Top Ten Doctor Who Episodes - In Order
I don't even remember who started this (johnmayergirl23 ?), but so far I've seen posts from _thirty2flavors , jlrpuck and earlgreytea68 . Here's mine (though I've done my Top Ten Doctor Who Moments before, if you care to check those out). It's outrageously tl;dr. But! It has CHARTS AND GRAPHS. No, really.
You'll notice no Classic Who or Series 5 is on this list. While I respect Classic Who and admire its achievements, it still feels like a relic to me when I watch it. I haven't seen that much, but definitely a fair few stories spanning many eras. It's still sort of an eat-your-greens experience for me. I know it's good for me, I know I'll like the result, but I still invariably fall asleep during Part 4 of any given serial, and I still feel like the storytelling style is just too different from what I'm used to for me to ever feel really comfortable with it.
We're only four episodes in to Series 5, but none of those four would make a Top Ten list for me. Top 25, perhaps. Rest assured, no one will be happier than me if a story airs this season that displaces one of the below ones. But that just hasn't happened yet.
Honourable Mentions (yeah, I'm cheating, so sue me-this was hard!):
Dalek by Rob Shearman
I was pretty much entirely new to Doctor Who when we started watching series 1, so Dalek was my first real exposure to, well, Daleks. You'll never catch me complaining about the Daleks returning constantly, but I am a bit bummed that they're not always as terrifying as in Dalek.
Father's Day by Paul Cornell
This episode is really kind of ouchy. At various times, pretty much everyone comports themselves like a bit of a tool, but at no time is anyone unsympathetic. That's tough to accomplish.
The Runaway Bride by Russell T. Davies
Haters to the LEFT! The TARDIS car chase alone is worth the price of admission. And apparently I'm one of the few people who actually loved Donna Noble right from the get-go. Yeah, Sarah Parish consumes every last bit of scenery left in the entire UK, but come on, what would you do if you got that gig? And I love that, even though this is a fun, barmy episode, at no point does the Doctor seem to forget what just happened with Rose. Character continuity, people. Don't leave home without it.
The Unicorn and the Wasp by Gareth Roberts
It's funny, I found series 4 to perhaps be the most consistent in terms of quality, but in the final analysis only two episodes made it onto the Top Ten proper. But I love The Unicorn and the Wasp because of it's fantastic, sparky dialogue, and a great set of performances all around. I'm not even a fan of Agatha Christie, but I just love the whole set-up and the rolling around naked in Whodunnit tropes. Also, Both Catherine and David have never, ever looked hotter. Unf.
10. Turn Left by Russell T Davies
I love alternate history, I love Donna Noble, I love Rose Tyler, and I love dystopia. Put it all together and what have you got? Turn Left. And most of all I love Turn Left for demonstrating that Donna Noble does not need the Doctor to be brilliant. She just needs someone to believe in her. I still really bristle at the popular fandom implication that taking away her memories was just as bad as killing her, because she's nothing without them. No. She is most definitely not nothing without the Doctor. Turn Left demonstrates this, with Rose standing in as the person there just to believe in her, and encourage her. Even when things are bleaker than any of us could possibly imagine, all any of us need to be magnificent is a hand to hold.
9. Army of Ghosts/Doomsday by Russell T Davies
I think it was _thirty2flavors who said that she didn't quite realise until Bad Wolf Bay (original recipe) how hard she shipped it. I'm not a shipper by nature. I don't wear ship-goggles, it's not really ever something that I think about. I sort of accept whatever ships canon presents, but I rarely get at all worked up about them. It takes a really, really special ship to get me interested. Preferably one with an element of high tragedy, because I'm an angstoholic like that. I went all the way through series 1 and 2 liking the Doctor and Rose together as a team, loving them both as individual characters, but not really giving that much thought to their romantic options. Then the voiceover at the beginning of Army of Ghosts started and I was like D: D: D: And of course the Daleks are still scary in this, even while having a bitchfight with the Cybermen, who are also still scary, and Jackie is there and the Jackie/Pete reunion makes me cry like an infant, and Yvonne Hartman is a really, really interesting complex secondary character, and then the lever room and OMGGGGGG ;___; And then the bittersweetness of the Bad Wolf Bay ending just kicks it over the edge. Fuck the haters, if this is what "soap opera" means in the context of Doctor Who, I'll take as much as you want to dish out, because I love to cry. Yeah, you heard me. Catharsis, bitchez.
8. Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways by Russell T Davies
My favourite thing about this story is how it subverts expectations. Or at least, it subverted my expectations, since the first series of New Who was my first real viewing of Doctor Who ever. In the final analysis, it's not really about Daleks or conquering the Earth through reality TV or about time travel. It's about love, and devotion, and people making a connection. The ending of Parting of the Ways is just so gorgeous, and totally subverted my expectation of a big lasers-shooty-sci-fi extravaganza. Instead, it's two people, who'd die for each other. It's gorgeous and quiet and just wonderful. And I love the "You need a Doctor" line, tyvm. At the time, I'm pretty sure I squeed, and I didn't even really ship it. I just thought it was a great moment.
7. The Christmas Invasion by Russell T Davies
I love this episode on a couple of different levels. First off, the writing is amazing, in that non-showy, under-the-radar way that RTD has. You don't realise until someone points it out that the structure of this episode is ingeniously paving the way for the viewer to instantly fall in love with Ten, even if they've gone into it mourning for Nine and resenting this new person. Specifically, it takes the very risky, counterintuitive tack of introducing a new character by immediately taking him away again. By removing the Doctor from the action for almost 3/4 of the episode, you're left desperately wanting him to show up again. Any Doctor. All thoughts of Nine vs. Ten are swept aside as everything goes to shit, the humans are just not qualified to deal with this threat effectively, try valiantly as they might, and the Doctor is out of commission. By the time he opens those TARDIS doors and says, "Did you miss me?" you're ready for him, even if he is this weird new guy. And then of course the episode also has wonderful moments for all the characters, it's got Harriet Jones (can someone please write me a The Thick of It crossover where Malcolm Tucker is her spin doctor? Please?), it's got the wonderful end scenes of Ten finally being able to get a little bit domestic with Rose's family. And it's got two truly chilling glimpses of the darkness that lurks underneath the pinstripes ("No second chances, I'm that sort of a man." and "Don't you think she looks tired?").
6. Rose by Russell T Davies
This is another genius bit of introductory showing-not-telling writing by RTD. What a massive thing he had to achieve in these 45-miniutes! Introducing 3 new major characters (Rose, Jackie, Mickey) plus a new Doctor, plus the entire milieu of the Doctor Who universe and how it operates, plus establishing the tone and style for the rebooted series and making viewers want to keep tuning in. It's not perfect, but damn is that a lot for one single episode of TV to accomplish, and it does hit every one of those beats, incredibly effectively. Jackie's characterization is still cartoonish and weird, but even at that she's got a few moments where you see the character she'll become later in the series. It's got the "Turning of the Earth" speech, which is just gorgeous. It introduces us to Rose as a complete, complex, sympathetic character in about 30 seconds. And the first thing that the Doctor and Rose do when they meet is hold hands and run.
5. Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords by Russell T Davies
To the left, to the left, h8ers. I bloody love all three of these episodes, even sparkly tinkerbell Doctor! So there! The pacing of each of these, separately and together, is incredible. There's not a boring moment, but there's also no pointless padding that you want to fast-forward through. The misdirection in Utopia is genius-what you think is sort of a rubbish monster turns out to simply be a distraction from what the real monster is. Chantho and Lucy Saxon as the Master's companions get treated just as seriously as any of the Doctor's companions, as far as characterisation. I really, really cared when Chantho died. I love all the paralleling of the Master and the Doctor, and their hawt phone sex. I love Martha Jones saving the world through the power of her belief, and then, at the end, telling the Doctor that it's been fun, but she's done. That's strength, people. I don't care that the reset button was hit for the rest of the world, because it isn't for our primary characters. For the Jones family, for Jack, for the Doctor, for Lucy, there is no reset button. The Master's death scene is profoundly moving, which is impressive for a character who is pure, mass-murdering evil. And so the Doctor glowed and floated for 10 seconds-who cares. It was in service to creating the emotional punch of him forgiving the Master and then the Master dying to spite him. I'm not going to let a few seconds of dodgy special effects and nonsensical technobabble sully 3 fantastic hours of television.
