But something to bear in mind: don’t let other people’s opinions dictate what you like. The only thing that is really important is that you like that era.
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Agreed - one thing I’ve realised as I’ve gotten back into the show the past few years is that all the Doctors are great, and there are things to love in every era. Maybe not everyone likes every era, but that shouldn’t take away from your own opinions 
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I enjoy the 13 era, while I think the writing in some of the episodes is very weak, Jodie and the others make it up with fantastic acting and energy, and the era has some truly spectacular episodes which deserve to be up there in the echelons with the other 2 showrunners. However, there are some two key aspects that I feel hampered the perception of the 13 era.
Series 11 is very back-heavy in terms of quality, The Woman Who Fell to Earth is a fantastic opener, but I’m going to be so real with you, if I watched the 13 era on release weekly, and I had to wait a week between episodes, I would have quit Doctor Who entirely. I just think Ghost Monument to Tsuranga are just a very weak set of episodes, this is also a year after Twice Upon a Time and the end of my favourite era of the show, so it would have stung extra. Quitting the show then would have been a tragedy given in this same season we also got Demons, Witchfinders, and It Takes you Away, which are amazing, beautiful, fantastic episodes. If we had gotten those episodes at the start of the series, I think it would have been better received.
As for the other issue, Chibnall liked to shake up the status quo quite a bit, and in some instances it worked out, bringing on the first ever female Doctor allowed the show to explore episodes and themes that were previously unavailable, and to great success in the case of Witchfinders. Then Chibnall did other things such as kill Gallifrey again, which is a controversial choice in of itself, but then discovering the pay off to that event is The Timeless Children is yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.
While this post comes off as a bit more negative that I would hope, overall I would say I enjoyed the era. I agree with Tian that you shouldn’t let the opinions of others dictate what you like (easier said than done 
), but I just want to add that you should cherish the good that came from the era. We were blessed to get some truly amazing episodes, and Chibnall and Jodie and all the others put their heart and soul into the show, and while there were some stumbles, we were truly lucky to have gotten something so unique and wonderful as the 13 era.
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I really enjoyed 13s era. For me it was a breath of fresh air after 12s time which I had struggled with somewhat.
The problem was that once Jodie was announced as the Doctor, a section of fandom was already predisposed to dislike it simply due to the difficulty with accepting a woman as the Doctor.
Actual discussion - and valid criticism - about the era was constantly drowned out by cries of misogyny and ‘wokeness’. For some reason a lot of fans, who claimed to be willing to give it a chance, took against Whitaker’s characterisation of the Doctor (if I read the word ‘gravitas’ one more time online I may go ■■■■■■■ insane) and it sort of sealed the era’s fate.
Add to this the fact that, admittedly, Chibnall has some faults as a writer, and nothing was going to drag fandom out of the mire it had fallen into.
And that’s a huge, huge shame. There are so many brilliant episodes in that time which, I feel, are the epitomy of Doctor Who and desperately in need of reappraisal: Demons of the Punjab, Spyfall, The Haunting of Villa Diodati to name but three. What’s quite obvious now - if you stay away from cesspits like X and Facebook still complaining about wokeness - is that fandom is generally being more open to listening to more reasoned opinions - both positive and negative - about the era.
Sadly, fandom does this - it happened in the 80s when fans wanted to hang, draw and quarter JNT for his perceived failings and lost their minds over stories like The Happiness Patrol and Delta and the Bannermen. It seems to be happening again with RTD (and did, let’s not forget with Moffat) and even cursed the New Adventures when there were constant ‘rad vs trad’ debates.
At the end of the day, in the precise moment an era is happening, fandom’s negativity always seems louder than its positivity. It’s, as has been discussed elsewhere, partly fear of cancellation, it’s fear of mockery, it’s frustration at not finding joy in their favourite show.
But it is passing for 13s time and it will pass for Ncuti’s too.
