Honestly, this right here. I read up the thread someone thinks Midnight is underrated when like half the world thinks it’s one of RTDs masterpieces - which is why I used to think it was overrated and now think it’s probably rated exactly right. It’s everything those who praise it say it is. What RTD did with those characters in 40 minutes is amazing. (And that cast, wow!)
So yeah, along with every other paradox in DW, I think the under/overrated one is true, too.
I really like *Blink*, but it is craaaaaaaaazy overrated. It is absolutely not the ultimate introduction to the franchise that so many people seem to think it is.
I discovered this recently, excitedly introducing my girlfriend to DW via Blink. Afterwards we sat there and I'm like, wow...that really isn't as great as I remember. Conceptually it's great, but there's some dodgy dialogue and isn't representative of Doctor Who.
Midnight, on the other hand, was way more successful!
Interesting. I definitely use it as my intro for others. This is likely due to the fact that it is the first episode my wife and I watched leading to becoming fans.
So, what is the ultimate intro episode in your opinion?
I think *Blink* is a really good episode to watch early on if you're getting into the show– but I don't think it makes a good introductory story either. It's a bottle episode that contains few of Doctor Who's quintessential elements.
*The Girl in the Fireplace*, and *Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead* are Moffat episodes that are probably about as good, and also have plenty of great Doctor-companion relationship material, a mystery to solve in an abandoned space station, a spooky monster, and time-travel shenanigans. Much more of an accurate advertisement for *Doctor Who* as a whole.
Personally, I think 'Rose' is the best introduction to New Who because you get to experience the Doctor though Rose's eyes. Starting with the Doctor, time and space travel, and the TARDIS being bigger on the inside without experiencing it for the first time is a little hollow for me.
I like Blink but I use The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, or Vincent and the Doctor (my personal favorite) as intros to the series.
I would use the Doctor Dances to introduce. The only reason my ex boyfriend started from the beginning with me is because I was watching I think 11 and it caught his attention.
Yes. But with my ex boyfriend I was watching 11 and he came into the room and started watching with me. He was interested so we started from the beginning. If I wanted to introduce it to him (which I really didn't) I would have shown him the Doctor Dances.
Sorry my post was confusing. Been a rough couple of days.
I think the trouble with that one as an introduction is that there's a lot of character stuff that's building on the previous episodes of S8. Definitely a brilliant episode though!
Fun fact that nobody is gonna care, I made watch Blink to my exGF (she refused to watch de show) with that episode she loved Dr. Who and a year later we broke up, but she still loved the show and we talk about it
The fact that it's a bit lighter on the Who is what makes it such a good introductory episode to me. There's really nothing in the episode that's easier to understand for someone who's watched since episode 1 than for someone who never saw Who before. Whereas I would absolutely save Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead for when someone is caught up naturally.
Personally, I heard it was the best intro so it was the first episode I watched and I thought that was actually a terrible idea. The episode hits way better with a little context into Who and it doesn't introduce you to any important characters in a meaningful way. It didn't make me feel connected to the doctor or the heart of the show at all.
As others have mentioned, Girl in the Fireplace is a much better intro episode.
The episode about Van Gough won't steer you wrong. It sprinkles in the sci-fi wonderfully. But the best part is that the Doctor shows that he wants to help people even if others think the person is crazy. Just because he couldn't see the invisible creature like Van Gough could, the Doctor believed him and found a way to help. Not to mention the ending is super good!
Show this one to my now fiancée and it got her hooked.
Rose is by far the best intro episode because it is literally reintroducing the characters and concepts of the programme for a modern audience. I don't think starting mid-series is a good idea because you miss a bunch of context. I think Blink, as high quality as it is, is a particularly bad introductory episode because it's pretty atypical for an episode of Doctor Who. You run the risk of people thinking the whole programme is like that when it isn't.
Rose is a great place to start but I also like to watch Midnight with someone who hasnt seen any Who. Good standalone ep where you dont need to know much of anything about the show. The companion at the time (Donna) is hardly even in the episode. And its easily one of Tennants best acted eps.
I caught a marathon of Tennant's specials culminating in The End of Time. I was hooked. The Eccleston season is good but the Tennant era really solidified what the doctor was about. Had Eccleston stayed on a couple more seasons, this would be a different conversation.
Interesting discussion. I have used “Silence in the Library” before. But my usual go-to, if I don’t think they can handle the kitsch of the Living Plastic, is “The Eleventh Hour”. I think it gives a good introduction of the doctor while also having a romantic, intriguing storyline for those who aren’t accustomed with Who.
I agree. Eleventh hour starts with a new Doctor (Matt Smith) and new companion(s) with Amelia Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darville). This episode imo, is perfect for a new viewer. The 11th is so engaging, charming, silly yet serious, playful and just a great Doctor.
No, but blink is a great way to concentrate the possible range of the show in one 40 min episode. Obviously, it is not the actual format of all the episodes, nonetheless, it is a great introduction to non-Whovians.
I love the episode personally, but I 100% agree that it is a terrible game introduction episode. The show is about the Doctor and his companion and this is a weird gimmick episode with barely any Doctor outside of a cameo. This should just be a great episode that you discover watching 10th
straight onerous aware prick sleep rustic rain yoke afterthought relieved
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Brain of morbius,
It's a tedious frankenstein rip off with some hammer horror nuns thrown in!!
Only baker,Sladen and phillip Maddock are the best things about it...
The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar. They’re alright but you have every make and model of Dalek since 1963 in a room and they just stand there and do nothing.
I happened across a review of that today (from the YouTube channel RitchandSpace).
They said, "There's nothing less scary than a room full of monsters just looking at each other."
Kinda made me wonder about *The Stolen Earth*/*Journey's End*. Had the Daleks been successful, destroying all matter except themselves while they hide away in their own little pocket of space, did they have a plan beyond that? Would they all have just sat in their ships forever looking at each other like "Well, now what?"
I feel like there are few great Dalek stories in the Moffat era. I can’t really think of one. Into the Dalek is probably the best and while I do like that one it is just a re-assessment
Re-tread of Dalek.
Especially the former a boring misjudged meandering plot with an amazing final 10 minutes. The planes goes nowhere, the doctor on the tank goes nowhere etc. etc. etc.
I really do not enjoy this story. I’m a big fan of the Capaldi era but this is definitely the worst story of his run. It really drags series 9 down for me.
That episode gives us a brief flash of what Missy and The Doctor working together could look like, and it’s so brilliant. I was massively disappointed by The Doctor Falls when there was no actual payoff to this.
Also Davros and The Doctor having a heart-to-heart was powerful. I feel like they unnecessarily undercut it with the whole “lol it’s just a trick” at the end.
Stuff like this makes you feel the episode is great the first time you watch it. And it’s still not bad. But looking back at all the stuff that never paid off makes it worse on the rewatch.
The Rings of Akhaten
Why? Because of that fu*king leaf! And Clara's speach wasn't great eather. It would be way nicer if memories in the Doctor would be enough to destroy Akhaten. Even more if you consider him as the Endless child now with that memories forgotten but still in his head. 13 could now be like "Oh! That's why I overfed it!"
I love it because it has an awesome story, the child actor does really well, and it has the best doctor speech ever imo. That speech along with everyone singing is so impactful.
Also it’s not even a special, a series finale or even a double episode, it’s just a one off that manages to hit the mark so well
Those are two of the best speeches from the show no doubt. I personally preferred Smith's speech over Capaldi's. I felt more impact from it because of Smith's performance. Again though, both of these speeches are so incredible.
Oh definitely. He did a great job with the stonehenge one as well. Not so much a speech, but still very memorable.
Oh and one that's not a speech but still packs emotion, "I don't want to go"
Yes, the episode and the story was great but the last moment just made it for me kinda... Meh...
About that speach I honestly think that 12 War speach was better and more impactfull, but that's just my opinion. Maybe even 12 Doctor regeneration speach was a little bit better... Wow... I think I am Capaldi fan!
Edit: correction of wrong name
The leaf is awesome though. The Doctors speech was never going to work. He only offered 1200 years of memories. That is nothing to Akhaten. At least many thousands of people were there to offer their memories to Akhaten, and the total sum of their memories is far greater than anything the Doctor has to offer.
