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The venerable British science fiction series Doctor Who is about an alien who travels through space and time in a blue box. Last season brought a lot of change. The Doctor is now played by an actor who is black and queer and who was born outside of the UK. And it marked the return of the showrunner who birthed the modern era of Doctor Who. But what did this mix of new and old mean for this science fiction institution?
Doctor Who just returned for a new season on Disney+, so we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the series. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Doctor Who on Pop Culture Happy Hour on NPR. Support for NPR and the following message come from Betterment, the automated investing and savings app. CEO Sarah Levy shares how Betterment utilizes tech tools powered by human advice. Betterment is here to help customers build wealth their way.
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Hey, Glenn. Hey, let's get to it. This is going to be fun. Welcome to the NPR.
We are not going to outline a history of a television show that launched in 1963. Trust me, there's a wiki for that. I'm out of here. I wanted to talk at least about Tom Baker. Come on. We are going to get in the weeds and the weeds are going to be thick. But basically, the Doctor is a time lord. He is the last of an alien species who could travel anywhere in the universe thanks to a machine called a TARDIS.
Time lords can also regenerate themselves, taking on new appearances and personas every time they do. Which is to say, the show very early on figured out an ingenious way to swap out its lead character and keep going and going and going. The latest Doctor, the 15th, if you're keeping score, is played by Nshuti Gatwa. Gatwa is of Rwandan-Scottish descent. His Doctor is young and vibrant and intensely passionate about doing what the Doctor does, which is saving lives. He is also black. ♪
Name, the doctor. Occupation, not a doctor. Current status, just passing by. Employer, myself. Address, that blue box over there. Now, if you don't mind, I just got snowmanned and I would like to go home. His traveling companion this season is the brave and resourceful Earthling Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson. The season also marks the return of showrunner Russell T. Davies, who was known for creating the modern era of Dr.
He revived the series back in 2005 after it had been off the air for many years. Doctor Who is streaming on Disney Plus here in the States. JC, kick us off. What'd you think? Okay. So I have to say, for longtime listeners of PCHH, you will know that in the past year or so, at least two or three of my What's Making Me Happies have been Doctor Who related. This is true. So this episode is my jam. I have been a Whovian for...
I think 15 years or so, and have gone deep, deep into the lore. And for a few years, I will say that Doctor Who was not exactly cool, but kind of nerd chic. Okay. When you had like David Tennant and Matt Smith in this like era of boyish charm. But,
by and large, over the last 60 years, over the 60-year history of the show, it was weird, you know? And in some ways, I feel like we're getting back to that with this season. The first couple episodes of this season were a good reminder to me that Doctor Who is kind of supposed to be weird and niche and a little bit embarrassing to explain to people. We'll get to the space babies. Yes, we will.
Yes, yes. We'll get to the space babies of it all. But this is an invitation to me, again, to just let the Doctor be weird. And I will say, since the third episode or so, I feel like things have leveled out and gotten to a kind of a norm. And I'm super into it. I have qualms about the writing. And I feel like the episodes could have been ordered differently. But...
By and large, I think that this season is meant to be an on-ramp for new audiences. And that is super exciting to me. Like, you don't need 60 years of lore to start. If you have that lore, if you've been watching since 2005 or since the 80s or the 70s, great. There's going to be payoff for everyone. But it's an on-ramp for everybody. That's interesting. That's an interesting approach. I hadn't thought about it that way. Joelle, what about you? How are you liking this so far? Baby.
It's so gay. Okay. All right. Y'all are the PCHH listeners. You know, it's usually my lead for a show that I really enjoy. Representation, it matters. We have drag queens singing and trans people making music and outfits that are so cool.
So many cool outfits. So many. Yes, that really evolved the character of the Doctor quite a lot. I love the Doctor. I love a man on an ark. I love a man dealing with his trauma. And I'm really excited to move sort of beyond the repressed rage we've been feeling with Doctor Bruce.
