HEWITT on Friday

Jodie Whittaker is just fine as Doctor Who. But the real villain of her new series is behind the scenes, says SEAN HEWITT

DID you see the new Doctor Who? By all the fuss you would think we’d witnessed the Second Coming.

The viewing figures were huge. Around 8.2 million people watched it – more than have tuned in for years. Fans are going mental about how great it was, too.

Sadly, I was a bit underwhelmed. It was... OK.

This has nothing to do with the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor. I have no problem with an alien with two hearts who travels through space and time in a police box, and has changed bodies 12 or 13 times, becoming a woman. Anyone who does is a bit dense, frankly.

Whittaker was fine, and will get even better. She’s not the problem. The problem was new head writer Chris Chibnall and his desperately clumsy script.

True, I long ago lost patience with the smart-arsed world of his predecessor, Steven Moffat, whose Doctor Who had great jokes but no real characters, no consequences and precious little drama. A change was way overdue.

But Chibnall – best known for bland ITV crime hit Broadchurch – has never written a single memorable line of dialogue and his previous four or five attempts at writing Doctor Who are among the worst episodes ever broadcast.

When Whittaker’s casting was announced, a friend thought that the fuss over her gender would distract from the quality of the writing. There’s a prediction that came true.

Russell T Davies, who brought the show back in 2005 (and whose Jeremy Thorpe show A Very English Scandal will soon be scooping up awards far and wide), could sketch in layers of detail about characters’ lives with glancing lines of seemingly random conversation, without you even noticing. By contrast, Chibnall told us a character had the co-ordination disorder dyspraxia by having him announce; “I’ve got dyspraxia – it’s a co-ordination disorder.” We knew a young policewoman was frustrated with her job because she told us so. The actors, in between describing what was happening to each other every couple of minutes, were plainly having trouble even saying some of the lines. And don’t get me started on the plot, centred around a lame Predator-style alien on a mighty quest to take over his world...by nabbing a random Sheffield crane driver called Karl. How rubbish was that?

Still, they’ve spent a bit of money on it. And Whittaker is very promising indeed. Let’s hope she can keep distracting the viewers until the other writers get a go.

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