Doctor Who Season 11: 10 Reasons To Be Excited
The real reasons behind the current buzz about Doctor Who's return.
The buzz surrounding Doctor Who's return to our screens this sutumn isn’t quite on the level of 1996, when Philip Segal finally realised his dream of bringing the show back after the so-called ‘seven year hitch’. And it’s not quite as exciting as 2005, when following an even longer break Doctor Who returned again under the leadership of Russell T. Davies. But it’s not far off.
In recent years, the BBC has worked hard to build up the hype, with often exaggerated claims of the show coming back 'bigger and better', and plenty of spoilers to whet the appetite. This year there has been little hyperbole, and virtually no official spoilers. Because, frankly… it isn’t needed.
The Doctor speaks for herself for starters. After years of teasing, we are finally going to see the first female incarnation of the Doctor on television (leaving aside Joanna Lumley’s fleeting appearance in Steven Moffat’s 1999 Comic Relief spoof The Curse of Fatal Death). This of itself propels the series to new levels of interest, but there are a number of reasons to get hyped for the arrival of the Thirteenth Doctor.
10. A Change Of Direction
As with The Eleventh Hour in 2010, Chris Chibnall’s maiden episode as showrunner is sure to provoke a frenzied reaction. Everything will feel noticeably new. As it turned out, the differences between the Steven Moffat era and the Russell T Davies revival were not as seismic as all the marketing hype had suggested.
The overarching motif of the Time War connected them story-wise, Murray Gold’s distinctive soundtracks glued the two production runs together by carrying over some of his best-loved themes, and Moffat brought back plenty of old writers.
It promises to be a different story this time around, with Chibnall going even further than Moffat when it comes to adding new voices to the mix. The BBC are promoting the series as a significant departure from anything we’ve seen before. Take, for instance, this recent controversial quote from the BBC’s Drama Controller, former executive-producer Piers Wenger:
“Gone is the daffiness and idiosyncrasy of [Jodie Whittaker’s] predecessors in favour of a Doctor with energy, spark and relatability.”
It’s standard practice to sell the latest version of a product by comparing it to earlier models, but this statement appears to go one step further in distancing the new from the old – much to the irritation of fans of the Moffat years. In a series that looks set to be the programme’s biggest creative gamble since its revival in 2005, the casting of the first female Doctor may turn out to be the least radical innovation.