Yeah.
the reality of my choices in the past, which we've seen the doctor do a lot of running. If you're a frequent watcher, you don't get the sense of fleeing anymore. Like this is a very grounded doctor in a way I think we haven't had in a long time. And in Shuti, like a
follow him off a cliff. What a magnetic personality. What a face. Be careful about that now. You might actually have to go off a cliff. Would do. Would do. He is an incredible performer and he makes you believe all the things you need to believe in order for this show to work, which is that this is a person who, above all else, really loves human beings and believes in the best in them. It's really a challenge, I think, for an actor to get into that level of, I don't even want to say emotional vulnerability, but like,
Like, like there's a, there's a, a belief, a hope in him. And like, you trust it. You trust it. I hope we get him as a doctor for a very long time. I'm very much enjoying the series. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. How about you, Eric? Yeah, well, I'm going to co-sign all of that. And I'm an odd doctor who fan in that I,
been watching this show since Tom Baker was the doctor making new episodes. Yep, me too. That's a very long time. But I'm also not somebody who gets caught up in the minutia of things, and I haven't watched it with that level of detail the whole time since the mid-70s. Good for you, trust me. It's a lot to keeping your brain.
Yeah. It is a lot. It is a lot. And I could be like Donna Noble and my head would just explode if I pay too much attention to it. There you go. Can I get my blurred crack now? Can I get my blurred crack? Anyway, I do love what they've done with this show. I will admit it took me a little while to warm up to this new vision of the Doctor, particularly in the Space Babies episode, which I love for a lot of reasons. But also, it is very elementary school level Doctor.
They're spoon-feeding you the backstory so that all the new people who might be attracted by being on Disney Plus can jump on board and understand the stakes. And that's awesome. When you've been watching it for a while, it can feel a little tedious sometimes. I get the feeling that the show is revving up. It's like slowly engaging. And the episodes are getting more complex.
They're asking deeper questions. I will say that I've always felt that the most compelling character in Doctor Who is the Doctor. And I feel like the show does lose its way when it loses sight of that. And I want to learn more about this Doctor character.
who does not want to learn more about himself because of all the stuff he'd have to face once he does that. So I'm looking forward to years of exploring this, but I do think that's key to making the show as good as it can be. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, guys, I miss our friend and colleague Petra Mayer so much. But watching this, I felt that very gainly because she was so passionate about the show. She was a passion about what Russell T Davies brought. She was even
Even more passionate, not always in a good way, about what Stephen Moffat brought to it and had thoughts about the treatment of women on this show. But I was worried, right? Yeah. I'm a fan of Russell T. Davies, but returning to a property a decade after you launched it
That way doth Phantom Menace lie, and I was not looking forward to it. Do not dare speak that name. Harsh. That was the danger, right? I mean, the Christmas episode, which launched the season, didn't really connect with me because I thought we were back in that first companion. We're back in Rose Tyler territory. Are you coming for Rose Tyler now? What is even happening to our relationship, Glenn? Like, I'm just very confused right now. I don't want to go back to Rose Tyler. I want to move forward, Joelle. Forward into evidently Space Babies, where there were these babies and...
crawlers on a spaceship and I... A bad guy made out of boogers. Oh, come on. Yeah. The literal boogeyman. A fart to save the day, Glenn? Does it get better? I kind of hated everything about it, but...
Frankly, it was Space Babies that made me worry that we were watching the Disneyfication of Who. Because in the U.K., Disney is just another streaming service. But here in the States, it's got a whole family-friendly thing. And Who has always been a show for the whole family, right? But in the U.K., they're perfectly fine with their kids cowering behind the couch in abject fear. Yes. That's not our vibe here in the States, right? Disney is known for inflicting emotional trauma here, kill Bambi's mom, but not terrifying children. That's a U.K. thing. Right. Right.
And then they double scored. Jinx Monsoon's great. I'm here for a dance number. But I felt like we were still flailing around. I wasn't getting a bead on this new doctor, who he is. But from then on, for me, anyway, it's been all hits, no skips. I mean, in the episode Boom, the doctor steps on a landmine and gets to go off on the military industrial complex. And he goes off on faith. He calls faith an excuse for allowing yourself not to think. I mean, most armies would notice that they were fighting smoke and shadows, but not this lot.
Ruby, you know why? Because they have faith. Shut up! Faith! The magic word that keeps you never having to think for yourself. In the UK, which is a very secularist Anglican country, that line is going to breeze by without hitting anybody. But here in the US and on Disney...
