Ghosts of Tardis past convinced me to give Doctor 13 a chance

Considering the first was aired only in december 2005, it is wonderful how rapidly the doctor Who Christmas special has cemented itself into tradition. it is now as obligatory a part of the day as the squiffy aunt, the soft satsumas and the (shrinking) tin of Quality street.

At its best it is usually a wonderful romp. The producers are almost always canny enough to remember that on this occasion the programme must grip a turkey-stuffed family audience, including hundreds of thousands who do not regularly watch the show.

We have enjoyed, then, whizzing killer Christmas trees, sinister robotic santas, gentle tales of redemption, gloriously over-the-top finales (a scene when the doctor heroically stopped the Titanic from flattening Buckingham Palace is not immediately easy to explain), lots of snow and a general lack of complicated wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

After Monday’s festive episode, Twice Upon A Time, then, one was left with very mixed feelings.

one was genuine surprise. i – and, no doubt, many men of my generation felt the same way – was quietly appalled when, in July, it was announced that Peter Capaldi’s successor as the doctor would be a woman, Jodie Whittaker.

in fact, it was always going to be a woman: not one man was even considered, far less interviewed, for the part. so i resolved to watch as much of Monday’s episode as i could bear and brace myself for our hero’s ridiculous re-gendering.

in fact, i agreed with past doctor Peter davison and others that, in a lazy and faintly desperate attempt to revitalise a show that has been in visible decline for years, the BBC had almost casually annihilated one of the very few male TV characters who – kind and funny, thoughtful and resourceful – has for decades been an admirable role model for boys.

YeT, when – wide-eyed and gasping – he regenerated into she, i couldn’t help but like her, and warmed to her still more when, seconds later, the 13th doctor Who jabbed at a button and promptly crashed the Tardis.

naturally, this begot for Christmas evening a great many jokes on Twitter about women drivers. But i saw just enough of Whittaker to find her rather appealing and, though i cannot see a female doctor working in the long run – the character is often ridiculous and at times dangerously grandiloquent, not traits you can sympathetically script for a woman – i think we may be in for a very interesting reboot.

doctor Who has been saved as a show, more than once, by quick thinking. The first rescue, in 1966, remains the most ingenious, when it became evident that the first actor in the part, William Hartnell, was too frail (and senile) to continue.

rather than let the show make a dignified end with him, it was decided to continue it with a new doctor. With a few special effects, Hartnell supernaturally regenerated into Patrick Troughton – who was as unlike Hartnell as possible.

The solution was thus found that, for half a century has kept the flame of Who alive as a succession of original and occasionally brilliant actors played a doctor fit for their times.

There have been other glitches. The programme, by then looking tired and shabby against star Trek, very nearly perished in 1969. But it was decided to continue it with Jon Pertwee in the part and, by the plot device of punitive exile, confined largely to earth.

This saved a fortune in special effects but it became evident that on this basis there were only two storylines – the doctor saving us from alien invasion, or the doctor saving us from a mad scientist with a crazy scheme. it grew boring and from 1973 he was allowed to roam the galaxies again.

At its best, it is terribly British. The doctor is unusually and sometimes outrageously dressed. He is droll, witty and never carries a gun.

He has almost always had a companion (so we bamboozled viewers can be told, secondhand, what is going on) – often several, bouncing in their gigglesome way about the cosmos, forever getting into scrapes. it has built a reputation, forged over generations, for inspiring children to hide behind the sofa during the opening credits.

it has often, too, been cheekily topical. our accession to the Common Market, in 1972, and a bitter miners’ strike in 1974, both inspired nudge-nudge, wink-wink stories on a planet called Peladon; another storyline, in 1976, had a wicked dig at Harold Wilson’s resignation honours list earlier that year. (‘There’s a few names in here that’ll surprise them!’). From 1980, the show went into sad decline. it became hard, camp and worldly, at times, even sickeningly violent. For the first time, in Peter davison and then in Colin Baker, it had doctors who acted the role as a part rather than played it as themselves.

The studio culture, by all accounts, became predatory. As was bleakly detailed in 2013, had producer John nathanTurner not drunk himself to death in 2002, he would almost certainly have been subsequently convicted of historic sex offences against boys.

MeAnWHile, doctor Who grew less relevant to the wider Britain beyond and, as it became increasingly the victim of its more fanatical fans it lost all sight of its core audience – the intelligent ten-year-old.

By high BBC decree it was ‘rested’ for 18 months, from 1985 and cancelled in october 1989. Yet, with a successful magazine, lucrative BBC video sales, a global fanbase and continued doctor Who fiction, it never really went away and, in March 2005 made its sensational broadcast comeback.

The new series has benefited from better special effects, fine acting, thoughtful scripting and stronger roles for women.

But many feel it has declined from its heights of the past decade – with russell T davies in charge and david Tennant as the doctor, viewing figures in seven digits were not uncommon – and suffered again from incomprehensible storylines and a certain neglect. davies’s successor, steven Moffat, has been much distracted by sherlock and other projects.

it was hard on Monday not to feel deep regret at Capaldi’s departure, anger that erratic scheduling and dubious scripting never gave this fine actor the full chance to play the doctor he could have been.

Too much of Monday’s episode, too, was self-indulgent stuff for fanatical Whovians and the sexist (and at one point coarse) scripting of david Bradley, as the first doctor Who, was profoundly unfair both to those early episodes and to William Hartnell.

Yet it ended with Whittaker and the mother of all cliffhangers – the Tardis flying off in one direction as the doctor hurtles to earth in the other – and a chance, in 2018 and yet again, for relaunch and reinvention.

After five very cross months, then, i shall give the show – and the Yorkshire lass – the benefit of the doubt.