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With the end of Season 18 and the demise of the 4th Doctor, the show when into a steep decline until the 9th Doctor which began with far better writing and superior special effects - attributes lacking in the early episodes with Pertwee. Script writing after the relaunch in 2005 became more creative and generally interesting. But PC-ness began its slow creep into the fabric of the show, unobtrusively at first, then with the demise of the 11th Doctor in 2015-16, the audience got hit full force with British PC-ness.
With the arrival of the 12th Doctor the writing became a jumble and the inclusion of a ugly, openly gay, black female, the show was on water skis headed to the ramp, not to mention making the Master a woman. With the 13th Doctor, the show left the ramp and soared over the shark, landing with a thud of lowered viewership.
“with the demise of the 11th Doctor in 2015-16, the audience got hit full force with British PC-ness…”
I didn’t think Capaldi’s first two seasons were anymore P.C. than the Eccleston/Tennant years run by the flamboyantly gay Russell T. Davies, who after all among other things had Captain Jack who would sleep with men, women, and aliens. Sure, the Master was made a woman during the 12th Doctor’s first season, but she was still more “Master-like” than the crazy, people eating, spiderman jumping Master that John Simm played in the Davies era. Capaldi’s second season also felt both more (successfully) experimental, meaningful, and more “Classic Who” to me, so I really liked it.
The show started truly going off the rails only last season in my opinion. In the past, like a lot of shows, it had a bit of leftism shoved in, but it was only occasionally and sometimes nuanced. It was only last season that we got the lesbian companion who reminded everyone she was a lesbian in clunky, virtue-signalling dialogue in a variety of episodes where it wasn’t even a plot point. Worse was the explicitly anti-Capitalist episode about businesses killing their workers for profit.
Then there was the episode where the Doctor, a character who has frequently forgiven murderers, turns violent against someone who made a racist comment (because speech is sooo much worse than murder) and radically misrepresents the racial make-up of 1800s Britain (to aid the left’s immigration arguments?). Add to that totally superfluous Trump jokes, radical vegetarianism, and illegitimately portraying the first doctor as a flaming sexist and I think it’s clear that last season was a big turning point for the show—and it was all done in such a simplistic, in-your-face way too.
It looks like the P.C. nonsense is still going strong this season (the anti-gun stuff in the second episode was like a child wrote it), but the show doesn’t even seem like Doctor Who anymore. At least last season still seemed like the same show and had a good interpretation of a settled-in 12th Doctor. This new one is more soap operaish, amateurish, predictable, and has forced, unnatural dialogue. I no longer feel like I have a reason to look past the P.C. propagandizing since both it and the show have gotten worse.