A line like that felt kind of, I mean, to me, bracing and kind of a mission statement. And I kind of leaned forward on the sofa. That just stuck out to me. Am I making too much of that, do you guys think? Not at all. Not at all. I feel you in that if we get a Disneyfication of Doctor Who, then we're getting an Americanized version of Doctor Who, which is not at all palatable to me. Like, it is...
steeped in its Britishness for a reason. It has to remain in that way. And so, and what we can talk about some more as we talk about some of these newer episodes, later episodes, but it definitely seems like somebody was planting flags to be like, what we're not doing is moving from this space. Like this is Dr. Who. But I also feel like they tucked it back a little in a way so that,
This is a show that has dealt with its fandom, that understands that occasionally we come at crossroads and we know what that, you know, as Star Wars fans, what that can do to a fandom. It's really detrimental. And so to tuck some of the more potentially controversial episodes a little later, I think it's really brilliant. It allows you to sort of come into the show, get used to this idea of the new Doctor, which can be jarring for some folks, and then plant the flag to say, hey, not only is this the new Doctor, but we're really standing behind the
It feels like we're also standing behind this performer with some of these themes. One thing that I would say is that Doctor Who has always had an element of being a kid show. I felt it was more Davey saying, we're never going to lose sight of the fact that this started as a kid show. And part of its identity is that it appeals to kids in an odd way. And to odd kids. Yeah, to odd kids like me.
So that's part of it. But that statement about faith that I thought was interesting, it's also an irony because the doctor has faith in humanity. And that's what distinguishes the character so much. So to have him sort of give a little shade to faith while he's also very much the embodiment of faith in humanity was also, I thought, kind of brilliant. Now, the thing that strikes me about
the show now, and maybe we'll see this change in the future. I interviewed Davies, and he says they're going to talk about race more directly on the show. It talks way more about being queer than it does about race. And in a way, you can justify it by saying, you know, this alien is sort of beyond that. But this is a show, even though it's about race,
the stars, it is very much grounded in being British. And it is very much grounded in reflecting humanity, even in the alien societies that it operates in. So to have the show kind of shrug off race, that's the one thing that doesn't make a lot of sense. And at some point they got to deal with it. Well, Eric, if I can, we have had queer moments with the doctor. Never anything... Yeah. Well, a little bit...
direct. A little bit with Jack, there's a lot of heavy flirtation, a lot of heavy patting. We know- The character of Jack Harkness, yes. Yeah. So we know for a fact that queerness in general for this doctor is something the show's dealt with, understands, it's something the fan base has already had to come to terms with. I think leading with queerness makes sense. And also I think when the show does dive into race, and you haven't gotten there yet, but when it does, it does it in such a
truly mind-blowing. Can we just talk about the episode Dot and Bubble? Yes. Okay. I, too, had been growing impatient with this show's unwillingness to address the doctor's race. And one could argue, like, in a world of, like, murderous salt shakers and slug monsters and lizard people, you could make the argument that skin color is a distinctly human hang-up and you can just plow past it. And, Eric, when you watch the episode Dot and Bubble, as this episode begins...
We are on this world where everybody is kind of addicted to social media. And it seems like, well, I don't know. You guys tell me. It seems at the beginning we're getting a very boomer disdain for Gen Z and their cell phones and their avocado toast. Yeah, it feels like just a Black Mirror episode that's just about how these kids are so stuck on their phones. Yes, exactly. It changes. It changes everything.
I would say kind of several times. It does confront it head on in a way that's subtle, which is something that we haven't really gotten in the past of Doctor Who when it has dealt with things like race. I think back to the episode Rosa from the Chris Chibnall era, and it was so ham-fisted. This is a criticism that Chris Chibnall got all the time, the last showrunner Chris Chibnall got all the time. And there are some that have that same criticism for Davis now is that the
Doctor Who has gone too woke because of the queer and trans characters and, you know, the Doctor dealing with capitalism. Have they been watching the show at all? Right, exactly. That is my biggest problem with it is that, like, I can only meet that critique with the long and ever-arching eye roll because, like, Doctor Who has had queer-coded characters since the 80s. The first episode was directed by a queer man of color. So, like, if that's your criticism, you have not been watching the show. But I will say that the writing...
In the Chibnall era, and even some in this season that we're watching...
