The Single Biggest Mistake Every Doctor Who Series Has Made

During the Moffat era, there was a perception that Doctor Who had become too complicated. Consequently, the BBC was keen to make the Thirteenth Doctor’s adventures completely standalone.

The idea was that you could watch Series 11 without any knowledge of what had come before. The same was true of the episodes themselves, with the only real throughline being the developing relationships between the fam.

Series 11 certainly achieved this, but at a cost. It went too far, and Doctor Who lost the identity it had spent 13 years creating.

Pre-existing elements don't automatically alienate new viewers if implemented correctly. It's not even like all the new, original stuff was any good – when the highlight of your series is the bloody Pting, you know you've messed up somewhere. World-building also suffered, with a weak attempt to bring things full circle with Tim Shaw, and... oh, that's it. Not to mention several awful episodes like The Ghost Monument and The Tsuranga Conundrum.

A back-to-basics approach to entice new viewers isn't a bad idea on paper, but Series 11 lacked identity and cohesion. A failed experiment that unsurprisingly was abandoned the following year.