What made Jodie Whittaker's Doctor Who debut so impressive was that it was an extremely typical episode

Variety

"When Whittaker’s casting was announced, legions of Whovians made both their excitement and displeasure known," says Caroline Framke. "To some, this female Doctor is way overdue; to others, it represented a concession to wokeness by denigrating a classic character. 'The Woman Who Fell to Earth' doesn’t spend too much time trying to justify its existence to the latter camp, which is smart. Anyone who made up their mind based solely on her casting is unlikely to change it. But the script from new showrunner Chris Chibnall nonetheless squeezes in a few canny moments to acknowledge the shift, wink at the show’s past, and ably make its case. As the episode itself stipulates — both implicitly and even a little explicitly — it doesn’t actually matter what form the Doctor takes. The Doctor is an alien time traveler whose life spans thousands of years, regenerating when one form wears out like a snake shedding skin. The real question isn’t 'why does the new Doctor have to be a woman?', as some have gotten stuck on, but 'why has the Doctor always regenerated into a white British man?' If nothing else, the previous casting has showed a remarkable lack of creativity for a series that’s long prized itself for its incredible intergalactic imagination."

ALSO:

• The new Doctor Who plays it safe with too little dramatic tension -- perhaps a woman should've wrote it
• Jodie Whittaker is remarkable, but her first episode was not
• Whittaker's Doctor is energetic and full of heart
• Showrunner Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who puts the focus back on the humans
• Whittaker absolutely owns the part from moment she leaps into the frame
• The writers tried to minimize the impact of her sex change while also working to self-reflexively address it
• Whittaker gets a Doctor Who Barbie Doll
• When showrunner Chris Chibnall first pitched Doctor Who to Whittaker, she says "it was a complete curveball because we were just chatting as friends"