To paraphrase that wise old Vulcan from across the science fiction aisle: “Perhaps new Who is for new fans.”

I’ve been around long enough to remember the flickering black and white glow of the first Doctor Who episode on my family’s wood-paneled television, and yes, I did watch from behind the sofa. I was five, and the grindy, wheezing, whooshing sound of the TARDIS stuck with me, a sound I’d recognize decades later with the same thrill that accompanied my first kiss, or the moment Armstrong stepped onto the Moon.

I grew up with the Doctor, through all their faces and foibles, from the gentleness of Troughton to the whimsy of Tom Baker’s scarfed silhouette. The show wasn’t perfect, never has been, but it had a sort of ramshackle brilliance that made it feel like ours. British. Imaginative. A little cheap, I mean it was the BBC, but so full of heart.

When the classic series ended in the ’80s, I mourned. Like losing an eccentric uncle, strange, inconsistent, but dearly beloved. Then, in 2005, Russell T Davies brought it back with Eccleston, and by the stars, what a revival! It had teeth, wit, charm, and it remembered where it came from too. I danced through the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. Tennant’s tragic hero. Smith’s madman with a box. River Song’s tangled timeline, that was poetry. It all mattered to me.

But time is merciless. Like the Doctor, the show changed, and perhaps, like the Doctor, I did too. Capaldi was brilliant on paper, but the writing lost its way. Companions died too easily, too cruelly, as if the writers were punishing us for caring. The warmth faded.

And then came Jodie Whittaker. I wanted to like her, truly! Yet, the spark wasn’t there for me. The stories felt like sermons, and not the good kind, not the “what does it mean to be human?” kind. More like being scolded during Saturday tea.

With Ncuti Gatwa, I had hope again. Charismatic, dynamic, full of promise, but so far, the stories seem more interested in the symbolism of who the Doctor is than in what the Doctor does. Maybe that’s necessary. Maybe that’s what this era needs, but it doesn’t grab me the way it once did.

I questioned myself. Was this discomfort rooted in something ugly? Was I turning into the kind of bitter old fan who snarls at change? A dinosaur, roaring into extinction? Was I being sexist? Even racist?

No. I don’t think so.

I think Doctor Who is evolving for a new generation. New voices, new faces, new visions. It’s becoming something that maybe, just maybe, isn’t for me anymore, and that’s okay. I had my Doctors. I had my adventures in time and space, and now it’s someone else’s turn to run down corridors, face impossible odds, and save the universe with a grin and a screwdriver.

And so I say, sincerely: long live Doctor Who. Even if the TARDIS no longer comes for me.

Endnote 
The first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast on November 23, 1963 by the BBC. The episode, titled “An Unearthly Child”, introduced viewers to the First Doctor, played by William Hartnell.

Interestingly, the broadcast was slightly overshadowed by news coverage of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred the day before. As a result, the BBC repeated the first episode the following week before continuing with the rest of the serial.