It Wasn't Jodie Whittaker's Fault; It Was Never Jodie Whittaker's Fault

I began a Doctor Who rewatch with my youngest children this week. For many of these episodes, it’s my fourth time through: Once alone, once with my wife, once with my son, and now with my daughters. My opinion of Doctor Who post-reboot is like most: Eccleston was great, Tennant was the best, Matt Smith was terrific, and then the writing let down the next two Doctors. Granted, Peter Capaldi had some great episodes, and Jenna Coleman was terrific, but the Chris Chibnall era didn’t work.

It’s important to note, however, that it wasn’t Jodie Wittaker’s fault. It was never Jodie Whittaker’s fault. Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor, was a brilliant Doctor. It was everything around her that failed. The stories were weak, convoluted, and overstuffed; there were too many companions, and the scheduling was erratic, thanks in part to the pandemic. There were some bad Capaldi-era episodes that we could blame on Matt Lucas — the James Corden of Jeremy Clarksons — but Jodie Whittaker was never anything but near-perfect as the 13th Doctor.

Unfortunately, too many people on the Internet wrongly blamed the lackluster Chibnall era on Whittaker, but the one saving grace about that is this: She never saw the criticism.

“No one’s told me they’ve hated me. I think it takes a lot to queue up and stand and say to someone, ‘I hated your version of the Doctor.’ So you only have smoke blown up your arse,” she said in an interview with The Independent. “So that means I only ever have positive experiences. I’m sure if I was on Twitter, I’d have a very different version. But I’m not. So I go ‘la la la!’”

Working on the show, in fact, was Whittaker’s “happiest time. That show gave me so many opportunities outside of it. I now meet a whole fandom of people that are possibly the most creative and diverse group of people, that love this show that I now love, because I never understood it before and didn’t watch it, and now I’m like ‘oh my gaddd’, and I get its impact. I understand its relevance. And I understand its joy. And it’s a f**king gig and a half. It just is. Three seasons was definitely enough. But I will be forever grief-ridden that I’m not playing the Doctor.”

As excited as I am about the arrival of Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor (after the current recurrence of David Tennant), I’m bummed that Whittaker didn’t get to play the Doctor under a different showrunner, not that Chibnall is bad (Broadchurch is obviously brilliant). He just wasn’t right for Doctor Who.

In the meantime, it looks like we’ll get to see Whittaker return to the bleak British series she was best known for prior to Doctor Who, as her next series is called Toxic Town, and it’s about “three mothers fighting for the justice for the rates of upper limb defects in babies born in Corby.” Wow. She jumped headfirst back into dreary TV, didn’t she? I can’t wait to watch.

In the meantime, the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary specials are currently airing on Saturdays on Disney+.

Source: Independent