YMMV / Doctor Who

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WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!

Subpages:

• Adorkable
• Alternative Character Interpretation
• Complete Monster
• Ensemble Darkhorse
• Episode YMMV pages
• Fanon Discontinuity
• Fandom Specific Plot
• Fan Nickname
• Franchise Original Sin
• Harsher In Hindsight
• Hilarious In Hindsight
• Magnificent Bastard
• Moral Event Horizon
• Narm
• Never Live It Down
• Special Effects Failure
• Visual Effects of Awesome
• Woobie

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YMMVs for the TV series:

TV Series Tropes - A to E

• Accidental Aesop:
  • "The Power of the Daleks": Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it—unless the Doctor arrives in time.
  • "The Dominators" was intentionally written with an anti-pacifist message. However, it's also possible to read it as encouraging student activists to fight for justice, rejecting rote learning and irrational laws.
  • "The Unquiet Dead" was perceived in some quarters as an attack on immigration (since the episode features aliens who come to Earth on the pretence of finding a new home after their planet was blown up, but are actually attempting to invade), even though the subtext was entirely unintentional.
  • "Kill the Moon":
    • Some viewers reacted angrily to what they saw as a pro-life (as in anti-abortion) message in the episode. There's a question of preventing a birth and the Doctor gives the women the "choice" to terminate it. Then, in a democratic method, the whole world together decides to prevent the birth. But finally, Clara just can't bear to "kill the baby", and her decision to save it is proven to be the right one in the end.
  • "Face the Raven": Those who aspire to greatness — or, in this case, to be the Doctor — are to be punished. ''Doctor Who Magazine' #494 printed a fan letter condemning the episode for implying this by having Doctor-aspiring Clara die because of it. The ending of "Hell Bent" does rectify this somewhat as Clara is quasi-revived, convinces the Doctor not to be a Woobie, Destroyer Of Worlds but to keep to his ideals, and becomes a Doctor-figure herself complete with TARDIS.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • From "Terminus", we have this spit-take inducing line:
    The Doctor: Nyssa's skirt... There's blood on it!
  • Fifth Doctor serials seem to have a knack for this. "The Visitation" gives us this exchange...
    Tegan: Hurry up!
    Adric:^note  Who's actually trying to force open a window. It's stiff.
    Tegan: You were boasting your strength a minute ago. Get on with it!
  • The sonic vibrator Nyssa builds in the same serial may also deserve mention. Made worse by Adric's line,
    "I don't see why you wanted to work in here (her bedroom)."
  • Yes, Jamie, it's a big one.^note This may have been a little more deliberate. It was actually a Running Gag between Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines that they would try to get this line in somewhere during each story they did.
  • Three words: Tissue Compression Eliminator.◊ So phallic the cast and crew were falling over laughing.
  • The jury is out on whether the Doctor's dodgy time disturbance detection device in "The Time Monster" was deliberately phallic or not. But... he built it to detect The Master.
  • The fact that the title "companion" carries some pretty... adult... connotations. Lampshaded immediately when the Ninth Doctor first used the term to refer to Rose in "Aliens of London" when explaining Rose accidentally missing a year due to the TARDIS landing her at the wrong time. The police constable questioning him immediately asks if he means this in the sexual sense. Occasionally the show tries to shy away from using the term directly, preferring "assistant" and "friend" among others, but "companion" is often used, and occasionally the innuendo is invoked. Ironically, in "The Husbands of River Song", the Doctor's actual wife (who also travelled with him occasionally) is only referred to as his "consort".
• Actor Shipping: Almost a secondary pastime for many fans.
  • Tom Baker and Lalla Ward - actually subverted as the two were in fact a real-life couple during their time on the show and were later married for a couple of years.
  • David Tennant and Billie Piper.
  • Matt Smith and Karen Gillan.
  • Matt Smith and Alex Kingston (due mainly to the two flirting during interviews for Doctor Who Confidential).
  • The chemistry between Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman proved to be so strong that some fans actively began shipping them with the name "Colepaldi" sometimes attributed to the pairing, despite Capaldi being happily married, Coleman in a long-standing relationship initially (and another later), and no indication of anything but deep friendship between the two. Ironically, the relationship displayed in real life by the two actors - confirmed as even extending onto the set, per Word of God (directors, writers, Moffat, and even the guy who shot a publicity photo with the two on the Abbey Road zebra crossing) - actually exhibits all the traits sans romance that some fans say should exist between the Doctor and Clara and other companions.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Adric is one of the most despised companions from the show's history, but his Senseless Sacrifice is still considered one of the show's biggest Tear Jerkers.
• Alternate Self Shipping: Although never even hinted at in-series, the use of "regeneration" in Doctor Who and the propensity for the Doctor to meet their past selves has all the inevitable implications. There is even an entire live journal community dedicated to exactly this. There are so many works devoted to relations between the tenth Doctor and the copy regenerated from his preserved hand that they have their own name: Tencest.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: When the revival was launched in 2005, the idea of reviving a cult science fiction series that had been off the air for sixteen years (with one failed revival) and was infamous for its at times campy tone and laughable production values starring an actor known for social-realist dramas (who bailed after one season) and a former pop star was deemed laughable. In fact, Russell T Davies later said that Christopher Eccleston was only given a one-season contract because they genuinely had no idea if they would even get another season. Davies also told the crew that even if the revival failed, at least they'd have the DVD boxset to show for it. Seventeen years and thirteen seasons later and it's still going.
• Angst Dissonance: Due to the diverse nature of the show's ever-changing mixture of characters and actors, some fans react differently to angst-related scenarios than others. The somewhat angst-ridden relationships between the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler (particularly after she is trapped in the alternate earth) and the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald are not supported by some fans.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Some of the companions have heavy overtones of this, especially Vicki (who lost her whole family and then spent years marooned on a planet being terrorised by a villain) and Nyssa (who had both her parents murdered by the Master, had the Master start walking around in her father's body, and then had her entire home star system destroyed).
  • Eleven in general in comparison to both Nine and Ten. It's shown in Series 6 he still has guilt for what he did to Rose, Martha and Donna, as well as the loss of the Time Lords, however.
    • By Series 7, he's gotten considerably more morose. He left a bomb in a Villain of the Week's ship and nearly shot another. This was before he lost Amy and Rory. The second half starts with him trying to stay out of all world-threatening events. He snaps out of it when he realizes there's a new mystery to solve in the universe, and even then he shows signs of trauma and such.
    • Turns out he's some bizarre combination of wilfully trying to forget the past and outright pretending it doesn't bother him.
• Anvilicious:
  • Robert Holmes is not exactly subtle about showing his contempt for tax collectors in "The Sun Makers".
  • The years that Andrew Cartmel was script editor (1987-1989) had a tendency to be a bit on-the-nose about how 'right-on' the show was. In 2010 this was admitted by people who worked on the show and who claimed they had filled the McCoy/Seventh era (1987-89) with attacks on the Thatcher government. This "revelation" was largely treated with derision, firstly for the sheer hubris of those involved (the show's days as a national favourite were well behind it and the audience by the late '80s consisted of hardcore fans and kids, neither of whom were a large voting block) and secondly because this was barely a secret since the attacks on Thatcherism had all the subtlety of, well, an anvil. Add in the fact that a LOT of shows were attacking Thatcher, so it was also a bit of "yeah, you and a thousand other blokes."
  • Yeah, painting the TARDIS pink in "The Happiness Patrol" was probably a bit on-the-nose...
  • In "The Beast Below", there is the "Doctor = Space Whale" parallel.
  • To a lesser extent, if you started a drinking game about how many times Rory being a nurse got brought up, you'd be drunk very quickly.
  • "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" has a thumpingly unsubtle Motherhood Is Superior message, especially when the tree people reject males (even the Doctor) as their vessel because "You are weak", but accept females - Madge in particular - as "the mothership". British journalist Caitlin Moran figured that having spent the day corralling the family and making Christmas dinner for everyone, mothers would appreciate the boost "Yeah, we're the USS Enterprise".
  • "Kill the Moon":
    • Humanity gave up on space exploration, and then found they were in desperate need of it.
    • Part of the reason for the angry reaction to the pro-life aesop is that the episode is not exactly subtle when it continually refers to the creature as a 'baby'.
    • Even if it not necessarily an anti-abortion episode, it is still a very heavy-handed Thou Shall Not Kill story.
    • Danny advising Clara not to make a big decision over a "bad day."
  • "In The Forest of the Night". Trees are good. Don't bother them.
  • Series 9 touched none-too-subtly on topics ranging from the futility of war (via the Doctor's epic speech on the subject) to allegories to Syrian refugees in not one but two episodes.
  • One teaser for the Thirteenth Doctor's debut season has her literally breaking a glass ceiling and giving a sarcastic "Oops," followed by the tagline "It's about time."
  • Thirteen's tenure as a whole has a tremendously heavy-handed anti-gun and -violence tone. While the series has a history of both, it gets ridiculous when she explicitly considers being locked in a room to starve to death to be more humane than a quick bullet.
  • "Orphan 55" from Thirteen's run would like to remind you that global warming is bad.
• Archive Panic: Oh boy where do we begin? In mid-2022, the TV series alone stands at a whopping 870 episodes split into 299 serials across 39 seasons. Watch (or listen to) one serial a week and you'll finish the classic series in a little over three years. Watch/listen to one serial a day and you'll finish the entire show in just under a year. There's a reason the show reset the season and episode counters to 1 when it started up again in 2005.
  • And then there's the Expanded Universe. To look upon the full extent of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe is akin to looking into the Untempered Schism. Even ignoring the Expanded Universe, there's two major spin-offs, plus K-9 and Company and Class (2016), which are all canon. And now Big Finish Doctor Who is also canon.
