There are a few lines from Flux and Spyfall where she's awesome, but all in all she's just acting out whatever blop is on paper and not making it her own, which is something most Doctors get to do - but Chibnall did not want her seeing old material either....
If anything, her stance with the sonic magic wand couldn't be any more forced if they tried.
Back to where the only real problem with his era is, the scripting, it didn't help that Chibnall used the thing as a tricorder - something even Tennant (whom she chatted with for advice) disagreed with.
It also didn't help that her early stories are so inconsistent and poorly developed, especially when Chibnall was in interviews telling of a new first for the series - a writers' ensemble. But the pseudohistoricals and ":It Takes You Away" were fairly good. Great in some cases.
Series 12 was an overall improvement, but in comes the classic "Fugitive of the Judoon" and Jo Martin manages to sell in 20 seconds what Jodie barely managed in more than a baker's dozen's worth of stories. That confidence, tone, and Jo Martin, is what the show needed most. And that episode got hype solely because the Captain Jack's memberberries. Which is odd as the whole episode has a verve to it, making impressive use of not just the fob watch magical fairyland watch where fairytale characters store their katras when needed, but making the Judoon more respectable than big Sontaran ripoffs spouting baby babble. A shame Chibnall dropped the ball after the series 12 finale that tries way too hard to augment the lore but ends up pureeing it into mush instead. Complete with character whose name is pronounced like the first three notes of the Doctor Who theme - "Tec-te-un". Yes, the audience needs as much spoonfed exposition pie-thrown into their face as possible, of course... A bigger shame that, despite allegedly more sophisticated storytelling over the last couple of decades or so we're told, he managed to commit the same temporal paradox goof of "older incarnation saves the current one" - okay, nobody knew where in the chain Jo's incarnation was, but most were theorizing "season 6B" if not a future incarnation; only after the season ended did it become confirmed Chibs made an unequivocal goof.
His era is a mixed bag but it easily could have been far worse. I didn't expect the retconned fugitive Doctor to have so much continuity applied right. Not knowing a sonic screwdriver, and this and that... That alone makes this new Doctor surprisingly refreshing (I'm not bringing up the police box visage), but Jo Martin runs with the material and makes the Doctor her own as quickly as Tom Baker had for his... all while Jodie's given crap lines like "The real Doctor doesn't use weapons" - a line so incredibly ignorant (if not outright stupid) that either she's on amnesia drugs, self-delusional (and this time there's no spectrox toxemia fettering the gray matter so what gives?), or Doctors 1-7 never existed (something that the timeless child arc flatly contradicts as well as guess whose images appear right on cue, with music, ooo-aaah-ooh? Again, Chibs' stories are an inconsistent hodgepodge that tell their ideas so badly and inconsistently...)
Heck, I'd love to see how RTD would handle Jo Martin's Doctor, without the background baggage Chibs crammed in. Or any producer. The other benefit to all this is that Chibnall, who's brought in some creative and fresh ideas, had worse followthrough than even JNT's worst times. So little of Jo's Doctor is on screen that there's a lot that can be crafted far better and more consistently than "I have dyspraxia but can be a perfect sniper sharpshooter just because I play a video game and can climb ladders and other things too." Given other feats of agility said video game could allow-- ugh, Chibnall's era is just a mixed bag and let down in more cases than it should have been. It's as simple as that and there was so much more potential...)
If anything, her stance with the sonic magic wand couldn't be any more forced if they tried.
Back to where the only real problem with his era is, the scripting, it didn't help that Chibnall used the thing as a tricorder - something even Tennant (whom she chatted with for advice) disagreed with.
It also didn't help that her early stories are so inconsistent and poorly developed, especially when Chibnall was in interviews telling of a new first for the series - a writers' ensemble. But the pseudohistoricals and ":It Takes You Away" were fairly good. Great in some cases.
Series 12 was an overall improvement, but in comes the classic "Fugitive of the Judoon" and Jo Martin manages to sell in 20 seconds what Jodie barely managed in more than a baker's dozen's worth of stories. That confidence, tone, and Jo Martin, is what the show needed most. And that episode got hype solely because the Captain Jack's memberberries. Which is odd as the whole episode has a verve to it, making impressive use of not just the fob watch magical fairyland watch where fairytale characters store their katras when needed, but making the Judoon more respectable than big Sontaran ripoffs spouting baby babble. A shame Chibnall dropped the ball after the series 12 finale that tries way too hard to augment the lore but ends up pureeing it into mush instead. Complete with character whose name is pronounced like the first three notes of the Doctor Who theme - "Tec-te-un". Yes, the audience needs as much spoonfed exposition pie-thrown into their face as possible, of course... A bigger shame that, despite allegedly more sophisticated storytelling over the last couple of decades or so we're told, he managed to commit the same temporal paradox goof of "older incarnation saves the current one" - okay, nobody knew where in the chain Jo's incarnation was, but most were theorizing "season 6B" if not a future incarnation; only after the season ended did it become confirmed Chibs made an unequivocal goof.
His era is a mixed bag but it easily could have been far worse. I didn't expect the retconned fugitive Doctor to have so much continuity applied right. Not knowing a sonic screwdriver, and this and that... That alone makes this new Doctor surprisingly refreshing (I'm not bringing up the police box visage), but Jo Martin runs with the material and makes the Doctor her own as quickly as Tom Baker had for his... all while Jodie's given crap lines like "The real Doctor doesn't use weapons" - a line so incredibly ignorant (if not outright stupid) that either she's on amnesia drugs, self-delusional (and this time there's no spectrox toxemia fettering the gray matter so what gives?), or Doctors 1-7 never existed (something that the timeless child arc flatly contradicts as well as guess whose images appear right on cue, with music, ooo-aaah-ooh? Again, Chibs' stories are an inconsistent hodgepodge that tell their ideas so badly and inconsistently...)
Heck, I'd love to see how RTD would handle Jo Martin's Doctor, without the background baggage Chibs crammed in. Or any producer. The other benefit to all this is that Chibnall, who's brought in some creative and fresh ideas, had worse followthrough than even JNT's worst times. So little of Jo's Doctor is on screen that there's a lot that can be crafted far better and more consistently than "I have dyspraxia but can be a perfect sniper sharpshooter just because I play a video game and can climb ladders and other things too." Given other feats of agility said video game could allow-- ugh, Chibnall's era is just a mixed bag and let down in more cases than it should have been. It's as simple as that and there was so much more potential...)
Last edited: