Doctor Woke & the Daahlings

NOTHING shows up the BBC’s complacency like their failure to fix shows in terminal decline.

Doctor Who has stunk like a logjammed Judoon outhouse for years.

Sunday’s “special” resurrected the bug-eyed Sea Devils, but the dawdling plot made less sense than Putin. Clumsy editing didn’t help.

No wonder viewing figures went down like the Moskva.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall’s legacy is a glut of badly written episodes, hamfisted preaching and an arrogant disregard for the show’s traditions.

Last year’s Flux was such a mess, Chibs had to post a video online trying to explain it.

Instead of crafting gripping original stories, he’s been allowed – probably encouraged – to turn the show into a vehicle for what Elon Musk calls “the woke mind virus”.

SF used to stand for science fiction. Now it’s snowflake. Sci-fi can address politics – Daleks were Nazis, Cybermen were Communists – but watching Doctor Who is like being lectured by stoned box-ticking students.

Serious TV bosses would have clocked the show’s decline and ditched

Chibs after The Tsuranga

Conundrum. But the Beeb are more interested in telling us what to think than in making quality programmes.

See Sharon Mitchell comparing Brexit to Covid on DeadEnders.

Naturally, no Walford character ever moaned about EU red tape or mentioned the real-life jihadists up the road in Leytonstone lest viewers draw the “wrong” conclusions.

Sunday’s “comedy” was Dan dressed like a panto pirate (Seaman Staines?). The “significant moment” had the Doc telling Yaz she loved her, but there’d be no jolly rogering. Give us a break.

Compared to grown-up sci-fi like Picard and The Expanse, it’s just embarrassingly lame.

Time to bring back the Doc’s biggest and most effective enemy, Michael “Axe-man” Grade.

I DID like Elizabeth Tan as Madame Ching. The sexy pirate would make any crew so solid.