No Doctor Who's viewership isn't dropping because it's woke. It's dropping because it's been an unfocused mess.

So coming into this I should say up front some stuff. 

Firstly I think the idea of making the Doctor a Woman was a stupid move designed just to virtue signal and grab headlines and ultimately did more harm than good. Doctor Who has had strong female characters in it for a long time and the whole "It's [current year] The Doctor should be female" made it seem like the only character that matters in the show or who ever did matter was The Doctor. It completely ignores strong characters such as Leela or Rose or at the very least suggests they don't matter. It was a move designed to appease people who likely don't watch much of the show if any and only care about claiming things as "Ours now" in some stupid culture war. I'd much rather Doctor Who as a show just came up with some reason for The Doctor to be trapped or incapacitated and had some-one else step into the role (I mean Romana still exists in theory) and just adopt the name The Doctor to make it seem he was still out there 

Secondly I really think Jodie Whitaker has been a good Doctor and have really enjoyed her performance despite me really not liking the idea of The Doctor being a woman and would have preferred they just bring in a female Time Lord who was essentially filling in for The Doctor in his absence or something.

I'm not in the camp of Super Dr Who fans. I would consider myself a fan though. I've seen all 3 films though I was born before New Who and just on the verge of the old Who ending so wasn't around to see old who. My first experiences of Dr Who was a VHS tape with a sort of documentary thing about the success of the Daleks which went over the first two Dr Who films and the development of the Daleks into cultural icons basically. I think the first episode I ever saw was Spearhead from Space on BBC's Dr Who celebration night. After that I watched the Web animations Dr Who series, Scream of the Shalka, Shada and Pyramids of Mars. I own a Doctor Who mug; I own on DVD the new beginnings collections, Revelation of the Daleks, The Five Doctors and Remembrance of the Daleks and a few years ago did own and use (until the head broke on it) a sonic screwdriver Toothbrush. So hopefully this shows I'm at least familiar with the series. 

Image Source: My own personal photo

So there have been videos about Doctor Who's falling viewing figures. Some of these have been suggesting it's due to Doctor Who in Series 11 and 12 being very woke. Or at least implying it. Yes there are a few quite a few infact I mean it.

The truth is Series 11 was less woke than Series 10 which was the last of the Capaldi era and featured Bill a woman of colour who I think every episode exclaimed at one point or another "I'm a Lesbian." Bill was an ok character mostly with definitely some personality but a lot of the time the series did seem to want to focus on her being a Lesbian and making sure to remind the audience, be it due to her being interrupted on a date or having a guy hit on her etc. Series 10 was the series where the show was quite on the nose with topics of racism and rampant capitalism among other things and introduced the Ice Warrior Queens who see men as lesser beings (something apparently the Doctor has no real issue with).

Series 11 however actually really wasn't as "Woke" or at least did things that would really upset the "woksters" on twitter who normally howl about stuff. I mean the first episode have them kill off Grace who was a strong willed woman of colour (which would normally cause outrage with the Woke crowd).

The series progressed with the episode Arachnids in the UK featuring a billionaire hotel chain owner with political aspirations, only the episode made a point that he wanted to run for president due to his hatred of Donald Trump. As the episode went on the character readily jumped onto a crazy conspiracy theory that Russia was to blame for the giant spiders and it was a plan to kill him to stop him trying to become president. The eventual reveal was it was his scummy practices and disregard for safety that lead to the creation of the spiders essentially. That's right the person vehemently opposed to Trump was shown as not being a paragon of virtue just for being against Trump and almost mocked the Russian interference claims about at the time.

Image Source: BBC Doctor Who website

The Tsuranga Conundrum was the very next episode and introduced a pregnant male alien. Now with certain developments you'd think this would be some woke idea but the episode played it for laughs mostly having two of the characters having to deal with helping him give birth and the ridiculousness of it all.

The most outright woke the series got was the episode The Witchfinders which as you can likely guess had commentary about women's unsuitability for certain roles. Even that can be passed off as kind of historical in context.

What went wrong in Series 11 was not the series being Woke. What went wrong in series 11 were a number of issues.