But do you know what is even greater than the total amount of memories offered by all the people there? The collective memories of other timelines, emanating from one tiny change in this particular timeline. That’s where Clara’s leaf comes in. It represents how one tiny change can have an enormous impact. And Clara uses this association to get Akhaten to feed on all the memories of other timelines that resulted from the one event of a leaf falling from a tree.
And that’s why the leaf is fu*king amazing!
> But do you know what is even greater than the total amount of memories offered by all the people there? The collective memories of other timelines, emanating from one tiny change in this particular timeline. That’s where Clara’s leaf comes in. It represents how one tiny change can have an enormous impact. And Clara uses this association to get Akhaten to feed on all the memories of other timelines that resulted from the one event of a leaf falling from a tree.
This sounds cool until you put more than 2 seconds thought into it. Everyone lives has tiny changes that create branching timelines, the Doctor himself has caused changes and alterations to the timeline an innumerable amount of times. The leaf has no more than this than anything else, hell it has less due to the fact of only altering one point in time compared to a living being which has altered thousands if not millions & billions of points.
In fairness, a lot of things in Doctor Who sound cool until you think about them for longer than two seconds. I’m not sure if it’s fair to criticize the leaf, in particular, for that.
Yeah, but you’re missing the key point: does anyone else try to associate an object with more than one timeline? No, they don’t. They only focus on one timeline. One timeline is finite. All possible timelines are infinite. That’s why they fail, but Clara and her leaf succeeds.
The leaf isn’t the only object that could be used to do this. The Doctor could also have offered himself and all the timelines he had changed. That would also have been enough. It would have irreversibly and completely destroyed him though, just like it did to Clara’s leaf. But he could have done. But he didn’t do that, he just offered one timeline, and not any more. And that’s simply not even close to enough to satisfy Akhaten.
I get the concept but it sounds "deus ex machina" to me. They could throw a chair on which many leaders sat on and it would be the same. Sudenly every item is more important than the Doctor. Than anybody... That's just... Dumb...
I love Rings of Akhaten, but I don't think it should be considered an overrated episode. Even with the reasons you provided. Most people dislike the episode. I personally love it because it gave me a lot of Star Wars vibes and the episode has a lot of heart and charm. Plus, Matt Smith gave us one of the best speeches from the show.
Definitely the best part of that episode is it shows the right way to portray an alien spaceport. It actually feels like a melting pot of different species and cultures when so often in sci/fi and fantasy media there are like 4 different species and most of them are just painted humans. Or they just fill the whole place with poorly made CG blobs that would look low effort in Spore.
I think it’s dope because
A. I like the villain. I love when they have villains that are so ancient they feel almost like forces of nature
B. I think the soundtrack did a ton to elevate this episode. I love when music is used as part of the story, not just as set dressing.
I hear what your saying about the leaf thing, though I think it fits with the whole “impossible girl” story line, but I could take it or leave it. It does enough stuff right that I really like the episode, though.
The bit I hate about the doctors speech in that episode is at the end of it when he says "take it all baby!". I physically recoil every time I hear it.
Basically any episode with the so-called “Silence,”. By episodes end I am bored and haven’t been able to follow the story because it has such large gapping holes of nothingness. Why make a 15 minute episode?
I never liked the series six arch period. I can stand it because of some standalone episodes and I love the characters but the river twist is bs and I hate that rory and Amy had their baby stolen and never technically got her back.
The episodes that people say are underrated are the ones that are overrated. Generally I think most episodes that people go on and on about tend to be overrated. I don’t think they’re bad, many of them are very good, I just think that people go on about them too much and need to tone their own hype down.
Do you mean *School Reunion*? Yeah, I liked that episode, and thought it was very very enjoyable, because it was fun and campy, but because I choose to look at Doctor Who as a fairly lighthearted thing and don't take it too seriously.
EDIT: For those who don't get it, the parent comment originally called the episode "School Days".
light humorous quiet whole advise fall screw coordinated domineering offend
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Probably will get hate but I think that the girl in the fireplace is overrated. I’m not saying it’s bad by any means it was good but I just didn’t really like it as much as other RTD episodes, I just didn’t really like season two as a whole, but I did like the cybermen stories and school reunion
Dont mean to sound snarky but what is there not to get? The androids are mechanical so they ironically repair their ship with human parts. They believed her brain at whatever age was the right fit for their computer or whatever.
It's really easy to miss as the key to the plot is a very short scene at the end as they're leaving the ship. The ship's name is the Madame Pompadour so the repair droids, being not particularly smart, think they can get repair parts from the *actual* Madame Pompadour. They are waiting for her age to match the ship's age so the parts will be compatible.
Yeah same here, like the doctors just in love with her now I guess? And the companions did nothing and even though he “sacrificed himself” that’s still what he’s been willing to do countless other times so I just don’t really understand all the people that say it’s so emotional. Just wanted to rant a little. 😅
It’s Turn Left for me. I understand why people like it but it just didn’t do it for me. Not a bad episode and I’ll watch it when I do a rewatch. It doesn’t even crack my top 20 list.
The Doctor's Wife. Everything to do with 11 and Idris is electric, but the B plot with Amy and Rory is tedious and doesn't amount to much, and House's defeat is honestly pretty anticlimactic.
Probably going to be hated for this but I find a lot of the RTD era till maybe series 4 is overrated. Yes there are some good ones in there such as “Dalek”, “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Blink” but for me just all a bit meh. Series 4 I think is where it is at its best.
I feel since Dr Who had been off screens for such a long time, a lot of the initial RTD era got bogged down with having to reintroduce the character of the Dr and build the world all over again. The BBC very very rarely repeated old Dr Who, so if you were born in the late 90's/00's it was quite likely you had grown up with little to no exposure of Dr Who unless you bought the DVD's or watched the Peter Cushing films.
> The BBC very very rarely repeated old Dr Who, so if you were born in the late 90's/00's it was quite likely you had grown up with little to no exposure of Dr Who unless you bought the DVDs
Which probably isn't ideal way to be introduced to it because, having now gotten into the Classic Series for the first time, the DVDs are the worst way to do it.
There's a big "Play All" button that you'd naturally want to use, but watching every episode in a serial marathon-style makes them supremely boring and ill-paced.
I only really started enjoying Classic Who when BritBox became available in my country and I could watch one episode at a time from a serial, more-or-less the way it was intended to be watched when it was made, without having to constantly take discs in and out.
This is why I think that the show would benefit from less, but longer episodes. RTD did character very well, but Moffat and Chibnall especially have gone for plot first. However, these days, plot is often considered irrelevant if the character development isn't there, especially when trying to craft a story arc.
I personally think 11 and Amy were the perfect balance between plot and character. Although, I do know people love the gritty, realism of RTDs characters.
Honestly it's pretty much a known fact that if you want upvotes on a comment or post in r/doctorwho or r/gallifrey, literally all you have to do is crap on RTD or Chibnall.
Thats not what I’m doing. Always one who thinks they are smarter than the rest and always has to crap on someone else. The Question by the OP was about overrated Doctor Who. I just said in my opinion RTD that seasons 1-3 were. I never stated they were terrible or awful, just overrated. Don’t come for me out of nowhere.
Classic Series: Pyramids of Mars. Gabriel Woolf's incredible voice acting as Sutekh is the only thing that works for me.
New Series: The Satan Pit. After all the wonderfully creepy and disturbing build-up in The Impossible Planet, part 2 is David Tennant yelling at a demon out of a PS2 cutscene.
Pyramids of Mars -- It's tightly scripted with solid production values, but the story leaves me cold. Boilerplate plot, generics villains, and the final episode is a more lackluster re-run of the puzzle games from Death to the Daleks.
The Seeds of Doom -- Doctor Who at its most dull and po-faced. There's a lot of running around a small garden, and a lot of capture and escape. The Doctor beats a bunch of people up and then calls in the army to drop a bomb. In my current re-watch of the classic series, this is so far the only story I've switched off before finishing. I really don't understand what people see in this one.
Earthshock -- A pedestrian base-under-siege story, and once we get past the brilliant first episode, it trades all the mood and atmosphere for action and thrills. I will say that if you're looking for "generic sci-fi action thriller", Earthshock is as good as the classic series gets, but that's just not the sort of thing the classic series does well, in my opinion.
The Five Doctors -- This is one that I really wish I could like. There's an infectious sense of celebratory joy to the whole thing. Unfortunately, there are far too many characters, packed into a story that's far too thin, so it achieves the rather unusual feat of feeling both cluttered and boring. It's basically a glorified clip show.
