well be that he was pressured by the BBC to produce this crap.

But one thing is clear; Moffat lost his passion for the property and was trying to find inspiration anywhere that he can.   Hence Doctor Who turning into the Adventures of Clara Oswald. 

The other and bigger problem was that after David Tennent and Matt Smith, the female members of the audience were as I said, used to Young Sexy English Doctor Who.  Peter Capaldi did not fit that bill in any way shape or form.

The most pointless character was Clara’s boyfriend.  A soldier with hilariously great big heaping gobs of PTSD because when he was clearing a room he killed a kid by accident.  Now it makes a certain degree of sense to bring in a young actor to do the action scenes that Capaldi simply can’t at his age, but this bitch cried all the fucking time.  I really wasn’t buying him as a hard-bitten man of action.  Danny Pink could not ironically play against his name, plus had cuck-face.

However, Jenna Coleman had the brains to bale before anyone started blaming her for killing Doctor Who.  Which left the comedy team of Moffat and Capaldi to be the target of all the rotten tomatoes.

Capaldi was out at the end of the ninth season. The first Doctor since William Hartnell to be outright fired. He couldn’t get a handle on the part even after two years. Naturally, he got a third year because SJWs always double down but there appears to be a limit even for an SJW Converged organization.  Although, there is no limit to convergence in Doctor Who.  The Doctor has now killed billions and yet remains incredibly self-righteous and unbelievably condescending towards the military. He will unhesitatingly use a Dalek laser arm but freaks out if anyone tries to hand him a pistol.

On top of all that, the plots became completely repetitive.

MacGuffin is presented.
Doctor: I will not interfere for I am a Time Lord and this is not our way

MacGuffin progresses, the problem is worsened
Doctor: I shall not interfere for I am a Time Lord and this is not our way

MacGuffin has reached its endstate and the heroes are at their lowest point.  
Doctor: I must not interfere for I am a Time Lord and this is not our way

Then the Doctor has an EPIPHANY!!!

Doctor:  Now, I can interfere!

A duex ex time machina solution to this week’s storyline then comes vaulting out of the TARDIS. And this was from Steven Moffat, whose previous work I have loved.  Repetitive character arcs have now replaced actual plotting. Something bad happens to talent when its owner gets an OBE. Matt Smith was right to bale after only three years.

I will grant there were two things that I liked in season eight but two weren’t enough.  Missy as the new arch enemy.  And the episode Heaven Sent which was actual science fiction.  But I was done.  I had no intention of watching another episode.

Then I discovered that my TIVO had recorded this ninth season of Doctor Who because I forgot to tell it not to (hell, I only use the damn thing for Phineas and Ferb reruns at this point). Out of masochistic curiosity, I decided to watch whatever episodes “Missy” was in because I thought they would be the most tolerable. 

I got to find out about the Doctor’s new companion, Bill the Black Lesbian (not kidding about any of that). She made friends with a black gay Roman Legionnaire in one episode (because the Romans were totes progressive and cool with being gay and stuff… Except they weren’t).

While I came to loath Moffat’s trudging along on the treadmill he did resist one disastrous demand of the SJWs.  The one that he knew would finish the show completely.  

Moffat got to cast the title character twice and both times he resisted the suicidal SJW demand that he turn Doctor Who into a woman.

It’s been a very long road for Doctor Who, the first episode was broadcast the day John Kennedy was assassinated. It ran from that day until 1987 when it was put on, “temporary hiatus.” 

That was technically accurate although a program hiatus doesn’t usually last twenty years. But if you take the show at its official description then it’s been around for nearly sixty years.

In that time the Doctor faced many foes. Daleks, Cybermen, Zygons, Sontarons, The Master, The Silence, The Weeping Angels and various one-shot enemies that are too numerous to mention. He triumphed over them all.

But he has finally met the enemy who at last vanquished him.

Against this foe the Doctor alas had no defense.

