Doctor Who: Time to say goodbye to season 11

The season finale of Doctor Who is upon us – so let’s take stock of Thirteen’s inaugural outing and see where we are.

Sadly, Doctor Who season 11 is almost over. Yes, really. For reasons beyond my particular understanding, Chris Chibnall apparently favors slightly shorter seasons than its modern era predecessors, clocking in at just 10 episodes and a New Year’s special, rather than 12 and a Christmas story.

This is an especially unfortunate development given the fact that the shortened episode count makes it feel as though we’re cutting off its inaugural season just as the Thirteenth Doctor era is starting to sing. To be sure, season 11’s initial installments were very entertaining. “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” was as pitch perfect introduction to the series’ first female Doctor as one could have ever hoped for. And the historical installment “Rosa” is absolutely one of the best episodes the series has ever done. But it wasn’t until we reached the back half of season 11 — the corporate mystery “Kerblam!”, historical story “The Witchfinders”, and the mad but beautiful “It Takes You Away” that we really started seeing what this particular version of Doctor Who could do.

Which, it turns out, is a lot of really interesting stuff. And as a result, it’s hard not to be excited about what this show could become.

This season isn’t so interested in overarching villains or puzzle box mysteries, in fact most episodes barely include something you can identify as a bad guy. Some of them aren’t actually even villains at all — the Solitract is a lonely cosmic god and the Thijarians are actually secret humanitarians. For every time jumping white supremacist hell-bent on upholding oppression, there’s a story about an alien who actually doesn’t want to hurt anyone at all. It’s a rather lovely way of showing the different sorts of creatures that reside in our universe and underlining the idea that there isn’t a binary of good and evil running between them.

Whereas Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who was more narratively complex — sometimes overly so — Chibnall’s version seems to focus more on emotional depth. That’s not a bad thing and actually feels kind of refreshing after so many seasons that avoided substantial character development. But it certainly is an adjustment, particularly for viewers who came aboard during the Moffat years, and are more used to action-packed installments with clearly defined enemies to fight.

Instead, season 11 generally opts for more introspective stories, focusing on everything from a companion’s search to understand her family’s past (“Demons of the Punjab”), to the broader implications of misogyny in society (“The Witchfinders”). This season has wrestled with big picture ideas like grief, racism, corporatism, sexism, fatherhood, and activism, all filtered through the way these things impact and effect regular people. It’s an adjustment, to be sure, because when compared to big stories about the fate of Gallifrey or wars stretching across space and time, these things can feel pretty small. (But they aren’t to the people going through them.)

That doesn’t mean the season is perfect, however.

No matter how good season 11’s individual storylines might be, the lack of a clear narrative throughline is probably what feels the most jarring for viewers. We’ve been trained to expect a big story spanning the season, something that goes beyond a group of strangers becoming friends with one another. So it does feel almost as though season 11 is spinning its wheels in places, even as Ryan and Graham reach a key emotional moment in the season’s penultimate episode.

Additionally, the presence of so many characters often means that each companion — if they’re lucky — receives tiny bits of development each week. Yaz, in particular, is often underwritten, and until “It Takes You Away” aired, Graham’s inner pain hadn’t been discussed in any real way in several weeks. That’s definitely a problem that season 12 needs to address, assuming that all members of Team TARDIS are returning for the Doctor’s next outing.

But for a season that needed to reset so many things, as well as find its own voice and structure, it’s hard to be too angry with the product we ended up with. Is Doctor Who season 11 the greatest season of the show ever? No, it’s not. But it’s perfectly enjoyable overall, with an extremely compelling lead, plenty of room to grow and a season finale still to come. Not a bad place to end up, all told.

Doctor Who season 11 concludes next Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on BBC America.