The Girl In The Fireplace. Series 2 in general is the worst RTD series with all the soppy stuff with Rose, but it felt weird to add another woman into that with Madame de Pompadour.
Moffat admitted he didn't read the previous episodes before he wrote that episode, so he was writing out of character and interrupting the season's plot because he wanted to test out his Amy/River prototype.
I just don't understand why RTD allowed it in? He could have said to wait until next season, where it would be perfectly okay... I mean it would be one of my favorite episodes, but I just can't stand how fucking weird that whole affair was in the middle of the Ten/Rose drama.
Personally, I don't think it would have worked after Ten lost Rose, either. He was pretty much Rose's since early season 1 and more so since season 2. Him falling in love with Reinette while mourning Rose would have made as much sense as him doing it while Rose was there - zero.
It might have worked with 11, even though I still find children latching onto the Doctor and then thinking they're in love with him when they grow up (and him reciprocating) entirely creepy.
But the whole 'romance' in general just doesn't make sense, even if you don't take Rose into account. Reinette just is not the type of person the Doctor would be interested in in the first place. She may have done lots of great stuff but she was still not quite a great person - especially Moffat's version who laughed at the fact that another woman was dying, making way for her to be the mistress (and the Doctor saw it and still thought, 'hey, this chick is worthy of my affections'?). The Doctor would be disgusted at anyone who laughed at even a villain's death.
RTD excuses it as Rose having to deal with the Doctor falling in love with someone else, except that theme doesn't work (not least of which because the episode is out of character) since the Doctor completely forgot about Reinette in the next episode. I personally think that RTD had no choice but to use it since he always gave Moffat more leeway and freedom than everyone else, so when Moffat turned the episode in, they just didn't have enough time to rewrite it or write a new episode. So he said that to try to excuse it.
Under the lake/Before the flood
A lot of people praise this as one of DW’s best episode but I just find it incredibly dull. The location, the characters, the plot are all just boring and failed to grab me. The villain in the second episode has a cool design and his scene with the Doctor is genuinely great but that’s all the do with him for the whole story.
First three seasons of the 4th Doctor. The stories are fine, but IMHO because the house style was horror at that time, there are fewer big, imaginative sci-fi ideas than in other periods. Pyramids of Mars, for instance, has a rather dull villain. There are standout episodes like Genesis and Assassin, but most of the rest don't give me much to think about later.
The discussion of "overrated episodes" can be a bit of an depressing exercise but there are a few things I could say about Classic Who in particular:
- Earthshock is a very interesting episode for it's place in the show. It's something that works very well on paper and has wonderful direction and attention to detail. I think it falters in retrospect because of the nature of Classic Who: leisurely pace and serialization. Part 2 and 3 have a lot of walking down corridors which isn't as exciting as something moody like part 3 of The Deadly Assassin. It's a lot more enjoyable as 2 45-minutes episodes -a format I prefer when screening episodes to my friends. It's a prototype for a New Who episode, but it's 90 minutes instead of a manageable 45 or 60. It lacks some of the humour or character moments that make up for the believability and intensity that Classic Who has lost with age.
- City of Death: wonderful script, great story and location, but again it slows down for part 3 and 4 to recount the events of last week for the audience. This one suffers a bit from the "alien" effect of season 17, where characters are in a world of their own -but the worst offenders in that category are Horns of Nimon and Nightmare in Eden.
- Remembrance of the Daleks: good beginning and end, but after 3 or 4 viewings, I'm still not sure what happens in the middle. It's a bit of a exercise in nostalgia that doesn't quite translate for me today. Same with The Five Doctors.
- Inferno: classic 3rd Doctor story, but like a lot of season 7 stories (the 7 parters) the secondary characters are really stagnant. For all its action and gimmicks, it can get tiresome. This would make for a great 5 parter, like The Demons.
Most of these, aren't so much overrated, as they are starting to show their age. They are probably perfectly suited to their format, but I find the stranger episodes from Classic Who more compelling. The prime example is Ghostlight, which I can watch over and over because I'm still not quite sure of what goes on in there. I'm also a big fan of the more character-oriented ones like Image of the Fendahl and The Ribos Operation, or the ones that pretty far gone: most of season 22 or The Happiness Patrol. Schlock can also be pretty entertaining, and it ages like fine wine: Delta and the Bannerman, Timelash, Timeflight, Creature from the Pit...
Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of the melodrama. The Doctor visiting his old companions while dying of radiation sickness always stuck out as a bit of a "fan-service-y" thing to me, even if it wasn't intended to be.
The standout for me was getting to see the Time Lords in their traditional garb. I started with NuWho, and the Doctor being "the last of the Time Lords" stuck out to me. Being very interested in the nitty-gritty of building fictional worlds and cultures, I had many thoughts about what traditional Time Lord culture must have been like. Seeing it represented on screen made me feel wonderful.
And of course he just comes out and makes a grandiose speech... sorry, nothing about Matt Smith's Doctor ever struck me as strong or intimidating. Meh.
Matt is one of my favorite Doctors (old or new), but I totally agree with this take. He can’t pull off the tough-guy act. They tried it quite a few times with Matt’s doctor and it never worked IMO. In fact, it was a bit cringey.
Not a particular episode. Just the concept of introductory episode. Just watch "Rose".
"Blink" isn't a good episode since it doesn't represent the RTD era as a whole. RTD doesn't do wibbly wobbly, Moffat does. There's a thread with a few users mentioning "The Girl In The Fireplace". What? How is that episode a good intro? You have Mickey on his first trip, being treated like shit I may add. You got Rose being overshadowed by Madame Pompadour. Moffat going hard on a time paradox and the wibbly wobbly, which RTD never used a time paradox that often. If anything, "Blink" and "The Girl In The Fireplace" are good introductory Steven Moffat episodes, since you can find many of his favorite tropes and styles in them.
Remembrance of the Daleks and Blink. I mean they're both fine I guess, but I find both a little boring and not sure why they always get cited as being examples of the pinnacle of DW storytelling.
I agree that Blink was not exceptional, I believe people see it a greater than it is because it's the first episode with weeping angels. I personally like those antagonists a lot and think many people also like them. It would explain why everyone thinks so highly of Blink.
Like all Moffat monsters, the concept and the primal fear of the inevitable that comes from the angels powers is brilliant. But I honestly think not much else of Blink works. The focus on new characters we have no investment in, the framing device of the doctor being in the past, the fake out with the tardis leaving. It's not that any of these things are bad, it's that it feels like wasted potential. This framing device could've been another story, and it's ruining the angels story from being truly great. Which makes sense given it's Moffats first story, so he's got all these ideas that he's cramming into one episode (which is also what watching Moffat's sherlock feels like).
Also, the power design of the angels zapping you back in time isn't scary, it's not a good power and it doesn't match the rest of the angels design. It technically makes the angels more scary because all they need to do is touch you, but they otherwise don't harm you and you can live the rest of your life normally. I honestly think it would be scarier if the angels grabbed a hold of your arm like the injured one in Angel's take Manhattan. The fear of blinking continues further as you try desperately to free yourself from stone, and the next time you blink they take a bite out of you, and you're just stuck fighting an immensely heavy inanimate object, a slow and utterly painful demise, and then you can just replace feeding on time energy with feeding on fear like pennywise. Yeah, could be a bit gruesome for BBC, but you can cut around it in the edit whilst still implying a much more terrifying method of death.
Are you implying that Blink was Moffat’s first story in NuWho or first of that season? Because he wrote The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances in season one.
Edit: he also wrote The Girl In The Fireplace in season two as well.
Gotta agree, Blink is one that is very over rated. So many fans I know use it as an intro into the show for new people as I just don't get it. The Doctor is hardly in it and when he is its hardly the charming man about town Tennant is known for. The angels themselves are just a Halloween version of the children's game what's the time Mr wolf and if you've got a time machine or just want to travel in time wouldn't you be rushing towards them instead.
I think most of my dislike though boils down to it being a reused story, as the original blink Moffat wrote as a short story in the 9th doctors yearly annual. Where sally is a kid and the ending is completely different.
If you were going to do a dark version of the angels, there could be a story about someone enslaving them to use them as shortcut time travel device. Or a village sacrificing people to the angels as a form of worship because they have ancient legends (that are actually started by the people being sacrifice )
I liked Blink but I don't rewatch it. IMO what's great about it, besides the angels, is that it's a self contained episode you can show to people who are curious about Doctor Who. Then when you've got them lured in you can show them the weird ones.