• Arc Fatigue: Many a fan has grown tired of the show playing up the Doctor questioning his morality, especially since we all know full well it'll never come down on the side of him being a bad person. That said, especially with the arrival of the darker Twelfth Doctor, he still finds himself doing things that some might vehemently disagree with from a moral perspective.
  • Similarly the Doctor's angst and self-loathing over being the last of the Time Lords was, in the minds of many a fan, milked until there was nowhere else to really go with it, and it seems Steven Moffat agreed, hence "The Day of the Doctor" playing out as it does.
  • The whole Silence arc in the renewed series had several fans complaining about how long it was stretched. The prophecy that "the Silence will fall" was first spoken in the first episode of the fifth season. At the end of that season, we find out that the Silence are the ones who blew up the TARDIS, but there are no clues to who they are or why they did it. In the sixth season, the nature of the Silence is revealed and they become the Big Bad of that season, but we still don't find out what the whole "Silence will fall" thing is really about. Series 7 ignored it until the season finale, but its true meaning is still not revealed. It's not until "The Time of the Doctor" that the Silence arc finally reaches its conclusion, over three-and-a-half-years after it was first introduced!^note During this time, the "Silence" went from a type of alien to a mysterious organization that includes those aliens to the silence of the universe destroyed with the TARDIS by that organization to the organization that the first organization was an evil splinter faction of (the Church, trying to keep the Doctor's name from being spoken, and the aliens helped with confessions). This arc also intersects with the Trenzalore arc, where the Doctor never dies and the Doctor's name is never spoken anyway.
  • Fans are split on the success of the three-season-long character arc followed by Clara Oswald, with some fans arguing it was well thought out and progressed naturally and logically, and others saying they couldn't make sense out of it.
• Ass Pull: So many episodes end with the villains being foiled by some brand-new, never-before-seen trick of time, space, the TARDIS, or the Doctor's sonic screwdriver that it's difficult to keep count.
  • It may sound incredible, but the now core concept of regeneration was itself an Ass Pull. William Hartnell was getting too ill to play the Doctor, but they didn't want to end the show - so Hartnell himself came up with the idea that the Doctor could regenerate into a new body.
  • The Doctor managing to disrupt the Daleks' power supply in "The Power of the Daleks".
  • The glass-shattering scream that Gallifreyans are capable of, which resolved a cliffhanger in "The Power of Kroll" but was never mentioned before and will probably never be used again.
  • The Doctor's previously unmentioned 'respiratory bypass system' which saves him from strangulation in "Pyramids of Mars" ^note At least it was established for the next dozen times it saved the day.
  • Undoing Peri's death off-screen. Actress Nicola Bryant didn't even know about this until years later, to boot!
  • Then there's Captain Jack Harkness' performance in "Bad Wolf". While completely naked he reaches behind himself and produces a small laser gun. This is immediately lampshaded when he is asked where he got it from. While the act in itself is an Ass Shove, it also qualifies as Ass Pull as there was no indication that he had it prior to using it. It was a scene played for laughs though.
  • The Gallifreyan mind meld in "The Girl in the Fireplace". Has there really never been a suitable reason to use it at any time in the previous 27 seasons?^note Granted the fact that Gallifreyans were telepathic had been established in the first season in 1963, so it's not such a bad example.
  • "Journey's End" features some of the biggest Ass Pulls in the history of the show. Suddenly the Doctor is able to send enough regeneration energy into a severed hand to conveniently grow a half-human Doctor when a human touches it. And when the human touching it is electrocuted she suddenly gets Time Lord intelligence, just in time to stop the Daleks destroying the Universe. The event actually provides a double helping of ass-pull as many fans feel this of Ten preventing his regeneration by sending the energy into his severed hand. Then again a few series' later when it's revealed that it still counted as a used up regeneration.
  • In "Journey's End", the Doctor is forced to wipe Donna's memories, saying that if she ever remembers him, her head will be incinerated. A year and a half later in "The End of Time", she does remember him - only then the Doctor says he added a "defence mechanism" which knocks out her and everyone in the vicinity. This comes very handy in incapacitating an enemy that the Doctor could not possibly have foreseen.
  • In "The Day of the Doctor", having the Queen pretending to be the leader of the Zygons, somehow knowing exactly what their plan was, and pulling it off well enough to fool the other Zygons.
  • "Robot of Sherwood":
    • Although the spoon has relevance to the swordfight, it does seem to appear out of nowhere in the TARDIS. The Doctor is discussing Robin Hood, he's flipping through a book, he turns away from Clara, we hear a "CHING" sound effect and suddenly there's a big spoon in his hand covered in an unknown white foodstuff (leading to momentary thoughts of this trope being applied literally), which the Doctor sheepishly licks. Clara doesn't even seem to notice. And the spoon appears to vanish when the Doctor starts hunting for the Polaroid. If the Doctor hadn't later needed the spoon for the swordfight (and as it is said spoon is completely devoid of said white substance when it does appear) this would have qualified most criteria for a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
  • In "Kill the Moon", the moon creature lays a second egg right after it's born, without any sign given before that it could, neatly sidestepping any problems destroying the moon would cause and proving Clara was right.
  • In "The Girl Who Died":, The Doctor brings Ashildr back from the dead using the Mire's medical kit that wasn't mentioned at all before at any point in the episode & it makes her immortal.
  • In "Hell Bent":, Gallifrey all of a sudden now has an "extraction chamber" that can take people out of the point in time where they're about to die "from heart beat to the next" & as long as they go back at some point, then there's no consequences This is what the Doctor does to bring back Clara.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Seasons 22-24 marked an irrecoverably massive exodus of viewership. Producer John Nathan-Turner's insistence on using new writers brought success in the early '80s, but here the practice's shortcomings overcame its benefits. Script editor Eric Saward's affinity for Darker and Edgier content resulted in the show seeing its highest levels of violence and cynicism, leading to widespread complaints of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. The BBC consequently tried cancelling the show before putting it on hiatus, and the result was Season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord, a season-wide arc which tried to address fan complaints but was regarded as padded-out and gimmicky. Season 24 further attempted to amend things with a Lighter and Softer approach, only to be seen as a swerve to the opposite extreme. While Seasons 25 and 26 moved to a more Byronic direction and are widely regarded as a creative renaissance, by that point the damage had been done, and the show was unceremoniously cancelled at the end of 1989.
  • Series 11-13 of the reboot, under the purview of showrunner Chris Chibnall, is often considered the weakest era of the revival. While Jodie Whittaker's performance as the Thirteenth Doctor is routinely praised, the era is plagued by poor writing, inconsistent characterisation, and controversial changes to canon. On several occasions The Doctor acts out of character, including siding with a large corporation in [[Doctor Who S 375 E 7 Kerblam "Kerblam!"] and deciding that a slow death by starvation or asphyxiation is kinder than a Mercy Kill in [[[[Doctor Who S 37 E 12 Arachnids In The UK "Arachnids In The UK"]. The episode count being cut down coupled with the large number of companions means that they often lack depth and exploration, to the point that she shares only a handful of conversations with Dan over their time together. Compounding matters was showrunner Chris Chibnall taking a lead writing credit on the vast majority of episodes during the period, resulting in several scripts being rushed - in fact, many fans note that the stronger episodes during this period were those written or co-written by other writers. Additionally, many fans despise The Timeless Child Arc ^note which reveals that The Doctor isn't Gallifreyan, but a member of an unknown species who was experimented on to give Time Lords the power of regeneration who lived several lifetimes as an agent for a secret agency called Division before having their memories erased and being raised as a normal Time Lord., noting that it effectively overwrites vast swathes of established canon and that the Master's decision to unceremoniously destroy Gallifrey as part of the arc effectively turns large parts of 11 and 12's arc's, as well as the 50th anniversary, into a "Shaggy Dog" Story. Finally, the conclusion of the arc saw cast swathes of the Universe and trillions of lives lost, with the Doctor neglecting to reverse the damage. As such, many fans hoped that Russel T. Davies would retcon the arc upon his return to the show, and were disappointed when he confirmed he would instead make The Doctor's search for his identity a central part of the Fifteenth Doctor's era.
• Awesome Ego:
  • Clara Oswald, who on not one but two occasions actually pretended to be the Doctor and became him in all but name at the end of Series 9.
  • The Doctor himself, of course.
  • The Master is an evil version. Yes, he's full of himself, but more often than not, he has reasons to be.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Susan. Some fans dislike her for being very shrill and easily frightened, and for constantly proving to be The Load of the first TARDIS line-up, especially in comparison to the much more capable Barbara. For other fans however, her role in the genesis of the series and unique relationship to the Doctor make her far too iconic of a character to dislike entirely, if at all — there's a reason why several companion permutations were considered for the Second, Third and (when he was meant to fully take part) Fourth Doctors when they came back for "The Five Doctors", but the list of potential First Doctor companions started and ended with Susan.
  • Romana I. Depending on who you ask, either she's little more than the less likable prototype of Romana II, or her intelligence, ability to verbally spar with the Doctor, and Defrosting Ice Queen arc over the course of the Key to Time season make her a worthwihle character.
  • Tegan is either a funny, sassy, relatable everywoman, or an annoying person whose constant bitching and complaining made her no fun to be around.
  • Clara Oswald. Her narrative role in her introductory series, and later her characterization in Series 8 & 9, have been intensely debated among fans. To some she was a flat, stereotypical "Moffat character" with all of Moffat's worst writing vices on display (Jenna Coleman was cast for the role in part because she could banter faster than Matt Smith) whose timeline-jumping arc meddled with years of past canon Moffat had no right or reason to touch, who then became obnoxious and self-centred in her Twelfth Doctor seasons with a relationship subplot that was impossible to care about. Other fans were endeared by her spirited personality and found her entire relationship with the Doctor - from their intertwined timelines to their quasi-romantic bond in her final seasons - poetic and touching. There's scant middle ground between fans who rank her among their favourite companions and those who rank her among their least favourites.
