10 Doctor Who Controversies Fans Can't Agree On
From showrunners to show canon, there are some Doctor Who debates that will seemingly never end...
Fan disagreements have existed for as long as the concept of fandom has – put two people with a shared interest in a room, and they’re just as likely to fall out as they are to bond over it.
These debates have become even more common in the age of social media, where everybody can share their opinions as they see fit.
Us Whovians are particularly good at arguing about our favourite thing. Every new season brings new characters and stories and plot twists for fans to go to war over, and rarely is a general consensus ever actually reached.
And that's the beauty of a show like Doctor Who – it can be interpreted in so many different ways, and there's almost never one right answer.
So, because we enjoy chaos, we've decided to discuss some of the hottest debates and controversies in the fandom from across the years. The question is, where do you stand on them?
10. Should The Doctor Be A Killer?
For a hero that makes a big deal of being against killing and is very pro-redemption, the Doctor is one bloodthirsty madman sometimes.
We’re not talking about the justifiable act to end the Time War here, we’re talking about the slightly more callous acts of murder. Sending the Sycorax leader falling to his death, gleefully blasting Solomon with heat-seeking missiles, suffocating space cooks – these are just a few instances where 'The Man Who Never Would' absolutely did.
RTD recently weighed in on this debate in a chat with Entertainment Weekly, saying:
"I thought that right now in 2024, we need a hero with more heart. I’m not a fan of the ones that slice and dice. Doctor Who is the opposite of heroes who pick up a gun and shoot, or a lightsaber and kill. It’s a marvelously pacifist show."
A nice sentiment, but rich words coming from the man who had the new Doctor literally impale the Goblin King with a church steeple in his first episode, just like all pacifists do.
'Sometimes there’s no other way’ can be a compelling story beat – forcing our protagonist into a position where they grapple with the fact that they simply have no option but to take a life. Deep Breath, and Twelve’s apparent murder of the Half-Face man, is a good example of this. Ten drowning the Racnoss is another good one, if you can handle listening to the Empress screaming again.
But for every instance of this working well, there’s another episode where murdering the villain is written in as a lazy get-out-of-jail-free card, and the Doctor skips off into the sunset without a care in the world.
OUR VERDICT: It’s interesting when the Doctor is forced to kill, but these moments should be treated with gravitas – there’s a huge inconsistency in whether it is or isn’t a big deal.