Is as subtle as a thumb to the eye. Like, I will admit that even for me, I felt big time cringe with some of it. We're talking about, you know, Russell T. Davis, Stephen Moffat writing some of these episodes. And they're 60 year old white dudes. So like them writing about progressive issues, the writing isn't exactly what I would have written. Like, you do not have to tell me that this is a critique on war and capitalism when you're standing on a battlefield.
Like, I get it. I got that already. So I don't think that the show is too woke. That criticism is definitely not merited. But I will say that some of the writing is a little bit too on the nose, even for me. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. What I really enjoyed about Dot and Bubble was the way it sort of switched through genre. Right? If you start off, it's sort of a...
teen dystopian vibe then it's maybe like a fantasy romance for a hot second and then you get a parasite level bomb drop at the end where you're like oh i see this was the critique it's one of those at least for me on a on a second viewing i was like oh not subtle at all but the setup for it uh specifically just that episode you're just like
oh, all of the layers are really here and it's really working on a deeper level to kind of point the finger. What I liked is like, if you're going to address race, if you're going to
talk about these subjects. And if you are not somebody who has experienced living in a body of a different color, it's a really awesome thing to do to be like, what if I just pointed the finger back at the audience? What if I didn't try to embody those shoes, but if I examined what a negative audience might, how they might interact with this series, which I thought was brilliant. Exactly. Because the thing that you're given this opportunity with this character, with the show to do a thing that literally no other character or show could do is
Which is why I was so excited when Shoot the Gatlin was hired because it's like now he can be a person who has been white and is now no longer white. How does that affect things? Nobody else. There is no other character you can think of who could do that. And the question is what does that look like in a show where –
Again, like everything about it is so British. True, true. That's what disappointed me so much about the Chibnall era is that we had a character who went from being male to being female. They hardly ever dealt with that. Just breezed past it. Exactly. One of the things that I also love about this new iteration, it's shot so well. The special effects are so awesome. And when they're not, they're deliberately not.
And you enjoy it because, again, that's a part of Doctor Who is like chintzy special effects, right? No, listen. Like I think back to the 2005 revival and you had the worst special effects, the worst costumes, you know, like the farting aliens in Downing Street. Those rubber costumes were the worst. And that is some of the thing that makes Doctor Who charming. So I was like, oh, no, like it's not going to be this super polished thing, is it? And I will say, again, with Space Babies,
A lot of that fear was a leap because like I was just like, this is going to be a weird thing. Like we're staying with the weirdness and even the graphics that are better, like especially Boom is spectacular. Like it's beautiful to look at, you know, as a whole, the show can still be weird. I want it to be able to do both. I want it to be as beautiful and as polished as it possibly can be. But intentionally, exactly as you're saying, Eric, intentionally weird. Yeah. I mean, especially when we look at like the Church of Ruby Road, like,
The goblins really do it for me. The design of them really works. I think the shots back in Thor's, you're going to like a lot of isolation. It still feels like it's being made on a smaller budget. You still get the feeling of like, oh, this is...
play in almost a theatrical level of play, but it looks good. It looks polished. And that's a lot of fun, I think. And hopefully a little bit easier to convert folks where you're like, I know you would like this if you could just get over the visual landscape of the series. Yeah. The Daleks. You can just get over watching deadly trash cans with plungers attached to the top of them. Salt and pepper shakers, baby. Yeah.
I don't know. I'm always going to have a soft spot in my heart for the giant invisible space chicken from the Van Gogh episode. Classic. Yes, Vincent and the Doctor. Let me ask you all a question. Are you who purists? Because this show has never been what anyone would call hard science fiction. But in every episode up to now, when something seemingly supernatural happens, it's always the Scooby-Doo answer. It's always monsters, aliens, robots. It's always grounded in science fiction. Yeah.
Yep. This season is a hard pivot into the supernatural. Now, there is an in-universe cause of that because a previous doctor spilled salt at the edge of the universe. I don't understand it either. But that is a new direction. Does it matter to you, that doctor who is now going into a little bit of the woo-woo? No, I think from like a literary standpoint,
if we look at the larger world of just books, like we're seeing a slam for science fiction and fantasy into each other where we're crossing the genres back and forth in a very...
heavy and considerate way. And so I think to do that here, particularly as we look at the other science fiction shows this series is competing with, like, you know, Star Trek will always be pure science fiction. That's the aim of it. Star Wars is pure fantasy. Finding a route in between those two spaces, I think, is intelligent, especially if you're going to be boosting this out to the world on the Disney platform.
