Doctor Who Season 10: Why I was worried, and why I was wrong to be!

Season 10 of Doctor Who has been slowly creeping up on me but I had been actively avoiding thinking about it too much. Don’t get me wrong I’m not one of the people unhappy with showrunner Steven Moffat’s writing, nor am I against Peter Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor, although I can see where the criticisms of both are coming from. No, it was the trailer that made me dread the coming of the new season.

Why? I hear you ask. Well, honestly it made the new assistant come across as, how should I put this, simple? Idiotic? Vacant? The trailer was the first anyone would see of Bill, and what we were given was a whole bunch of close-ups highlighting Pearl Mackie’s best wide-eyed open-mouthed look and a bunch of reactionary dialogue full of wonder and amazement like ‘Doctor What?’ Compared to the intelligent Clara full of Hubris, or the joint team of Amy and Rory this made Bill seem, not as good.

Then there were the topical references and cultural and societal nods. Some of the new villains appeared to be robots whose faces are made up by emojis (or emoticons as they were called back in my day) and Missy dabbing. Doctor Who has always been a show that is actually quite good at incorporating things that are relevant from real life, however these things did make me cringe a little bit. Call me cynical as well, but the revelation that Bill would be a lesbian also came across as pandering.

So, yeah, I wasn’t looking forward to the tenth season of Doctor Who, or the first episode ‘The Pilot’ however I have no shame in admitting that I was wrong. My worries about Pearl Mackie’s Bill dissipated very quickly, she wasn’t a dim-witted, constantly amazed simpleton, but a smart-witted, warm-hearted, vulnerable sci-fi nerd who feels like a real person and she was excellently acted by Pearl, and a perfect balance to Peter’s Capaldi, as well as being something fresh and new in the companion role.

I was also completely wrong to be cynical about her being a lesbian because it was handled perfectly in this episode, with the relationship between Bill and a woman she meets at a nightclub being the core of the drama.

Capaldi’s Doctor has undergone somewhat of a journey since he was first introduced as the brooding, grouchy man unsure of whether or not he was a good person. Now he’s a sweet, caring eccentric imparting knowledge as a lecturer and doing touching things like using his time travelling abilities to present orphaned Bill with pictures of her mother as she’d never seen any before, there’s no angst or anger here, just softness. It’s different and it works!

In fact Moffat has made a clever, albeit obvious homophone with the episode’s title, not only is it pertinent to what happens in the plot, but ‘The Pilot’ is also referring to the fact that this episode somewhat soft-resets Doctor Who as a series, in a way that means you don’t have to have watched the show before to understand what’s going on.

We’re reintroduced to the Doctor who seems to have had a fresh start, and we’re given a new companion, but there’s no shock twists, no timey wimey stuff, no elaborate adventure, even if there is a brief visit from iconic Doctor Who villains the Daleks, just a story focussed on characters, heart, love and emotions. There’s also no ‘chosen one’ quality about Bill like there was with Clara or Amy (not yet anyway) and there was no ‘kicking off with a bang’. This episode was understated, calm and solid and it washed away all of my fears. Doctor Who is back!