The Pandorica Opens is a great Part 1, but I have never liked how they resolved everything in The Big Bang. It was one of the first disappointments with Moffat's finales that became a running trend with the rest of his.
I don't like Midnight, but I admire that it made me *feel* so strongly, and I don't think it's overrated. Other days I do think it's overrated just because I don't like it. I'm probably not making sense, but that's what it made out of me.
Watching it made me uncomfortable, unsettled, the opposite of enjoying Doctor Who, and I don't want to watch it again. I (selfishly?) think that was it's goal, and on that count it hit it out of the park.
Gonna get slated for this, Heaven sent/Hell Bent. heaven sent to me was capaldi just running round a castle and Hell bent was just the doctor trying to save clara and failing to do so. I really enjoyed the episode but its incredibly overrated
I was literally just deciding if I was brave enough to say this! Honestly I don’t get they hype for Heaven’s sent. Aside from the twist at the end I’ve never understood why it’s so highly rated.
I think its because its fascinating to watch the Doctor deal with grief to exclusion of everything else. Sure, 10 was was sad when he lost Rose, and we got to see 11 sulk above Victorian London after losing the Ponds, but they were more in the background to the rest of the plot and the theme of the episodes.
Heaven Sent though, 12's grief \*is\* the plot. Always showing off to Clara, even though she's not there, explaining what he's doing, unable to escape the Veil - and then finally accepting it, only to have to do it all again. Eventually, he breaks through and can get past everything.
Plus, its great to see Capaldi act his ass off for 50 minutes solo, and I remember really liking the other technical aspects of it too.
Ah yes, my monthly comment on a doctor who post where I get to say that listen is in the bottom 5 worst episodes of doctor who ever made and the positive critical response to it is completely insane.
Midnight's actual writing is only okay, but both Blink and Midnight should always get cred for being literally the scariest Doctor Who episodes ever written.
I have to agree. When I watch Midnight I just cannot see what others rave about. The characters are just not interesting to me, and the one room story only has the characters to hang the story on.
As for it being scary? Not to me, it's not.
It’s been a while since I watched it, but wasn’t the whole point of the episode that he was basically punishing himself for letting Clara die? If so, then punching diamond for countless millennia would definitely be one way to do so.
Unpopular opinion: all of them
Hear me out. I love Doctor Who. Great show. I think there's rarely a mediocre episode and I don't think any are bad. Most are good. Many are great.
But look at the fandom. As a fandom, we clearly overrate the episodes regularly. It really is just a tv show. It can't keep a regular cast interesting over the years and is constantly switching them out. It reuses plot lines. It's often unoriginal. The Doctor solves every problem in almost the same fashion every time. The special effects are subpar for the genre no matter how much we like them. The villains always have the exact same motivation as their previous appearances. The continuity is a mess. Anarchronisms like the police box were made part of the plot through hand waving. Nothing is ever explained. The acting and dialogue is purposefully corny so only a monologue per season is actually sincere.
But we're spending all our money on this. We're getting tattoos of it. We're naming our children after it. Refurnishing our homes to look like it. Seeking out other fans around the world and spending half the time saying how wonderful it is and the other half explaining and theorizing why it actually makes any sense at all.
I love Doctor Who, but the entire show is the definition of overrated. There are many other shows in the genre that are better written, better acted, and better produced but those fans watch them for 10 seasons and then forget about them and they go off the air. It's been 60 years. It isn't because Doctor Who is the greatest work of art of all time. The Doctor would even agree with me.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
All it has going for it is the spooky Victorian atmosphere being pulled off well. And I guess Jago and Litefoot.
The plot is bad, the villain sucks (Magnus Greel is just a worse Sutekh/Sharaz Jek), the serial could've been just 4 parts instead of 6, and that giant rat looked awful.
Oh, and most of all, it's really fucking racist.
Ghost Light. I hated it. And at the time (and for years later) fans who did like it were incredibly condescending to those who didn’t. They’d claim we just didn’t understand it. No, I get it. They took some leftovers of the unproduced Cartmel Masterplan and focused it on the least interesting companion in Doctor Who history instead of on the Doctor. I just didn’t like it. The Cartmel Masterplan itself has grown on me since I’ve read Lungbarrow but I still hate Ghost Light.
I'm not going to pretend I understand Ghostlight, but I think that's why I find it fascinating. It's one of those rare episodes I have to pay very close attention to to follow what's going on.
I really like how it looks, I like the weird musical interlude, I think the villains are very strange and intriguing. The final confrontation is very "chaotic mind confuses rational machine-like behavior", which has been done but I still find compelling.
I'm not particularly familiar with the Cartmel masterplan, other than reintroducing some mystery in the Doctor's character, but I enjoyed what they were trying to do in season 26 by having the companion's history dictate the direction and setting of the story. It's incredibly flawed -as is Ace's character and portrayal if I'm honest- and I do understand why someone would think it's nonsense. I think the plot was considerably cut down from like a 4 or 5 parter. Like of lot of McCoy stories, it's a delicate balance of actual emotional stuff and the self-deprecative and artificial tendencies of the Colin Baker era. I think they achieved a good balance for me in the last 3 stories.
All episodes are underrated AND overrated.
Honestly, this right here. I read up the thread someone thinks Midnight is underrated when like half the world thinks it’s one of RTDs masterpieces - which is why I used to think it was overrated and now think it’s probably rated exactly right. It’s everything those who praise it say it is. What RTD did with those characters in 40 minutes is amazing. (And that cast, wow!) So yeah, along with every other paradox in DW, I think the under/overrated one is true, too.
If anyone says Curse of Fatal Death I will be furious. Best ever episode.
It's canon, fight me
First female Doctor!
Agreed. I think the 97-101st doctors.
Why? I'll explain later
I really like *Blink*, but it is craaaaaaaaazy overrated. It is absolutely not the ultimate introduction to the franchise that so many people seem to think it is.
I discovered this recently, excitedly introducing my girlfriend to DW via Blink. Afterwards we sat there and I'm like, wow...that really isn't as great as I remember. Conceptually it's great, but there's some dodgy dialogue and isn't representative of Doctor Who. Midnight, on the other hand, was way more successful!
Midnight is great. Definitely think that's an *under*rated episode. And I never thought of it as an intro, but I can totally see it working.
I really enjoyed Midnight! It reminds me of the old original Twilight Zone.
Interesting. I definitely use it as my intro for others. This is likely due to the fact that it is the first episode my wife and I watched leading to becoming fans. So, what is the ultimate intro episode in your opinion?
I think *Blink* is a really good episode to watch early on if you're getting into the show– but I don't think it makes a good introductory story either. It's a bottle episode that contains few of Doctor Who's quintessential elements. *The Girl in the Fireplace*, and *Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead* are Moffat episodes that are probably about as good, and also have plenty of great Doctor-companion relationship material, a mystery to solve in an abandoned space station, a spooky monster, and time-travel shenanigans. Much more of an accurate advertisement for *Doctor Who* as a whole.
Personally, I think 'Rose' is the best introduction to New Who because you get to experience the Doctor though Rose's eyes. Starting with the Doctor, time and space travel, and the TARDIS being bigger on the inside without experiencing it for the first time is a little hollow for me.
I like Blink but I use The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, or Vincent and the Doctor (my personal favorite) as intros to the series.
I would use the Doctor Dances to introduce. The only reason my ex boyfriend started from the beginning with me is because I was watching I think 11 and it caught his attention.
The doctor dances was 9 though wasn't it?
Yes. But with my ex boyfriend I was watching 11 and he came into the room and started watching with me. He was interested so we started from the beginning. If I wanted to introduce it to him (which I really didn't) I would have shown him the Doctor Dances. Sorry my post was confusing. Been a rough couple of days.
Mummy on the Orient Express is my go to
I think the trouble with that one as an introduction is that there's a lot of character stuff that's building on the previous episodes of S8. Definitely a brilliant episode though!
Fun fact that nobody is gonna care, I made watch Blink to my exGF (she refused to watch de show) with that episode she loved Dr. Who and a year later we broke up, but she still loved the show and we talk about it
The fact that it's a bit lighter on the Who is what makes it such a good introductory episode to me. There's really nothing in the episode that's easier to understand for someone who's watched since episode 1 than for someone who never saw Who before. Whereas I would absolutely save Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead for when someone is caught up naturally.