4. The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit by Matt Jones
In the discussion had at starwhales last week about how to introduce newbies to Doctor Who, it occurred to me that I never see anyone suggest TIP/TSP as good introductory episodes. But, really, they were some of the first I ever paid attention to (before going back and watching from the beginning for real). I remember being just knocked out by the scene of Ten literally shouting at the devil. These episodes do sort of have it all: a beginning that introduces the Doctor and Rose as the sort of people who land in a cupboard in some unknown time and place and then laugh about it; Rose being compassionate towards the Ood; the Doctor hugging Zach because humans are so amazing but stupid; secondary characters that each have a life of their own that just sing; Rose/Doctor will-they-won't-they shippiness (that you can ignore easily if that's not your bag), and Big Thinky Thoughts about the nature of belief and faith. And then Rose kills Satan with a bolt gun. I mean, really, can it be any more perfect? And the "Oh, she knows" scene just haunts my dreams, it's so gorgeous.
3. Waters of Mars by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford
Oh man. See, now we're in the Top 3 and really any of these you could just exchange with any of the others. I absolutely forgive the specials year and all the naffness of Planet of the Dead and underwhelment of The Next Doctor and WTFery of The End of Time because it gave us Waters of Mars. If the Doctor would have tripped on a brick and regenerated at the end of it, I'd totally have accepted that. I have actually only seen this episode twice (both times the day it aired), and the reason for that is that I love it so much that I'm keeping it in reserve as sort of an "In case of emergency, break glass" episode. It's like that bottle of fine wine you keep at the back of your cupboard, just waiting for an occasion special enough to bust it out. And really, it's primarily down to two scenes: The airlock, and Crazy!Ten Goes On A Rampage. The rest of the episode is very good, but those two scenes just knock it totally out of the park. I wrote in my "Favourite Moments" entry that doing an evil!Doctor story could have been as simple as "Oh, he has inhaled evil!pollen, whatever will we do?" But what Waters of Mars gives us is a Doctor who is doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons. And, as it turns out, that's even scarier than evil-pollen!Doctor. And his hubris and arrogance, in service to saving lives, is a very natural, fluid growth of the character of Ten. It doesn't come out of left field at all. You find yourself sitting there going, "Yup, he'd totally do that." *shudder*
2. Human Nature/Family of Blood by Paul Cornell
I miiiight argue that there's a bit too much padding in these episodes, but the problem is that there's also too much stuff to fit in a single-parters. So I'll forgive the padding. Besides, the padding lets me enjoy David Tennant and Jessica Hynes being lovely together. But the core of the story is so gut-wrenching, and all of the performances are so awesome, and the monsters are, to me, legitimately scary (those scarecrows freak me the fuck out) that this will always be one of my "Do you see what this show can be, when it tries?" episodes. I love the FIRE-SLASH-ICE-SLASH-RAGE speech in a totally unironic way and I love John Smith. I see people sometimes say that John Smith is a prick and unsympathetic, and maybe I just watch too much costume drama, but I never found him to be so. He's a man of his time, certainly. And it's meant to be a bit jarring, that he looks like the Doctor but is acting in ways that are very unDoctor-like, but I never find the things he does making me just out-and-out dislike him. He encourages Latimer; he's legitimately upset over the sight of his students engaging in a real battle; he's condescending as all fuck to Martha, but I never get the impression that that comes from a place of cruelty, just ignorance. I guess I draw a line for myself between people who are knowingly and willfully cruel and those who simply don't question the things that they are taught by their culture. And in the end, he does the right thing, and the brave thing. He choses to die in order for others to live. Mainly, though, it's the Tennant fangirl in me who appreciates this story, because you get to see a tremendous amount of subtlety in his acting. John Smith is not just the Doctor in a tweed suit, he's a whole different character-but with a wee tiny bit of Doctor bleeding through at the edges. And The Doctor pretending to be John Smith is slightly different from either John Smith or the Doctor. And then at the end, with the Doctor-as-the-Doctor, he's FUCKING TERRIFYING, without (as Son of Mine says) ever raising his voice, or saying a word. My interpretation of his actions at the end of the story is not that he's come unhinged, but that this is what happens when you break the hearts of the people he loves. He's not getting revenge for himself, but for Martha Jones, Joan Redfern, and John Smith. That's what takes him to a place where he's capable of subjecting living creatures to eternal torment.