Chris Chibnall didn’t think twice about caving to this demand.  He didn’t even think once about it.  SJWs declared this to be the greatest thing since Rey Skywalker.  And by their standards, I suppose they were right. 

Here was the thing about having a woman as Doctor Who, the showrunner needs to have known a woman and after watching the first episode of Jodie Whittaker’s run, I’m not certain that Chris Chibnall even knows they exist beyond some abstract Leftist concept of them.

If you are going to turn Doctor Who into a woman then DO SOMETHING WITH HER.  When Moffat turned the Master in Missy he created an enjoyable evil Mary Poppins.  Chris Chibnall turned the Doctor into Woman Doctor he created David Tennent with a vagina and that was it.  There was no uniquely female perspective on the Doctor other than to bitch at everyone for being racist-sexist-Nazis if they didn’t completely agree with whatever was on her mind this moment. 

I watched the first episode of Whittaker’s run out of morbid curiosity.  Dull, boring, and tedious.  Since that time I’ve only looked at the most egregious episodes in order to drag them.

For instance the last season finale. 

The one where Chibnall retconned the unholy fuckity fucking fuck out of Doctor Who. The Soy-Wonder brought back the Master to kill off all of the Timelords so he can resurrect them as Cybermen who can regenerate. He also presented us with the very first Doctor who was also a woman and (mega-woke bonus points) was also black.

Now, this presented something of a problem because the Timelords are supposed to have a hard cap limit of twelve regenerations. They aren’t supposed to get any more than that. After number twelve it’s the end of the road for any Timelord. The show had made a pretty big deal out of that around the time Matt Smith left the show. On top of this, it was canon for the entire run of the show since 1963 that William Hartnell’s Doctor was the very first one.

So how did Chibnall account for this “Ruth” being the First Doctor? Simple, he demolished the entire sixty-year backstory of Doctor Who.

One day many, many ages ago a woman scientist/explorer was gadding about the universe when she came upon a diverse child of color at the mouth of some wormhole or something. And although she was white herself, she adopted this child and was raising it as her own. Then one day the kid fell off a cliff and low and behold regenerated. 

A woman scientist/explorer is intrigued by this, straps her adopted child to a table, and starts murdering her for ten years until she figures out the secret of regeneration. She shares this with her friends and them…I shit you not…become the first Timelords. The Diverse Child of Color was, of course, the Doctor. Her memory was erased.

This actually beats Luke throwing away his first lightsaber. 

This retconning of sixty (well really 40) years of canon is malignantly pointless. There has been nothing but hideous disasters since that blob Chibnall took over and the thing is, with this action he makes it blatantly clear that he never cared about Doctor Who at all. It was always just a paycheck to him

But I think there is something more at work here.

Petty revenge on the Doctor Who fans who have so completely and utterly rejected his work. He now holds the record for worst ratings of all time for Doctor Who. No one has ever done a worse job. There are those who point out that the ratings were worse in 1986 but that was when Doctor Who was a genuine kid’s show. This epic fail is on prime time. Fans are now crying, “Moffat all is forgiven. Please, come back to us!”

“Sunday’s episode of Doctor Who, “The Timeless Children,” saw 3.78 million viewers tune in, but what is especially troublesome for the BBC is the fact that the shows preceding Doctor Who and following both had a higher number of viewers all in the same range.

Prior to Doctor Who, Countryfile saw 4.44 million viewers, and following Doctor Who, Antiques Roadshow had 4.41 million.”

According to those numbers, about six hundred thousand people turned OFF their TVs when Doctor Who came on and turned them on again only after it was over.

The BBC has reached a state of SJW convergence that nearly prevents them from performing their core functions. In any sane organization, Jodie Whittaker’s departure would be the perfect time to pull the plug and let the patient die.  But they can’t admit they are wrong.  No SJW can do that.

Even if Chibnall jumps ship too, the disaster that is Doctor Who will continue.