Doctor Who: 8 Mistakes That Series 13 NEEDS To Fix
2. Less 'On The Nose' Storytelling
Doctor Who could often forget that subtlety was the best way forward even pre-Chibnall. The Twelfth Doctor debacle, ‘In The Forest of the Night’ is a particularly awful example of what happens when a message is placed in front of a plot, rather than woven throughout it.
Encouraging viewers to be pro-environment is obviously a good thing, but Series 12 is obsessed with it to a ludicrous degree. Two episodes from Series 12, Orphan 55 and Praxeus, are the worst offenders.
Fans were especially mocking of the speech that the Doctor gives at the end of Orphan 55 once the desolate planet turns out to be Earth after pollution has destroyed it in the far future. This is an interesting angle to tell a story about the climate crisis from, but you have to make an audience care about what you’re telling them through your characters and plot. You can’t just give them a lecture.
Doctor Who has always been a politically charged show and that should continue. But it must never sacrifice a good story for the sake of ramming the same message down the audience’s throats yet again.