form, it gives you a space sort of in the middle to cross for people who might be purists on either side, say there's space for both sides within this IP. I am also not very bothered by it. You have a lot more supernatural elements in this season, the boogeyman, Welsh fairy circles, a pantheon of gods. And I think that's fine. One of the characteristics of Doctor Who is when you think you have all the answers and
The doctor literally changes their face. But I will say the issue that I have with it is I kind of need the companion of
To be a little bit more like, wait, what? But this doesn't exist. Like the companion is meant to be a stand in for the audience. Right. In this case, it's Ruby Sunday. And I just need a little more incredulity when we when we see Ruby faced with literal baby stealing goblins. Like I need her to be like, wait, goblins don't exist. You know, like I didn't get a lot of that. So I do want the companion to be a little bit more like.
incredulous about it, but I don't mind a little dabbling in the world of supernatural and fantasy. I will push back a little bit on that to say that one of the things that I'm enjoying about the new Doctor Who is that the type of person who would be a companion to the Doctor is the type of person who wouldn't be put off by stuff like that and would be more ready to say... I mean, once you've met a time-traveling alien...
Is anything else really that weird? Yeah. Everything is on the table at that point. Yeah. And so I'm kind of digging the idea that in this sort of altered, you know, again, weird universe, humans come to accept that.
you know, that they inhabit a universe that's filled with all this crazy stuff. Yeah. Like much more readily than we would. That's true. And so I'm, I'm really enjoying seeing them explore. And in a weird way, having supernatural elements to stories,
cuts down on all the technobabble and nonsense that they have to say to get you from point A to point Z in a story. And they can just kind of say, it was God who did that. It makes the storytelling a little leaner and makes more room for some of the character stuff that we're really digging now. Yeah, I really like Ruby Sunday. She's an interesting character. Even the way we sort of meet her, it's interesting. We always come into a companion's life at a moment of crisis, crisis.
or personal change slash growth where they're in this moment where they're like,
I think I need to be doing something different. But when we come into Ruby's life, she's really just trying to learn more about herself in a very, again, grounded way. I find myself drawn to Ruby. And I think maybe it's because, you know, we talked a little bit about like the way the show has explored queerness. The Doctor's not a character who easily embraces romantic love. So I don't think we're going to get a lot of that across the series. It's just not really who the character is.
So how are we exploring queerness? I think it's through friendship and this idea of a character like Ruby who is immediately just on board. We see her friends before she meets the doctor. They're all very queer. She performs for lesbians at a bar. It's a culturally queer friendship, which I really love, which is like, I'm not going to second guess what you're doing. You're on your own trajectory. Can I just tag along? Cool. I'm with you. Let's go. You're my D.
It's kind of wonderful to see this relationship not through the eyes of like two cis heterosexual people. Even when there isn't sexual tension between the doctor and his companion, there's always this sort of like, are you going to go out with that guy? Are you with him? There's a lot of like, it's just very heterosexual.
And again, nothing wrong with that. But to see this sort of queer friendship, even when they're separated, there isn't this desperation of I have to get back to the doctor. It's such an easy like, oh, well, maybe this is just what you do and who you are. OK, I'll accept that. I have to go on. And I was like, wow. I mean, it was just it was really speaking to me on a sub level of queer friendships. And I value that. And I really enjoyed it.
seeing it and having it in the series. I will agree. I love Ruby Sunday. And I think that the Doctor and Ruby's chemistry is off the charts. What's your name? Ruby. Ruby Sunday. Hello, Ruby Sunday. And it's a Sunday right now. That's a coincidence. I'm the Doctor. Hi. I've met you before. Yep. Although I will say, Judy could have chemistry with a CVS receipt. Absolutely. That's the next episode. LAUGHTER
Okay, well, I think we would characterize our collective reaction to this season as bubbling with enthusiasm. I would say dot and bubbling with enthusiasm. Dot and bubbling. It was right there. It was right there. Well, we don't know what you think about Doctor Who. Find us at facebook.com slash pchh. And
And that brings us to the end of our show. Joelle Monique, Eric Deggans, J.C. Howard, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thanks, Glenn. This episode was produced by Hafsa Fathima and edited by Mike Katziff. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.
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