Follow TV Tropes

Following

Dethroning Moment / Doctor Who

Go To

While the Doctor has gone through many adventures in time and space, being the longest running Science-Fiction show ever created means that there's bound to be some moments that people want erased from history.

Keep in mind:

  • Sign your entries
  • One moment per show to a troper, if multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
  • Moments only, no "just everything he said, " "The entire show, " or "This entire season, " entries.
  • No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
  • No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
  • Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
  • No Real Life examples, including Executive Meddling. That is just asking for trouble.
  • No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.


Classic Series

  • Metz77: Peri in general is a dethroning character, but her absolute worst moment is in her debut episode, "Planet of Fire", when Nicola Bryant, struggling to make her American accent sound even slightly convincing, attempts to be defiant at the Master with the line "I'm Perpugilliam Brown and I can shout just as loud as you can." Instead of sounding defiant and confident, it comes out shakier than a bobblehead in an earthquake.
  • Sceptre: "The Twin Dilemma". Strangling the companion is not the best way to present a new Doctor to the world. It pretty much killed the show for twenty years. And the plot is so bad the novelization is a thousand times better, in a world where the reverse tends to happen.
  • bazer63: The TV Movie. "I'm half human, on my mother's side." That line. It makes me cry, and wonder if the writers actually watched Doctor Who beforehand. It makes me cringe so badly, it is the reason for the otherwise ok TV movie to be near-universally loathed by the fandom. Why you do this, America?

New Series

  • Ecclytennysmithylove: I sometimes tolerate New Series episodes that other fans have negative views on (specifically "Love and Monsters" and "Fear Her", those two episodes that I don’t really find that bad). But if I can think of one episode that nearly stopped me from watching the New Series, it would be “Father's Day”. I know that the episode writer, Paul Cornell (his written two-parter, “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood”, were actually great), was trying to expand the rules of the space-time continuum (i.e. Reapers), but still, none of the established rules ever came back after that episode. What even pissed me the most was the Ninth Doctor calling Rose a 'stupid ape' for saving her father from the accident, even though she did it because she wanted to get to know her father. I'm sorry, but as a victim of emotional abuse, that nearly made me lost my sympathy for the Ninth Doctor when he regenerated!
  • Gentlemens Dame 883: At the risk of earning the ire of Nine fans, I found his chickening out of destroying both the Daleks and Earth in "The Parting of the Ways", given his previously established Badassitude in taking Van Statten's gun to use against the Dalek and not flinching from Margaret Blaine's attempted shaming of Team TARDIS in "Boom Town", to be one of these.
  • Rushi: "The Christmas Invasion". If Harriet Jones is supposed to bring a Golden Age to Britain, I believe that Ten should have let her do it. Or the Reapers should have shown up and screwed him and Rose over for messing up the timeline or something.
    • Statzkeen: Yes, yes, yes this was awful. First of all, the Doctor's decision was idiotic. Second, the writers didn't seem to realize this. Third, the way it was done was completely unbelievable. Doctor or not, he doesn't have any powers that should make him able to turn a question about someone being tired into the whole country turning against said person.
    • LondonKdS: Yes. This poisons the entire Tenth Doctor era for me, and outweighs even things like the Donna Mind Rape and all of Ten's reactions to his upcoming regeneration. I'm not convinced that Harriet deserved to be overthrown for doing something very similar to things that the Doctor has frequently done, especially not for killing a bunch of cold-blooded slavers who would go off and enslave some more people. But what makes it unforgivable is that the Doctor deliberately appeals to the sexism and class prejudice of Harriet's staff and the media against her, in a way that will make it more difficult for any future woman or non-public-school person to become PM, and which is extremely reminiscent of the way that the Blairites tried to shaft Mo Mowlam in real life, at a time when she was suffering from cancer. And all just so that Russell T. Davies could make clear his opposition to a wartime strategic decision that Margaret Thatcher made over twenty years previously.
    • dmcreif: On the one hand, the Doctor overreacted. On the other hand, "The Stolen Earth" makes it clear that Harriet Jones never changed her position on how to handle alien threats, so I’m not sure if he could have really convinced her to behave differently. It's possible the aggressive attitude she had would have spilled into all of Earth’s agencies dealing with aliens, and it is not the kind of entry into the galactic society that Earth should have. However, the fact that her downfall did pave the way for The Master to come to power, does sour the Doctor's decision.
  • MrThorfan64: I was doing "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" and hope someone will put it back but I am now going to add "Tooth and Claw". The behaviour of Rose, the "perfect companion". People are getting torn to pieces by a werewolf. And what does Rose do? She keeps trying to win a stupid bet with the Doctor that she can get Victoria to say she isn't amused. What. This isn't the time, Rose! Her and 10 come across as unbearable here, seeming to enjoy the horrible stuff that's going on, when if they had any decency they would be appreciating this is not the time to be light-hearted. It's not surprising Victoria banishes, from her perspective, these terrible people who can't act serious even at the most horrific moments. Rose and 10 are thought by many as the best TARDIS team but this episode demonstrates what jerks they are when together, and I certainly feel 10's era became better when Rose left.
  • InTheGallbladder: I think I'll step up to the plate and add "Love & Monsters" to the list. Lazy writing, lots of padding, shoddy humor and a mountain of stupidity all steadily accumulated over the course of the episode, to the point where they were practically unignorable. But the fun doesn't truly begin until the villain is revealed to be a complete ripoff of Fat Bastard, to the point of even having a similar-sounding accent. It's at this point that Ursula is reduced to a disembodied face that protrudes out of things. She's then robbed of her dignity, leading into the reveal that she will spend eternity a talking paving slab. This is considered a happy ending.
    • Jarxon 6: That was all minor, to me at least, compared to the EPIC derailing of both Rose and the Doctor. There's this big monster, threatening to absorb someone, several innocents trapped in an And I Must Scream situation, and the Doctor has a more or less instant solution. So, what does the Doctor do? Stands back and watches Rose bitch out the guy for a fairly minor thing, thus making it impossible to free the people trapped. Let me repeat this: our heroes condemn innocent people to A Fate Worse Than Death so Rose can complain.
      • WickedIcon: Ursula's fate is bad enough, but you know what makes it even worse? The following lines:
    Elton: We've even got a bit of a love life.
    Ursula: Oh, let's not go into that.
  • Tropers/romanatorX: Almost everything about "Fear Her" was an embarrassment to the series, from the bad acting to the idiot balls. I would nominate the childish aesop about "Love conquers all" to be the episode's nadir, but no. The ultimate low point for the entire franchise is the drawing of Chloe's abusive dad being turned back to life. So how do they defeat him? Chloe and her mother... sing him away. Yes, you heard that right. They sing a living being away. That is so childish that it is actually insulting to the millions of fans who practically begged the BBC to bring back Doctor Who for so many years. And even if it wasn't prodding to the youngest demographic, you could tell that the writers, when coming up for an ending to this episode, threw their hands up in the air and said "We don't give a damn!" Give me the charm (mediocre special effects, So Bad, It's Good acting) of the old series over this childish excuse of a Doctor Who episode any day.
