So the new series is getting the worse ratings ever.
Im not sure why it looks great the new Doctor seems fine.
Is it a Disney backlash? Is it to woke?
I'm as woke as fuck, but it doesn't mean I want to see it in my TV shows.
Maybe they need a good dark, scary episode to get people talking
Yeah, it's an interesting question around why it has fallen away so badly, especially when Russell T Davies was expected to be its saviour.
Think it has been hurt a bit by the off-screen brouhaha that now accompanies a lot of the sequels/reboots of beloved sci-fi or fantasy IP like Star Wars, Star Trek and LOTR.
You see a recurring pattern of the new creatives coming across as a bit dismissive of/disinterested in the original version, and less fussed about making a good film/show and more about giving self-aggrandising interviews about how they're using the new film/show to address previous wrongs perpetrated by the IP, or the wider genre, or cinema/TV as a whole.
That upsets the original fans because it implies the show they love (and in a lot of cases a show that was actually fairly "woke" for its time) is now tarnished or problematic. But it also upsets the vocal minority of racists/misogynists who just can't stand seeing women or ethnic minorities in prominent roles. And then when the show comes out and fans criticise characters or ideas (often legitimately, like with Chibnall's Doctor Who run), that criticism gets conflated by the creatives with the racist/misogynistic trolling, and they consequently dismiss the criticism of the actual fans without any reflection on their validity. That alienates those fans, who no longer feel welcome in the fandom.
And that's exacerbated by the on-screen issues - a lot of these new versions, including Chibnall/new Davies Doctor Who, simply aren't as good as the originals they claim to be improving upon.
I suspect that if you drew a Venn diagram of the fans who were supposedly frothing at the mouth with misogynistic hatred for Jodie Whittaker's Doctor or Rey in Star Wars, and the fans who heap praise on House of the Dragon and Fallout, there'd be a pretty sizeable overlap. The reason they have different reactions to these female-led IP is because in the former they were poorly written characters in not-very-good shows/films, and in the latter they were not.
I think it's the case with the initial Davies 2.0 episodes too (though to be fair it sounds like the more recent ones have improved). The first Tennant episode was a good example. Criticism of the trans character in the first episode was not because she was trans (ignoring the small number of sad bigots on Twitter). It was because Davies wrote a flat character with wooden dialogue, and actively ignored what makes the character of the Doctor so admirable - their openness to different people and cultures, their empathy, their tolerances - in order to give that character a few unnecessary soapbox lines. I'm willing to bet that if the episode was the equivalent of Blink but with a trans woman instead of Sally Sparrow, 99% of fans would've loved it and eagerly watched the next episode.
Don't get rid of the progressive casting/messaging - sci-fi has always been about that. Just stop boasting about it in interviews as though it's a bigger priority than making the show good, and stop acting like historic fans are annoying, buzzing fly in the room. And then focus on making the show actually good (which, hopefully, they're now managing with the more recent Gatwa episodes), and you'll see fans returning and the whole "woke Doctor casting backlash" will have the same staying power as the criticism of Bond having blonde hair or Peter Jackson making Arwen a proper character.