  • Rose Tyler is a major example of this. To some, she is one of the best and most iconic companions, an adorable badass, and the Doctor's one true love. Others, however, see her as an obvious Creator's Pet who is praised by the Doctor to an undeservably high degree despite not being particularly interesting or extraordinary and despite acting as The Load in many of her episodes. Some also dislike her for her Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies towards the Doctor (which are somewhat hypocritical considering she is shown to have no issue with flirting with and even kissing other men in front of him) and for the fact that she always seems to get whatever she wants regardless of the consequences or dangers that come with it. The fact that she is one of the characters most commonly shipped with the Doctor doesn't help, as, again, some people genuinely don't understand why he's so smitten with her.
• Best Known for the Fanservice:
  • Nyssa's skirt-removal◊ in "Terminus". The in-story Hand Wave for why she decided to strip down to her slip was that she was feeling feverish. This doesn't really come across on screen, so Nyssa appears to strip off her clothes for no reason.
  • The Fifth Doctor's moving death scene in "The Caves of Androzani" is somewhat undermined by the excellent view the audience get of Peri's trembling cleavage. Davison has joked about this turn of events at times.
  • In "Planet of Fire", Peri entered the TARDIS wearing a bikini◊ (being carried by Turlough, who was wearing bikini briefs). There was a long-running joke/tradition that Companions always left the TARDIS wearing less clothes than they entered in, which many were waiting to see if it would hold true...
  • Most of Peri's costumes seem to be designed to show as much cleavage as possible on a family show. Also note that a lot of people note that Peri is pretty.
  • And Zoe clinging to the TARDIS console◊ in "The Mind Robber", while the camera drools over her bottom in a very tight catsuit.
  • We've got Leela◊ in her fur bikini and split skirts, while Romana 1 was a very attractive◊ woman with a cleavage window.◊
  • Most media coverage of new companion Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) at the start focused on her skimpy kissogram costume in her first episode.
  • There were some media attempts at this when Jenna Coleman made her first appearance in "Asylum of the Daleks", in which Oswin wore a short, form-fitting dress, and the fact a miniseries titled Room at the Top in which Coleman appeared topless aired soon after didn't help matters. Ultimately averted, however, as the decision was made to dress Clara more conservatively.
  • The Eleventh Doctor's era is best known by many as the era where the Doctor was played by an attractive and young Matt Smith.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • "The Feast of Steven", the Christmas Episode in the middle of the grim 12-parter "The Daleks' Master Plan". The heroes have a chase through Hollywood in the 1920s, get arrested by police in the 1960s, and end up Breaking the Fourth Wall. It's really bizarre when you remember that they are in the middle of an epic journey to stop the Daleks from dominating the universe, and that one of the characters murdered her brother a few episodes ago.
  • "The Mind Robber". The TARDIS materialises outside reality and then explodes, and the characters find themselves randomly interacting with fictional characters. Despite this bizarre premise (or perhaps because of that), it's unanimously considered by fans as one of the Second Doctor's best and most creative serials, in addition of escaping the typical structure "Base Under Siege" of his era.
  • "Love & Monsters" from the New Series introduced the "Doctor-Lite" concept to the revived series. It features an unreliable narrator, Scooby-Doo style cartoon physics in a flashback, and a monster designed by the winner of a kids' TV show contest.
  • "Sleep No More", an experimental episode depicted in the first-person "found footage" format and without a traditional resolution. Often described as a "marmite" episode (after a particularly divisive foodstuff popular in the UK): those who love the episode really love it, and those who hate it tend to rank it among the worst in the franchise's history.
  • "Heaven Sent": A an episode in which the Doctor is (almost) completely alone for the entire hour in a surreal scenario sparked by the death of his companion. Unlike the other episodes of this type, it's widely acclaimed across the board as a modern classic.
• Broken Base:
  • For decades there was a massive argument about "UNIT Dating" - whether Jon Pertwee's earthbound stories were set in the early 1970s or the near future from then (stated to be either the early 80s or late 70s). Nowadays the debate has died down, as newer fans broadly assume they were set sometime around broadcast.
  • During the "Wilderness Years" when the show was off the air there were frequent and very heated online debates about the question of canon. The franchise has never had an official statement defining which Expanded Universe stories are or aren't officially in continuity with the TV show, so fans have taken all sorts of stances - from "everything counts" through "only the TV show counts, but not even all of that", to "the concept doesn't even apply to Doctor Who" and everything in between. Debates between fans of the books (who tended to include everything or deny canon existed) and the audios (who tended to say that the audios counted but the books didn't) were particularly heated.
  • To this day, some fans are still divided over whether the Classic series or the Modern series is better. Some fans prefer the Classic series for being less melodramatic and having less stories set on Modern Earth while also having more focus on the plot and a more sci-fi feel, while Modern series fans prefer the focus on Character Development and story arcs while having more modern storytelling conveniences. There are of course plenty of fans who like both series and even see them as one big show, but don't tell the other fans that.
  • The Steven Moffat era can get very divisive in the fandom, since the man ran the show for six seasons and gave two Doctors three full seasons.
    • Along with the not uncommon internet arguments about the strengths and weaknesses of Moffat's era versus his predecessor, Russell T Davies', people also tend to be divided over which half of the Moffat era was more entertaining overall - the one with the Eleventh Doctor or the one with Twelfth. Depending on who you ask, the Eleventh Doctor regenerating into the Twelfth Doctor is either the point where the Moffat era grew the beard or the point where it started to steadily decline into blandness and banality.
    • Fans of Twelve's run prefer it for Peter Capaldi's consistently impressive, introspective performance as the Doctor; Clara Oswald's character development as she tries to emulate the Doctor and flies a bit too close to the sun; several, thought-provoking philosophical episodes; and the era as a whole avoiding the excesses of the Matt Smith years (especially after the Seasonal Rot of Series 7) by having simple, character-driven season arcs instead of plot-driven ones that occasionally got too convoluted for their own good.
    • However, those in favour of Eleven's run are enchanted by Matt Smith's layered performance and Eleven's character arc as a Doctor who's simultaneously young and old; the multi-season arc of the Doctor finding a family with the Ponds, Amy and Rory gradually outgrowing the Doctor and the Silence meddling with the Doctor's life; the confidence and ambition present in Series 5 - 7 with their consistently stunning cinematography, and Eleven, Amy and Rory having more likable personalities than Twelve, Clara and Danny; and most of all, the freshness and vigour of Moffat's early seasons compared to the later Capaldi seasons, where many have argued the series experienced franchise fatigue and Moffat's exhaustion as the showrunner started to show with Twelve having a large number of bland, uninteresting scripts that coasted by too much on social commentary.
  • The Chris Chibnall era is either great or awful. Common complaints are aimed towards the writing, the direction, or the method in which the perceived "PC politics" are executed in the show since Chibnall's takeover as showrunner. On the other hand, praise has been given towards the series' handling of historical events, Jodie Whittaker's acting, Bradley Walsh's emotional performance as Graham, and an overall feel reminiscent of the classic series.
  • The reveal in Series 12 of the Doctor's "true" nature (pending a very possible retcon, naturally), an extradimensional being who is the source of the Time Lords' ability to regenerate, and who has had a ton of other life cycles beyond the one covered by the series that have been periodically erased from their memory. While some fans liked it, many others just think it interferes with the idea of the Doctor just being a random "idiot with a box" bopping around space and time. There was also a sizable number of fans who feared that it would be used as an excuse to never again cast the "main" Doctor as anything but a white man, with all other options relegated to guest stars like Ruth. These fears were mitigated with the casting of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor.
  • More generally, every era of the show has fans who loved it and fans who hated it.
  • Shipping the Doctor with other characters (mostly companions, but other characters as well) has become this to a certain extent. Some fans see no issue with shipping the Doctor with other characters since the show itself has featured the Doctor actively showing romantic interest in other people from time to time and even gives him a wife in the form of River Song. Other fans dislike the idea of the Doctor being paired with anyone, prefering him to only have platonic relationships with his companions. Fans in the latter category are typically part of the group of people who dislike the increasing focus that the show has taken on romantic relationships between the Doctor and their companions and feel that the show should focus more on the adventure aspect of the story.
• Cargo Ship:
  • Some fans pair the Doctor and sonic screwdriver. The series itself has lampshaded this by having the Doctor actually acknowledge this in "A Christmas Carol" and in the made-for-DVD mini-episode "Clara and the TARDIS" Clara Oswald says the Doctor is in a "co-dependent" relationship with his screwdriver.
  • The show itself pairs the Doctor and the TARDIS. (With some serious squick potential when we see the ship's Cronenberg-esque telepathic circuits for the first time in Series 8.) This climaxes in the episode "The Doctor's Wife" when the TARDIS - the titular "wife" of the title - briefly takes on human form and ultimately is heard to say "I love you" to the Doctor before she reverts to her original form.
• Character Perception Evolution: The show, being a series that's been operating almost nonstop since the '60s (apart from a lengthy hiatus in the '90s and 2000s), inevitably has a number of characters whose reputation shifted with time:
  • The First Doctor, by virtue of being the only Doctor for the show's first three years, was a popular figure among viewers. Initially devised as an Anti-Hero to contrast main protagonists Ian, Barbara, and Susan, he quickly became the show's Breakout Character and became a more beloved hero through Character Development; after William Hartnell's departure in 1966, reactions ranged from scepticism to outrage at the idea of anyone else playing the Doctor. Nowadays, while he's still well-regarded, the First Doctor is seen as more of a historical curiosity thanks to him being very different from later incarnations.