Firstly the Doctor was joined by 3 companions all seemingly meant to be taking equal billing except the series consistently struggled to find things to do with new characters and Police Officer Yasmin Khan especially, often relegating her to more of a background character often not really integral in uncovering the plot or most of its resolution. Yaz gets saddled with guard duty or in series 11 the possible implied romance between her and Ryan Sinclair. It could be argued Ryan could be considered somewhat woke as the character has dyspraxia but that mostly was used to build up tension as Ryan struggled to navigate a task requiring co-ordination, like say climbing down a ladder. The other Doctor Who assistant who gets more screen time is Graham O'Brien a retired bus driver who has quickly become a fan favourite due to his sometimes cynical nature. Most previous series have run with The Doctor and a core companion with sometimes a second companion joining but often more as a secondary character. With 3 supposedly core companions the show is struggling to give them all something to do or showcase their personalities with Yaz being the huge casualty in this regard. The audience don't have that much of a connection to her as a character and she's somewhat of a stranger to the audience even after her being a companion for a full series we know more about her family than Yaz's own personality. The larger core cast and issues finding them roles in stories however isn't the only issue.

Image Source: BBC Doctor Who website

A running problem in Series 11 was inconsistencies in the stories or just moments where the suspension of disbelief collapsed and questions of logic flowed in due to glaring inconsistencies. Take Arachnids in the UK this new incarnation of The Doctor is a pacifist so refuses to kill the giant mutant spiders, however she's apparently fine locking them away in a vault to either suffocate or starve to death possibly ripping one another apart to try and get food to live just a bit longer. She even admonishes a character after he shoots one of the extremely large spiders that is struggling to breath, even when he claims it was a mercy killing (which in fairness it was). Or in The Witchfinders where apparently a simple axe is enough to break a super high tech alien prison. Or How about the fact a Dalek suddenly ends up vulnerable to microwave radiation? (I'm all for making the Daleks weaker and stopping the power creep on them but that feels like too much of a simple flaw). Or another one in the episode Rosa the villain is implied to be a time travelling racist terrorist from the future. Except he acts like a caricature of a racist 50's greaser dude it comes off as comical and not working logically, even with all the shouts of "Nazi" and "Racism" in [Current YEAR], it could strongly be argued racism isn't as prevalent as in the past nor as overt when it happens. Unless you're some-one who buys Jussie Smollett original story as absolute truth and ignores all the information that came to light from the police inquiry. The idea of some-one in the future being on the same overt level as a 50s style racist is just comically stupid and a level that I don't think even 4chan's Politically incorrect board would manage these days. 

The inconsistencies extend to The Doctor, a supremely knowledgeable time lord who on some occasions needed others to help come up with a solution that was often quite simple and obvious E.G. using a Microwave against a Dalek after it responded badly to it previously.  The Doctor shouldn't have all the answers but having the companions come up with almost the whole solution just doesn't feel right, maybe them saying something and giving The Doctor an idea of something else related to that idea but basically giving her the whole idea feels wrong and not in keeping with the character of The Doctor.

The next problem (which ties back into inconsistencies) is the villains for series 11 were quite weak. The idea of getting away from the classic Dr Who villains for a bit and not relying on the big named villains was a nice idea, the problem was the replacements were poorly implemented and also inconsistent at times. The attempt by Chibnall seems to have been to leave his mark on Dr Who by creating a monster that resonates with fans, the problem being it seemed blatantly obvious quite quickly this was happening and the villain being built up as a bigger threat too quickly without having a solid backstory and idea behind the villain. Chibnall's attempt was the Stenza.

Image Source: The Doctor Who Fandom Wiki

The Stenza are a sort of combination of the idea of an honour based warrior / hunter culture like Predator crossed with something I'd expect on a lower end Creepypasta by having the villain embed the teeth of its victims in its own face. Why does it put them in its face not say an arm or I dunno long ear ring like chains ? It's never explained. The problem with the Stenza was their inconsistency though, you know how I said they were an honour based warrior / hunter culture alien race? Yeh in episode 2 of series 11 the Stenza were mentioned as apparently being find dropping bioweapons on plants which doesn't sound very honourable or warrior like. Also in that second episode the Stenza were mentioned and built up as some massive galactic threat running rampant conquering the galaxy, why? It's never said and doesn't seem to be just to show they can. It became really obvious that the Stenza were meant to be a big villain but didn't catch on when the series 11 finale saw The Doctor face the Stenza warrior she faced in the shows first episode. This Stenza Warrior was shown to be willing to cheat and not play by the rules of honour so personality wise he worked as a villain and the finale was him and the implication the rest of the Stenza did something for some reason to help him. It felt like and admission the Stenza just hadn't worked as it was ultimately just one villain and people talking about the rest of his kind. The lack of consistency in what the Stenza were like and how they acted, if the one we met would be seen as a disgrace to his kind for cheating and failing his hunt or not. The Stenza didn't feel like fleshed out villain nor super interesting one as they borrowed from the idea of Predators and the whole "Teeth are creepy" idea that is very overplayed on the internet.

