#too angry

I'm not going to include this in the final Room With No Doors review - I don't really like going off on tangents about the Chibnall Era unless I can really help it, since I recognise that plenty of people enjoy it more than me and I wouldn't want to take that away from people - but I do think there's something to be said for the way in which Kate Orman handles these themes of the Doctor's role not being that of a cosmic policeman, as distinct from the way it's handled in the Chibnall years.

I see people saying that Yaz quit, and that people who "missed" that are just clueless. But like... I dunno. I guess, to my own personal taste, they never really dealt with the particulars of Yaz's quitting in enough of a substantial fashion, and that speaks to a general aesthetic of the Chibnall Era that I could never get down with.

Would I go so far as to say it is actively "copaganda?" No. But I don't think that's what anybody is really arguing anyway when they say Chibnall is "pro-establishment." And yes, that includes folks like Darren Mooney or El Sandifer, both of whom have written on this topic way better than I ever could tbh.

(And look, having read Darren's stuff for a long time, while I know some folks find him to be sneering or mean-spirited in his treatment of Chibnall, I've never really gotten that veneer. Trust me, I've read his reviews of some truly dire Star Trek episodes and he's way harsher in those than he ever has been on Chibnall imo.)

Chibnall's Who is not "pro-establishment" in the sense of a 50-something, lifelong Republican with an All Lives Matter flag in the back window of their ute. If it's "pro-establishment" at all, it's "pro-establishment" in the sense of your average milquetoast liberal. It may not be *as* conservative, but it's still a preference, on some level, for the status quo. It's comparatively, rather than absolutely, conservative.

Enlightened centrism, if you will. At least in my opinion.

The New Adventures, at least, were generally aware of the weird optics of having the TARDIS inhabited by two regular cast members who were explicitly police officers.

The Room With No Doors, for instance, actively ridicules the view of the Doctor as a non-interventionist, "cosmic policeman," and interrogates Chris' desire to be a hero with specific reference to his policing career, with the character voicing a desire to go back to the kind of small-scale traffic policing that marked his early days on the job.

This is obviously supposed to play against the grandiose notions of "Time's Champion and his steward" that run throughout the NAs, but it's telling that the Chibnall Era never really does anything comparable to this.

We don't really get an in-depth exploration of what Yaz sees in policing, or her eventual disillusionment. We get the general outline, sure, with the backstory of Can You Hear Me? and the eventual revelation - pretty much buried in a throwaway line - that she eventually quit. But that isn't really enough for me, personally. As ever, I should stress that it's totally fine if the character and her arc resonates more with you, mind.

I could also go into Roz's character arc and how she's incredibly multi-faceted and well-rounded as a character, including her relationship to her work as an Adjudicator, but for now I'll basically just leave it at this: That final speech in The Also People as to why she feels justified in turning feLixi in is a better articulation, for me, of a regular character's relationship with their policing work than anything in the Chibnall Era, made all the stronger because while Aaronovitch enables you to understand Roz's perspective, he's shrewd enough to leave the truth of her statements a little ambiguous.

Anyway. Sorry to be so negative, like I said I'm not a fan of doing this too regularly, but The Room With No Doors threw up a lot of comparisons in my head and I wanted to voice them without derailing the flow of the eventual review proper.

Maybe this is dramatic and maybe it’s not, but this ban on discussing mental illness? Think of the people who get the majority of their support from Tumblr. Who have unsupportive families and/or can’t access professional help. This could literally kill people.

Also it’s just…fucking insanely awful how sex in advertisements is fine because “sex sells” but we wouldn’t want to sell our sexy products on a sex-positive app, heavens no. Can’t even say the word “girl” because there might be a naked woman somewhere on your site. No talking about an entire gender because there might be a connection because sex literally exists.