  • The Second Doctor was initially a huge Base-Breaking Character with viewers thanks to Patrick Troughton bearing the burden of being the very first actor to take on the role from the previous (and at the time, only) incumbent. The First Doctor was quite beloved, and Hartnell's exit and unconventional means of replacement initially came as a big shock to audiences (something Troughton himself anticipated), with Troughton's performance in his first story receiving plenty of negative audience feedback. While Troughton soon won over audiences and brought an increase in ratings from their low ebb at the end of the Hartnell era, they never recovered to the heights of the earlier Hartnell era, and by the end of Troughton's final season ratings had begun to slide again to the point where the show faced cancellation at the end of the '60s. Decades later, he's now considered one of the best and most influential incarnations of the Doctor, with his "secretly-scheming mad hobo" characterization laying the groundwork for all later versions of the character.
  • The Third Doctor helped usher in a revival of interest in Doctor Who during the early '70s thanks to a substantial retool that had him fighting aliens on Earth with UNIT. Like Hartnell, Jon Pertwee's departure in 1974 was the target of consternation with viewers. Today, while the Third Doctor is by no means disliked, his reputation is much more modest, with many viewing his era as restrictive in scope and his character as decent, but vastly overshadowed by the more popular and influential Second and Fourth Doctors.
  • The Fourth Doctor was initially a Base-Breaking Character. His actor, Tom Baker, was much younger than prior incarnations, he came right after the highly popular Third Doctor, and he was initially seen as a bit too out-there compared to his comparatively grounded predecessors. Within a few years, however, he quickly became the single most popular incarnation of the Doctor, thanks in part to his mammoth seven-year run, his broad-reaching appeal (having been deliberately written to resonate with both children and countercultural adults alike), and his arrival coinciding with what is widely considered the show's golden age. Today, the Fourth Doctor remains the most iconic version of the Doctor in the Classic Series, with his overall popularity only being rivaled by the Tenth Doctor.
  • For years, the Sixth Doctor was widely regarded by fandom as the worst incarnation. His characterization as a haughty Anti-Hero was derided as a poor attempt at emulating earlier Doctors, while his greater willingness to use violence was seen as straying far from the show's ethos of "brains over brawn." However, several factors over the years would contribute to a belated reappraisal: the Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays gave him Character Development that stripped away his most abrasive elements, the Revival Series would feature multiple morally gray Doctors to great success, and more information about the behind-the-scenes chaos of Colin Baker's tenure would become publicly available. All of this resulted in a major reevaluation of Six's portrayal in the mainline TV series, with him now being seen as an ahead-of-his-time incarnation who simply got stuck with bad scripts and never got to use his full potential until the audio plays.
  • Martha Jones was initially a Base-Breaking Character, coming after the similarly divisive companion Rose Tyler and being unflatteringly compared to her in-universe by the Doctor himself. Years later, however, she's now considered one of the best Revival Series companions next to her successor, Donna Noble, for being far more intelligent than many of her predecessors and for being able to hold her own without any New Powers as the Plot Demands (which was a criticism of both Rose and Donna). Furthermore, her exit, leaving the TARDIS entirely on her own terms, is considered one of the best for how against-the-grain it was compared to other Revival Series companions, who were more often than not forced away from the Doctor.
  • The Daleks immediately became the show's most iconic and beloved villain when they debuted in its second serial, ushering in a wave of "Dalekmania" that culminated in film adaptations of their first two stories. However, as the decades dragged on, Villain Decay gradually soured their reputation, leading them to become emblematic of the show's limitations in the eyes of audiences. Their final appearance in the Classic Series restored their menace among hardcore fans, but it would be the Revival Series story "Dalek" that reignited their popularity with casual viewers as well. Nowadays perception of the Daleks remains fairly positive, if not returning to Dalekmania levels.
  • Upon their introduction in 1966, the Cybermen were considered genuinely terrifying, leading them to become the Second Doctor's equivalent of the Daleks when the pepperpots were Killed Off for Real. However, the Cybermen would sit out most of the '70s after the Daleks' "final end" was undone, and once they became mainstays again in the '80s, their reputation sharply declined due to severe Villain Decay that undercut the Cybernetics Eat Your Soul elements that made them appealing in the first place. The Revival Series would briefly turn this around when they introduced an alternate universe version of the Cybermen that emphasized how each one Was Once a Man, but Villain Decay would quickly affect them too: nowadays, what people think of the Cybermen is entirely dependent on how a given story uses them.
  • The Celestial Toymaker, a one-off villain from a First Doctor story of the same name, was considered one of the show's best antagonists for decades thanks to reviews that praised the lost serial as a forgotten classic; there were even plans to bring him back for Season 23 before a BBC-imposed 18-month hiatus led to the season being completely rewritten. However, after a reconstruction of "The Celestial Toymaker" released and sank the story's reputation (with many now knowing it for its copious padding and racist elements), the titular villain would decline into curiosity status at most, with people praising Michael Gough's performance but considering his character an Orientalist relic of the show's Early Instalment Weirdness in the '60s. The Toymaker would eventually (read: 57 years later) make a return during the 60th anniversary specials, and this incarnation received much more straightforward praise as he preserves the theatricality and unique characterization that made the villain so intriguing but was mercifully reworked to exclude his cringeworthy baggage.
• Character Rerailment:
  • The Sixth Doctor was accused by many fans and critics of being a complete jerk in his first season, being mean to his companion Peri and forgetting the moral values of previous Doctors. In his second season, the writers clearly made the Sixth Doctor more likable, especially in his friendship with Peri. Unfortunately, it was not enough to save Colin Baker, who was fired from the series at the end of the season.
  • In an especially long-term version, Chris Chibnall's run saw a return to the show's original conception as an edutainment series, with the Doctor often pausing to give lectures about history or science. This, however, is a very divisive example of this trope, as it led to several accusations from long-time fans of increasing political correctness, though professional reviewers seemed to enjoy it.
• Common Knowledge:
  • DALEKS CANNOT BE STOPPED BY A FLIGHT OF STAIRS GODDAMNIT. The Daleks were able to fly over stairs since the 1988 story "Remembrance of the Daleks" , so it's been quite a while and yet the myth persists. Some fans will even point out that they were inferred (though not shown on-screen) to be able to fly up stairs as early as The Chase, which was only their third-ever story.
  • Many people and fans often describe the Doctor as a character that preaches Thou Shalt Not Kill and abhors guns. While this portrayal is true to some extent, this varies Depending on the Writer and the Doctor in question as shown here. Even the Tenth Doctor, who called himself "a man who never would", killed his enemies when all else failed as the Racnoss and a few others can attest to...if they were alive.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Vincent van Gogh. He's the only person who can see the Monster of the Week. So he stabs it with his easel. It works.
  • Some of River's stunts are this. Highlights include jumping out of an airlock, confident that the Doctor would show up to save her and defacing the oldest mountain in the universe to leave a message for him. Oh, and fighting Nazis with regeneration.
• Creator Worship:
  • There's no single person who can be called the creator of Doctor Who, but one of the most important creators was the original producer, Verity Lambert. She is held in such high esteem by the fans that, when Doctor Who Magazine held an open "single contribution" category in its 50th anniversary poll, she was the clear winner some 48 years after she stepped down from the role.
  • Terrance Dicks was known as the face of the show for years, in no small part due to his work in novelising the stories. Barry Letts as well.
  • Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe are widely considered as the show's very best creative team, overseeing what many consider the show's Golden Age.
  • Andrew Cartmel for helping the show regain its mojo in its last years.
  • Although not strictly the creator, Russell T Davies gets a fair amount of worship for bringing the show back.
  • However, Steven Moffat, titled the Grand Moff, is more revered due to making some of the best Who episodes. His tenure as the executive producer and head writer received much praise from his followers.
• Creepy Awesome: In general, if a villain or monster is popular, at least part of it comes from the fans being terrified of it.
• Critical Backlash:
  • There comes a point at which the sheer amount of hatred that gets directed at the Sixth Doctor makes it difficult not to root for him as a Good Is Not Nice Anti-Hero. The fact that Colin Baker is loved by the fandom and that everyone knows about the problems that occurred behind the scenes of his era also helps. It also helps that some of the Sixth Doctor serials have now become classics like "Vengeance on Varos", "Revelation of the Daleks" and "The Trial of a Time Lord" and the Sixth Doctor does get better as time goes on and that he got stories from Big Finish that fills the gap between Season 23 and 24 that which leads to his regeneration story that explains what happened to him and why he regenerated as well.
  • Thanks to DVD releases, a lot of fans have given the critically maligned Seventh Doctor era a positive reassessment, with Season 26 in particular now acclaimed as one of the strongest of the entire series, even though that was the year the ratings bottomed out and the original series was terminated, while some fans were mounting a campaign to have the showrunner ousted.
  • Modern Era showrunners Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, and Chris Chibnall endure a lot of hatred from some aspects of fandom.
• Critical Dissonance:
  • For a very long time (due to home video not being invented when the show began) there was simply no way to find out the quality of stories you had missed (due to not having been born when they aired) save for: 1) buying one of the heavily altered and variable in quality Target novelisations, or 2) buying a book written by someone who had seen the episode in question summarising what it was about and, more importantly, saying whether or not it was good. Both these methods led to serious distortions of truth in the fandom.
  • A particular 1980s review tome - "Doctor Who: A Celebration" - contained reviews of all of the stories, in some case based on guesswork themselves (looking at the general quality of actors playing guest stars) which were taken as gospel by people who had never actually seen the stories, leading to "The Gunfighters"'s reputation as an absolute disaster and "The Celestial Toymaker"'s reputation as a classic - there is an anecdote about a woman who stood up at a Who-con to announce that the two aliens she definitely didn't want to see return were the Zarbi and the Gunfighters. Now that all the surviving footage is widely available thanks to the internet and DVDs, fans nowadays (such as Expanded Universe and new series writer Paul Cornell) tend to find that "The Gunfighters" is a self-referential and funny comedy episode and "The Celestial Toymaker" is slow-paced, badly-plotted, racist garbage - but "The Celestial Toymaker" had the benefit of a quality actor playing the villain and a quirky premise, while "The Gunfighters" had no-names and a very straightforward "the Doctor in the Wild West" premise.
