TV Just had a difficult trip into the city centre. We needed some shopping and I chased around a few shops looking for some lost property. But masks are firmly back in pockets or bins and humanity was out in force so I began to feel a bit overwhelmed. Despite having planned to visit some of my old haunts, it was impossible for me to exist successfully, especially around people (have I developed social anxiety on top of everything else?) so it was essentially through the M&S food hall then home. Went out at about one of the clock, back by four.
As I was unpacking, Radio 5 Live was on in the background and the Drive programme mentioned that Jodie Whittaker is leaving Doctor Who. Thanks to a tabloid leak or guess, we've been speculating and made our peace with this for months so this is really just a confirmation. Six episode series this year, then three specials next year culminating in a regeneration during the BBC's centenary celebrations in Autumn 2022. Sighing, I stacked some ready meals in the freezer and popped a mini pork pie my mouth. At least the blog'll have a Doctor Who post on its birthday.
Preparing to write this, I opened up the Doctor Who folder in my RSS reader and there at the top was the BBC News version of the story.
Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall to leave in 2022.
Well, reader, I cheered. He's going. He's bloody going. Turns out he and Jodie had a three years and out pact at the start of production and here we are. Is it so wrong the news that one of the worse showrunners the Doctor Who universe has had to deal with is leaving cheered me up? That it had me dancing in my bedroom, bouncing up and down and singing?
Back when it was announced Chibbers would be taking over my initial reaction was to mimic Heston at the end of The Planet of the Apes but the eternal optimist in wondered what he would do with full creative control of the show, whether he would produce something special.
Well he didn't did he? All the very best episodes have been at least partly written by someone else, he's fundamentally misunderstood some of the Doctor's core values as a character and although I am a fan of the Morbius Doctor turn of events (so, so EDA) the execution was typically duff, amounting to a lecture about new Gallifreyan mythology on New Year's Day. At least he didn't drop this infodump at Christmas.
Chibbers has this to say on the subject of his leading lady:
"Jodie's magnificent, iconic Doctor has exceeded all our high expectations. She's been the gold standard leading actor, shouldering the responsibility of being the first female Doctor with style, strength, warmth, generosity and humour."
Against your best efforts, mate. At least now she can go to Big Finish if she wants to and get some decent scripts. Hopefully, at least, you'll do us a favour and leave a nice gap somewhere for them to be set.
So who's next? Peter McTighe seems the next obvious choice - huge experience writing and producing popular shows and fan enough to have already been creating minisodes advertising the Doctor Who BDs, not to mention writing the enclosed booklets. His one episodes Kerblam! and Praxeus were a bit of a mess but there are all kinds of reasons why that might not be his fault.
The other interesting possibility is Maxine Alderton, writer of several hundred episodes of Emmerdale and Doctor Who's The Haunting of Villa Diodati. She's been promoted to something called "core writer" for season 13 which implies some kind of shadowing, so perhaps she's being groomed to take over but without showrunner experience needs some coaxing.
That's unless we get the Abi Morgan series starring Romola Garai finally.
We'll talk some more about this, I expect.
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