From what I've been reading there is a wide range of opinions on series 14 and 15. I've noticed a lot of the older fans of the show are a bit divided by the new pacing and changes.
Personally I am loving the direction of these episodes. I adore the Doctor's personality and the shake up of a companion that doesn't want to travel (for once). The storytelling is nice, too.
What are your thoughts?
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I have complicated feelings on 15s era. On one hand, I really love it- I think most of his episodes are good, 15 is a great doctor, and I like the companions.
However, I think his era is hurt a lot by the shortened seasons, it throws off character arcs a lot (particularly the recent season lmao) and it just makes the finales feel sudden and awkward. There are some absolutely gorgeous episodes I will continue to return to again and again (73 Yards and The Well), as well as some fun episodes I just really enjoyed (Robot Revolution minus the cat scene, Lux, Space Babies, etc). But those finales were just... awkward. Also with the shortened episode count, the fact that so many episodes were doctor-lite felt kind of weird, you'd think they'd use as many episodes as possible to focus on fleshing out the character arcs but they didn't :(
On the whole I think this era was good, series 14 was especially good (Ruby isn't my favorite, but she was well written, I like her story a lot, and I think she had a lot of good episodes), but my opinion has soured on it after series 15's ending. Like many people, I found Belinda's whole character arc to be very poorly handled. She was set up as a really strong character (honestly she was the main reason I was excited for this series!) but after about 3 episodes, she fell apart. I think the point when she completely changed personalities was the end of Interstellar Song Contest. Just when she was warming up to the Doctor, she saw him torture a guy in cold blood (he was already defeated, it was not nessesary) but then just... brushed it off and kept being best friends with him. The Belinda just a few stories ago would've lost all trust in the Doctor!
Then, you'd think that the Interstellar Song Contest was setting up something interesting for the Doctors character arc, that he'd have more of a crisis over what he did than just "I have trauma so I tortured a man oops." But because we only have 8 episodes and the finale takes up 2, suddenly the next episode they have amnesia and he regenerates so nothing ever comes of it. And Belinda, the character known for being very confident and independent, has her whole character erased and written over to have a child. It puts a bad taste in my mouth personally.
It's upsetting because this series started off SO WELL only to fall apart at the end.
Anyways TLDR: series 14 is really good and Gatwa is one of my favorite doctors, I'm just sad about the ending of series 15 bc it had so much wasted potential and fumbled its message really badly lol
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