1. Midnight by Russell T Davies
Is anyone surprised? Yes, it's a standard bottle or base-under-seige episode. Yes, it's a companion-light episode. Yes, it's got a typical the-monsters-are-us moral. I don't care. It's completely brilliant and the closest I've ever come to actually having my belief that the Doctor won't die suspended. I think this also might be a contrary-to-popular-belief excellent introduction to the show, as it demonstrates what the Doctor is, just in a setting where no one likes him. He gets to be charming, gabby, funny, and then a bit too over-excited by danger, and finally just out-and-out bossy and know-it-all annoying. And the humans react the way humans would-they fear and hate him. The tension is maintained longer than I could have really thought possible, and the end is devastating. Leslie Sharp and David Tennant are mind-bogglingly good at their interactions, and then DT hits it clean out of the park as his mouth utters words that aren't his own and his eyes are like dinner-plates with pants-pissing terror. His reunion with Donna is probably the closest I've ever come to shipping them. He's really broken, and she offers solace and unconditional love, and they don't have to say a word.
And now for the moment shinyopals has been waiting for.
Just because I'm a big dork, I thought I'd demonstrate, THROUGH SCIENCE, what excellent taste I have. Behold!
So, did I favour any particular series over any other?
No, not really. I am egalitarian with my love for Doctor Who, apparently!
However, you know what I'm really not at all egalitarian with my love of?
Oh, dear. This is not boding well for you, Mr. Moffat.
However, you should listen to me, because I clearly know what I am talking about:
This graph takes some explaining. The blue line represents the viewing figures for each episode on my list (in millions). They average out to the red line. The green line is the overall viewing figure average for Doctor Who series 1-4 as a whole. So, as you can see, the episodes I love are ABOVE AVERAGE, thus conclusively proving that I have IMPECCABLE TASTE.
You'll notice no Classic Who or Series 5 is on this list. While I respect Classic Who and admire its achievements, it still feels like a relic to me when I watch it. I haven't seen that much, but definitely a fair few stories spanning many eras. It's still sort of an eat-your-greens experience for me. I know it's good for me, I know I'll like the result, but I still invariably fall asleep during Part 4 of any given serial, and I still feel like the storytelling style is just too different from what I'm used to for me to ever feel really comfortable with it.
We're only four episodes in to Series 5, but none of those four would make a Top Ten list for me. Top 25, perhaps. Rest assured, no one will be happier than me if a story airs this season that displaces one of the below ones. But that just hasn't happened yet.
Honourable Mentions (yeah, I'm cheating, so sue me-this was hard!):
Dalek by Rob Shearman
I was pretty much entirely new to Doctor Who when we started watching series 1, so Dalek was my first real exposure to, well, Daleks. You'll never catch me complaining about the Daleks returning constantly, but I am a bit bummed that they're not always as terrifying as in Dalek.
Father's Day by Paul Cornell
This episode is really kind of ouchy. At various times, pretty much everyone comports themselves like a bit of a tool, but at no time is anyone unsympathetic. That's tough to accomplish.
The Runaway Bride by Russell T. Davies
Haters to the LEFT! The TARDIS car chase alone is worth the price of admission. And apparently I'm one of the few people who actually loved Donna Noble right from the get-go. Yeah, Sarah Parish consumes every last bit of scenery left in the entire UK, but come on, what would you do if you got that gig? And I love that, even though this is a fun, barmy episode, at no point does the Doctor seem to forget what just happened with Rose. Character continuity, people. Don't leave home without it.
