{"id":225,"date":"2026-06-08T04:39:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T04:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=225"},"modified":"2026-06-08T04:39:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T04:39:47","slug":"russell-t-davies-is-stuck-in-a-purity-spiral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=225","title":{"rendered":"Russell T Davies is stuck in a purity spiral"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

My father was a great admirer of the television show\u00a0Dr Who<\/em>, right from the start in 1964. Because I\u2019m so old, I remember three Doctors: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. I was four when I started watching it; 14 when I finally rebelled, using the occasion of Tom Baker becoming the Fourth Doctor to jump ship and make a clean break, which consisted of playing records loudly in my bedroom.<\/p>\n

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But looking back, they were good years; I came from a very loving and secure background\u00a0\u2014\u00a0an only child\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and Saturday evenings watching the show\u00a0as\u00a0a\u00a0family was one of the tableaux which seem to sum it up. The evening meal was taken early (my dad barely able to keep calm as he strode around the kitchen; he didn\u2019t believe in women cooking, being a Communist\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and a show off), I was dispatched to walk the dog until it became exhausted, my mother took extra pains with making the always immaculate lounge even more welcoming. Then we would gather to absorb the magic; talking was frowned upon and as for anything as daft as screaming at the Daleks or hiding behind the sofa, forget it \u2014 this was a serious business. After my teenage rebellion, I avoided anything to do with\u00a0Dr Who<\/em>\u00a0for decades \u2014 but on discovering that my third husband was a Whovian, it was kind of like coming home. When one of my favorite actors, Christopher Eccleston, was announced as the Ninth Doctor after a long lay-off, I decided to throw myself into this new but oddly familiar fan experience.<\/p>\n

I was very lucky to get back onboard when I did; this was the brilliant pairing of Eccleston and Billie Piper as his companion Rose Tyler, an unconsummated love story to rival\u00a0Lost In Translation<\/em>. It was here also that I became a fan of the writer Russell T Davies, going back to seek out his earlier body of work. But when Eccleston left after just one season and was replaced by the ineffably irritating David Tennant \u2014 all mugging and shrugging, with a Cockney accent that made Dick van Dyke look like Ray Winston \u2014 I lost interest. When my husband watched it, I\u2019d go into my bedroom and play CDs loudly.<\/p>\n

So when it was announced that RTD was returning to\u00a0Dr Who<\/em> in 2021 after several years of plummeting ratings, I didn\u2019t even know he\u2019d left in 2010. The fans were jubilant, as he was still revered for the way he\u2019d brought the show back to life in 2005 and made it a surprise smash hit; the general feeling was that each subsequent change of show-runner had watered down that winning formula a little more, and the most recent incumbent (Chris Chibnall) had brought it to the brink of cancellation with atrocious scripts, an unlikeable lead (Jodie Whittaker) and an insufferably preachy tone that had a lot to do with the internet\u2019s idea of social justice and almost nothing to do with monsters. The \u201cDoctor Woo\u201d jibe had been well earned. Of course we all knew RTD was a raging Leftie, but we also knew (or at least believed) he was no fool. This was going to be Doctor Who<\/em>\u2019s last chance \u2014 surely he\u2019d have the sense to rein in the wokery a bit, bring back the half-decent jokes and reverse or at least ignore Chibnall\u2019s disastrous Timeless Child storyline, which had posited that the First Doctor was not, in fact, William Hartnell but a little black girl? And we had every reason to feel encouraged by an interview that had recently appeared in the Telegraph<\/em>\u00a0with the headline \u201cRUSSELL T DAVIES LAMBASTS DIVERSITY FIXATION OF \u2018RUBBISH\u2019 NEW TV WRITERS\u201d. Go get \u2019em, Russell!<\/p>\n

To say that what happened next was disappointing would be like saying that Daleks don\u2019t make the best bartenders. RTD\u2019s first comeback episode began by introducing us to a transgender youngster who wasted no time in telling off the Doctor for assuming a monster\u2019s pronouns; that pretty much set the tone for the two (mercifully short) series that followed, in which Ncuti Gatwa gave us his Doctor as a prancing ninny who\u2019d burst into tears at the drop of a fancy hat. But this incessant woo was actually the least of the revamped show\u2019s problems. Davies had always been better at dialog than plot, but whatever storytelling skills he\u2019d once had seemed to have deserted him: series-spanning story arcs led nowhere, or to the tritest conclusions, and it soon became apparent that he still knew how to start a story but had totes forgotten how to end one. Even the humor was labored and often weirdly childish, or else weirdly bitter.<\/p>\n

When people inevitably started to complain, he\u00a0hit back, saying they just had to accept that the show wasn\u2019t for them any more. But it didn\u2019t really seem to be for anyone else either, as the ratings continued to plummet; almost every episode in the second series got lower ratings than the one before and so became, for one week only, the lowest-rated episode ever. And then it just stopped, seemingly halfway through a story that made absolutely no sense, and Ncuti was off, amid rumors of backstage bust-ups, to be fleetingly replaced by Billie Piper, for reasons that almost certainly don\u2019t exist yet and probably never will.<\/p>\n

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Now Davies is back:\u00a0not only\u00a0with\u00a0Tip Toe<\/em>, a miniseries about two next-door neighbors (Alan Cumming as a gay bar owner, David Morrissey as a straight electrician), but also with a strange new beef that no one saw coming. It was set off when, talking to the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>, Davies said of including a sympathetic gender-realist female character: \u201cI wanted all sorts of voices in there. I\u2019ve got friends who are gender-critical. It\u2019s only online you end up screaming and shouting and being attacked by them. In real life, you have a chat, and we all kind of sigh and put up with each other. That\u2019s how the world works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having friends who think differently from one? How very dare T! Cue India Willoughby piling in on him for speaking to people who don\u2019t think exactly the same as he does, because \u201ctolerating the intolerant is unacceptable\u201d. Some of the snarkiest reactions could be found on Mumsnet, where one user observed that \u201cno doubt he\u2019ll make a statement soon suggesting he was \u2018misquoted\/taken out of context\u2019 and will swear fealty to the Purity Police\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Purity Police are the merciless overseers of the Purity Spirals, and that\u2019s just what Davies has got himself into with Willoughby. In the past, a PS was known as \u201cinfighting\u201d, which has always been so much worse on the Left, where politics takes the role of religion. Purity Spirals are so out-there cray-cray that one of the most famous centered on an Instagram knitting circle run by a gay man who became the victim of a race-row pile-on after he attempted to recruit more people of color by using the hashtag Diversknitty; he was accused of white supremacy and ended up in hospital on suicide watch. A sophisticate once told me that if you sit at a pavement cafe on the Via Veneto long enough, you will see everyone you know. It was probably an exaggeration \u2014 but I do think it true that if you stay on X long enough, you will have a bust-up with India Willoughby.<\/p>\n

Davies has not deigned to answer Willoughby since the initial invitation to a ruck, so I\u2019m hoping that Dr Whobris (as I have dubbed him) will stand firm and not be bullied into submission by the T he seems so determined to add to the LGB \u2014 though, of course, the bad part of me would love to see a good old online barney. Whatever, I think we can safely say that\u00a0Tip Toe<\/em>\u00a0is not the only RTD show in town now that his comeback has commenced: I\u2019ll be keenly observing both.<\/p>\n

Read more Can religious families survive liberalism?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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