  • NCZ: "Last of the Time Lords". When all hope is lost and the heroes (and writer) have been backed into an inescapable corner, Martha gets everyone in the world to say the word, "Doctor" at the exact same time, which transforms The Doctor into Jesus and allows him to defeat The Master. It's ludicrously cheesy and a Deus ex machina at its finest. And to top it all off, we get a Reset Button ending, and The Master comes back anyway.
    • Calamity 2007: Also the reveal that the Toclafane are the future of humanity, who in an effort to escape the death of the universe, turned themselves into cyborg creatures, with minds of children, that cannibalize and kill each other for fun. That's right: in one simple reveal, RTD managed to make any optimistic speech about the human race moot, since apparently we are all doomed to become psychopathic man-children no matter what. Just feels like the only reason the plot twist was even included was to just make The Master look more evil for using them.
  • Larkmarn: As much as I disliked Donna (... which is a lot, by the way), the titular girl in "The Doctor's Daughter". Now, not only do I take issue with introducing an item that can single-handedly allow the Doctor to recreate the Time Lord race (granted he has gone back and forth on whether or not that would be a good thing or not, but it's still worrisome), but then functions as a massive Canon Sue, being birthed fully formed with Time Lord intelligence and Action Girl abilities. But the absolute dethroning moment was the end. Despite being, you know, dead, she regenerated... but for some reason, she kept her body and instantly went on an And the Adventure Continues.
  • Renita: "Journey's End". So many reasons, including the regeneration tease, the Clone Doctor, the Doctor's reaction to the Clone Doctor's rational decision to kill the Daleks when they were clearly beyond redemption, the Doctor fobbing Rose off with the Clone Doctor, Donna defeating the Daleks with Time Lord leet haxxor skillz, Donna being given a psychic lobotomy, the Earth being towed back whilst that "you should feel moved now" music plays in the background like a cue card and Davros being downgraded from Magnificent Bastard to a Dalek pet just to sate the wrath of the Fan Dumb that objected to him ever overshadowing his creations despite being far more interesting than they are.
    • Loquacia: The realization of the complete bollocks that the Daleks would keep a "blow us up" button in the first place rather spoiled the episode, let alone that they'd keep it in the same room as their enemies.
    • BlueButterfly: Donna's psychic lobotomy is the one I took issue with. She was the first new series companion not to be in love with the Doctor (Rose, Martha, Jack, Amy), whose life didn't revolve around him, who held her own and underwent a huge deal of Character Development, gained confidence, got significantly less annoying and then saved all of existence with not just sudden Time Lord knowledge but also her own skills... and she will never remember any of it and is reverted back to who she was (which we see in later appearances), because drama. It felt like RTD was slapping me in the face for liking her so much.
    • Stormchaser23: Agreed completely, but I also have to bring up how much Rose pisses me off in this two parter. From her whiny, selfish "but you can't!" when her young, pretty Doctor is about to regenerate, to her unearned happy ending with the Meta-Crisis Doctor (a concept I also fundamentally disagree with as a blatant Deus-ex Machina that seems like it was made up on the fly). And then there's her kiss with the half-human Doctor. At least "Doomsday" left it the tiniest bit ambiguous as to what the Doctor was actually going to say to Rose when the hologram transmission was cut off, but the context of this scene in "The Stolen Earth" makes it impossible to doubt that the Doctor told Rose that he loved her. Why does Rose deserve this honor while other companions do not? Rose has time and time again proven herself to be shallow, self-absorbed, and stubborn, but time and time again, other characters ignore her obvious flaws. The Doctor especially treats her as the perfect companion, at the expense of poor Martha, who constantly gets compared unfavorably to Rose, and has to put up with the Doctor pining for Rose and ignoring her, despite Martha in many ways being a more humble and caring person.
    • dmcreif: For me, a proper way to describe the plot of "Journey's End" is that it's like Avengers: Infinity War featured all our heroes coming together so they could stand around in a room for 45 minutes while Thanos monologued, then one of them pushed a few buttons and stopped his evil plan with little to no effort. Rose is back, Martha is back with her Osterhagen key, Mickey and Jackie are back, Sarah-Jane is back, Captain Jack is back, they're all working together with a warp star to blow up the Crucible. And what happens? They all get teleported into the same room to do nothing and stand around waiting for Donna and Metacrisis 10 to save the day. Apart from the planetwide phone call, they could've technically been cut from the story with minimal impact. The plot at its most basic is that The Doctor gets shot, regenerates into his hand; Donna touches the hand, becomes the DoctorDonna, and stops the Daleks. There is zero reason for Jack, Sarah-Jane, Mickey, Jackie, Martha, any of them to be there. You could argue that we needed Rose so The Doctor had someone to run towards and get shot but that is very flimsy, especially when it was built up to over the course of the entire series.
      It's the handling of Rose that is the worst part for me. The thing about Rose coming back as foreshadowed throughout the early parts of the season is that I was expecting it to mean a lot, with Rose coming back to be the Doctor's companion again. But what does she do when she gets here? Not a lot apparently. There's the big scene on Bad Wolf Bay at the end and the cute little moment at the beginning where Rose is all like "Dimension cannon so I could... come back" but it's genuinely fascinating to me how little Rose and the Timelord Tenth Doctor talk to one another in the big "Rose is back" story. Why was her return built up over the course of the series if she was barely going to do anything when she did finally come back?
      What would've made the episode better, and make Rose's return actually mean something, is if the Doctor never got shot by the Dalek and caused the whole Metacrisis situation. As in, either the Doctor was a bit slower and/or Jack showed up a few seconds earlier to shoot the Dalek first. If not that, have Rose reunite with the Doctor much earlier in the season, maybe after "Midnight" and before "The Stolen Earth," or, if "Turn Left" still has to happen, have Rose reunite with the Doctor at the start of "The Stolen Earth" before the Earth is even taken. Then, when they're taken to the Crucible, it's Rose (and not Donna) who stays in the TARDIS while everyone else exits, and she joins forces with the TARDIS once again as Bad Wolf. The TARDIS strongly foreshadowed her return in "Turn Left" so it's clear the two were still very much linked, plus it would've made those lingering Bad Wolf references in series 2 actually have some meaning. So the Daleks would be defeated as is Davros, but Rose continues traveling with the Doctor.