I can understand not wanting to keep using the well known villains of the past but there are plenty of lesser known lesser used villains in Doctor Who's past which could have been brought back to support building a cast of new villains but this simply wasn't done. Personally I think Chibnall took on too much having to basically create a new villain every week and flesh them out enough to work, while also seemingly trying to create his own lasting iconic villain for the long running show. This in my view left him not fleshing out his villains and hoping to do so later by bringing them back again and having got the work done by then or did the work but didn't have time to show the audience that they're more fleshed out villains.  Series 11's best contributions to Dr Who were basically a super alien termite, a species of assassins and some delivery robots. The problem being none of them were as such villains or recurring adversaries that could bring much more to the table for future adventures, at least not yet anyway.

Image Source: BBC Doctor Who Website

Chibnall feels like he often needs more time for his adventures with many feeling like they could have easily been two part episodes to allow more time to develop all the shows main cast of characters along with better establish villains and thematic elements or just general plot pacing. In many episode it feels like one aspect or other gets pushed out or rushed to make room for everything else with some episodes feeling like the plot only starts to be resolved in the last 10 to 15 minutes or less and quite rapidly too often intentionally or not leaving a number of questions and loose ends.

Now I'm not going to pretend Doctor Who is some perfect show that's always been perfect and every show runner before this point has been perfect.

I'd argue Russell T Davies era became very formulaic where the enemy was revealed, they showed they had some plan to take over earth using some technology that cause a very visual obvious thing to be happening then just in the nick of time the Doctor stopped it. Once your spotted the formula at play in a lot of his episodes (not all there were some that differed) it would just be annoying enough to stick out and irritate. Also unlike old Doctor Who the crisis was always very obvious, visual and obvious to everyone rather than being something threatening the Earth and only a select group ever knowing The Doctor saved the day.

Steven Moffat's era as show runner started out great, the episodes he'd written beforehand were considered some of the best and as show runner he did quite good with the longer plotlines of the show creating more memorable moments. The problem being when he ran out of Steam which you can almost pinpoint as the 2016 Christmas special The Return of Doctor Mysterio which while a fun superhero romp it felt directionless. While it could be argued in places in Series 9 the writing was starting to appear on the wall it was series 10 that just felt like Moffat had lost his touch. One of the main bad points was one of the writers on Moffat's team did keep sneaking in a formulaic episode which was as follows. Doctor finds out monster, Doctor confronts monster, monster says it's too late the plan is already underway the Doctor can't stop it only for somehow the power of the human spirit or people thinking hard enough or believing hard enough saved the day. Series 10 however felt like Moffat had lost interest and just wanted to tie up some loose ends to make sure no-one could tug on them later to continue what was left dangling. Old Who also had its issues like the weird esoteric episode of the Sylvester McCoy era as an example, but Chibnall's era feels like it has more issues than most and more serious issues with it especially as this is new Who not old Who we're on about.

Image Source: BBC old Doctor Who Website

The thing is in both Russel T Davies's era and Steven Moffat's era (excluding Series 10) you could tune in and know you'd get a certain level of quality and even at its worst it provided something often new and interesting. Russel T Davies's era was exciting and well paced often with some decent action. Steven Moffat's era brought mysteries and a lot more twists to the show. Both of them also felt planned out as to where their ideas were going and places the series was going.

 Chris Chibnall's era, though it brings a very good working knowledge of Doctor Who lore, has stories that have pacing problems and inconsistencies. I couldn't do any better (Most likely) but that's why I'm criticising something via a blog in the internet and not writing Doctor Who. Chibnall's era doesn't feel like he or his team are bringing new stuff to the table as I can sit and dissect episodes and point out fairly recent or well know Sci-Fi or fantasy properties ideas have been heavily borrowed from along with a number of different films.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth The episode and the Stenza feel so much like it was taken from the Predator Franchise.

The Ghost Monument feels like a mix of a road trip style film and the Tom Baker Doctor Who era where his Tardis starts sliding through time.

