Doctor Who: Why Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Needs an ‘Everybody Lives!’ Moment

In isolation this might seem like optimism tempered with caution, but since Chris Chibnall became showrunner, edgy, provocative ideas have crept in and given stories a cynical edge. Small moments have a cumulative effect, such as Epzo’s story about his mother in ‘The Ghost Monument’, Robertson surviving ‘Arachnids in the UK’ without learning any moral lessons and indeed likely to cause more suffering, ‘Kerblam!’ ending with the system that blew up an innocent woman being allowed to continue (while closing the warehouse for four weeks and offering employees two weeks’ holiday pay), Daniel Barton escaping freely in ‘Spyfall’ while the Doctor wipes the memories of someone doomed to die, ‘Orphan 55’ shows us the unavoidable destruction of the human race, as does ‘Ascension of the Cybermen’. Under Moffat, we had some episodes ending with cynical quips that left a bad taste in the mouth, but under Chibnall the bad taste is there before the outro quip.