  • The book also panned comedy episodes simply because they were comedy and the author felt they had no place in a "serious" science fiction show, causing comedy episodes to fall out of fashion amongst the fanbase for a while. Some fans-turned-writers even condemned "City of Death", nowadays rightly considered a defining classic of its era and which had the highest-rated episode ever until the revival (more than sixteen million viewers, which even the revival has only occasionally surpassed), purely for the crime of being funny.^note Doctor Who had done its first comedy serial all the way back in Season 2, with "The Romans", by the way. Notably, deliberate comedy would make a comeback as part of the general resurrection of the series in Sylvester McCoy's era, and the new series embraces humour as a vital part of the formula.
  • Similarly, fans-turned-writers of the late 80s regularly condemned the historical serials of the Sixties as "aberrations" in what was supposedly a show about the Doctor fighting monsters. Originally the series had alternated between historicals and future/alien-set stories every serial, so the "aberration" was really only something that could be perceived in hindsight. The record low viewership figures of "The Gunfighters" and "The Smugglers" were (and sometimes still are) held up as evidence of the unpopularity of historicals, but they were in fact more indicative of the series' shrinking popularity generally.^note Viewership had been falling steadily since "The Daleks' Master Plan", due to increased competition from ITV and the series' behind-the-scenes production troubles being reflected in the scripts. It would bounce back strongly when Patrick Troughton took over the role, but they also felt that Troughton's Doctor didn't work the same way in historicals, and having Jamie, Victoria and Zoe from the past and future respectively meant they didn't work as well as audience surrogates. It also didn't help that many of the best historicals were missing. Still, unlike comedy episodes, the historical never really returned, being replaced with the "pseudo-historical", featuring SF plots in Earth history. They're still a presence in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, however, with Big Finish regularly dropping the Doctors into mundane (but equally dramatic) historical events.
    • A term used to refer to inaccurate memories (both positive and negative) of lost or not-seen-in-decades episodes, "the memory cheats", is often invoked within Doctor Who fandom. It was first said by John Nathan-Turner, though ironically he seems to have meant it as a defence against accusations that "Doctor Who used to be better" in a time when the series actually was in the doldrums and the accusation was true.
  • Professional reviewers loved "Love & Monsters", but the fanbase does not.
  • While "Kill the Moon" seems to be a Broken Base for fans, critics for the most part loved it. In fact, the bulk of critics seem far less divided and substantially more positive about the Twelfth Doctor era (particularly Series 9) as a whole than the fanbase.
• Crossover Ship:
  • Amy Pond has a couple of Crossover Ships with some popularity:
    • With Sherlock Holmes of Sherlock.
    • With Dean Winchester of Supernatural.
  • The Doctor himself with Sailor Pluto.
  • Clara also gets tons of it. One particularly popular little oddity seems to be to ship her or any of her echoes with practically every single character Peter Capaldi has ever played. For that matter, due to Capaldi and Jenna Coleman's intense chemistry and close friendship off-screen — if one wasn't aware that he'd been happily married for a quarter century and she was likewise in a long-term relationship, and ignoring the age disparity, one could easily mistake them for a real-life couple — a branch of shipping emerged dedicated to shipping the actors themselves.
• Cult Classic: The Seventh Doctor's tenure (more specifically, his latter two seasons under Andrew Cartmel as head writer), which had the lowest ratings from the series' history but a very loyal fanbase.
• Damsel Scrappy:
  • Tegan—though, as a woman of normal intelligence stuck on the TARDIS with three alien super-geniuses (The Doctor, Nyssa, and Adric/Turlough), she was Damsel Scrappy By Default. You want a real Damsel Scrappy in Doctor Who, try Susan, Victoria Waterfield or Peri Brown.
  • In a rare male example, Adric. In addition to being a widely disliked character, he was repeatedly captured and/or mind-controlled by various evil manipulators; most notably the Master in "Castrovalva", the Vampire Orcon in "State of Decay", and the Cybermen in "Earthshock".
  • Mel was the only companion during her tenure, and thus had the duty of getting captured. This would be fine if she were useful or likeable. And then she was followed by Ace. Who killed Daleks with homemade explosives (stored in deodorant cans) and a super-charged baseball bat. It also doesn't help that Colin Baker's firing made it impossible for the show to portray her backstory and how she met the Doctor, which could have done a lot to make her more sympathetic.
• Die for Our Ship: The Russell T Davies era upped the (previously unspoken) romantic side of travelling through space and time with a heroic, dashing genius, with each companion dealing with it in their own way. Of course, everyone has their favourites. Every Doctor-companion pairing has been the subject of this, with competing factions (most notably Doctor/Clara and Doctor/River) not seeing eye to eye.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The Master has benefited from a lot of this, particularly thanks to John Simm's depiction and the increased Foe Romance Subtext it's given him with the Doctor. It can be a bit too easy for fans so inclined to handwave his lengthy list of evil deeds and the body count they have resulted in just because he acts a bit quirky and flirty to the Doctor or because of the Freudian Excuse the drums in his head (introduced in the 2007 episode "Utopia" as a symbol of his insanity) give him.
• Dry Docked Ship: Doctor / Master - while the latter is an unrepentant mass-murderer, the sheer amount of Foe Romance Subtext between the two (especially in the revival) makes it very easy to read them as bitter exes. Especially after the Master becomes Missy.
• Dry Docking: The fandom has "Stay away from the Doctor!"
• Ending Fatigue:
  • The farewell scenes in "Journey's End", which partially led to the episode overrunning by 20 minutes.
  • The 15-minute farewell scenes in "The End of Time". Though to be fair, in "The Death of the Doctor" The Eleventh Doctor told Jo Grant that during that scene he also visited all of his classic companions offscreen. As awesome as that would be, we should probably be lucky it was only fifteen minutes.
• Engaging Chevrons: The rocket launch in "The Seeds of Doom", with a full one-minute countdown.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Series 5 has generated reams of fan theories, ranging from very clever, probably right ones, to the fact that the barely legible text of the library card in "The Vampires of Venice" has a slightly wrong post code on it.
  • Series Six has followed in suit, and the Spoilers Wild Mass Guessing page had to be broken down into folders sorting the different type of speculation- e.g. The Silence, Rory's Death, who is River, etc.
  • And of course, Series 7 has the mystery of who Clara is and why she keeps coming back from the dead in various time periods. Steven Moffat really likes instigating these.
  • Series 8 before it came out already had a page.
  • Likewise with Series 9.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory:
  • "The Happiness Patrol" is the most (over)analysed story in the history of Doctor Who. Is it a biting criticism of Thatcher? Is it about homophobia? Is it a satire of runaway commercialism smothering society? Is it just plain crap? Or all of the above? Just about the only thing anyone can agree with is that it features a candy robot that kills people.
  • Everything about Swarm. Swarm's relationship with the Doctor, his criticism about her idealism, and his concept as an alien appear to be a critique of the toxic fanbase of Doctor Who, specifically the entitled side of the fanbase that criticised the series for their creative direction. Swarm is an ancient alien who knew the Doctor before her 13th incarnation, he criticised the Doctor for being too idealistic for wanting peace, he wants to see the destruction of the universe because of what the Doctor did to him, and he has a hatred towards The Division, Tecteun, and the Timeless Child. These traits parallel some real-life criticism for the series; having the Doctor played by a woman for the first time parallels the fact that Swarm knew the Doctor before her 13th incarnation, Swarm's hatred for her pacifism and idealism is in reference to virtue signalling since people have widely criticised the series for its messages on justice and revenge, and finally, Swarm's hatred towards The Division, The Timeless Child, and Tecteun greatly parallels the controversy of The Timeless Children and the criticism that it brought.
• Escapist Character:
  • The Doctor. Owner of an effectively self-powering, Bigger on the Inside time machine that lets them go anywhere in time and space they feel like - and no matter where that is, their ability to save the day lets them get away with acting (and dressing) like a complete lunatic regardless of cultural norms. Oh, and their travelling companions tend to be attractive twenty-something women. They don't have to work at a job, find money to be a queer social construct they don't entirely get the hang of, and can go anywhere in time and space. The Doctor, like many of their geek fans, is never a rugged, muscular, Action Hero. They pride themselves in saving the day using their wit, humour, and intellect instead of fisticuffs and guns. They are quirky and eccentric but still seen as a thousand times more charismatic than the traditionally masculine types. Oh, and when they get old, they can just change into a younger, often sexier body. No matter your age, that's pretty fun.
  • The Doctor's companions are an Audience Surrogate who also get to be more grown-up, cooler and more fun than the children. Many, many children in the UK have grown up wishing the Doctor would whisk them away for adventures in his TARDIS.
    • Susan Foreman was added to the show for this reason. The two teachers were needed for the show's original edutainment premise, and then an innocent teenager and close relative of the Doctor was added so children could imagine themselves aboard the TARDIS.
    • Leela was created because Philip Hinchcliffe was concerned that the show lacked a companion that little girls would want to be, rather than one who always got rescued or who didn't have any cool features. She's an extremely strong and highly intelligent Action Girl from a warrior tribe selectively bred to embody the Doctor's courage and passion, with highly aware senses and a great outfit. She gets to come with the Doctor and learn about the world (and stab robots).
    • Russell T Davies stated that Rose Tyler was intended to be this. She is an Audience Surrogate already, but also a young woman from a London council estate (housing project for American tropers) who gets picked out of her boring life to find adventure and love (!) with an alien much cooler than her current boyfriend.
    • The cosplaying Petronella Osgood is explicitly a big fan of the Doctor's. She's almost the canonical Whovian and she gets to run with the Doctor. SQUEE!