Arachnids in the UK the film Eight Legged Freaks

The Tsuranga Conundrum has a plot kind of close to Alien as something gets on the ship and causes chaos and the Neural piloting rig felt like it was ripped straight from Pacific Rim, Alien and the Startgate Episode The Other Side

On the Left the Neural Piloting rig in Dr Who.
On the Right the Piloting rig in Pacific Rim (from the back)
Source of Pacific Rim Image = IMDB

Kerblam!  felt like it was doing heavily inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's

It Takes You Away felt like it borrowed heavily from M. Night Shyamalan's The Village

I know the idea nothing is original anymore and originality is dead and if you look enough at various works you'll always be able to draw parallels to others these days but the elements just felt clear enough for me to easily notice them and their similarities to other properties. Series 11 felt like Doctor Who was no longer leading and trying to break new ground but following other ideas and trends trying to piece together things that worked for other properties in the hopes the difference pieces would fit and make something that would resonate with audiences. Unfortunately for me it feels like the pieces are often grinding against one another and the seams starting to show where the parts have been joined.

So far Series 12 at the point of writing this has had three adventures. The first being the two part Spyfall adventure which felt almost back to form, it had action, some mystery elements and complain wise I could only really point to it seemingly wrapping up quickly with the 2 part story only really coming to a conclusion in the final 20 minutes or less of the 2nd episode still leaving loose ends (which I hope was more deliberate to allow future use of certain characters). The 2nd nitpick being the seeming little jab as the head of MI6 claimed The Doctor has always been a man and it being played mostly to make him seem a fool. The 3rd nitpick being it maybe overstated Ada Lovelace's role in history a little while downplaying Charles Babbage (whose machine she created codes for) presenting her as some visionary pioneer while the onscreen character of Babbage just spent what screen time he got frustrated his machine wasn't working and slightly confused as to what was going on. Again tiny nitpicks and it's nice to see lesser known figures get more attention so I don't think overstating Ada Lovelace's role was a major issue.

The second adventure of Series 12 however was Orphan 55 which had a lot more of the issues that have plagued the series. We had the rushed feeling script as the team decided to leave a protected dome to try and recover some-one taken by the monsters. A return to the dome and revelation of what the desolate planet is along with some moralising by the Doctor, then a conclusion with enough time for a Game of Thrones series 8 Tyrion like lecture to camera from the Doctor to make sure the audience got it and no-one was getting left behind. Yaz's only real input to the episode was to sort of tease Ryan about how he was trying to chat up some girl that met on the adventure and little else. The Plot felt like easily 2 episodes crammed together with the ending leaving a lot open once again. Also due to the speed of the plot and lack of time the moral / theme of the episode came off far more as message mongering than well implemented, not helped by the footage and clips in the episode being slightly different to the moral lecture at the end. I don't know who this episode was for? Was it for kids because the ending moralising lecture felt like it was something you'd find in G.I. Joe it was awkward and felt put there I can only assume for children. However if it was for children I question the design of the monstrous dregs.

Image source = BBC Doctor Who Website

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying don't have scary monsters and I personally liked the look of the dregs but holy crap I wouldn't want to be dealing with complaints from parents of viewers over this one. The ITV series Jekyll and Hyde got complaints for having it be seen as too scary for the time slot it was in and Doctor Who has always been somewhat ok for children unlike Jekyll and Hyde. The Dregs look straight out of a B movie horror film and far more extreme than the kind of monsters in similar shows aimed at a more family audience where the almost lecture from the Doctor would make sense they're in fact arguably more horrifying than the Weevils from adult orientated Doctor Who spin off Torchwood.

Weevil from TorchWood
Image Source: Ultimate Popculture Fandom Wiki

Future predator from Primeval
Image taken from the Primeval fandom Wiki

The Doom Sayer / Doom prophet from Jekyll and Hyde
Got masses of complaints from parents 

Also before I get "But it was lecturing about environmentalism". There were episodes as early as the 1973 episode The Green Death in Doctor Who and was mentioned in Scream of the Shalka before people start to thing that alone is evidence of it "suddenly" going super woke.

The most recent Doctor Who adventure as of writing this was Nikola Tesla's Night of Fear which I'd argue was about on par with some of the more mid quality episodes of the T-Davies era. It was fairly good but nothing exceptional, just entertaining enough. Spyfall feels like the high point so far and Orphan 55 like the low point. Hopefully this is just Doctor Who evening out

So no it's not Wokeness that's killing Doctor Who. It's a mess that doesn't seem to be able to be consistently good quality but does consistently have a number of issues episode after episode that is killing it. It's the feeling that Chibnall the new show runner hasn't really got control of the reigns yet and has been struggling with the direction to take both the show and characters in it. Hell In the 2nd adventure of this series (series 12) I'd even argue its struggling to set the right tone for its audience or even decide who it wants that audience to be anymore.  

Thank you for reading.