Current Events > Doctor Who Series 11 was a step in the right direction

(+) Yeah! (+)

The quality of the season was shaky, don't get me wrong. I personally liked The Tsuranga Conundrum as the dumb monster episode it was, but I get why most others didn't like it and it was ultimately episodes like Kerblam and Demons of the Punjab that shone through that season. I might not court much of an audience saying this, but I enjoyed Demons of the Punjab more than any Peter Capaldi episode.

Tangent aside, here's what I mean when I say last season was a step in the right direction: it was an honest to god attempt to try something new.

RTD's run relied on older monsters to a degree, with the Daleks in particular making a big impact on his first two seasons of the show. But there was a fair amount of good new stuff - the Krillitane, the Midnight stuff, the Ood pre-Myth Arc, just about every Christmas episode monster. Even the way that the Daleks were used in the first three seasons was an attempt to be fresh - confronting the Doctor's horror and guilt over the Time War, pulling off an intra-dimensional Trojan Horse, trying another human hybrid plot.

I don't think there was a lot of growth with Moffat's run, a lot of his stories remained rooted in the past. The Daleks have their society on Skaro, the Cybermen are splintered across the universe, the Silurians want to overthrow the surface people and regain their place as the dominant species on earth etc. I mean Moffat once made a Zygon episode where he depicted them in a similar light to ISIS, but that sucked.

Chibnall's series floundered in a lot of places, especially in episodes he himself penned. Arachnids In The UK is a turd, and the last episode is too standalone and basic in places. But he's at least trying to make new shit again.

The Stenza have potential to be awesome. Tim Shaw kept teeth as his trophies, but who's to say that Stenza don't keep different trophies of their prey? The different races that existed prior to the Time Lords have been hit or miss, but the Demons of the Punjab were fantastic. There's room for all sorts of creature features, historical stories, new alien worlds and Earth-centric stories set in Sheffield.

Moffat ended up jerking off the same handful of monsters and shitting out this monsters-under-the-bed garbage. I'd rather see the show break new ground, even if the ground ends up being shaky at times. Series 11 was rough, but if the show's not going to try new things, then why bother?

Eschewing everything else from the series' history isn't the way to go, but I can't fault Chibnall for trying new things. The early seasons of New Who were great because they were at least trying new things without getting mired in the clout of its classic monsters. A lot of Moffat's new stuff was just kind of weak throughout his entire run, and I'm liking Chibnall's take on Sheffield in the same way I liked a lot of RTD's episodes set on contemporary Earth.
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