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By Chris Snellgrove
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As a Doctor Who fan, I recently felt like I was trapped in an episode of this beloved sci-fi series. That’s because, as soon as the BBC confirmed that the show was getting canceled, I entered some kind of bizarre time loop. My social media feeds were filled with people breathlessly claiming that Doctor Who was canceled because it was overly woke. Hadn’t I been here before, listening to the same arguments about how progressive messaging killed a progressive sci-fi show? Yup. The same thing happened three months ago, when Paramount announced that Starfleet Academy was canceled, effectively killing active production on Star Trek TV shows for the foreseeable future.
When that happened, many critics claimed that Starfleet Academy had been canceled because it was an overly woke show, what with its gay Klingon and characters endlessly talking about their emotions. Now, those critics are claiming that Doctor Who (which, like Trek TV, is on indefinite hiatus) was canceled because of its own wokeness, what with its openly queer Doctor and proud identity politics. However, wokeness didn’t kill either of these franchises; bad writing did. At the end of the day, both of these fantastically expensive sci-fi series were canceled because not enough people were watching. As Discovery’s Tilly might say in the cringiest possible way, that’s the power of math, people!
The End Of Two Eras
Right now, Star Trek and Doctor Who are in the same boat. Starfleet Academy was the only Trek show in active production; after it was canceled, Paramount (under new, post-merger leadership) decided to pivot entirely to movies. It could be a long time before we see a new Trek on television. Last time Paramount pivoted this IP to film, there was a 12-year wait between shows. Now, Doctor Who is effectively canceled because the BBC is looking for someone else to produce the show (Disney declined to renew their own production deal last year). Last time Doctor Who went on hiatus, there was a 16-year wait between shows.
So, Doctor Who and Star Trek are in the same boat: on hiatus for the foreseeable future. Another major thing that these shows have in common is that haters claim they were canceled because of their “woke” content. Doctor Whofor example, prominently features a queer Black actor, a trans supporting character, and preferred pronouns. Starfleet Academymeanwhile, has multiple gay characters, polyamorous Klingons, and a dude prominently wearing a skirt. Once these shows got canceled, many critics pointed to this aforementioned content as the reason they got the axe, citing the oldest, dumbest axiom of the internet: “go woke, go broke!”
Woke From The Beginning
Star Trek has, of course, been woke from the beginning: the first pilot episode featured a strong female commander, the Original Series featured a multiracial crew, featured an interracial kiss, and so on. The franchise retained such progressive wokeness throughout the decades, and while Starfleet Academy was no more woke than what came before. What it was, however, was very badly written. The progressive messaging of this show is that much more noticeable because it’s that much louder and on the nose. This would be bad enough even if the show were otherwise well-written. Unfortunately, the poor writing and sometimes nonsensical plotting of Starfleet Academy ensured that obvious identity politics sometimes overshadowed everything else.
Similarly, Doctor Who has been very visibly woke since the NuWho era began back in 2005. These early seasons featured a male Doctor kissing his flamboyantly gay Companion, spouting anti-war messaging, and emphasizing that major corporations are evil.; nonetheless, it was successful enough to warrant nearly two decades‘ worth of new episodes. Fast-forward to the Disney era of Doctor Who, and the show hadn’t gotten any more woke. The Doctor was still kissing dudes, war was still bad, and corporations were still evil. Written well, none of this offends anyone, regardless of politics. Written poorly, the virtue signalling gets so loud that it’s tough to make out the message of any given episode.
The Numbers Are Ugly
Simply being woke would never be enough to get the respective Star Trek and Doctor Who fandoms to turn on their favorite franchises. After all, the franchises have each been woke for decades. But being badly written can destroy these brands in very short order. For example, both Trek and Who tried to pander to a wider audience, but this backfired. Old-school fans just stopped tuning in, feeling like what they saw onscreen no longer resembled the franchise they fell in love wth. Meanwhile, poor marketing and diminishing name recognition meant these shows didn’t gain any new fans. The result? A show that ends up bleeding money.
Paramount never really releases streaming numbers, so it’s impossible to know exactly how many people watched Starfleet Academy. Notably, it never cracked the Top 10 Nielsen streaming originals list. Citing an unnamed source, Mike Stoklassa of Red Letter Media claimed that Season 1 only got a cumulative number of 400,000 viewers, which averages out to 40,000 views per episode. Meanwhile, the first season reportedly cost $100 million, averaging out to $10 million per episode. At the end of the day, it’s just math: because Starfleet Academy cost a small fortune to make and didn’t attract enough viewers, it got the axe.
The Juice Ain’t Worth The Squeeze
The same can be said for Doctor Who. Showrunner Russel T. Davies had a way bigger budget than he otherwise would have, thanks to Disney. They covered half the costs; the episodes featuring Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor reportedly cost between $8.5 million and $10.5 million. That’s about three times what it cost to make Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who episodes. However, these new episodes failed to crack the Nielsen top 10. And on the BBC, Gatwa reportedly lost about a million views from season to season, culminating in a Season 2 finale that garnered only 2.25 million views. Like Starfleet Academyit’s not worth making super expensive episodes if nobody is watching them.
Wokeness didn’t kill these franchises because they’ve been woke since before most of their haters were born. But each franchise tried in vain to appeal to broader audiences, creating shows that drove away old fans while failing to recruit new ones. Old-school fans of Star Trek and Doctor Who were very accustomed to woke messaging, but it was usually packaged with stellar writing. Continuous poor writing drove away the base of each show until there was nothing left but a handful of diehards. Sobering as it is, the creators of Trek and Who just learned a brutal lesson: you can’t have a successful blockbuster show with only a handful of fans.
