Curate, connect, and discover
I've had a bit of a mixed opinion on the newest doctor who stuff for a while now, and for most of that time I've really struggled to pin point what exactly it is that's been missing. The writing isn't bad (for the most part), the actors are great, the settings are interesting and overall its felt like a very needed breath of fresh air for the show... but there is something missing, and I think I've finally figured out what it is.
The aliens are gone.
No seriously, look back on all of 15's episodes from both the current season and the last and count how many of them include some sort of alien civilisation or society. Not just a singular monstrous alien that acts as an antagonist but an actual collective. There are very few. And no, aliens that are visually indistinguishable from regular humans do not count.
from what I can tell, there are three. Just three. Three alien species across an entire season and a half of doctor who.
There's the slugs from dot and bubble, the birdmen in Rouge and the singular Silurian in joy to the world.
And from those three all of them act as antagonistic forces.
Just as a quick comparison, the first season of new who, which came out in 2005 and had a significantly smaller budget had at least 6.
Sorry, wait, did I say first season? My mistake what I meant was first two episodes.
Where have they all gone? The universe of Doctor Who used to be teeming with so many different reoccurring and one off alien races that all interacted and coexisted. They weren't just throwaway villains, they were living, breathing creatures.
It used to be so rich with so much diverse life. The living plastic, The Slitheen, Daleks, Adipose, Sontaran's, The Catkind, The Ood, Silurians, The Silence, The Atraxi, The Racnoss, The family of blood, The mighty Jagrafess, The Reapers, The Judoon, The Hath, The Ice warriors, The vashta nerada, The Sycorax, The tree people, The Zygon.
But now the best they can do is regular humans and sometimes the odd robot or two. It's kind of depressing when you really look at it. The universe of doctor who has lost its magic, the life that was once abundant wherever the doctor landed is now sparse and non-existent. We don't visit alien civilisations anymore, we don't even encounter aliens anymore.