      And more importantly, Donna would get to keep her memories. Which is another big beef I have with this episode, so I'm including it here. Donna's lack of confidence is barely addressed until "Journey's End", and then in the same episode that it's resolved, all her development is wiped out. I sort of understand why RTD wrote her ending the way he did. It's certainly tragic, trapping her back in the life she hated, and from a meta standpoint, I can understand the technical logistics behind the scenes like actor contracts and whatnot. But I also feel that there must have been a way to do that without losing all of her character development. They could have her suffer a physical injury that makes TARDIS travel impossible. Something the Doctor can't solve. Then she's still trapped on Earth, but she gets to keep all the growth she went through.
    • dcutter2: Just the whole business with the regeneration scene cliffhanger, was cheap writing in the extreme for me. Using one of twelve regenerations as a cliffhanger moment is absurd. And then the Doctor is selfish enough to burn all that energy just to stay the same, leading to his later angst that regeneration is really death which undermines the whole point of it, that it's not death and the next actor is legitamately the same hero we've rooted for all along. It's a horrible cop-out that hastened the day they had to write a horrible cop-out for the twelve regenerations thing.
  • Crazyrabbits: The "dramatic" gun scene in "The End of Time". Was there really any doubt that The Doctor was going to shoot the computer maintaining the link? Not to mention that the other supposed targets in question could both regenerate and shoot lightning bolts from their hands. It even underscores the power of the next scene, where a pissed-off Master unloads all the electricity he has into Rassilon, driving him back into the gateway.
    • polooglu: Ten saying "I don't want to go". Sure, tons of people think it's sad, but really considering the Doctor has done it ten times prior, and never complained as much, and got to wrap up all his loose ends (something I would be grateful to have done before I died), the fact that he still goes into his regeneration kicking and screaming just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
      • Sonikkuruzu: Ten also seemed to be holding on for as long as possible, almost as if he wanted his next self to be born in a crashing TARDIS. Partly sad though mostly selfish.
      • Hyrin: I wasn't so bothered by Ten saying goodbye as I was by the fact that his regeneration somehow flipped the Self-Destruct Mechanism on the TARDIS. Several Doctors have regenerated inside the TARDIS without sending it out of control towards the nearest inhabited area, and it just felt like a cheap setup for Eleven to be the wacky one who laughs as his flaming ship plows towards some hapless Scottish garden.
    • Swim To The Moon: I just didn't like The End of Time, Part II as a whole. A shame because I really did enjoy the first part, but that's besides the point. The whole episode was 80 minutes of navel-gazing, RTD masturbating to his own characters and Ten being taken way out of character. However two moments did it in for me, they both were in the same scene: the first being RTD proving that he has obviously never seen The Five Doctors and having Rassilon shout things like "YOU DIE WITH ME DOCTOR" and "WE WILL ASCEND!" And "THE END WILL COME AT MY HAND!" and "I WILL NOT DIE" in addition to portraying the Time Lords like suicide bombers. The second came from when he got into his whole "IT IS NOT FAIR" rant. This was the pinnacle of all his angst and whining. Seriously, Doctor? You've regenerated ten times and merely becoming another person is only a problem now?! To top it all off, he called Wilfred "not even remotely important". Wow. By this point, I was already waiting for RTD to be done pissing on this show's legacy.
    • FezJez: After going to great lengths to establish in "Journey's End" and reassert in "The End of Time" Part 1 that if Donna remembers her time with the Doctor then "her mind will burn and she will die", Russell T. Davies completely ignores it and instead has her unleash a Master-blasting booby trap and then wake up later perfectly alright with no other explanation than the Doctor's line "Do you really think I'd leave my best friend without a defence mechanism". Lame doesn't even begin to describe it.
  • Macgyver 644200: "A Good Man Goes to War". Right out of the gate, we get the Church as the bad guys. This wouldn't sting so much if they weren't one of the few religious good guys in this show's history. Combine that with the Headless Monks and their blatant 'religion makes you stupid' crap, and it marks the nadir of Doctor Who's idiotic stance on religion. Also, rampant Doctor shilling. Not only is he introduced in the episode destroying a whole FLEET of Cyberman ships at once, not only is his takeover of the station effortless, but the Demons Run rhyme is just so pointless other than to set up how 'awesome' the Doctor is. Even if he loses (which felt amazing to me), you know it's not going to last for any meaningful period of time. And the Doctor speaks 'baby'. And only the Doctor. Either they can't understand language that early or the others should be able to understand that too. This is the episode that crystallized my hatred of the new show and convinced me it wouldn't get any better. Looking at the further episodes, that prediction seems to have been accurate.
  • nostalgicfan: "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe". The underlying Christmas message quoted: "Men are weak". I have forgiven almost everything in Doctor Who, but I cannot forgive this episode. The plot holes are just huge and would take an entire page to fill, but I'll take one: The Doctor, a neigh immortal Time Lord, with memories of over ten lifetimes (which, when the Flesh tried to emulate, it was completely overwhelmed by without the Doctor keeping it together), was an unsuitable carrier for the Tree Lights because of his male organs. Fortunately, there was a woman around, so she could fly the tree-ship through the Time Vortex. No kudos was given to the young boy who had led them there (and come on, would any kid 'really' do that if they found a magic portal?). The message was vindicated as much as possible by the plot by having all the male characters act like gung-ho idiots, with only the women being the sensible ones. I just want to forget this episode ever existed, and I genuinely feel sorry for any young boy who watched this one.
  • James Picard: "Asylum of the Daleks". The entire episode relied on viewers eating up incredibly dumb stuff. The Daleks' characterization is completely ignored, the much-hyped "Classic Daleks" only get cameos; the Amy and Rory divorce was stupid, offensive, and to finally twist the knife in the wound, it was filler! It never came up again! Then there was the fact that even Oswin's voice was inconsistent, and really, it was just a horrible episode that needed either major rewrites, or just plain trashing. This was Moffat's lowest point for me.
    • Dragonmouth: The big reveal of why Amy and Rory are getting a divorce. Amy says she left Rory because she could no longer bear children after her experience at Demons Run and felt she was no longer worthy of him. First of all, Rory never showed any particularly strong interest in raising children. But what really makes this a Dethroning Moment is how horrifically it derailed Amy's character. I can understand why Amy might be angry at the Silence for what they did to her but I cannot see her being ashamed of her inability to have children. She should have had an honest discussion about her infertility with her husband but instead she ran away from him without telling him why, which is irrational and cruel. Amy was a smart, spirited, loving and mature woman, but now she seems to believe that a woman is worthless to her husband if she is unable to bear children.
