Doctor Who is known for constantly reinventing itself while staying more or less exactly the same. The show has had a difficult few years, which has led to some dramatic changes behind the scenes. Russell T. Davies, who was behind Doctor Who 2005 revival, stepped in to save the show. What was once an in-house production of the BBC is now taken over by a Sony-owned production company. And Disney has funded it, with this revival being announced outside the UK as a Disney+ Original.
The dramatic changes behind the scenes raised some fundamental questions about how Doctor Who would thrive in this new world. Would Davies be able to save the show from the brink a second time? And would the show appeal to Zoomers in the same way it has found a loyal audience among Millennials? And would Doctor Who Surviving unscathed under Disney accustomed to an obsessive level of control?
I can already answer the last question after watching the first two episodes of this new eight-episode season: Doctor Who has not been watered down to accommodate the new paymasters or the broad international audience that will see this show every Friday. Actually, Who ’24 has placed an emphasis on being strange, avant-garde, hard to handle and harder to pigeonhole. It’s a little punky and a little rough around the edges, which makes it all the more interesting compared to, say, some other Disney+ series I could mention.
I’m not allowed to share much of what I saw, but in episode one, “Space Babies,” the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby (Millie Gibson) visit a space station manned by babies. As you can see in the trailer, these Rugrats make generous use of unconvincing and creepy CGI mouths. Meanwhile, in “The Devil’s Chord,” the TARDIS travels to Abbey Road to meet the Beatles at the start of their career.
If this is your first experience Doctor Who, Please begin with The Church on Ruby Road Christmas Special. These first three episodes form the starting point and form Davies’ standard trilogy “Present”, “Future” and “Past” with which he opens his series. All three are sold as fun, but there’s a certain poignancy that comes from Davies’ underlying cynicism. As much as he paints in primary colors, his worldview is much darker than that of some of his colleagues.
Davies is a strong advocate for better queer representation in film and television and is arguably one of the most influential gay men in media. Many of his shows including Queer as Folk, Cucumber, a very English scandal And It’s a sin focus on queer narratives. Davies has made it clear that he wants to foreground queer experiences this season Doctor Who and does so with pride. He said diversity that the Doctor “rings with strange energy” and that he is not a “castrated Doctor”.
Some context: In 2021, Davies criticized Disney+ for the lack of real representation in some of its other shows. During a virtual panel, as reported by Pink News, he pointed to Loki’s single reference to the main character’s fluid sexuality as a warning sign. “Loki makes a reference to being bisexual at one point and everyone says, ‘Oh my god, it’s like a pansexual show,” he said. Adding the only oral reference was a “ridiculous, cowardly, weak gesture to the vital politics and stories that should be told.”
Davies returned to the job following the failure of his immediate predecessor, Chris Chibnall, who is likely to be disgraced. Chibnall inherited a successful show and decided to expand his horizons by hiring a far more diverse crew both in front of and behind the camera. This included writers such as Malorie Blackman and Vinay Patel, as well as casting two women, Jodie Whittaker and Jo Martin, in the role of the Doctor. Chibnall also refused to bow to culture war pressures when boring people started screaming that the show was “woke.”
But for all the goodwill the show had – and which Chibnall’s early decisions contributed to – the showrunner quickly began to burn his own legacy as he built it. The quality of his episodes was never great and he wrote episodes that were incoherent or implicitly said some pretty terrible things. He then began using the show as a vehicle for his own fan theories, re-discussing niche continuity topics even as selective I I rolled my eyes so hard my skull caved in.
And then he invented a secret origin story for the Doctor that essentially undid much of the last 60 years of character development. He transformed the Doctor into a sort of space Jesus and then set about destroying a significant portion of the series’ fictional universe. Audiences were not thrilled: 8.2 million people watched Chibnall’s first regular-season episode, but by the end of his tenure the number dropped to 3.47 million.
It would have been wise to abandon all that and announce a fresh start, but Davies took a different approach. He opted for the awkwardness of Yes-And Chibnall and used the catastrophic events of last season as a new backdrop for the series. The universe is now “shattered,” which has caused the show’s fictional reality to shift in new, stranger, and more bizarre directions. While before Doctor Who It was at the intersection of science and fantasy and has since become a soft fantasy show. Villains like the Toymaker and the Goblin King take the Doctor to a more mythical dimension than ever before.
CGI baby mouths aside, Doctor Who’s slick production values don’t work if they’re not coupled with great writing and acting. Ncuti Gatwa had already become a superstar thanks to his work Enlightenment lessons And Barbie and is a magnetic presence on the screen. It’s hard for me to look away from him, but he’s clearly willing to give up space and time to his co-stars. Millie Gibson has the more difficult role as Ruby Sunday and has to keep her character grounded and believable in this fantastical world. The role of the Doctor’s traveling companion has shaped many British celebrities since the show’s return and Gibson is clearly destined for greatness.
If there’s one thing that comes across too much in these opening episodes, it’s that Doctor Who is no longer the same show from week to week. It revels in being chaotic and moving freely through genres and styles with the freedom that its main character enjoys so much. So if this is your first time aboard the TARDIS, we welcome you and get ready for some silly and serious fun.
Oh, and they fixed the title sequence.
The first two episodes of Doctor Who will be released worldwide on Disney+ on Friday, May 10th at 7:00 p.m. ET and in the UK on BBC iPlayer at midnight on Saturday, May 11. An episode will be released at the same time over the following six weeks.