The Unicorn and the Wasp by Gareth Roberts
It's funny, I found series 4 to perhaps be the most consistent in terms of quality, but in the final analysis only two episodes made it onto the Top Ten proper. But I love The Unicorn and the Wasp because of it's fantastic, sparky dialogue, and a great set of performances all around. I'm not even a fan of Agatha Christie, but I just love the whole set-up and the rolling around naked in Whodunnit tropes. Also, Both Catherine and David have never, ever looked hotter. Unf.
10. Turn Left by Russell T Davies
I love alternate history, I love Donna Noble, I love Rose Tyler, and I love dystopia. Put it all together and what have you got? Turn Left. And most of all I love Turn Left for demonstrating that Donna Noble does not need the Doctor to be brilliant. She just needs someone to believe in her. I still really bristle at the popular fandom implication that taking away her memories was just as bad as killing her, because she's nothing without them. No. She is most definitely not nothing without the Doctor. Turn Left demonstrates this, with Rose standing in as the person there just to believe in her, and encourage her. Even when things are bleaker than any of us could possibly imagine, all any of us need to be magnificent is a hand to hold.
9. Army of Ghosts/Doomsday by Russell T Davies
I think it was _thirty2flavors who said that she didn't quite realise until Bad Wolf Bay (original recipe) how hard she shipped it. I'm not a shipper by nature. I don't wear ship-goggles, it's not really ever something that I think about. I sort of accept whatever ships canon presents, but I rarely get at all worked up about them. It takes a really, really special ship to get me interested. Preferably one with an element of high tragedy, because I'm an angstoholic like that. I went all the way through series 1 and 2 liking the Doctor and Rose together as a team, loving them both as individual characters, but not really giving that much thought to their romantic options. Then the voiceover at the beginning of Army of Ghosts started and I was like D: D: D: And of course the Daleks are still scary in this, even while having a bitchfight with the Cybermen, who are also still scary, and Jackie is there and the Jackie/Pete reunion makes me cry like an infant, and Yvonne Hartman is a really, really interesting complex secondary character, and then the lever room and OMGGGGGG ;___; And then the bittersweetness of the Bad Wolf Bay ending just kicks it over the edge. Fuck the haters, if this is what "soap opera" means in the context of Doctor Who, I'll take as much as you want to dish out, because I love to cry. Yeah, you heard me. Catharsis, bitchez.
8. Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways by Russell T Davies
My favourite thing about this story is how it subverts expectations. Or at least, it subverted my expectations, since the first series of New Who was my first real viewing of Doctor Who ever. In the final analysis, it's not really about Daleks or conquering the Earth through reality TV or about time travel. It's about love, and devotion, and people making a connection. The ending of Parting of the Ways is just so gorgeous, and totally subverted my expectation of a big lasers-shooty-sci-fi extravaganza. Instead, it's two people, who'd die for each other. It's gorgeous and quiet and just wonderful. And I love the "You need a Doctor" line, tyvm. At the time, I'm pretty sure I squeed, and I didn't even really ship it. I just thought it was a great moment.
7. The Christmas Invasion by Russell T Davies
I love this episode on a couple of different levels. First off, the writing is amazing, in that non-showy, under-the-radar way that RTD has. You don't realise until someone points it out that the structure of this episode is ingeniously paving the way for the viewer to instantly fall in love with Ten, even if they've gone into it mourning for Nine and resenting this new person. Specifically, it takes the very risky, counterintuitive tack of introducing a new character by immediately taking him away again. By removing the Doctor from the action for almost 3/4 of the episode, you're left desperately wanting him to show up again. Any Doctor. All thoughts of Nine vs. Ten are swept aside as everything goes to shit, the humans are just not qualified to deal with this threat effectively, try valiantly as they might, and the Doctor is out of commission. By the time he opens those TARDIS doors and says, "Did you miss me?" you're ready for him, even if he is this weird new guy. And then of course the episode also has wonderful moments for all the characters, it's got Harriet Jones (can someone please write me a The Thick of It crossover where Malcolm Tucker is her spin doctor? Please?), it's got the wonderful end scenes of Ten finally being able to get a little bit domestic with Rose's family. And it's got two truly chilling glimpses of the darkness that lurks underneath the pinstripes ("No second chances, I'm that sort of a man." and "Don't you think she looks tired?").