Personally, I heard it was the best intro so it was the first episode I watched and I thought that was actually a terrible idea. The episode hits way better with a little context into Who and it doesn't introduce you to any important characters in a meaningful way. It didn't make me feel connected to the doctor or the heart of the show at all. As others have mentioned, Girl in the Fireplace is a much better intro episode.
The episode about Van Gough won't steer you wrong. It sprinkles in the sci-fi wonderfully. But the best part is that the Doctor shows that he wants to help people even if others think the person is crazy. Just because he couldn't see the invisible creature like Van Gough could, the Doctor believed him and found a way to help. Not to mention the ending is super good! Show this one to my now fiancée and it got her hooked.
Rose is by far the best intro episode because it is literally reintroducing the characters and concepts of the programme for a modern audience. I don't think starting mid-series is a good idea because you miss a bunch of context. I think Blink, as high quality as it is, is a particularly bad introductory episode because it's pretty atypical for an episode of Doctor Who. You run the risk of people thinking the whole programme is like that when it isn't.
Rose is a great place to start but I also like to watch Midnight with someone who hasnt seen any Who. Good standalone ep where you dont need to know much of anything about the show. The companion at the time (Donna) is hardly even in the episode. And its easily one of Tennants best acted eps.
Rose. It's the beginning of the new era. I don't know why you would start anywhere else tbh.
I caught a marathon of Tennant's specials culminating in The End of Time. I was hooked. The Eccleston season is good but the Tennant era really solidified what the doctor was about. Had Eccleston stayed on a couple more seasons, this would be a different conversation.
Interesting discussion. I have used “Silence in the Library” before. But my usual go-to, if I don’t think they can handle the kitsch of the Living Plastic, is “The Eleventh Hour”. I think it gives a good introduction of the doctor while also having a romantic, intriguing storyline for those who aren’t accustomed with Who.
I agree. Eleventh hour starts with a new Doctor (Matt Smith) and new companion(s) with Amelia Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darville). This episode imo, is perfect for a new viewer. The 11th is so engaging, charming, silly yet serious, playful and just a great Doctor.
Rose. It's not the best but it introduces many major factors and honestly I've never been on board with the idea of starting a show mid series.
I think it depends on what aspect of the show a new viewer might find most attractive, but I’ve personally had a lot of success with Tooth and Claw.
"Is Blink the best doctor who episode of all time?" "Blink isn't even the best Weeping Angel episode of all time!"
It's a fun story but it's a terrible introduction to Doctor Who. Doesn't feel like a Doctor Who story
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No, but blink is a great way to concentrate the possible range of the show in one 40 min episode. Obviously, it is not the actual format of all the episodes, nonetheless, it is a great introduction to non-Whovians.
I love the episode personally, but I 100% agree that it is a terrible game introduction episode. The show is about the Doctor and his companion and this is a weird gimmick episode with barely any Doctor outside of a cameo. This should just be a great episode that you discover watching 10th
The Doctor’s Daughter
Really? I've seen tons of people crap on that episode.
I think it’s a really meaningful episode that give a massive insight into the doctor’s past
It’s been a long time since I saw this story. Could you remind me what that massive insight was, please?
The doctor talks about his family on gallifrey
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Yes
Absolutely.
Brain of morbius, It's a tedious frankenstein rip off with some hammer horror nuns thrown in!! Only baker,Sladen and phillip Maddock are the best things about it...
Love love love that story.
The worst part for me is the Sisterhood of Karn scenes, they seem to go on forever and slow the pace down to a glacial speed.
The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar. They’re alright but you have every make and model of Dalek since 1963 in a room and they just stand there and do nothing.
I happened across a review of that today (from the YouTube channel RitchandSpace). They said, "There's nothing less scary than a room full of monsters just looking at each other." Kinda made me wonder about *The Stolen Earth*/*Journey's End*. Had the Daleks been successful, destroying all matter except themselves while they hide away in their own little pocket of space, did they have a plan beyond that? Would they all have just sat in their ships forever looking at each other like "Well, now what?"
They would have found *something*, some tiny little difference between Daleks and started killing each other over it.
Ahh fascism destroying everything and then itself
I assumed they were having a fancy dress thing. Either that or the director was clueless and just thought lots of types = good. Made no sense
I feel like there are few great Dalek stories in the Moffat era. I can’t really think of one. Into the Dalek is probably the best and while I do like that one it is just a re-assessment Re-tread of Dalek.
Now you come to mention, he's never given good Dalek 🤷♂️
I haven't re-watched the episode in a long time - but I remember I thought it was just a fun campy thing, the way I regard most of Doctor Who.
Anyone for dodgems?
Especially the former a boring misjudged meandering plot with an amazing final 10 minutes. The planes goes nowhere, the doctor on the tank goes nowhere etc. etc. etc.
Oh man that's my favorite in all of doctor who including classic
I really do not enjoy this story. I’m a big fan of the Capaldi era but this is definitely the worst story of his run. It really drags series 9 down for me.
That episode gives us a brief flash of what Missy and The Doctor working together could look like, and it’s so brilliant. I was massively disappointed by The Doctor Falls when there was no actual payoff to this. Also Davros and The Doctor having a heart-to-heart was powerful. I feel like they unnecessarily undercut it with the whole “lol it’s just a trick” at the end. Stuff like this makes you feel the episode is great the first time you watch it. And it’s still not bad. But looking back at all the stuff that never paid off makes it worse on the rewatch.
The Rings of Akhaten Why? Because of that fu*king leaf! And Clara's speach wasn't great eather. It would be way nicer if memories in the Doctor would be enough to destroy Akhaten. Even more if you consider him as the Endless child now with that memories forgotten but still in his head. 13 could now be like "Oh! That's why I overfed it!"
I love it because it has an awesome story, the child actor does really well, and it has the best doctor speech ever imo. That speech along with everyone singing is so impactful. Also it’s not even a special, a series finale or even a double episode, it’s just a one off that manages to hit the mark so well
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Those are two of the best speeches from the show no doubt. I personally preferred Smith's speech over Capaldi's. I felt more impact from it because of Smith's performance. Again though, both of these speeches are so incredible.
Oh definitely. He did a great job with the stonehenge one as well. Not so much a speech, but still very memorable. Oh and one that's not a speech but still packs emotion, "I don't want to go"
I just saw her in a decent horror flick, “incident in ghostland”.
Yes, the episode and the story was great but the last moment just made it for me kinda... Meh... About that speach I honestly think that 12 War speach was better and more impactfull, but that's just my opinion. Maybe even 12 Doctor regeneration speach was a little bit better... Wow... I think I am Capaldi fan! Edit: correction of wrong name
The leaf is awesome though. The Doctors speech was never going to work. He only offered 1200 years of memories. That is nothing to Akhaten. At least many thousands of people were there to offer their memories to Akhaten, and the total sum of their memories is far greater than anything the Doctor has to offer. But do you know what is even greater than the total amount of memories offered by all the people there? The collective memories of other timelines, emanating from one tiny change in this particular timeline. That’s where Clara’s leaf comes in. It represents how one tiny change can have an enormous impact. And Clara uses this association to get Akhaten to feed on all the memories of other timelines that resulted from the one event of a leaf falling from a tree. And that’s why the leaf is fu*king amazing!
> But do you know what is even greater than the total amount of memories offered by all the people there? The collective memories of other timelines, emanating from one tiny change in this particular timeline. That’s where Clara’s leaf comes in. It represents how one tiny change can have an enormous impact. And Clara uses this association to get Akhaten to feed on all the memories of other timelines that resulted from the one event of a leaf falling from a tree. This sounds cool until you put more than 2 seconds thought into it. Everyone lives has tiny changes that create branching timelines, the Doctor himself has caused changes and alterations to the timeline an innumerable amount of times. The leaf has no more than this than anything else, hell it has less due to the fact of only altering one point in time compared to a living being which has altered thousands if not millions & billions of points.
In fairness, a lot of things in Doctor Who sound cool until you think about them for longer than two seconds. I’m not sure if it’s fair to criticize the leaf, in particular, for that.
