It's pretty hard to explain Doctor Who to someone who has never seen the show. For those that haven't, it's a British science fiction show which first aired in 1963 and has been on and off the air ever since. The show's main character is The Doctor and super-genius alien who travels through time and space in a ship called the TARDIS which in theory is supposed to blend in with the surroundings but in practice always looks (from the outside anyway) like a British police box.

Of course you can't keep the same cast on a show that runs for 60 years so one of the science fiction elements of the show is that the Doctor has a very long life and occasionally regenerates his body into a new form. This conveniently allows a new actor to take over the role every few years. In all there have been 14 actors to play the Doctor to date.

I first saw the Doctor on TV in the early 80s. It was clever and sometimes fun but the production was embarrassingly cheap. The special effects looked more like something done in a basement than they did like Star Wars or any of the SF TV shows of that era. The show went off the air in 1989 and then returned for one season in 1996.

But old intellectual property never dies it just waits to be regenerated by new producers. So in 2005 Doctor Who returned to the BBC with a much higher budget and better production values all around. It was initially intended to come back for five years but the show was such a hit that it just kept going. In particular, the arrival of actor David Tennant as the 10th Doctor was widely considered a new golden age for the show. 

I was watching the show at the time and it really was pretty great. Not every episode worked but the ones that did often seemed much better than anything else on TV at the time. 

Tennant was followed by Matt Smith who now stars in House of Dragons and then by Peter Capaldi as the Twelth Doctor.

And that's where things started to take a turn. For the role of the next Doctor, starting in 2018, the BBC cast Jodi Whittaker. The idea was that the Doctor didn't have to always be a male but around the same time the tone and quality of the show started to slip a bit. By the end of her three seasons playing the character, the viewership had dropped and both Whittaker and the showrunner left.

In order to bring fans back to the series, David Tennant was brought back as the 14th Doctor for a handful of holiday episodes. The BBC also announced that the original showrunner Russell T. Davies would return to take over. And that brought Disney on board with a commitment to 26 episodes at a cost of $13 million each.

Unfortunately, Russell Davies's return has not been a return to form. Instead, Davies has doubled down on woke lectures in his stories in a way that has even longtime fans heading for the exits.

Davies, 61, has seemed more interested writing overtly political programmes in recent years, with the high point his smash-hit, award-winning Aids drama, It’s A Sin, which aired in 2021. He has also been increasingly strident in airing his progressive views, especially contributing on social media...

Take the first episode of Gatwa’s series, Space Babies, which is set on a “baby farm” space station 20,000 years in the future that has been abandoned by its crew and is instead run by a clutch of talking, baby-sized six-year-olds in pushchairs. The first bit of identity politicking comes when a character named Captain Poppy asks the Doctor if the babies had all grown up “wrong”, and he replies: “Oh Popsicle, nobody grows up wrong. You are what you are and that is magnificent.”

Later, Bridgerton star Golda Rosheuvel pops up as Jocelyn, the ship’s accountant and the only adult left on the ship after an economic crisis on the planet below sparked the exodus – but still had the babies be born. Here Davies knowingly rebukes anti-abortion Americans (“They refuse to stop the babies being born but they won’t look after them,” asks the Doctor. “It’s a strange planet,” says Jocelyn. “Not that strange,” offers companion Ruby Sunday.)

The second episode, The Devil’s Chord, introduces a villain named Maestro, played by the non-binary RuPaul’s Drag Race star Jinkx Monsoon. When Maestro first appears, a teacher tells a boy to “get away from him”, which serves as the set-up for a line about pronouns. Maestro says: “I’m them. Them. Me,” then kills the man.

You'll probably not be shocked to learn that the last episode of last season was the lowest rated show since it returned in 2005. The next season starring the 15th Doctor played by actor Ncuti Gatwa hasn't aired yet but the Sun tabloid published a story claiming he was leaving after the upcoming season and that Disney might even pull the plug on the show because of the low ratings and allow it to go on hiatus for a few years.

The BBC has since clarified that the show has not been cancelled and that the viability of another season won't be decided upon until the 2nd season airs later this year.

While the show doesn't sound like it's going on hiatus, overnight ratings are still the lowest they've ever been, with the show dipping to a low 2.02 million with season 14, episode 7, "The Legend of Ruby Sunday." This is a significant dip from season 13, whose lowest-rated episode was season 13, episode 6, "The Vanquishers," at 3.58 million viewers.

So maybe it will survive though I think that's unlikely if Russell Davies continues to drive it into the ground with woke lectures every episode.

“The trouble with television is that as ratings become less important or reliable, you start to lose a sense of what the audience actually is,” says a long-time Who observer. “I think a mistake was made by a lot of people in these positions who mistook a few thousand very loud activists on Twitter for people – particularly young people. That’s who they thought was watching, but they are a tiny proportion. Russell used to know that, it was in his bones.” Those who have closely followed Doctor Who for decades reckon that the team surrounding Davies – especially those who owe their positions to him – may feel unable or unwilling to stand up to the showrunner when they think he is veering too far off track.

I haven't watched the show regularly since about 2017. The Jodi Whittaker episode I did see were mostly not very good and I haven't watched any of the latest series. It's looking like wokeness is about to claim another victim. It's too bad because back when this was just aiming to be fun, clever entertainment it really was enjoyable and sometimes even great.

Here's the Critical Drinker's take.