      • Tropers/Hodor!: I was never a big fan of Amy and Rory's romance, as it was always "Amy doesn't appreciate Rory, then Rory has something awful happen to him, and now Amy can't live without him", but this episode takes the cake for me as far as her character. What a slap in the face to Amy's character and Rory's feelings. I mean, she just up and leaves him with no explanation or warning. What pissed me off more is that they just get back together and it's never brought up again. I mean, hell, when the whole divorce plot tumor was introduced I wanted to forget it too, but just because I want to act like it never happened doesn't mean Moffat can.
  • Kellor: "The Power of Three". As others have summed it up, it's like Chris Chibnall came up with an interesting idea, wrote himself into a corner, and came up with a nonsense ending just to be done with it. We've got an alien race that the Time Lords apparently believed were just a myth (which seems like a phrase we've heard so much that's it's become cliche). They want to stop humanity from colonizing space. This is a cool motivation that is just wasted on this episode- there's no sympathetic or even relatable face put on the Shakri, they're just another race of jerks. We don't even meet a real one, just a soapboxing hologram. They're advanced enough that they can time travel, build indestructible and scientifically inscrutable devices, and can hide in parallel dimensions. Yet the best plan they could come up with took a year to execute and only killed a third of humanity. Only the aliens from Plan 9 were less competent. Had the cubes used biological, chemical, or even conventional weapons, Earth would have been screwed. One of the cubes sprouted a gun and flew around shooting- why didn't they all do that? And why did they need to study humanity for 47 minutes if they came from a future that was overrun by humans? Why did one of the cubes play the Chicken Dance? Why was the robot girl with the weird eyes sitting in that hospital all year? Why were the aliens (androids?) with the weird mouths kidnapping people from the hospital? Nothing made sense. Added to that, we've got Brian sitting in the Tardis watching a cube for two days straight without moving or anyone noticing (remember when Mickey was justifiably miffed about holding a lever in the Tardis for an hour?), we've got the Doctor being a real pain in the ass about sitting still for a few minutes, and we've got all of humanity bringing unknown alien things into their homes and businesses because humanity is just quirky like that. This didn't have characters playing with an Idiot Ball, it had everyone playing in an Idiot Ball pit.
    • Valjean: The main redeeming factor to this plot was that no one really cared about its stupidity because it was pretty much a minor Excuse Plot for the Doctor to hang around on Earth with Amy and Rory, and the character-driven real plot of the episode was Amy and Rory adjusting to and settling into their non-world-saving normal routine of daily life and responsibility (because they did it while saving the world, but saving the world from a slow invasion that was taking months to get underway — it crept up on them very naturally), realizing that they love the Doctor but can live without him, the Doctor being regular friends with Amy and Rory and slowly letting them go, and it all seemed to be moving towards a logical ending of them having one last crazy adventure before amicably retiring from companioning for good in a satisfying and optimistic manner. Then we got "The Angels Take Manhattan" instead. *thud thud thud*
    • PentiumMMX2: This episode was easily my least favorite of the revived series, entirely because the main plot felt like a waste. To me, it actually had good build-up, and given how there was maybe 5 minutes left on the episode when the villain revealed what their plan was, I expected it to be a two-part episode. But, they resolve the plot by having the Doctor use the sonic screwdriver on one of the control panels for the alien ship, causing it to self-destruct and somehow resurrect everyone who died as a result of the cubes. I was very much annoyed by this; it felt like they wanted to make this a two-part episode, but were unable to, so they just hastily cobbled together an ending.
  • Dark Hero 9: "The Angels Take Manhattan", just all of it. But if you want a more specific reason for why this episode is the lowest point in the Moffat era, we'll begin with the ridiculousness of the plot that relies on a paradox that makes absolutely no sense after you think about it. A new rule that comes right out of nowhere that subverts the "Time can be rewritten" message that had existed throughout. Not only that, but Amy and Rory's departure is the worst companion departure ever on this show, simply because of how mean-spirited it is, as well as rendering the bulk of the plot of the episode completely pointless. It's the worst case of The Bad Guy Wins that I have ever seen in any media. Especially since, in all honesty, their stories ended just fine in Series 6; there was absolutely no reason to do this episode other than because Moffat apparently disagreed. Not only that, but it doesn't match the tone of the rest of Series 7, especially where Amy and Rory's story was going. This episode sucks and deserves to be forgotten, it's such an absolute waste of two awesome characters in the worst way imaginable.
    • Dynamite XI: This. The Amy arc should have ended with Amy accepting that she doesn't need to wait anymore, telling the Doctor that he can move on, but the episode forces the decision on her and only serves to give the Doctor angst. Plus, Moff seems to be sticking to the dogma of "fixed points in time," even though the Doctor actually HAS looked ahead to a Bad Future and still managed to change it (at least twice, anyway). It's like the showrunners are trying to one-up each other with tragic ways to permanently dismiss companions. Except this time it felt exactly like when Peri was killed off in the classic series, yet got some kind of tacked-on Esoteric Happy Ending. Anyway, this episode certainly killed Season 7's good vibes.
    • TommyR01D - To me, that ending felt like a contrived Doomsday rehash (especially how Clara acts like the Martha to Amy's Rose later in the series).
    • Highwind - "The Power of Three" would have been a superior ending to Amy and Rory, especially since the whole episode was about them finally settling down in a post-Doctor life. They could have simply said "No, you go on your own" to The Doctor, Doc could have been sad for a while, and then gotten the new companion. Instead, we get this abomination, which butchers Angel rules again (Angels are clearly moving and existing while being looked at, or with camera focus on them. The fact they didn't move even when you were looking at them was part of the creepiness), has several paradoxes, and as others have mentioned goes against Amy and Rory's plot arc as a whole.
    • Sedirex: And seriously, the Statue of goddamned Liberty? You really expect us to believe no one in all of Manhattan looked at it in the entire time it was taking a stroll?
  • SbenLives: "The Rings of Akhaten" contained a lot of stupid decisions, like the dreadful singing element, but my breaking point was how the planet-eating planet creature was destroyed. Seriously, that single leaf (one that led, somehow, to Clara being born) contained more stories for the thing to feed on than what the Doctor himself offered up?! One could argue the issue with what Clara ended up doing in "The Name of the Doctor", but it still grated. That whole resolution reeked of Clara becoming Moffat's Creator's Pet.
    • zoop: I never even made it to the end of the episode. First, I have a pet peeve about the Time Lords' "universal translation" sometimes working and sometimes not. It's all right if there's an explanation for it failing, like in "The Satan Pit", but here it just... randomly fails. Second, the Doctor runs off, abandoning Clara on an alien planet for no reason whatsoever. But the final blow was when the Doctor was discussing the planet's religious beliefs. Clara asks him if it's true and he brushes it off with a very dismissive "Well, it's a nice story." Thank-you, Doctor, for dismissing every major religion in the world. Yeah, it's a nice story... which happens to be true for the people who believe in it. If you don't understand why I'm upset then imagine this: Suppose Neil Degrasse Tyson were to tell the Pope about the big bang. When he's done, the Pope just chuckles and says, "Well, that's a nice story." I think you can see where I'm coming from. I turned it off at that point.
  • Novus Wulf: "Nightmare in Silver". The episode shows signs of running out of ideas when the whole Imperium is unashamedly ripped straight from Warhammer 40,000 - "Punisment Platoon" being a nice rewording of Penal Squad, the soldiers clearly dressed like classic Cadians and armed with Lasguns, and they even have a goddamned Emperor (who mercifully is NOT a corpse on a Golden Throne, thank god)! However, where I really take umbridge with this episode is what it did to the Cybermen. It's something Moffat and team have been doing for a while now - first the Daleks being changed from a Nazi Allegory to "they take love and replace it with hate" or some other BS, but now they've turned the Cybermen into a carbon copy of the Borg! Weren't the Borg Cybermen ripoffs? At any rate, the sheer amount of Plagiarism going on and the absolutely awful re-imaging of the Cybermen makes this episode my new low point. Oh, and those insufferable, terribly acting kids (who were to some credit at least out of the way for most of the running time). Good god, Moffat and friends, was this awful.
  • fluffything: I'll just flat-out say it. I did not like "The Name of the Doctor". I felt it was overhyped, had an uninteresting villain (sorry, but The Great Intelligence does not deserve to be among the likes of The Master and/or Davros as an arch-nemesis for The Doctor), and ended on a predictable cliffhanger (Though, I will admit I do like the idea of John Hurt as an alternate Doctor). But, my biggest problem is the reveal of who or what Clara is. How she is able to exist in many different timelines at once. The reveal? It is due to her entering The Doctor's time-stream (IE: his life) in order to save him from the GI causing her life to split into over a million different versions. That's right, the whole thing was one big "Clara is destined to save The Doctor!" reveal. What should've been a huge reveal for The Doctor is turned yet into another "Clara-centered" episode as she once again steals the spotlight. They could've had River, Strax, Jenny, and Vastra all joining Clara as she enters The Doctor's time-stream to save him from the GI in a big epic moment of "Let's save The Doctor". But, nope, instead, we have to have Clara be miss Purity Sue and sacrifice herself to save The Doctor all by herself because otherwise we couldn't reveal that this is how she exists in multiple time streams. What a load of bull. Give me back "Dalek Oswin". At least she was more interesting and compelling of a character.
  • ThatRandomGuy42: I'm not angry over "The Time of the Doctor", but it was rather disappointing in many aspects. The massive war on Trenzalore didn't look like much of a war until near the end, there were one too many things to keep track off (especially with the Time Skip mechanic thrown in) and the solution to the Doctor's regeneration cycle was... too simple. Call me weird for thinking that, but Clara begging the Time Lords to give him a new cycle and having it work seemed a bit too... easy. I was expecting a more complex method from Moffat. It's probably because that I wasn't the biggest fan of Amy but her cameo right at the end did nothing for me other than remind me that she was his companion. Finally, the Doctor's regeneration happening in the blink of an eye felt a little off compared to the spectacular regenerations of the 8th, War, 9th and 10th Doctors. Some things worked in the episode, but it was far from perfect.
  • Cumbersome Turcel: "Into the Dalek" had the moment that killed any and all likeability Clara had. Not only does she hit the Doctor and get away with it, but she cracks a stupid, tasteless joke to Danny ("You shoot people and have a little cry about it?"). She patronised and insulted a war veteran to his face and got away with it. Why Danny would have anything more to do with her after that, I have no idea. She went from an uninteresting plot device, to smug, condescending, narcissistic bitch in the space of two Doctors. That raven couldn't come fast enough for me.
  • bazer63 "Listen". It started out as a decent episode with a couple of problems (like copying off other episodes, and a pointless subplot) but that last scene kicked it to where it deserved a place on this list. First off, we don't want a scene of the Doctor's childhood. That's what we have fanfic for. It ruins the mystery of him. Second of all, that thing was obviously an alien and EVERYTHING up until that point was telling us this: the special effects, the sound, the script, the acting, EVERYTHING. And finally, Clara influenced The Doctor's entire life and exists only for The Doctor. This was stupid the first time around for undermining The Doctor's ability to problem solve and being a stupid end to yet another stupid subplot, but doing it again reduced the Doctor to absolutely nothing. It's a bit like Love and Monsters: ok, even good until the final 5 minutes where the writer goes out of its way to reduce the episode to a pile of ***.
  • Guardian978: "Kill the Moon." More like "Kill the Series." Where to begin? The annoying kid that gets dragged along for no reason? A decision by the entire planet getting overridden by Clara the Almighty? The hamfisted antiabortion metaphor where a single person with no say in the matter saves the day by ignoring the host's wishes? Or maybe the countless science errors that only the laziest of hack writers would fail to catch? For the sake of fuck, the DOCTOR doesn't know the age of the moon! Is in fact off by a factor of 45! Nor can mass appear out of nowhere, an egg does not change in mass as it develops. Nor did the idiot writers even to bother to Google the MASS of the moon, one of the biggest plot points in the episode! This was my moment of utter breakage with Moffat's pathetic excuse for Dr. Who, I will not watch another episode until he is GONE. And he can take Clara with him.
    • Deadpan29: Concurring with this one. I could not get my suspension of disbelief over the many physics-failures regarding the moon and eggs in general. Then Clara makes a decision that the writers degree to be virtuous, but looks to me like the morally wrong choice based solely on what information was available to her. And then the Doctor turns out to have been playing a sick mind-game based off of some warped misunderstanding of human interaction.
  • Silverblade2: "In the Forest of the Night" was as a whole lackluster but there's the moment that defies all logic. The Doctor and Clara find out that there's an upcoming solar flare that will burn the earth and it's too late to save the day. So Clara proposes the Doctor to "Save what you can". When they all go back to the TARDIS, Clara confesses that it was a trick and in fact wants him to go alone. She states that the children wouldn't want to be separated from their parents, Danny wouldn't want to be separated from the children and for herself, she doesn't want to be the last human. What The Hell Clara? Why do you think you are entitled to refuse the chance for humanity to survive? Losing one's parent is, of course, a huge traumatism but it doesn't mean that the children don't want to live without them. Said children don't even know that the earth is going to burn! In short, Clara uncharacteristically decides to let the children die horribly without bothering to ask their opinion on the matter. The Doctor doesn't try to argue as if she was right. Even thought, I'm sure, the parents would beg the Doctor to save their children. It also negated the "I don't want to be the last of my kind" speech because she could have chosen to save herself, Danny and the children.