  • Daleks. It's been noted for half a century that children strongly identify with Daleks - it's often suggested that it is because they act like bratty toddlers (even having Ambiguous Innocence) but get to exterminate adults, allowing children to explore anger and hate in a safe way. The 60s comics even used Daleks as heroes because this was what children wanted.
  • In "Pyramids of Mars", when the Doctor shows Lawrence Scarman into the TARDIS, watch how Michael Sheard (who plays Scarman) chooses to play it - his otherwise adult character suddenly starts acting like an excited child. Sheard said that he hadn't known how to perform the scene, but then decided that his job was to 'live the dream of the children in the audience'.
• Evil Is Cool: The series has many popular villains, many of which are considered cool enough to have received Joker Immunity so that they are never gone for good. These are considered the coolest:
  • The Daleks are popular for their unique design, menacing delivery of their “EXTERMINATE”catchphrase, and for being so powerful that The Doctor cannot defeat them in a straight fight, requiring him/her to rely on his/her wits to defeat them each time.
  • The Master’s level and type of coolness depends on the incarnation, but nevertheless he/she is considered an extremely cool villain in almost every incarnation. The Delgado Master oozes charm and sophistication, the decaying Master is a No-Nonsense Nemesis who uses crafty methods to extend his lifespan, the Tremas Master is an entertaining Large Ham Card-Carrying Villain with some of his sophistication regained, the Yana Master managed to be threatening in his short amount of screen time by changing from extremely good to extremely evil on a dime, the Saxon Master is a wildly entertaining Troll who steals every scene that he’s in, the Missy Master is an entertainingly evil Large Ham who ends up revealing the Hidden Depths of the character in an engaging way, and the “O” Master is an unpredictable psychopath with a surprising amount of charm and style to his insanity.
  • Davros for his unique look, Large Ham voice, and intelligent schemes due to being a Mad Scientist.

TV Series Tropes - F to J

• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • The main character's name is not "Doctor Who". It's not actually The Doctor either, but that's the most common pseudonym they use. It probably doesn't help that he was credited that way for more than a decade in the classic series.
  • TARDIS these days is all caps. While Tardis was officially used in the series's early years, from the 70s onwards it's been TARDIS, and unless you're deliberately being archaic, using Tardis is going to come off as being out of touch. (Radio Times can get away with it since they're using their house style.)
  • Yes, Daleks CAN climb stairs. And we've known it since the 1960s, and saw it happen in 1988.
  • A certain brand of Thirteen haters took to spinning Series 11's ratings to "prove" that making the Doctor into a woman had killed the show, ignoring that even with the gradual decline across the series, it objectively got the highest numbers the show had seen in years. It also tends to involve the naturally lower overnight ratings, rather than the later ones that incorporate people who watched the episode by other means than the live broadcast within a week that ends up as the official ranking.
  • They tried doing the same for Series 12, due to the large ratings drop between Series 11 and 12... but said drop saw the show ending up roughly where it had been in Series 10. Series 13 managed to maintain Series 12's ratings and improved its average UK chart position from the mid-20s to the mid-10s. Further, the BBC were secure enough in the show's performance after Series 12 that they ended up commissioning Series 13, the 2022 specials, the 2023 specials, and Series 14, which for British TV is an astonishing commitment. (And Series 15 was in pre-preparation before the 2023 specials and Series 14 had aired.)
  • And speaking of Thirteen haters, do not refer to her or her seasons as "Nurse Who."
  • This particular brand of haters have set a new template for people who want to proclaim the show becoming more inclusive will kill it (such as the introductions of trans girl Rose Noble and Fifteen, the first main black Doctor), regurgitating much the same fallacious arguments about the ratings - the Who version of "get woke, go broke".
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • The longest-running rivalry is with Star Trek simply because they are the two most famous and long-running TV-based SF franchises worldwide. One of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, The Blue Angel by Paul Magrs, specifically included a direct Trek parody. The two franchises finally crossed over officially in the IDW comic series Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation², which is based around a Villain Team-Up between the Cybermen and the Borg, who many Who fans accuse of being the Trek franchise's Expy of the Cybermen.
  • There have been several different rivalries in different eras with SF/fantasy ITV shows that were scheduled directly against the series: The Tomorrow People (1973) in the 1970s, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in the early 1980s^note It originally aired in the US on NBC, but it was aired in the UK on ITV directly opposite Season 18 of Doctor Who, Robin of Sherwood in the mid-1980s, and Primeval in the 2000s.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • "The Big Bang":
    • Rory spent 1894 years staying out of trouble ^note unsuccessfully and going from Britain to Rome to Germany/France to Italy in 1240 and then back to Britain by 1941. And whatever he went through, he learned that you shoot Daleks in the eyestalk.
    • At the end there is the whole Egyptian Goddess and Orient Express IN SPACE!. It was suggested to have been a ruse in Series 8, enacted by the owner of the Orient Express, but the details are not mentioned.
  • The talk of "Star Cults" who believe in the onetime existence of stars (and who are right, as the disappearance of said stars signals that the universe is wrong) and their head prophet Richard Dawkins. Who's willing to bet that said cults are made up of many of the Doctor's previous companions? Just think of the possibilities...
  • From "The Name of the Doctor": what all of the Clara-fragments were doing and how they saved the Doctor.
  • The Doctor spending hundreds of years on Trenzalore fighting off various Monsters.
  • The Time War itself.
  • The Eighth Doctor's regeneration, before "The Night of the Doctor".
  • It's been heavily speculated that the Ninth Doctor, after leaving Rose and Mickey in "Rose" only to reappear a split second later, went on a bunch of unknown adventures during that time. As the start of the episode hinted he just regenerated, this fills the plot holes of (while alone) visiting Krakatoa and saving a family from boarding the Titanic. "The Beast of Babylon" confirmed this.
  • Series 9 gives us the immortal Ashildr/Me. It's revealed that she was present at the battle of Agincourt, helped end the Hundred Years' War, was (unsuccessfully) drowned as a witch after saving from scarlet fever, and other historical achievements. Later, she decides she will look after the Doctor's companions after he leaves them.
  • And Series 9 ends with the launching of a potentially infinite number of adventures featuring the functionally immortal Clara Oswald and Ashildr.
  • "The Husbands of River Song" raises the question of how the Twelfth Doctor and River Song spent those 24 years together.
• Fanon: Pretty much every question that's gone unanswered has fan theories, some more widely accepted than others.
  • Truly, one of the only nigh universal pieces of fanon in the fandom is the idea that the Could Have Been King mentioned in The End Of Time was Omega.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The entire 23rd season of the show was rewritten from the ground up following Executive Meddling that led to an 18-month hiatus. The new version, The Trial of a Time Lord, was ambitious in its overarching story arc where the Doctor is put on trial as an allegory for the show's situation, but the results are widely seen by fans and critics as hamfisted, gimmicky, and rehashed from several better-regarded earlier stories. When word about the original plans for Season 23 got out, fans quickly gravitated towards it for consisting of more original ideas and following up on the cliffhanger ending of "Revelation of the Daleks". This eventually reached the point where Big Finish Doctor Who adapted most of the scrapped season as the inaugural collection in its Lost Stories range.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Eric Roberts' Master always dresses for the occasion.
• Faux Symbolism: "Kinda" and "Snakedance" writer Christopher Bailey derived the Mara from a demon of the same name in Buddhist philosophy which, as in Doctor Who, symbolises temptation rather than evil (at least, in the sense of "sinfulness"). In Kinda, Dukkha, Panna, Karuna, Anatta and Anicca's names and functions all derive from Buddhism as well.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Long before the internet, the TARDIS was the name for things that are Bigger on the Inside, and "Doctor Who" was the archetype of a time traveller, at least in Britain. The Daleks and their "sink plunger" attachment hve a similar penetration into popular imagination.
  • The Eleventh Doctor has a meme now. Memes are cool.
  • As of Series 5, the Weeping Angels became this.
  • The relationship between David Tennant and Georgia Moffett has provided a Whovian take on the "Yo Dawg" meme.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Due to both being a time travel-heavy sci-fi with a sense of scale that is roughly an equal to one another, both the fanbase of the Xeelee Sequence and Doctor Who often overlap.
  • The Blake's 7 fandom tends to have a lot of overlap with classic series fandom, due to the similarities in style and close links between the production teams; the former is generally considered the adult sister show to the latter.
  • Similarly, a lot of fans of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss' Sherlock tend also to be fans of Moffat and Russell T Davies' eras as head writer as well (Gatiss and Moffat having contributed episodes to both eras).
    • SuperWholockians: Sherlock and Doctor Who with Supernatural thrown in as well. Very common amongst the fandom side of Tumblr.
  • Fans of Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman also tend to overlap with the show. As both authors also wrote for Doctor Who (and in the case of the former served as a script editor), this is also understandable.
  • The Affectionate Parody spoof Inspector Spacetime on Community was very well received by Doctor Who fans. Both Matt Smith and Karen Gillan have expressed appreciation of the other show and an interest in appearing on it.
    • Community creator Dan Harmon's other well-known series Rick and Morty has also become this with Whovians due to being influenced by DW.
  • Due to several actors appearing in both franchises, most notably John Barrowman and Alex Kingston in the main series and Arthur Darvill in one of its spinoffs, Doctor Who and Arrowverse fans manage to get along pretty well.
  • According to this wiki, fans of Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor form a crossover fandom with The Thick of It, especially Slash Fic fans appreciating Malcolm Tucker's willingness for Gay Bravado.
  • At least in social media, there's a significant overlap between the Revival fandom and Good Omens (2019), due to David Tennant. It helps that several Who actors are also in the show, and Neil Gaiman and Michael Sheen have worked on the Revival before.
    • On the other hand, there's a fair number of fans of Good Omens starting Doctor Who due to David Tennant. Especially in Japan where interest in the Revival spiked thanks to it.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Professor Bracewell is a sort of Bracewell Probe.