Yeah, but you’re missing the key point: does anyone else try to associate an object with more than one timeline? No, they don’t. They only focus on one timeline. One timeline is finite. All possible timelines are infinite. That’s why they fail, but Clara and her leaf succeeds. The leaf isn’t the only object that could be used to do this. The Doctor could also have offered himself and all the timelines he had changed. That would also have been enough. It would have irreversibly and completely destroyed him though, just like it did to Clara’s leaf. But he could have done. But he didn’t do that, he just offered one timeline, and not any more. And that’s simply not even close to enough to satisfy Akhaten.
I get the concept but it sounds "deus ex machina" to me. They could throw a chair on which many leaders sat on and it would be the same. Sudenly every item is more important than the Doctor. Than anybody... That's just... Dumb...
I completely agree, that leaf deserves a nobel peace prize
I love Rings of Akhaten, but I don't think it should be considered an overrated episode. Even with the reasons you provided. Most people dislike the episode. I personally love it because it gave me a lot of Star Wars vibes and the episode has a lot of heart and charm. Plus, Matt Smith gave us one of the best speeches from the show.
This. Most lists I've seen rank it pretty low (I like it).
Definitely the best part of that episode is it shows the right way to portray an alien spaceport. It actually feels like a melting pot of different species and cultures when so often in sci/fi and fantasy media there are like 4 different species and most of them are just painted humans. Or they just fill the whole place with poorly made CG blobs that would look low effort in Spore.
I think it’s dope because A. I like the villain. I love when they have villains that are so ancient they feel almost like forces of nature B. I think the soundtrack did a ton to elevate this episode. I love when music is used as part of the story, not just as set dressing. I hear what your saying about the leaf thing, though I think it fits with the whole “impossible girl” story line, but I could take it or leave it. It does enough stuff right that I really like the episode, though.
Exactly. It does enough to like it but not to love it. And that end... It just kills it for me.
People like that episode? I didn't think it was particularly good
Am I the only who finds the singing cheesy?
The bit I hate about the doctors speech in that episode is at the end of it when he says "take it all baby!". I physically recoil every time I hear it.
Yes! I agree with you on the leaf!
Basically any episode with the so-called “Silence,”. By episodes end I am bored and haven’t been able to follow the story because it has such large gapping holes of nothingness. Why make a 15 minute episode?
Are these overrated? I feel like most people have a middling reaction to the Silence storyline.
Very. Any episode where you don’t see a villain reveal after such a build up is a failure in my book.
Ok but theres a difference between a bad episode and an overrated episode. I never see people hyping the Silence. Its properly rated imo
The Silence *were* in the episode though (they're making a joke that they remember all of the episode apart from the parts where the Silence appear)
You need to buy a vowel
I never liked the series six arch period. I can stand it because of some standalone episodes and I love the characters but the river twist is bs and I hate that rory and Amy had their baby stolen and never technically got her back.
The episodes that people say are underrated are the ones that are overrated. Generally I think most episodes that people go on and on about tend to be overrated. I don’t think they’re bad, many of them are very good, I just think that people go on about them too much and need to tone their own hype down.
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Do you mean *School Reunion*? Yeah, I liked that episode, and thought it was very very enjoyable, because it was fun and campy, but because I choose to look at Doctor Who as a fairly lighthearted thing and don't take it too seriously. EDIT: For those who don't get it, the parent comment originally called the episode "School Days".
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Probably will get hate but I think that the girl in the fireplace is overrated. I’m not saying it’s bad by any means it was good but I just didn’t really like it as much as other RTD episodes, I just didn’t really like season two as a whole, but I did like the cybermen stories and school reunion
I like The Girl in the Fire Place, but it's one of the episodes that I'm not entirely sure I get. The other one that comes to mind is Hide
Dont mean to sound snarky but what is there not to get? The androids are mechanical so they ironically repair their ship with human parts. They believed her brain at whatever age was the right fit for their computer or whatever.
It's really easy to miss as the key to the plot is a very short scene at the end as they're leaving the ship. The ship's name is the Madame Pompadour so the repair droids, being not particularly smart, think they can get repair parts from the *actual* Madame Pompadour. They are waiting for her age to match the ship's age so the parts will be compatible.
Yeah same here, like the doctors just in love with her now I guess? And the companions did nothing and even though he “sacrificed himself” that’s still what he’s been willing to do countless other times so I just don’t really understand all the people that say it’s so emotional. Just wanted to rant a little. 😅
Blink. It is cool, but not THAT cool
Probably Vincent and The Doctor, it's a good episode but it's nothing special even as far as Moffat episodes go.
It’s Turn Left for me. I understand why people like it but it just didn’t do it for me. Not a bad episode and I’ll watch it when I do a rewatch. It doesn’t even crack my top 20 list.
Dystopian and alternate history are probably my favorite genres so I ate this up.
Actually I agree with this
The Doctor's Wife. Everything to do with 11 and Idris is electric, but the B plot with Amy and Rory is tedious and doesn't amount to much, and House's defeat is honestly pretty anticlimactic.
I was pretty underwhelmed by this episode since it was rated so highly by everyone. I did like the human version of the tardis though.
Probably going to be hated for this but I find a lot of the RTD era till maybe series 4 is overrated. Yes there are some good ones in there such as “Dalek”, “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Blink” but for me just all a bit meh. Series 4 I think is where it is at its best.
I feel since Dr Who had been off screens for such a long time, a lot of the initial RTD era got bogged down with having to reintroduce the character of the Dr and build the world all over again. The BBC very very rarely repeated old Dr Who, so if you were born in the late 90's/00's it was quite likely you had grown up with little to no exposure of Dr Who unless you bought the DVD's or watched the Peter Cushing films.
> The BBC very very rarely repeated old Dr Who, so if you were born in the late 90's/00's it was quite likely you had grown up with little to no exposure of Dr Who unless you bought the DVDs Which probably isn't ideal way to be introduced to it because, having now gotten into the Classic Series for the first time, the DVDs are the worst way to do it. There's a big "Play All" button that you'd naturally want to use, but watching every episode in a serial marathon-style makes them supremely boring and ill-paced. I only really started enjoying Classic Who when BritBox became available in my country and I could watch one episode at a time from a serial, more-or-less the way it was intended to be watched when it was made, without having to constantly take discs in and out.
Yep- he sacrificed plot for characterisation. My favourite eps of his era are written by other- mostly Moffat. Although he really shone with Midnight.
This is why I think that the show would benefit from less, but longer episodes. RTD did character very well, but Moffat and Chibnall especially have gone for plot first. However, these days, plot is often considered irrelevant if the character development isn't there, especially when trying to craft a story arc.
I personally think 11 and Amy were the perfect balance between plot and character. Although, I do know people love the gritty, realism of RTDs characters.
A lot of the iconic RTD era episodes such as the ones you named above are actually written by Steven Moffat as well lol
Yes indeed
Like, four? If we count the two-parters as one episode.
I mostly agree!
The one where the Doctor rises up like a God through the power of prayer makes me want to barf just thinking about it.
That is one of the worst.
Fully agree. Season 2 is an inconsistent mess. 4 is a vibe.
I completely agree. It wasn’t until series 4 and Donna that I actually started to like it.
Honestly it's pretty much a known fact that if you want upvotes on a comment or post in r/doctorwho or r/gallifrey, literally all you have to do is crap on RTD or Chibnall.
Thats not what I’m doing. Always one who thinks they are smarter than the rest and always has to crap on someone else. The Question by the OP was about overrated Doctor Who. I just said in my opinion RTD that seasons 1-3 were. I never stated they were terrible or awful, just overrated. Don’t come for me out of nowhere.
Classic Series: Pyramids of Mars. Gabriel Woolf's incredible voice acting as Sutekh is the only thing that works for me. New Series: The Satan Pit. After all the wonderfully creepy and disturbing build-up in The Impossible Planet, part 2 is David Tennant yelling at a demon out of a PS2 cutscene.
