Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Big Questions After 'The Woman Who Fell To Earth'
3. Was It Too Scary For The Target Audience?
I probably shouldn’t have booked my children’s dentist appointments for this week. The sight of Tim Shaw wearing the teeth of his fallen victims was a particularly nasty one, and shows that this series of Doctor Who is perhaps about to up the horror stakes, even as it attempts to woo back the family audience. For the Sunday early evening timeslot this is graphic stuff.
Over the years the show has frequently run into debates about the appropriateness of its horror content, and it’s likely that some parents will have found this episode too much for their little ones. The world we live in offers far less shelter for younger children these days, particularly with the rise of video games and apps, and so, whilst too much for some, many will not have been overly troubled by the scenes. Whether this is a good thing or not is for the experts to analyse, but fortunately there are some caveats that might alleviate some of the concerns regarding Doctor Who.
We have in Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor a character who instils trust, who offers a hand of friendship, who tells us to stay behind her. Bad things might still happen, but the Doctor is there to support as with Graham, Ryan and Yaz. Also of note is the decision to tell ten self-contained stories, so whatever evils have been encountered in the episode have been banished by the end. And finally, responsible editing has made sure that there is nothing too gruesome. We don’t see the dead body that Grace describes for instance.