  • Asger: I had tolerated Clara for the most part. She was grating since Twelve's debut and has steadily became less tolerable and more obnoxious (In tandem with the growth of how much she stole the spotlight from, you know, the character the show is fucking named for) but the absolute nadir for me came in "Dark Water". Danny dies, literally didn't care at all, and in a dream sequence brought about by the Doctor she showed that she was willing to drug her 'friend', steal all his TARDIS keys and destroy them if he refused to bring Danny back to life, an event that the Doctor said would likely destroy all of spacetime. After this, the Doctor is a-okay with her and doesn't tell her to fuck off and never return for what must be one of the most vile acts of betrayal ever shown by a companion, fantasy or not. He doesn't even really scold her, he just turns into a goddamn doormat so she can have her way. What the actual fuck?
    • Noraneko: "Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?" Except she was legitimately about to destroy access to his TARDIS (aka, his wife) and after she did so she claimed that she'd do it again in a heartbeat. Some have pointed out that it's something that a father would say to a daughter, but they're not father and child; Clara is supposed to be his best friend. If they actually had a fight rather than a scolding that lasted for thirty seconds, I could have dealt with it, but the whole thing is resolved after a few seconds and then they go on like it didn't happen... And this is after an entire episode of Clara being wishy-washy on whether or not she wanted to stay with the Doctor after he gave her an equally hard time. I have no idea how Clara became more selfish as the series went on but this took the cake for me and the betrayal quote just annoyed me, and as mentioned above it's more or less turning a manic and capricious Doctor into a doormat so that we know just how important Clara is.
    • legomaniac90: For me, it was the reveal that Missy is in fact The Master back yet again. Seriously, how? The guy plunged into a portal leading into the freaking Time War for crying out loud! And somehow he got out of it alive, healed himself of the Horror Hunger he'd been afflicted with, and regenerated into a woman? Sorry Doctor Who, but you are really stretching the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, and this is coming from a guy who was totally cool with everything else on this list.
  • wererat: I usually have an absurd level of tolerance for out of character moments, but the final scene of "Death in Heaven" nearly ruined the 12 Doctor's character for me when upon finding out that Gallifrey wasn't where Missy/theMaster said it was, the Doctor began beating on a TARDIS panel hard enough to cause sparks to fly out of it. Let me repeat that: the Doctor, a man who has been shown to attempt peaceful solutions when going up against the most omnicidal foes, is now beating a character that has been equated to a wife. I get that 12 is meant to be angrier than the previous few incarnations, but when your protagonist essentially commits domestic abuse a moral event horizon has been crossed.
  • @h31r-of-l1f3: I hated both "Death in Heaven" and "Dark Water" for their utter destruction of my favorite enemies: The Cybermen. I love the Cybermen. I also like Iron Man. They are two incredibly distinct characters. Cybermen cannot fly. The current models run on hydraulics, so they have too much weight and no space for fuel. In addition, why are they working with the Master (I refuse to say Missy)? To what end is this plot? Would it not conflict with ever other plot they have hatched on Earth? Also, you cannot make Cybermen from dead bodies. If you could, then they would just kill people rather than capturing them. Even if that were possible, corpses are too deteriorated to work. The Cybermen need the nerves intact. This raises another piece of nonsense: the Cyberseeds or whatever they were called. The water drops that made Cybermen. You may as well say that humans need only bleed on dogs to make more humans. There is less that an ounce of Cyberjuice on each dead body, I'm assuming, so construction of a half a ton of machinery is impossible. Even more, why are they keeping the people's personality alive? We know that the personality of the person is repressed, and only incredibly strong individuals, or incomplete/broken Cybermen remember who they were. Moreover, not only are the brains intact, but their bodies are as well! It is as if Cybermen are Iron Man, just a suit you don, not a fully integrated body with only a brain and some nerves. I loved Doctor Who for many years. I watched it (in the US) since I was in Kindergarten. I walked around like a Cyberman as a kid. I only watch classic episodes occasionally now, this so totally turned me off of it.
  • JulietF2: The Doctor's attitude towards Danny Pink in general, shown in "The Caretaker", when he learns that Clara is interested in an ex-soldier: he insists that Danny must be the Physical Education teacher rather than the maths teacher, and generally disparages both his intelligence and him as a person. This is really out of character when you consider that a soldier, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, was one of his best friends and taught maths after his retirement. (The Doctor's problems with the military tend to be with the entire concept, not with individuals in the military — unless they deserve his scorn.)
  • Hbot: For me, it was "Hell Bent". All the episode does is bring Clara, one of the show's biggest bland powerhouses back to life, team her up with Ashildr, and give them a bloody Tardis. Not to mention how, despite it being the season finale, there was no real danger, Rassilon was reduced to a raving jackass, and how, in general, the entire episode didn't seem to go anywhere.
    • Tiggerific: The episode had so much potential to be awesome, and it was simply wasted. Gallifrey, Rassilon, an angry Doctor, the Hybrid mystery, Ashildr's return, the sisterhood... How could you go wrong with that? Instead they made everything about Clara again, spat in the face of her genuinely tearful death scene and trampled on the moral she was supposed to learn (don't take risks) by sending her off in her own TARDIS, thus turning her into a Doctor pretender. Not to mention they wiped the Doctor's memory of her, taking away his right to grieve. Added to that, Rassilon was sent away in the first ten minutes, Ashildr was given practically nothing to do and they hinted that the Doctor might indeed be a Half-Human Hybrid.
    • KennethMorgan: The biggest problem with "Hell Bent" is that it's not a resolution to the mystery of the Hybrid. It's not the Doctor's long-awaited return to Gallifrey. It's not the Doctor confronting those who helped cause Clara's death, and then tormented him for billions of years. In the end, the episode turns out to actually be nothing more than a Backdoor Pilot for a potential Spin-Off, "The Adventures of Clara and Me". A tremendous buildup, followed by a lousy payoff.
    • timotaka: Most people might consider this a trivially small thing, but it managed to piss me the right off: A (white) male Time Lord regenerates into a (black) female. This itself is not so bad, but then the first thing she says is she's "back to normal" and how bad it was to be a man. Imagine the situation reversed: A female Time Lord regenerates into a male and his first words are, "Ooh, being a man is much better. Now I can keep my emotions in check and think clearly for a change!" Way to be stupid and insult half of everybody!
    • ApeAccount: For me, this episode just helped cement the idea (that I'd long suspected) that nothing that happens in the series mattered at all. Clara had seriously messed up and she died. It really did seem at the time like the writers had given her some sort of character arc, with the character having gotten progressively more cocky and thinking she could do what the Doctor could do but inevitably taking on more than she could do and facing the consequences. The consequence was death. There was a time when a character dying actually meant something (Adric may not have been the most popular character, but his death did have meaning). She'd died. She was mourned. Then she was just brought back. In fact, she was effectively made immortal and given her own TARDIS to share with another character who they brought back from the dead and made immortal a few episodes earlier. So the writers really were confirming that dying is meaningless. Characters don't die in Doctor Who because of anything that happens, they die because the writers decide to let them stay dead. I know that it's not the first time something like this has happened in the revived series (other characters have come back from the dead) but this time it seemed worse than usual. The way the death was written and then the way she was brought back, her death felt like it should be final and her coming back felt less like it fit within the series and more like some fan fiction by someone not happy with the way the character was killed off (and two Mary Sue like characters getting to fly off in their own TARDIS is EXACTLY the start of a bad fan fiction story).