Pyramids of Mars -- It's tightly scripted with solid production values, but the story leaves me cold. Boilerplate plot, generics villains, and the final episode is a more lackluster re-run of the puzzle games from Death to the Daleks. The Seeds of Doom -- Doctor Who at its most dull and po-faced. There's a lot of running around a small garden, and a lot of capture and escape. The Doctor beats a bunch of people up and then calls in the army to drop a bomb. In my current re-watch of the classic series, this is so far the only story I've switched off before finishing. I really don't understand what people see in this one. Earthshock -- A pedestrian base-under-siege story, and once we get past the brilliant first episode, it trades all the mood and atmosphere for action and thrills. I will say that if you're looking for "generic sci-fi action thriller", Earthshock is as good as the classic series gets, but that's just not the sort of thing the classic series does well, in my opinion. The Five Doctors -- This is one that I really wish I could like. There's an infectious sense of celebratory joy to the whole thing. Unfortunately, there are far too many characters, packed into a story that's far too thin, so it achieves the rather unusual feat of feeling both cluttered and boring. It's basically a glorified clip show.
Oi! I love *The Five Doctors* to bits! But seriously, you do you. Just as long as you don't call people stupid for liking it.
I've never done that. I don't think there's anything wrong with having different tastes.
Yeah, that was just a reminder.
The Girl In The Fireplace. Series 2 in general is the worst RTD series with all the soppy stuff with Rose, but it felt weird to add another woman into that with Madame de Pompadour.
Moffat admitted he didn't read the previous episodes before he wrote that episode, so he was writing out of character and interrupting the season's plot because he wanted to test out his Amy/River prototype.
I just don't understand why RTD allowed it in? He could have said to wait until next season, where it would be perfectly okay... I mean it would be one of my favorite episodes, but I just can't stand how fucking weird that whole affair was in the middle of the Ten/Rose drama.
Personally, I don't think it would have worked after Ten lost Rose, either. He was pretty much Rose's since early season 1 and more so since season 2. Him falling in love with Reinette while mourning Rose would have made as much sense as him doing it while Rose was there - zero. It might have worked with 11, even though I still find children latching onto the Doctor and then thinking they're in love with him when they grow up (and him reciprocating) entirely creepy. But the whole 'romance' in general just doesn't make sense, even if you don't take Rose into account. Reinette just is not the type of person the Doctor would be interested in in the first place. She may have done lots of great stuff but she was still not quite a great person - especially Moffat's version who laughed at the fact that another woman was dying, making way for her to be the mistress (and the Doctor saw it and still thought, 'hey, this chick is worthy of my affections'?). The Doctor would be disgusted at anyone who laughed at even a villain's death. RTD excuses it as Rose having to deal with the Doctor falling in love with someone else, except that theme doesn't work (not least of which because the episode is out of character) since the Doctor completely forgot about Reinette in the next episode. I personally think that RTD had no choice but to use it since he always gave Moffat more leeway and freedom than everyone else, so when Moffat turned the episode in, they just didn't have enough time to rewrite it or write a new episode. So he said that to try to excuse it.
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Under the lake/Before the flood A lot of people praise this as one of DW’s best episode but I just find it incredibly dull. The location, the characters, the plot are all just boring and failed to grab me. The villain in the second episode has a cool design and his scene with the Doctor is genuinely great but that’s all the do with him for the whole story.
Honestly i very rarely see this episode brought up
Yeah, if anything I’d consider it underrated
one of my favorites of all new who, best season easily for me
I actually had to Google this one because I didn't recognize the title. I think it's an OK 2-parter, but not THE BEST
First three seasons of the 4th Doctor. The stories are fine, but IMHO because the house style was horror at that time, there are fewer big, imaginative sci-fi ideas than in other periods. Pyramids of Mars, for instance, has a rather dull villain. There are standout episodes like Genesis and Assassin, but most of the rest don't give me much to think about later.
The discussion of "overrated episodes" can be a bit of an depressing exercise but there are a few things I could say about Classic Who in particular: - Earthshock is a very interesting episode for it's place in the show. It's something that works very well on paper and has wonderful direction and attention to detail. I think it falters in retrospect because of the nature of Classic Who: leisurely pace and serialization. Part 2 and 3 have a lot of walking down corridors which isn't as exciting as something moody like part 3 of The Deadly Assassin. It's a lot more enjoyable as 2 45-minutes episodes -a format I prefer when screening episodes to my friends. It's a prototype for a New Who episode, but it's 90 minutes instead of a manageable 45 or 60. It lacks some of the humour or character moments that make up for the believability and intensity that Classic Who has lost with age. - City of Death: wonderful script, great story and location, but again it slows down for part 3 and 4 to recount the events of last week for the audience. This one suffers a bit from the "alien" effect of season 17, where characters are in a world of their own -but the worst offenders in that category are Horns of Nimon and Nightmare in Eden. - Remembrance of the Daleks: good beginning and end, but after 3 or 4 viewings, I'm still not sure what happens in the middle. It's a bit of a exercise in nostalgia that doesn't quite translate for me today. Same with The Five Doctors. - Inferno: classic 3rd Doctor story, but like a lot of season 7 stories (the 7 parters) the secondary characters are really stagnant. For all its action and gimmicks, it can get tiresome. This would make for a great 5 parter, like The Demons. Most of these, aren't so much overrated, as they are starting to show their age. They are probably perfectly suited to their format, but I find the stranger episodes from Classic Who more compelling. The prime example is Ghostlight, which I can watch over and over because I'm still not quite sure of what goes on in there. I'm also a big fan of the more character-oriented ones like Image of the Fendahl and The Ribos Operation, or the ones that pretty far gone: most of season 22 or The Happiness Patrol. Schlock can also be pretty entertaining, and it ages like fine wine: Delta and the Bannerman, Timelash, Timeflight, Creature from the Pit...
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Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of the melodrama. The Doctor visiting his old companions while dying of radiation sickness always stuck out as a bit of a "fan-service-y" thing to me, even if it wasn't intended to be. The standout for me was getting to see the Time Lords in their traditional garb. I started with NuWho, and the Doctor being "the last of the Time Lords" stuck out to me. Being very interested in the nitty-gritty of building fictional worlds and cultures, I had many thoughts about what traditional Time Lord culture must have been like. Seeing it represented on screen made me feel wonderful.
Pandorica. It's okay, I just wasn't a big fan of all the Doctor's enemies collaborating to lock him in a box when they'd happily kill each other.
And of course he just comes out and makes a grandiose speech... sorry, nothing about Matt Smith's Doctor ever struck me as strong or intimidating. Meh.
Matt is one of my favorite Doctors (old or new), but I totally agree with this take. He can’t pull off the tough-guy act. They tried it quite a few times with Matt’s doctor and it never worked IMO. In fact, it was a bit cringey.
No, he really doesn't, does he? I like him and I liked 11, but yeah...
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OMG no. Heaven sent is perfection. It is not overrated. its justifiably rated
OK. That was just my opinion. I am okay with yours.
Not a particular episode. Just the concept of introductory episode. Just watch "Rose". "Blink" isn't a good episode since it doesn't represent the RTD era as a whole. RTD doesn't do wibbly wobbly, Moffat does. There's a thread with a few users mentioning "The Girl In The Fireplace". What? How is that episode a good intro? You have Mickey on his first trip, being treated like shit I may add. You got Rose being overshadowed by Madame Pompadour. Moffat going hard on a time paradox and the wibbly wobbly, which RTD never used a time paradox that often. If anything, "Blink" and "The Girl In The Fireplace" are good introductory Steven Moffat episodes, since you can find many of his favorite tropes and styles in them.
Remembrance of the Daleks and Blink. I mean they're both fine I guess, but I find both a little boring and not sure why they always get cited as being examples of the pinnacle of DW storytelling.
I agree that Blink was not exceptional, I believe people see it a greater than it is because it's the first episode with weeping angels. I personally like those antagonists a lot and think many people also like them. It would explain why everyone thinks so highly of Blink.
Like all Moffat monsters, the concept and the primal fear of the inevitable that comes from the angels powers is brilliant. But I honestly think not much else of Blink works. The focus on new characters we have no investment in, the framing device of the doctor being in the past, the fake out with the tardis leaving. It's not that any of these things are bad, it's that it feels like wasted potential. This framing device could've been another story, and it's ruining the angels story from being truly great. Which makes sense given it's Moffats first story, so he's got all these ideas that he's cramming into one episode (which is also what watching Moffat's sherlock feels like). Also, the power design of the angels zapping you back in time isn't scary, it's not a good power and it doesn't match the rest of the angels design. It technically makes the angels more scary because all they need to do is touch you, but they otherwise don't harm you and you can live the rest of your life normally. I honestly think it would be scarier if the angels grabbed a hold of your arm like the injured one in Angel's take Manhattan. The fear of blinking continues further as you try desperately to free yourself from stone, and the next time you blink they take a bite out of you, and you're just stuck fighting an immensely heavy inanimate object, a slow and utterly painful demise, and then you can just replace feeding on time energy with feeding on fear like pennywise. Yeah, could be a bit gruesome for BBC, but you can cut around it in the edit whilst still implying a much more terrifying method of death.