  • The logo for the Thirteenth Doctor's era features a sideways female symbol on the end.
  • The word "TARDIS" is a play on the Latin word "tardus", meaning "slow".
  • A more obscure example, overlapping with Historical In-Joke, is the "Bad Wolf" arc: the first time Rose is referred to as the "bad wolf" is in 1869, a time during which she is mistaken for a prostitute because of her makeup. At the time, "she-wolf" was slang for "prostitute".
• Gotta Ship 'Em All: The Doctor is shipped with almost every single one of their companions (most of whom were strictly platonic friends) over the course of the show's decades-long existence. Other companions from different eras are shipped together regardless if they've ever actually met. One-Shot Characters are all shipped with random companions, the Doctor, and other one shot characters. The Doctor's daughter/Opposite-Sex Clone Jenny deserves a special mention for being a Launcher of a Thousand Ships despite appearing exactly once and having previously met none of the people she's most commonly shipped with.
• Growing the Beard: Considering the series has decades of history, it's a bit inevitable that there have been times when the show's quality dips and rises again.
  • In the case of the First Doctor, the second season is often considered superior to the first. With the exception of the hated The Web Planet and The Space Museum, all the other serials of the season are considered to be great or reasonably good, managing to dose the pacing and humour of sci-fi and historical stories better than to Season 1.
  • The Second Doctor's arrival made the Doctor younger, paving the way for more action-orientated episodes, and properly established him as an eccentric but sympathetic character. However, his first season is considered irregular (the fact that most episodes are missing does not help). Meanwhile, his second season is frequently touted as one of the greatest of the entire series, with classics such as "The Tomb of the Cybermen" and "The Enemy of the World", as well as the debut of the Brigadier in "The Web of Fear".
  • In the case of the Third Doctor, although his first season is considered one of the best in the series, for introducing more adult plots and a spirit of espionage, many fans think it was in his second season that the writers finally found the right tone for his era, with a better pacing (most of the previous season's serials were up to 7 episodes each) and the introduction of Jo Grant, Captain Yates and, of course, the iconic villain of the Master.
  • The era of the Fourth Doctor is widely agreed to have improved in its second year. Season 12 has two masterpieces ("The Ark in Space" and "Genesis of the Daleks"), but the three other stories of the season are less well-regarded. It's widely agreed that Seasons 13 and 14, which moved away from recurring enemies and into a pastiche of Hammer Horror with tightly-written scripts by Robert Holmes and high production values courtesy of Philip Hinchcliffe, are the absolute high point of the Golden Age.
  • The Seventh Doctor in Season 25, particularly "Remembrance of the Daleks", is seen as marking the point when the 1980s Doctor Who began to show more confidence and maturity. Unfortunately, the show's ratings did not improve and this led to its cancellation after the following season.
  • Many fans think that "Dalek" was this for the revived series and the Ninth Doctor, lifting the Daleks out of a long period of Villain Decay and revealing dramatic details about the Time War; not only that the Daleks had been the Time Lords' foes, but that the Doctor himself had been the one to end it. It also painted the Doctor as a much more complex character with his reactions regarding the Dalek.
  • For the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant's performance in his first series (Series 2) was actually very well-received, but fans were less impressed by several story lines, including the romance between the Doctor and Rose and the Torchwood story arc (although all three have their defenders). Depending on who you ask, either the concluding episodes of Series 2 or Series 3 in general saw a significant overall improvement. Series 4 is seen as where this era really hit it out of the park, with one of the strongest Doctor-Companion dynamics with the Doctor and Donna, no episodes that were regarded as outright bad (or even anything less than "pretty decent"), and an incredibly strong run of episodes in the second half of the season. It's near-universally considered to be one of the best seasons of the revival (Series 1, 5 and 9 are similarly well-beloved), and a strong contender for the best season in the show's entire history, including both the classic and revival eras.
  • The Twelfth Doctor's era improved when his hair grew. For his debut in Series 8, some thought the fantastic lead performance by Peter Capaldi was hamstrung by his character's personality initially coming off as too grumpy and insensitive (though this starts softening as early as episode 3, "Robot of Sherwood"), and companion Clara's romantic subplot, and there were a few absurd-even-by-Who-standards plots in "Kill the Moon" and "In the Forest of the Night". Depending on who you ask, either Series 9 or 10 is where this Doctor’s era drastically improves. The former because of it’s return of multi-part stories allowing for character-based & slower-moving stories still filled with comedy and action, containing some of Capaldi’s best moments as the Doctor, as well as some of his most popular episodes such as "Heaven Sent". The latter because of the new companions of Bill & Nardole, the fresh start approach, acting as a potential jumping on point for new viewers & its fantastic finale "World Enough & Time" / "The Doctor Falls”.
  • Series 11 enjoyed some of the new series’ highest ratings, but got middling reviews for its extremely episodic structure and lack of characterization due to having to split focus between four main characters. This resulted in a seemingly catastrophic ratings drop in Series 12 (though the series had survived similar drops and worse in the Classic era), but the people who actually did stick around tended to praise it as a welcome course correction, putting Thirteen through a horrific Trauma Conga Line that leaves her questioning her very existence and is all the more effective after getting to know her as such a lightweight character, plus several truly stunning character returns they were miraculously able to keep totally under wraps.
• Hard-to-Adapt Work: While the series has seen a number of mostly well-regarded adaptations in other mediums, two of them are considered far trickier:
  • Many fans regard the show as next-to-impossible to adapt into a movie. Much of this stems from the 1963-1989 series' nature as a serialized show, already featuring drawn-out plots that match or even surpass the length of most feature films, making the idea of a movie redundant. Additionally, the series' dense lore and tangled continuity would make it difficult to make a movie that appeals to neophytes, as so much stuff would need to be introduced at once. Only three Doctor Who movies were ever made — the first two were adaptations of already-aired serials set in an independent continuity, while the third was poorly-received by fans thanks to being indecisive about whether it wanted to appeal to longtime fans or newcomers.
  • The other medium Doctor Who has a strong amount of difficulty fitting into is video games. While the series' "fighting monsters through time and space" premise would theoretically make for a good game, it's set back by the fact that the Doctor is not a conventional action hero, preferring to confront enemies with guile more often than not, with the Doctor's companions typically acting as The Watson to them. Consequently, while multiple attempts have been made to create viable Doctor Who video games, none of them were particularly well regarded.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Seeing the early First Doctor stories, where he slowly warms up to Ian and Barbara, becomes more so after seeing the Doctor develop a fondness for humans and planet Earth. If not for that meeting in a junkyard, Earth would have been destroyed a million times over, and the Doctor themself would be a much poorer person.
  • "The Waters of Mars", set in 2059, has a scene in which one of the first Astronauts on Mars, a Russian, video-chats with his brother about said brother's husband's spending habits, with the implication that same-sex marriage is no big deal in Russia. Given the repression of Gay Rights in Russia we've seen in 2013, it makes the episode's overall theme of humanity rising beyond its early 21st-century crisis and making it to faraway Mars all the more powerful.
  • In "Survival", last story of the 1989 series, the Doctor closes with a beautiful speech culminating with, "Come on, Ace. We've got work to do." At the time, it was unknown if the show would ever come back, due to Executive Meddling. Fast-forward sixteen years, and the Doctor is back on our screens, with the show as good as (many would say, better than) ever, and since then it's only gone from success to success.
  • A later story has the Doctor meet Van Gogh and inspire him, though sadly it's not enough to prevent the artist from committing suicide. Later, new research showed that he may not have committed suicide at all, that it may have been accidental. If this is so, then the Doctor and Amy were far more successful than they realized.
  • Back in "Genesis of the Daleks," the Doctor tells Sarah Jane and Harry that even though he failed to destroy the Daleks, he knows that out of their evil must come something good. This can be easy to dismiss, given all of the evil the Daleks are responsible for, but given stories such as "Journey's End" and "Twice Upon A Time," where Daleks actually help the Doctor, it turns out that he was actually right.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Billie Piper was known as a novelty late-90's teen pop artist who was essentially untested as an actor, given the difficult task of being the very first companion of the revival series. Rose continues to be a highly-regarded companion, which makes it easy to forget how wild of a swing her casting was.
  • Catherine Tate was largely known only for her rather low-brow comedy series when she was cast as Donna. Her performance in Who was a revelation and she's often considered one of the best companions of all time.
  • At the time Series 11 aired, Bradley Walsh was perhaps best known for hosting The Chase. His moving performance as Graham (a man grieving after the loss of his wife, while already disappointed that he can't connect with his grandson) was hailed as one of the best things about that series, and reminded people that he is an actor first and foremost.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Fans are known for mourning their favourite Doctors after their regeneration, even though the character isn't technically dead, and cooking up elaborate theories for how Doctors can regenerate back into whatever the fan's preferred version of themselves is. These theories were eventually confirmed in "The Day of the Doctor", in which Tom Baker, who played the very much loved Fourth Doctor, reappears as a far future regeneration of the Doctor, playing Eccentric Mentor to his young self and assuring him that maybe he'll find himself 'revisiting old favourite faces'.
  • Possibly confirmed in "Timewyrm: Revelation" where it is claimed that when a Doctor regenerates he lives on in the Doctor's mind.
  • The Time Lords were all killed, with the Doctor as the Last of His Kind. Then the Master was revealed to have concealed himself by temporarily becoming human, leading fans to endlessly speculate about who else did this (the Rani being the most popular choice). "The End of Time" and then even less ambiguously "The Day of the Doctor" revealed that Gallifrey was actually locked away from the rest of the universe rather than being destroyed, and could potentially be rediscovered. It is at the end of Series 9!
  • "Journey's End":
    • Theories regarding Donna's Time Lord memories/self/whatever and how she can regain them are similarly endless. She finally gets them back in Doctor Who 60th AS "The Star Beast".