    • Sapphirea 2: Beyond the Mary Sue treatment Clara and Me get in "Hell Bent", its treatment of the Twelfth Doctor is genuinely appalling when one considers what he's gone through — a cruel betrayal by both Me and his own people (who all owe him their lives and those of their loved ones) inadvertently leading to the death of someone he loved, followed immediately by isolation and torture. The episode gives lip service to the monstrous behavior of the Time Lords while constantly condemning the Doctor's actions, blaming him for not just getting over Clara's death, but he didn't have a chance to properly process it because of the isolation and torture. Ohila, the General, Me, even Clara are browbeating a broken, mentally ill torture victim who didn't deserve any of this and needs help. Instead he ends up getting his memories of a wonderful, if ultimately toxic, relationship robbed from him, being dumped in the desert, and is forced to wander the Nevada desert in a daze before his TARDIS is returned to him. And while HE is forced to accept losing Clara to the grave and burning his bridges with his ungrateful people, Clara and Me — who both told him he had to move on — get to have all the fun they want with the former's "wiggle room". He deserved better.
    • Doryna: Among the other issues with "Hell Bent" (many already mentioned above), I'm extremely bugged by the Doctor just casually shooting another Time Lord and causing them to regenerate. The Doctor makes such a big deal out of it every time he undergoes it, and mentions the psychological damage and pain it causes when it happens. But in this case, when it comes to another Time Lord, he's basically like, "Oh, you have a couple of regenerations left... you're good," and just fires, brushing it off as "man flu." It's especially egregious when compared with how seriously he's taken Time Lords dying in older incarnations, and is just completely out-of-character for him. I generally have a pretty high tolerance for bad writing in Doctor Who, but even I can't handle this episode as a whole, and that moment in particular.
  • Sinister_Sandwich: "Knock Knock" is one of the worst episodes I've seen in a long time. It starts strongly, with Bill moving into a creepy house run by a creepy landlord with her student friends, and had great potential to be chilling. This all falls apart when the secret of the tower is revealed, resulting in one totally nonsensical plot twist after another. Why did the bugs turn the landlord's mother into a wood-nymph? Why doesn't she recognise her own son? When she does realise it's him, why does his plan fall apart? How do the bugs bring the students back to life after eating them alive?! Why does the Doctor not give a shit that a horde of alien woodlice, capable of devouring a very large house in minutes, are now loose in a major city? What did the bugs eat before they came to the house? Where did they come from? Literally none of this is explained; it's like the writers threw a load of ideas at the wall to see what stuck, and this mess is the result. In addition, the story is going for a heart-wrenching Tragic Monster (which we've had three times in a row already in this series, can we have something nasty for a change please?) and it's just a sappy, saccharine 'everybody lives' ending, yet again. David Suchet's talents are wasted on this pathetic excuse for an episode. Doctor Who needs to do better if I am to make it through this season with my TV intact.
  • Stormchaser23: I have to put "The Lie of the Land" on here. It has some interesting elements like the stuff with Bill's mother, and, of course, Missy, but it ultimately was a disappointing conclusion for me. I thought the Monks couldn't support a three part episode, and their gimmick of mind control wasn't explored effectively enough to be intimidating, especially since all four of our main protagonists seem completely unaffected. The episode never really shows why an earth ruled by the Monks would be so terrible, so their ultimate defeat feels somewhat hollow. Nor do we ever really come to understand why the Monks want the earth so badly, and what their plans are beyond conquest. And then, there's the worst part of all; the issue of the Doctor's fakeout regeneration. I think most fans came up with better about why and how this would happen in two minutes after the "next-time" trailer aired. Bill shoots the Doctor when he tells her he's working with the Monks willingly, which already seems just a tad drastic. The Doctor starts regenerating. Then he just stops regenerating, and reveals the whole thing was a setup to see if Bill was already under mind control. This left me wondering WHY the Doctor would fake his own regeneration. There was never an onscreen moment where the Doctor told Bill he could regenerate and what it looked like, and faking regeneration was pointless anyway since the whole thing was a setup. He could have just as easily revealed his true intentions to Bill as soon as she pulled the trigger. But this also leaves me wondering HOW the Doctor faked his regeneration. When the Tenth Doctor started regenerating, he had to direct the energy into his severed hand to stop, and he lost an entire regeneration in the process. The whole scene just felt like a stupid, pointless tease, and the whole episode was a disappointing conclusion.
  • dmcreif: I'm not a fan of Steven Moffat's writing from the RTD era, but "The Girl in the Fireplace" takes the cake, especially for Moffat's out-of-character writing of the Tenth Doctor and his disrespect for Rose. The technical plot of the clockwork droids is fine and all that, but for one episode, the Doctor becomes a nasty liar to his companions, and is also rather dismissive of Rose, treating her like Mickey, basically. I find fanfiction rewrites of the episode to be more tolerable.
    In what we are given, Rose is painted to be like a shrewish or nagging wife. And Moffat does not just stop at setting up Rose as the nagging wife type character (because in interviews, he's said some classist things about Rose being too uneducated to be the Doctor's equal), he also sets up the relationship with Reinette as a sexual relationship. In light of that, the Doctor’s relationship with Reinette takes on a really skeevy tone. Now it feels more like an extra marital affair, where he’s going off to have fun and escape the nagging wife at home. I mean, I know that is not what actually is going on here, but it’s the tone of the thing. The sexual nature of the Doctor and Reinette’s relationship is strongly hinted at. In Moffat’s previous episodes “dancing” was used as a euphemism for sex. And that’s kind of gross, especially when you consider that he’s known this woman for barely an hour, and when he’s just abandoned the woman he’s been traveling with (and it’s been hinted that he has romantic feelings for) on a spaceship thousands of years in the future. So essentially, the Doctor is abandoning the "old lady" who won't let him have fun and nags at him in order to have fun with the woman who will "dance" with him. Awesome.note 
    The Doctor is also written out of character for what the Tenth Doctor's personality is. In just the episode prior to this, "School Reunion", he told Rose that he would never leave her behind. Then in this episode he decides he needs to go save Reinette… and in the process abandons and strands Rose (and Mickey) on a spaceship in the 51st century with no way of getting home. Now how is it that I know that this is the episode that is out of character and not “School Reunion”? Well, the rest of the episodes back up the Doctor as he is in "School Reunion". In "Army of Ghosts", when he asks Rose how long she’s going to stay with him and she replies, "Forever", you don’t see this look of panic on his face as he thinks of ways to ditch Rose. In the very next story that follows GITF, the Cybermen two-parter, when Rose wants to go looking for her AU father in Pete's World, the Doctor doesn’t just say "good riddance!" and let her do whatever in the AU while he fixes the TARDIS and then abandons her there. No, he goes running after her. In "The Impossible Planet", when things start to go south, he wants to get back up to Rose so that they won’t be separated. It really seems then, that "Girl in the Fireplace" is the episode he is out of character in. Secondly, how stupid is the Doctor?! Asking an established historical figure to go traveling in the TARDIS?
