A new ‘doctor who’ arrives
I tend to avoid reviewing long-established series, or “properties.” nobody is going to watch or avoid “star trek” on my say-so. and that goes for “doctor who” as well.
But with Ncuti Gatwa (“Barbie”) as the new Doctor and Millie Gibson (“Coronation Street”) as the new Ruby Sunday, it seems as good a time as any to check out the franchise. Russell T. Davies has returned to the series where he worked as writer and showrunner from 2005 to 2010.
Three new ‘Doctor Who’ episodes stream on the Disney+ service starting today.
When it was announced that Disney+ would be distributing “Doctor Who,” some worried about its fate. Would it merely stream the series or turn it into the Disney version of itself? The latter is true.
Much was made of Jodie Whitaker, the last Doctor, being the first woman to take the role. And the charming, frequently swashbuckling Gatwa is both the first Doctor of color and a gay man as well. In fact, in the Christmas episode, streaming today, he’s first seen dancing in a crowded disco bar where Ruby works as a keyboardist for a trans singer.
Some may quibble with the fact that the Doctor is gay and that Ruby, a foundling child, is raised in a magical foster home run by Caribbean immigrants whose patois extends to the kind of “bless my soul” dialect that wouldn’t tax the credulity of a “Call the Midwife” fan.
So much of the charm of the long-running “Doctor Who” series lies in its peculiar British flavor. But here, that Marmite seems to have been run through the Disney food processor. This is hardly a new phenomenon to anybody first introduced to cockney accents by Dick Van Dyke’s character in the 1964 musical “Mary Poppins.”
My beef with this Disneyfied “Doctor” is not its souvenir-shop Britishness, its unsubtle messaging, multiculturalism or gender fluidity. I’m simply depressed by its peculiar sterility.
For a show set in a 21st-century approximation of jolly old London, the streets are curiously empty. Nearly every scene features a single character, or at most two, sharing dialogue against the backdrop of depopulated sets, vacant avenues and shopping mall/snow globe versions of churchyards. It’s as if all the money spent on digital effects meant that they couldn’t afford to hire what used to be known as “extras.”
The effect is jarring. For all of its bold adventures, dazzling sets and effects, swelling and insistent orchestral score and even moments when the Doctor breaks into song, this series seems completely lifeless.
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