I’m gonna go ahead and admit it.

Series 11 of Doctor Who has been… a tiny bit disappointing.

Now

Okay

Hear me out

It’s good.

But it’s lacking.

The stories are tight, in my opinion.

The characters were introduced beautifully.

But

Those tight stories

and those beautifully introduced characters…

aren’t…

really…

blending that well.

It still feels like we’re getting to know them, and yet we’re already reaching the end of the series. They’ve never fought, never struggled beyond the immediate conflict or their mildly told backstories. They talk about how close they are and how long they’ve been adventuring like they know each other so well, but the show itself is still getting its footing.

We have Ryan, who has an absent father. That was just kind of resolved in the background.

Graham is dealing with Grace’s death, but that’s in the background too. I like that he’s using adventuring as a distraction, but you never really feel it. I’d almost say the distraction is entirely too effective.

Every time they talk about these things, it’s despite the episode, not because of it. Awkward conversations just kind of… shoved in there. The one in Rosa was nice, the one where Yaz and Ryan talked about racism—because that was contextually relevant. Ryan’s letter from his dad? The talks in the spider episode? Those were just so disconnected. And Yaz got that one episode dedicated to her family, but no one ever really… did anything. Don’t get me wrong, that episode was fun, and not doing anything is on par with a lot of early episodes, which I understand Chris Chibnall is going for, but they can’t be passive in every episode, and that one is about Yaz. You’d think she’d have more of a part to play, you know?

Speaking of Yaz, I love her, but she needs an inner conflict. She’s adorable and smart, but we’ve only seen a bit of her family and we don’t really know why she wants to be a cop beyond “I want to be in charge.”

And then the Doctor. Oooh, the Doctor. The first female presenting incarnation and I wish they did a quicker job at developing her. We’re nine episodes in, and she’s a passive, cheery leader who gets along with her crew and maybe shows some deeper hypocrisy now and then. Usually at the end of the episode. And then we never talk about it. I would like to talk about it.

Again, don’t get me wrong. She’s great. She feels like the Doctor. But sometimes, she just feels like the eleventh Doctor. Or the tenth Doctor. Or she’s just the detective, and none of her personality gets involved.

I still feel like I’m getting to know everyone. You can’t have that at the end of a season. What if the Doctor regenerated? What if one or all of the companions leave or die? I’d be sad, but not as sad as if I lost a beloved character. I’d be sad because I was just getting to know them and wanted to see them in action for real. They don’t have enough presence right now.

And I get it. I get it. It’s supposed to feel like the original show. It took a while then for Ian and Barbara to be more than the woman and the big strong man. But before that happened… they were boring! With a few exceptions, in most episodes, until that changed, were dead boring. But they had over 25 hours of screentime to go through that phase and develop as characters. Series 11 has less than 8. Passivity doesn’t really work with that little time.

And even then, the original crew got breaks. That we saw. The episode would begin and end with their normal, every day lives going on. The Tsuranga Conundrum started out like that. That was good. But I don’t even quite remember how it ends. They defeat the creature and then… go home I guess? They killed the mother spider in Arachnids in the UK, and then… went off to adventure some more? Where’s the resolution? Where’s our view of how this experience affected the main characters? You need that with episodic stories. The Woman Who Fell to Earth did it brilliantly, and then The Ghost Monument had that moment with the new TARDIS, rush of excitement, and then…

The excitement just stopped building. It petered out. Fun stories and all, but… The overall writing in terms of the characters is just really off.

Tl;Dr — I like it a lot, but the characters are too passive and sweet and don’t ever seem affected by anything after it’s over and the season is almost over while I don’t even know what makes Yaz angry.