Just remember that you are allowed to enjoy the show however you want and if other fans have a problem with that then, as I tell my class of 8 and 9 year olds most days, they need to Mind Their Own Business…
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I’m tempted to just link this:
Don’t be put off by the title/runtime, the author is a trans woman, acting in good faith, analysing all of series 11 and 12 in one video
Personally, I just found it mostly bland and generic. I love it when Doctor Who is weird and experimental and complex, and I didn’t really find this era to be any of those things until Flux, which wasn’t planned. Anything new it did try (a female doctor, the fugitive doctor, the timeless child) it did nothing with. It felt like it did things just to say that it did them, rather than because there was a story it wanted to tell. Series 11 especially felt like a female doctor was the risk they took, and so they compensated by playing everything else incredibly safe. The climax of the Rosa Parks episode deals more with a bus schedule than it does with actual racism, but now they can say they did a Rosa Parks episode. The Amazon episode is, at best, politically confused (if a good portion of the audience of your anti-amazon story come away feeling like it was pro-amazon, there’s a problem), but now they can say they did an Amazon episode. It Takes You Away has some weird visuals, but it’s not actually a weird story. Chibnall himself admits that the series 11 finale is literally a first draft and therefore one of his weakest scripts. I like the pitch for this series, it just falls flat when it comes to the execution. (And then there’s the occasional actually awful bits like when the Doctor weaponizes the Master’s race againat him in Spyfall, or the hologram scene from Survivors of the Flux that feels extremely anti-refugee.) I went in wanting to like it, it just very rarely worked for me
To be clear, I do like some stuff from this era (Flux is fun, Demons of the Punjab is mostly good, Resolution is possibly the most original Dalek story we’ve had in years, I even have a soft spot for Praxeus), just less than half
Interestingly, I really enjoyed the tie-in books and comics that came out around the same time (I’ve recently finished the Mistress of Chaos graphic novel, and it was phenomenal), which further suggest to me that my issues lie with the specific writing team under Chibnall, rather than any fundemental flaws with the series itself
(Also, this era came off the back of the 12th Doctor era, which I adored. It’s always a little frustrating when the show is doing something I really love, then decides to pivot in a totally different direction. It’s one of the same issues I have going from 8 and Charley to 8 and Lucie)
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I was going to link to that YouTube video but I forgot what it was called.
It has a clickbaity title.
I think when I watched it I was actually kind of protest-watching it because I thought it was going to be full of hate but I ended up agreeing with 90% of the points made.
And I agree with what you said above. I also think that they played it too safe with the Doctor’s gender - purposefully made her a bit androgynous instead of making her at all feminine, gave her non-feminine clothes, and hardly ever mentioned the change in gender. It was all very safe.
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And if they had mentioned her gender more you can guarantee there would have been complaints that they should have ignored it more.
Damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.
My main issue is that, really, are the faults of the writing any more egregious than what people complained about with RTD or Moffat? I really don’t think they are. I can’t even begin to agree that Demons of the Punjab is ‘mostly good’ - it’s a beautiful piece of Doctor Who reminiscent of The Massacre. There is so much focus put on one or two ‘controversial’ aspects of stories (Kerblam’s apparently pro-Amazon stance; the end of Spyfall etc) that people are blinded towards what is actually really very good about the era.
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I actually ADORED how they handle the Doctor’s gender as Thirteen. It gets mentioned often enough that it comes up but is still treated casually. And I think that really fits with the way the Doctor, and also Time Lords in general, do gender. I read her as someone to whom gender isn’t very important internally, who only notices when she is affected by it. Her being surprised at being called a woman, or having to remind herself that that’s how other people see her, is very relatable to me. I also think it shows the contrast between the Doctor and the Master very well. The Master is someone very dramatic and that extends to their treatment of gender expression as well. She goes out fully as for the Mary Poppins vibe, even changing her name to fit! Meanwhile the Doctor is most of all, eccentric and that is what stays in the outfit and everything. I just don’t think gender plays a big, if any role in how the Doctor sees themself
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I sometimes I wish I could formulate my posts as concisely as this one! 100% agree with what you’ve said.
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I hate that Thasmin felt like an afterthought to Chibnall, they could’ve done so much more and I hope the big finish series explores that relationship
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I mean, it was an afterthought. Thasmin wasn’t something planned with Thirteen’s introduction. It’s something that grew in the fandom and eventually reached Whittaker who brought it up with Chibnall who then decided to go with it. It wasn’t something planned, it was something that developed naturally. And I think that’s rather beautiful. One can disagree on whether the final execution was good or bad, but I very much like this ‘romance that cannot be’ as it is. Though I very much agree with you on hoping Big Finish explores it further
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