Prefacing this post with the obvious caveat that the RT user score was brigaded, along with the fact that I am and have always been a longtime advocate of a female Doctor and was ecstatic when Jodie Whittaker was cast.
With that being said, here are my issues with series 11:
The scale is too small. Doctor Who is a grand show with an infinite scale, with adventures that can take place anywhere in space and time, with monsters and aliens and weird shit beyond your wildest imagination. But series 11 is just so small. Six episodes, half the season, take place on Earth. Three episodes take place in small spaceship corriders or space stations that effectively resemble Earthlike buildings. And the other two episodes take place on "alien" planets that strongly resemble Earth. Actual aliens are a rare appearance (though there's no shortage of "aliens" that look exactly like human beings). All of these elements are things that have happened in previous Doctor Who seasons from time to time, but never all at the same time, which is what makes it feel so small and boring.
There's too much educational/historical focus. The show is clearly trying to ape the early Hartnell seasons (more on that in a moment) by being more educationally-focused. But, and I hate to say this, but this isn't really what Doctor Who is about anymore. Doctor Who abandoned a historical/educational focus as early as the Pertwee era. For generations of fans, Doctor Who is a big, bombastic sci-fi adventure series. There's nothing wrong with a show that has a more educational focus, and there have been a number of modern Doctor Who episodes with such a focus, but when you decide to essentially rewrite the entire show around an entirely different genre and premise, you can't be surprised when you alienate a significant portion of your audience. I know there was a lot of yearning over the last few years for a "pure historical" episode and I'm glad we got one in the form of Rosa, but we also got a couple more historicals that were more hit or miss. I'm happy they experimented with the format a bit, but maybe now it's time to put the historicals back in the vault.
Too much mimicking classic Who. Look, classic Doctor Who is important and people enjoyed it and it's great, yes. But it's also decades old and it's no longer a part of the modern television environment. Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989 because the format was boring, outdated, and had lost its audience. The modern series became a worldwide phenomenon because it embraced the concepts of peak television: serialized storylines, character development, big budget action and effects (well, bigger than before), and an exciting musical score. Series 11, on the other hand, is clearly an attempt at remaking the show in the mold of the early classic series. There's no serialized storyline, barely any character development, limited action and effects, and the music is dull and quiet. I understand that some people really enjoy this particular format of the show, but perhaps there was a reason Doctor Who abandoned it to begin with.
The Doctor is a side character in her own story. The Thirteenth Doctor is the most passive incarnation we've seen, constantly unsure of herself and needing reinforcement from her companions. She is rarely the star of a given scene, instead delegating important tasks to the companions, and is typically never the person to come up with an exciting idea or interesting twist to defeat the villain. Chibnall, who comes from an ensemble drama background, is very clearly more interested in writing Graham, Ryan, and Yaz than he is in writing the Doctor. Perhaps we shouldn't have hired a Doctor Who showrunner who doesn't find the Doctor to be an interesting character. I'm not calling for a return of the Moffat-era "most important person in the universe" Doctor who is a legendary warrior and badass, but it'd be nice to be occasionally reminded that the Doctor is a cool intelligent alien and not just a regular human woman with a time machine. I don't want to ascribe ill motive to Chibnall, but it's kind of a Bad Look™ when your first female Doctor is passive, submissive, and constantly requiring validation and support from others.
Too many companions. I like Graham, I like Yaz, and I'm okay with Ryan too, but all together they're too many cooks in the kitchen. Graham having a storyline about mourning his wife is great, and Ryan having a storyline about coming to accept Graham is also great, but together it's too much and takes away too much time from the actual show and the Doctor. Yaz, meanwhile, is sidelined for nearly the entire season, as if Chibnall just forgot about her or never decided what her storyline should be. Again, I'm glad the show decided to experiment with the bigger TARDIS team idea from the 70s, but it's another swing and a miss for me and I think we need to retire it. Unfortunately, all three characters are confirmed to be returning in series 12. Now that Graham and Ryan's storylines are done, maybe they can take a backseat, Yaz can have a small storyline, and we can spend the majority of the season focusing on crazy sci-fi storylines instead.
Is this a reboot? Before the New Year's special, you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd rebooted the show. Much like series 1, series 11 contains very few references to any previous incarnation of the Doctor or season of the show. The moment in Kerblam! where the Doctor opens the package she ordered and finds a fez was a breath of fresh air -- hey, that's right, this is actually the same character we knew before! Wow! It seems as though Chibnall and the BBC were either A) so afraid of the backlash to a female Doctor that they decided to just court an entirely new fanbase or B) were so annoyed at the ratings issues and criticisms during Moffat's tenure that they decided to do a hard u-turn and make the show a soft reboot, avoiding any sort of potentially confusing continuity. This is very disappointing because Doctor Who's most unique aspect is its very long, rich history. No other serialized sci-fi show can claim to have 55 years of continuity and storylines from which to draw ideas, characters, and references.
Overall, I think series 11 was ambitious, but tried to stray way too far from the Doctor Who format established by the modern series. Chibnall isn't strong enough as a writer and doesn't appear interested enough in the rich history of the show or its unique format to really take advantage of the showrunner position. Unfortunately, as many people feared, Jodie's first season was heavily undermined by Chibnall's poor writing and producing. With that being said, Resolution was a much better episode than most of series 11 and felt like a return to form for the show, so hopefully that's a good sign that things are improving.
