Doctor Who Series 11: Everything We Know So Far
3. Time War? What Time War?
A major connecting line between Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who is the Time War. Originally a convenient way of writing out the Time Lords, it became the focus of the 50th anniversary special and ended up defining all the 21st century Doctors. Anyone hoping that the demons of the war would finally have been exorcised following the War Doctor’s redemption in The Day of the Doctor would have been disappointed. The Twelfth Doctor, even more so than his predecessors was haunted by past atrocities and his questionable morality.
A certain heaviness of heart, a fallibility, and a cynical realism combined to make the twelfth Doctor the most intense and multi-layered incarnation to date. He might have had his fun and those moments of enlightenment when he would preach about what really mattered - peace, freedom and above all kindness. But for the casual audience, the fact that it took him an age to reach such conclusions was a turn-off, and for the fans it was a draining experience just to get the measure of the man.
It now looks like the long shadow of the Time War has finally passed. Word is that Chibnall is making little or even no reference to it. Just where the Time Lords themselves might fit into this remains to be seen, but the new Doctor will be stripped of much of her predecessors’ baggage. Chibnall has stated categorically for instance that the Doctor is a pacifist. Steven Moffat, by contrast, deconstructed the Doctor’s heroic status, turning him into a wounded healer and a weaponless soldier. Things are likely to be much more straightforward from hereon in.