Doctor Who series eleven: the Doc's not dead yet

Well, that could have been a lot worse. I recently finished watching series eleven of Doctor Who (except the new year special which isn't out on DVD yet) and found myself, surprisingly, not hating it. I had grave misgivings about this series: I didn't like the idea of a female Doctor, I wasn't a fan of the new show runner Chris Chibnall, and I found the way the series was marketed grating. In the end, though, although I'm not bowled over by it, it exceeded my expectations.

The quality of the episodes, though uneven, is by no means uniformly bad. The two first episodes were fine - not spectacular, but good entertainment. I especially liked "The Ghost Monument", with its satisfyingly alien world and Art Malik's enjoyable guest turn as the high-handed runner of a space race. Then the series hit something of a rough patch. The premise of the third episode ”Rosa”, where the Doctor and her team has to protect a small but important historical event from outward interference, isn’t bad in itself. What you could call the Sliding Doors theory of history, where small changes in the past can knock history seriously off course, usually provides entertaining time-travel plots. Not this time, though, as the sci-fi part of the story takes a back seat (no pun intended). It’s hard to quarrel with the episode’s message – segregation laws bad, Rosa Parks’s protest good – but it’s conveyed rather heavy-handedly. Every white person the Doctor and Co. meet is an eye-rolling, overacting racist, and every point is hammered home.  Vinette Robinson is a good Rosa Parks, though: her weariness, stemming from having to watch her step and keep her head down every blessed day of the week, feels very convincing.

At least “Rosa” is well-intentioned. There's no excuse for “Arachnids in the UK” whatsoever. The threat is dumb – spiders grown unnaturally large by “toxic waste”? Is this a children’s cartoon from the Seventies? The Doctor’s squeamishness about killing said spiders outright is inexplicable – would she object to squashing a normal-sized spider in a bath, then? The solution she and her friends come up with instead is basically an “out of sight, out of mind” one which will end with the spiders dead anyway, only it will be slower. And then there’s Robertson, an American hotel magnate and presidential candidate who barks “you’re fired!” at a new employee… Yeah, they went there. Even if the Trump caricature had been done with Yes Minister-like finesse, it would have been out of place in a Doctor Who adventure. As it is, the episode takes a cheap shot at a goodish-sized target and manages to miss it completely. Robertson may be a one-dimensional bastard, but unlike the Donald, he is crushingly predictable, which would make him a pretty safe incumbent of the White House. Plus he has the right idea about those spiders.

After the just about OK "The Tsuranga Conundrum" the series picked up with two strong installments - "The Demons of Punjab" and "Kerblam!" - which where not at all what I'd expected them to be. "The Demons of Punjab" is set during the Partition of India, but the focus is an intimate family drama. Context is provided by conflicts within the Indian population rather than moaning about the awful Brits, and there's not a tropical-helmeted Colonel in sight. "Kerblam!" takes place at what's basically Amazon in space, and I braced myself for a lecture about the evils of commercialism. That's not what the adventure's about, however: instead, it's a fun caper full of surprising twists and turns.

"The Witchfinders" was another dip for me, though as it took itself less seriously than "Rosa" I somehow minded it less. I’ve had a soft spot for Alan Cumming since he played Boris, one of my all-time favourite Bond villains, in Goldeneye. So I was disappointed at first when Cumming camped it up as King James I – just because a king has male lovers doesn’t mean he’s a pantomime dame. All the same, Cumming’s campiness may have saved King James from having even a harder time. If the part had been played with Iain Glen-like grimness, the two character moments which the king is allowed would have had more impact, but at the same time all the “burn the witches” stuff would have seemed more sinister, and the companions would probably not have ended up amiably chewing the fat with him in the end scene. Not exactly a fair portrayal of the king who smoothly succeeded Elizabeth I, brokered a peace with Spain and commissioned an ace Bible translation – whatever James I was, I suspect he was no fool – but it could have been worse. Oh, and Siobhan Finneran (alias Miss O’Brien) as a paranoid estate owner acts everyone else off set. Could we have her in the Downton movie, please?

Then came "It Takes You Away" – which was amazing! Mirror portals, parallel worlds, characters having to face loved ones seemingly back from the dead and having to figure out whether they're real or fake... my geeky heart soared. This had the true Who feel, and even though the series finale was tepid, I found myself cautiously looking forward to series twelve. On the subject of the finale, though, it does contain one of my least favourite plot clichés: the one where a good character is tempted to kill a bad character out of revenge, then is persuaded that he's "better than that", then subjects the bad character to an even worse punishment than death would have been. But it's OK, as the goodie didn't get blood on his hands. For pity's sake (literally), just kill the guy, you wuss!

I'm still far from convinced by Chris Chibnall as show runner, but he did pick some good guest writers, and the main acting cast works well. Jodie Whittaker convinces as the Doctor – I don't think she will ever be my favourite, but she is suitably Doctorish as well as warm and engaging. The companions are likeable, too. Bradley Walsh nails it as retired bus driver Graham, the best-developed companion and a real sweetheart. His step-grandson Ryan, played by Tosin Cole, is disarmingly laid-back, and his and Graham's tentative bonding following the death of Graham's wife and Ryan's nan Grace suitably touching. Mandip Gill's apprentice policeman Yaz is, as has been commented on, under-developed, but she has potential. I really enjoyed the friendly dynamic between the companions – Ryan and Graham backing up Yaz when she tried to persuade a sceptical Doctor to go back in time so she could see her grandmother as a young woman was a sweet moment.

Having said all that, I do feel like some of the magic of the series is gone. Above all, it's not as clever as it used to be under brainbox Steven Moffat. With less brilliant banter and brain-twisting sci-fi concepts to distract one, the flaws of the series, which have always been there – a clunky political comment here, a certain sense of over-worthiness there – become more apparent. But it's still watchable, and as Chibnall settles in, I'm hoping he'll deign to use more familiar Doctor Who tropes, including some of its old villains (especially as he hasn't really managed to create impressive new ones this far). Perhaps the Master could come back, regenerated as a man again, thus flipping the Gomez-Capaldi dynamic? It would be nice if he still had that Scottish accent...