    And on top of all of that the character and relationship writing is so completely lazy. Instead of trying to make the Doctor and Reinette have any actually interaction that would lead to real feelings or a relationship, Moffat takes some really lame shortcuts. The Doctor goes in already knowing who Reinette is, he doesn’t need to get to know her. She’s really just this historical figure that he has a crush on. And then to short cut the “getting to know you” phase of the relationship, Reinette just magically looks inside of the Doctor’s mind!
    What I mean about the Doctor being out of character is that, curiously, this episode would make more sense in series 5 if it were the Eleventh Doctor with Amy and Rory, not the Tenth Doctor with Rose and Mickey. It would fit so much better with a Doctor designed by Moffat, and not in the middle of developing his relationship with Rose. It'd also match how Eleven talked to Cleopatra, too. Yes, the fact that Eleven treats historical ladies like conquests is an issue… but at least it would be consistent.note  I can sit and imagine the whole thing with Eleven, Amy, and Rory; only minimal changes would have to be made.
  • JMRS: So, "Resolution". I personally thought this episode was pretty average. And keep in mind that this is coming from someone who doesn't think Series 11 was all that bad. While this episode did quite a few things right such as the Dalek mutant taking control of Lin's body, Ryan's relationship with his father and Jodie Whittaker's performance, there were a few things that I found questionable at best like the design of the Dalek's casing in this episode and downright saddening at worst like UNIT being disbanded. However, the part of this episode that I actively despised is the scene where the Dalek has shut off the internet, because that's what every alien species who wants to conquer the Earth does, and we just randomly cut to a family who cannot watch Netflix without the internet. Leaving aside the fact that this scene was completely pointless and wasn't even that funny to begin with, there's the mother's reaction to this whole ordeal: "We'll just have to have a conversation." Her sons' reactions perfectly sum up my feelings towards this whole scene. The internet is out and all you can think to do to pass the time is to randomly talk about stuff? There are plenty of ways to keep yourself entertained without the internet: books, board games, video games, leaving the house for a bit, the list goes on! If the internet goes out and your first suggestion to keep yourself entertained is to just have a random conversation, then you are not a good parent. Oh, and there's also the fact that on the DVD, this unfunny scene is the scene that kicks off the 10th chapter.
  • SorPepita: I'm retiring my previous pick because someone has to point out the true, one and only, absolutely indisputable almost to the point of scientific certainty Dethroning Moment of the show (it kind of boggles my mind that I had to be the first one to do so; I guess not enough people care any more), which of course would be The Reveal of The Timeless Children. They decided to wreck into pieces the show's canon (flexible as it was, and despite what people like Paul Cornell might say, it had one) by doing what I think could be, without any exaggeration, one of the most Plot Hole-inducing Retcons in the history of professional fiction (Why does The Doctor have two hearts like the Time Lords if they belong to a different species altogether? Why did Eleventh seem to be in need of more regenerations if he already had an infinite number? Why didn't the previous regenerations show up inside the Doctor's timeline when Clara entered it? Why was River Song able to regenerate if the ability to do so comes from the Doctor's biology and not from the Time Vortex? If those Brain of Morbius faces were supposed to be the Doctor and not Morbius, why didn't Fourth question the meaning of those incarnations that he didn't remember? How is it that Doctor!Ruth calls herself the Doctor and travels around in a police box-shaped TARDIS when those two traits are well-established as having started with the William Hartnell incarnation, which takes place in her future? I could go on and on and on, you guys). Their reasons for doing this? As far as I can tell, mostly three: cheap shock value, adding another thing for the Doctor to be angsty about (because Lord Rassilon knows they didn't have enough of those already) and establishing a villain for the next season (and only for the next season, because she gets Killed Off for Real). Totally worth it. And the cherry on the shit sundae? The BBC and their friends in the media trying to gaslight the fans into thinking that this... thing is awesome storytelling that improves canon instead of breaking it, even bringing up the Cartmel Masterplan to imply that this kind of twist has been years into the making despite Andrew Cartmel himself later saying that it wasn't like what he had in mind at all. What an absolute trainwreck. Dear Steven Moffat, I'm very sorry for all I said about your work, but I didn't know. God help me, I didn't know.
    • batmany: For me, the DMOS occured when the absolutely butchered The Master. Let's start off with his current evil plan. Remember when he would have all these Crazy is Cool ideas to take over the universe (IE: killer plastic flowers, turning everyone into himself, etc.)? Here, he... uses an army of Cybermen (Oh, I'm sorry. Cyber''lords''). Something he had already done two times in a row already. Second, remember that amazing Character Development he got as Missy? Remember how there was an entire redemption arc for her and she genuinely wanted to become a better person? Welp, that completely gets thrown out the window for no reason other than Status Quo Is God. And, then, then we have the whole reveal as to why The Master destroyed Gallifrey. It's because... he thinks he's no longer special because the Time Lords lied about their history. Not only does this completely piss on the complex friendship between The Doctor and The Master, but it utterly shits on The Master's backstory. The Master already had a very good reason to hate the other Time Lords. Or, did Chibnall conveniently forget that Rassilon had deliberately driven The Master insane? Oh, and it doesn't help that this incarnation of The Master is basically doing a poor impression of Simm's Master. BBC, please, give us back the real Master. Give us the diabolical, charming madman we all know and love. Give us The Master with the proper post-Missy regeneration character development. Give us an Anti-Hero Master. The Master deserves better than to be reduced to a one-note villain with the depth of a puddle in the Sahara and the motivation of a Bratty Half-Pint.
    • Patrickthekid: Let's not forget the part where The Doctor herself felt the most helpless she's been in the entire series. She did very little to move the plot. And when the time came where she might have to do a Heroic Sacrifice to save the universe, she let a human do that and ran away instead. This despite many fans pointing out theories that she could have done to save the day without sacrificing anyone. This just puts Jodie Whittaker in a worse light when people have already calling Thirteen the worst version of nuWho.

Top