6. Rose by Russell T Davies
This is another genius bit of introductory showing-not-telling writing by RTD. What a massive thing he had to achieve in these 45-miniutes! Introducing 3 new major characters (Rose, Jackie, Mickey) plus a new Doctor, plus the entire milieu of the Doctor Who universe and how it operates, plus establishing the tone and style for the rebooted series and making viewers want to keep tuning in. It's not perfect, but damn is that a lot for one single episode of TV to accomplish, and it does hit every one of those beats, incredibly effectively. Jackie's characterization is still cartoonish and weird, but even at that she's got a few moments where you see the character she'll become later in the series. It's got the "Turning of the Earth" speech, which is just gorgeous. It introduces us to Rose as a complete, complex, sympathetic character in about 30 seconds. And the first thing that the Doctor and Rose do when they meet is hold hands and run.
5. Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords by Russell T Davies
To the left, to the left, h8ers. I bloody love all three of these episodes, even sparkly tinkerbell Doctor! So there! The pacing of each of these, separately and together, is incredible. There's not a boring moment, but there's also no pointless padding that you want to fast-forward through. The misdirection in Utopia is genius-what you think is sort of a rubbish monster turns out to simply be a distraction from what the real monster is. Chantho and Lucy Saxon as the Master's companions get treated just as seriously as any of the Doctor's companions, as far as characterisation. I really, really cared when Chantho died. I love all the paralleling of the Master and the Doctor, and their hawt phone sex. I love Martha Jones saving the world through the power of her belief, and then, at the end, telling the Doctor that it's been fun, but she's done. That's strength, people. I don't care that the reset button was hit for the rest of the world, because it isn't for our primary characters. For the Jones family, for Jack, for the Doctor, for Lucy, there is no reset button. The Master's death scene is profoundly moving, which is impressive for a character who is pure, mass-murdering evil. And so the Doctor glowed and floated for 10 seconds-who cares. It was in service to creating the emotional punch of him forgiving the Master and then the Master dying to spite him. I'm not going to let a few seconds of dodgy special effects and nonsensical technobabble sully 3 fantastic hours of television.
4. The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit by Matt Jones
In the discussion had at starwhales last week about how to introduce newbies to Doctor Who, it occurred to me that I never see anyone suggest TIP/TSP as good introductory episodes. But, really, they were some of the first I ever paid attention to (before going back and watching from the beginning for real). I remember being just knocked out by the scene of Ten literally shouting at the devil. These episodes do sort of have it all: a beginning that introduces the Doctor and Rose as the sort of people who land in a cupboard in some unknown time and place and then laugh about it; Rose being compassionate towards the Ood; the Doctor hugging Zach because humans are so amazing but stupid; secondary characters that each have a life of their own that just sing; Rose/Doctor will-they-won't-they shippiness (that you can ignore easily if that's not your bag), and Big Thinky Thoughts about the nature of belief and faith. And then Rose kills Satan with a bolt gun. I mean, really, can it be any more perfect? And the "Oh, she knows" scene just haunts my dreams, it's so gorgeous.