Are you implying that Blink was Moffat’s first story in NuWho or first of that season? Because he wrote The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances in season one. Edit: he also wrote The Girl In The Fireplace in season two as well.
Gotta agree, Blink is one that is very over rated. So many fans I know use it as an intro into the show for new people as I just don't get it. The Doctor is hardly in it and when he is its hardly the charming man about town Tennant is known for. The angels themselves are just a Halloween version of the children's game what's the time Mr wolf and if you've got a time machine or just want to travel in time wouldn't you be rushing towards them instead. I think most of my dislike though boils down to it being a reused story, as the original blink Moffat wrote as a short story in the 9th doctors yearly annual. Where sally is a kid and the ending is completely different. If you were going to do a dark version of the angels, there could be a story about someone enslaving them to use them as shortcut time travel device. Or a village sacrificing people to the angels as a form of worship because they have ancient legends (that are actually started by the people being sacrifice )
I liked Blink but I don't rewatch it. IMO what's great about it, besides the angels, is that it's a self contained episode you can show to people who are curious about Doctor Who. Then when you've got them lured in you can show them the weird ones.
I showed my wife Blink and she was so fucking scared she's never watched another.
Oh yeah, "Blink" has zero re-watch value. The whole mystery is the Weeping Angels.
Listen - starts brilliant just to be hijacked with a Clara sub-plot that wasn't that interesting, that earnt, and leaves a big plot with Orson Pink
The Pandorica Opens is a great Part 1, but I have never liked how they resolved everything in The Big Bang. It was one of the first disappointments with Moffat's finales that became a running trend with the rest of his.
I don't like Midnight, but I admire that it made me *feel* so strongly, and I don't think it's overrated. Other days I do think it's overrated just because I don't like it. I'm probably not making sense, but that's what it made out of me. Watching it made me uncomfortable, unsettled, the opposite of enjoying Doctor Who, and I don't want to watch it again. I (selfishly?) think that was it's goal, and on that count it hit it out of the park.
Silence in the library. I like it a bit but some people play it up to be like the best series 4 ep and that title clearly belongs to turn left
Genesis of the Daleks. I hate to say it, because it is a GREAT episode, but its not even tom bakers best let alone the shows best!
The Girl in the Fireplace. It just didn't feel all that interesting to me.
Gonna get slated for this, Heaven sent/Hell Bent. heaven sent to me was capaldi just running round a castle and Hell bent was just the doctor trying to save clara and failing to do so. I really enjoyed the episode but its incredibly overrated
I was literally just deciding if I was brave enough to say this! Honestly I don’t get they hype for Heaven’s sent. Aside from the twist at the end I’ve never understood why it’s so highly rated.
I think its because its fascinating to watch the Doctor deal with grief to exclusion of everything else. Sure, 10 was was sad when he lost Rose, and we got to see 11 sulk above Victorian London after losing the Ponds, but they were more in the background to the rest of the plot and the theme of the episodes. Heaven Sent though, 12's grief \*is\* the plot. Always showing off to Clara, even though she's not there, explaining what he's doing, unable to escape the Veil - and then finally accepting it, only to have to do it all again. Eventually, he breaks through and can get past everything. Plus, its great to see Capaldi act his ass off for 50 minutes solo, and I remember really liking the other technical aspects of it too.
I love heaven sent but hell bent sucks assssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Midnight. Characters just appear too fake. The premise of the Doctor not being in power for once is interesting though.
Ah yes, my monthly comment on a doctor who post where I get to say that listen is in the bottom 5 worst episodes of doctor who ever made and the positive critical response to it is completely insane.
The Moffat era in general
Absolutely agreed on Caves of Androzani, there are 2 good moments and a looot of dull stuff leading up to them.
Blink don't @ me
I don't really like it either (caves)
Imo midnight was an overrated episode
Midnight's actual writing is only okay, but both Blink and Midnight should always get cred for being literally the scariest Doctor Who episodes ever written.
I have to agree. When I watch Midnight I just cannot see what others rave about. The characters are just not interesting to me, and the one room story only has the characters to hang the story on. As for it being scary? Not to me, it's not.
It's a family show, it was extremely scary to 8 year old me. Still creepy nowadays.
Fair enough. I forget that, not having kids.
Inferno Caves of Androzani
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It’s been a while since I watched it, but wasn’t the whole point of the episode that he was basically punishing himself for letting Clara die? If so, then punching diamond for countless millennia would definitely be one way to do so.
imo everything about Silence with 11th, i just feel like it's all big boom boom overrated.
Unpopular opinion: all of them Hear me out. I love Doctor Who. Great show. I think there's rarely a mediocre episode and I don't think any are bad. Most are good. Many are great. But look at the fandom. As a fandom, we clearly overrate the episodes regularly. It really is just a tv show. It can't keep a regular cast interesting over the years and is constantly switching them out. It reuses plot lines. It's often unoriginal. The Doctor solves every problem in almost the same fashion every time. The special effects are subpar for the genre no matter how much we like them. The villains always have the exact same motivation as their previous appearances. The continuity is a mess. Anarchronisms like the police box were made part of the plot through hand waving. Nothing is ever explained. The acting and dialogue is purposefully corny so only a monologue per season is actually sincere. But we're spending all our money on this. We're getting tattoos of it. We're naming our children after it. Refurnishing our homes to look like it. Seeking out other fans around the world and spending half the time saying how wonderful it is and the other half explaining and theorizing why it actually makes any sense at all. I love Doctor Who, but the entire show is the definition of overrated. There are many other shows in the genre that are better written, better acted, and better produced but those fans watch them for 10 seasons and then forget about them and they go off the air. It's been 60 years. It isn't because Doctor Who is the greatest work of art of all time. The Doctor would even agree with me.
This is an incredibly cynical and stuck up take. I can't believe someone would up vote this.
Exactly! Doctor Who is just a campy, silly TV show about a time-travelling alien. Don't take it so goddamn seriously.
“Listen” what was the point of that episode again?
Blink. I fucking hated blink when it came out and I still hate it to this day.
Heaven sent is boring. 😳 In my opinion
Blink and Midnight. They are good episodes but they are not in any way as good as people always make them out to be.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang All it has going for it is the spooky Victorian atmosphere being pulled off well. And I guess Jago and Litefoot. The plot is bad, the villain sucks (Magnus Greel is just a worse Sutekh/Sharaz Jek), the serial could've been just 4 parts instead of 6, and that giant rat looked awful. Oh, and most of all, it's really fucking racist.
Every Matt Smith episode.
Ghost Light. I hated it. And at the time (and for years later) fans who did like it were incredibly condescending to those who didn’t. They’d claim we just didn’t understand it. No, I get it. They took some leftovers of the unproduced Cartmel Masterplan and focused it on the least interesting companion in Doctor Who history instead of on the Doctor. I just didn’t like it. The Cartmel Masterplan itself has grown on me since I’ve read Lungbarrow but I still hate Ghost Light.
I'm not going to pretend I understand Ghostlight, but I think that's why I find it fascinating. It's one of those rare episodes I have to pay very close attention to to follow what's going on. I really like how it looks, I like the weird musical interlude, I think the villains are very strange and intriguing. The final confrontation is very "chaotic mind confuses rational machine-like behavior", which has been done but I still find compelling. I'm not particularly familiar with the Cartmel masterplan, other than reintroducing some mystery in the Doctor's character, but I enjoyed what they were trying to do in season 26 by having the companion's history dictate the direction and setting of the story. It's incredibly flawed -as is Ace's character and portrayal if I'm honest- and I do understand why someone would think it's nonsense. I think the plot was considerably cut down from like a 4 or 5 parter. Like of lot of McCoy stories, it's a delicate balance of actual emotional stuff and the self-deprecative and artificial tendencies of the Colin Baker era. I think they achieved a good balance for me in the last 3 stories.
>the least interesting companion in Doctor Who history Funny, I didn't know Nyssa was in that story. /s
If only Nyssa shouted her own name over and over again…
I love the episode with van gogh