In 1962 the BBC introduced viewers to the Doctor. At the time, all we knew about him was that he was a time traveler. Over the years, we learned he was a genius, a time lord, and quite a bit more about the character. At least the viewers learned these things. Based on the first three episodes of the latest season of Doctor Who, the writers didn’t learn anything about the character, and have turned him into a moron.
In the latest episode, as one of the Doctor’s companions lay dying, the Doctor stands by useless, apparently unable to perform CPR. Fortunately Amy Pond is smarter than the dimwitted Doctor. More than that, for the past several seasons viewers have been hit over the head with the fact that the Doctor’s only weapon is his sonic screwdriver. However when the alien of the latest episode lures victims in using sound, it never occurs to the Doctor to turn on his own sonic device and block the sound. Instead, he stands there impotently as the victims are taken.
The current writers seem to have no idea about what came before. In the season opener, the TARDIS arrives in the oval office in 1969 and President Nixon has no idea what it is. By 1969, according to the show, the Doctor had been working with U.N.I.T. (the United Nations Intelligence Task Force) since 1968. It was stated explicitly that the U.N. Security Council and U.N.I.T. created the first contact procedures in 1968. So the idea that the President of the United States wouldn’t know about the agency’s alien scientific advisor is unlikely.
The writers seem to be quickly running out of ideas, as they have created two sets of aliens that you must look at to stop, They also ended the last season with the TARDIS exploding, without ever figuring out why that happened. While the BBC promoted the fact that the season opener was filmed in America for the first time, the episode featured no reason for doing so. There was nothing that couldn’t have been filed on a soundstage in Britain.
I am begging the writers to go back to the show’s roots, when the Doctor was a hero worth watching, instead of the mewling, ineffective twit he has become.