3. Waters of Mars by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford
Oh man. See, now we're in the Top 3 and really any of these you could just exchange with any of the others. I absolutely forgive the specials year and all the naffness of Planet of the Dead and underwhelment of The Next Doctor and WTFery of The End of Time because it gave us Waters of Mars. If the Doctor would have tripped on a brick and regenerated at the end of it, I'd totally have accepted that. I have actually only seen this episode twice (both times the day it aired), and the reason for that is that I love it so much that I'm keeping it in reserve as sort of an "In case of emergency, break glass" episode. It's like that bottle of fine wine you keep at the back of your cupboard, just waiting for an occasion special enough to bust it out. And really, it's primarily down to two scenes: The airlock, and Crazy!Ten Goes On A Rampage. The rest of the episode is very good, but those two scenes just knock it totally out of the park. I wrote in my "Favourite Moments" entry that doing an evil!Doctor story could have been as simple as "Oh, he has inhaled evil!pollen, whatever will we do?" But what Waters of Mars gives us is a Doctor who is doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons. And, as it turns out, that's even scarier than evil-pollen!Doctor. And his hubris and arrogance, in service to saving lives, is a very natural, fluid growth of the character of Ten. It doesn't come out of left field at all. You find yourself sitting there going, "Yup, he'd totally do that." *shudder*
2. Human Nature/Family of Blood by Paul Cornell
I miiiight argue that there's a bit too much padding in these episodes, but the problem is that there's also too much stuff to fit in a single-parters. So I'll forgive the padding. Besides, the padding lets me enjoy David Tennant and Jessica Hynes being lovely together. But the core of the story is so gut-wrenching, and all of the performances are so awesome, and the monsters are, to me, legitimately scary (those scarecrows freak me the fuck out) that this will always be one of my "Do you see what this show can be, when it tries?" episodes. I love the FIRE-SLASH-ICE-SLASH-RAGE speech in a totally unironic way and I love John Smith. I see people sometimes say that John Smith is a prick and unsympathetic, and maybe I just watch too much costume drama, but I never found him to be so. He's a man of his time, certainly. And it's meant to be a bit jarring, that he looks like the Doctor but is acting in ways that are very unDoctor-like, but I never find the things he does making me just out-and-out dislike him. He encourages Latimer; he's legitimately upset over the sight of his students engaging in a real battle; he's condescending as all fuck to Martha, but I never get the impression that that comes from a place of cruelty, just ignorance. I guess I draw a line for myself between people who are knowingly and willfully cruel and those who simply don't question the things that they are taught by their culture. And in the end, he does the right thing, and the brave thing. He choses to die in order for others to live. Mainly, though, it's the Tennant fangirl in me who appreciates this story, because you get to see a tremendous amount of subtlety in his acting. John Smith is not just the Doctor in a tweed suit, he's a whole different character-but with a wee tiny bit of Doctor bleeding through at the edges. And The Doctor pretending to be John Smith is slightly different from either John Smith or the Doctor. And then at the end, with the Doctor-as-the-Doctor, he's FUCKING TERRIFYING, without (as Son of Mine says) ever raising his voice, or saying a word. My interpretation of his actions at the end of the story is not that he's come unhinged, but that this is what happens when you break the hearts of the people he loves. He's not getting revenge for himself, but for Martha Jones, Joan Redfern, and John Smith. That's what takes him to a place where he's capable of subjecting living creatures to eternal torment.
1. Midnight by Russell T Davies
Is anyone surprised? Yes, it's a standard bottle or base-under-seige episode. Yes, it's a companion-light episode. Yes, it's got a typical the-monsters-are-us moral. I don't care. It's completely brilliant and the closest I've ever come to actually having my belief that the Doctor won't die suspended. I think this also might be a contrary-to-popular-belief excellent introduction to the show, as it demonstrates what the Doctor is, just in a setting where no one likes him. He gets to be charming, gabby, funny, and then a bit too over-excited by danger, and finally just out-and-out bossy and know-it-all annoying. And the humans react the way humans would-they fear and hate him. The tension is maintained longer than I could have really thought possible, and the end is devastating. Leslie Sharp and David Tennant are mind-bogglingly good at their interactions, and then DT hits it clean out of the park as his mouth utters words that aren't his own and his eyes are like dinner-plates with pants-pissing terror. His reunion with Donna is probably the closest I've ever come to shipping them. He's really broken, and she offers solace and unconditional love, and they don't have to say a word.
And now for the moment shinyopals has been waiting for.
Just because I'm a big dork, I thought I'd demonstrate, THROUGH SCIENCE, what excellent taste I have. Behold!
So, did I favour any particular series over any other?
No, not really. I am egalitarian with my love for Doctor Who, apparently!
However, you know what I'm really not at all egalitarian with my love of?
Oh, dear. This is not boding well for you, Mr. Moffat.
However, you should listen to me, because I clearly know what I am talking about:
This graph takes some explaining. The blue line represents the viewing figures for each episode on my list (in millions). They average out to the red line. The green line is the overall viewing figure average for Doctor Who series 1-4 as a whole. So, as you can see, the episodes I love are ABOVE AVERAGE, thus conclusively proving that I have IMPECCABLE TASTE.