    • In the commentary producer Julie Gardner expressed her belief that Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister wasn't dead and had escaped through a trap door.
  • "Death in Heaven":
    • Fans were quick to notice that if Danny had the opportunity to return to the living world two weeks after his Cyberman body was killed, similar means could be used to resurrect any other character killed in the episode. Especially Missy.
    • Fans were also adamant that Missy killed a Zygon and not the real Osgood. Ingrid Oliver, Osgood's actress, would certainly like to think her character's just hiding. Series 9 doesn't quite reveal what happened. Either the Zygon duplicate or the original Osgood is still alive, and she's not telling anyone which she is; she considers herself both human and Zygon, and that's all she cares to reveal. Later another Zygon also takes the form of Osgood, and again neither of them will reveal which of them is which!
    • Since Seb isn't actually alive, but an A.I., it's unlikely he would have been "killed" by Missy. This, in turn, provided a small Hope Spot regarding Osgood's survival, though it wasn't what Moffat and co. went with...
  • Post-"Face the Raven", partially because there were two episodes still to come, there was much speculation in Radio Times and elsewhere that the original Clara Oswald was not actually Killed Off for Real. As it turned out, she was, but the Doctor removes her from the timeline at the last possible moment in "Hell Bent". She's agelessly "alive" as a result, and as the story ends heads out with Ashildr to travel the universe in a TARDIS of their own — but since her death remains a fixed moment in time, she must eventually return to that moment to preserve time and space.
• Home Grown Hero: The Doctor sure seems to have a thing for the British isles; from speaking with a British accent, having British assistants on their galaxy-saving travels, to settling in them for the very brief times they do something remotely resembling settling down. Then again, the aliens love Cardiff too.
• Hype Backlash: There are several Missing Episodes from the 1960s which have developed a reputation for being almost legendarily good classics, despite this being hard to confirm or refute without seeing them. Consequently, there have been several occasions in which these episodes have been found, to the delight of all... only for a slightly awkward moment to set in as everyone realises on looking back that these episodes, while perhaps not exactly bad, weren't actually as good as they were made out to be. "The Tomb of the Cybermen" and "The Web of Fear" are two which have suffered this fate (though this is a YMMV itself as many have acclaimed the episodes upon seeing them, with Matt Smith openly crediting "Tomb" with influencing his development of the Doctor). Others, such as "The Enemy of the World" have ended up being better than many remembered.
• I Am Not Shazam:
  • The main character's name is "The Doctor", not "Doctor Who" (in spite of what the credits might sometimes say). Though "The Doctor" isn't his real name either.
  • And never, ever call him The Who. Good natured fans might chuckle at the coincidence that both are British icons that started in the 60s, and may occasionally crack a joke about it. The more rabid ones will most likely unleash a verbal storm at you for mixing up the two, followed by a lecture about the Doctor's name.
• Improved Second Attempt: The Sixth Doctor was intended as a Darker and Edgier take on the character, being a morally gray Defrosting Ice Queen as a throwback to the First Doctor. However, he made such a bad first impression with viewers, who derided him for decades as the worst Doctor in the show's history, that Colin Baker was fired from the role by The BBC, cutting off his tenure prematurely. Years later, the Ninth and Twelfth Doctors would revisit the basic outline behind Six to much more acclaimed results, this time placing more emphasis on the Doctor's heroism and giving a number of What the Hell, Hero? moments at the hands of both himself and his companions. Furthermore, Nine and Twelve's darker qualities were made the results of trauma as a veteran of a Great Offscreen War and lingering post-regenerative insecurity, respectively, rather than making them inherent parts of the incarnations' personalities. Incidentally, the better reception of Nine and Twelve would also contribute to Six's positive reappraisal by the fandom, who now view him as simply being a victim of wasted potential prior to his Character Development in Big Finish Doctor Who.
• I Knew It!:
  • In his recap of the second-to-last episode of the first season of NuWho, Jacob of Television Without Pity incorporated a lengthy rant on Gnosticism and the parallels thereto in the revived series. He concluded from this analysis that, among other things, the season finale would have to involve the Doctor as the Devil battling a "fake bastard God" and being saved by a female character ("I hope it's the TARDIS, but it's probably Rose") as the incarnation of the goddess of wisdom. In his recap of the actual finale, he doesn't so much gloat as express relief that he doesn't look insane.
  • The return of the Master in the new series. Granted, this got more and more obvious as the show went on, but some fans had this figured out from the trailer. Others had this worked out even before that based on what DVD box sets of the classic series the BBC was releasing. (The box set in question being the "New Beginnings" trilogy, which returned the Master to recurring character status in the original series.) Others rejected this theory because they felt that The BBC wouldn't be "that obvious".
  • In possibly the most extreme example, the possible connection between Jack Harkness and the Face of Boe was predicted ahead of time.
  • Rassilon turning out to be evil in "The End of Time" was this for many fans. "The Five Doctors" and much Doctor Who Expanded Universe material had already depicted him as fairly shady.
  • There was a theory that in "Flesh and Stone", the reason that the Doctor was wearing the jacket that he had just lost wasn't because of continuity errors, but because he was actually the Doctor from the future who had come back in time to talk to Amy. Those who subscribed to this theory were entirely correct.
  • Arthur Darvill had several guesses as to River Song's true identity before it was revealed on the show, and would sometimes bug Alex Kingston with them on set (she being the only person other than Moffat who knew). Eventually he guessed right, and she just said "Hello, Dad." He wasn't the only one who predicted this, though, as quite a few fans speculated the same thing.
  • And on the subject of River, it was widely suggested that the "good man" that River killed would turn out to be the Doctor himself — it was. He survived.
  • How many jokes were there about the Statue of Liberty being a Weeping Angel before "The Angels Take Manhattan"? A lot. How horrified was everyone that the jokes were right? Very.
  • A few fans successfully guessed the revelation regarding Clara in "The Name of the Doctor": that the modern London Clara is the original and somehow ends up splintered across time to save the Doctor's life countless times.
  • After he first appeared in "The Name of the Doctor", fans speculated that the War Doctor was a previously unknown incarnation of the Doctor from between his eighth and ninth incarnations. The minisode "The Night of the Doctor" proved this to be true.
  • Missy's identity, which was revealed at the end of "Dark Water", was correctly guessed ahead of time by savvy fans.
  • Although the actual mechanics remained unspoiled, many fans predicted Clara's death at the end of Series 9 as early as the end of Series 8, though granted some expected her to die (as was actually originally planned) in the 2014 Christmas special.
  • The official synopsis of post-Series 9 Christmas Episode "The Husbands of River Song" triggered predictions/fears that it would reveal the circumstances of the Doctor and River Song's last night together, and it did. However, the episode ended on a twist no one saw coming: said night on Darillium lasts 24 years in Earth/human time!
  • "World Enough and Time":
    • Some fans figured Steven Moffat would kill off Bill because he was about to leave the show and would likely sweep the chessboard clean for Chris Chibnall. That, and they know what to expect with Moffat by this point, and it made sense he would have one last crack at killing off a beloved character... though from there other fans correctly guessed that there would be more to Bill's fate than the Cliffhanger teased!
    • Because of the fake-out regeneration in "The Lie of the Land", when the Doctor appeared to be dying in the opening sequence, a lot of people expected another tease of a regeneration, only for real this time.
  • "The Doctor Falls":
    • Quite a few fans predicted that Bill would be rescued from her fate by Heather from "The Pilot" given the latter character's established shapeshifting and time-and-space travelling abilities and the fact that just killing off a companion for good just isn't in the revival's wheelhouse. Eagle-eyed viewers even caught a hint of Foreshadowing in the previous episode when she appeared in the window Bill was glancing out of!
    • After David Bradley's return was spoiled by newspapers, many fans correctly guessed he would appear as the First Doctor — after his turn as William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time — in the final scene.
  • "Twice Upon a Time": Long before the special aired, most fans figured that the Captain, who was not named in the pre-publicity, was somehow related to the Brigadier. The reveal of his name near the end confirmed him as a member of the Lethbridge-Stewart family.
  • "Resolution": Despite the advertising going to considerable lengths (until Christmas Day, anyway) in avoiding the revelation of who or what "the most dangerous creature in the universe" was, that description was enough for many to figure out just who the Doctor was talking about.
  • When the first photos of Neil Patrick Harris's character in the 60th anniversary specials were revealed, the most common guess was he was playing the Celestial Toymaker, a First Doctor foe who hadn't be seen since then, based off of him wearing what looked like toymaker attire and being in a workshop. This was confirmed to be the case on September 22.
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • In "The Dominators", the Dominators' plan to explode the planet into a radioactive mess as a fuel source is foiled. But the Dominators have been repeatedly sending messages to the main fleet to come that way. When the fleet arrives, will it sit back and take it? Especially against a Perfect Pacifist People?
  • "The Time Warrior". So, the kitchen staff got out of Irongron's castle before it exploded... right?
  • In "The Armageddon Factor", it's implied that the Atrians unknowingly managed to wipe out the Zeons very early on in the war, and that the subsequent conflict was engineered by the Shadow simply so that he wouldn't get bored waiting for the Doctor to arrive.
  • Multiple episodes end with it being very unclear whether things won't just go back to normal after the Doctor leaves, or if he has actually improved anything at all. Became Ascended Fridge Horror in "Bad Wolf", which explicitly states the Doctor's actions in "The Long Game" made things many times worse.
  • The climax of "Journey's End" has Earth dragged through space at phenomenal speeds, which is shown to cause such a large amount of shaking that characters have to take shelter to protect themselves from the wind and flying debris. What is essentially a world-wide earthquake would have caused widespread damage, killing thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people, and would be worse than normal given all the damage the Daleks did beforehand. Yet the only thing that Doctor comments on is that the disturbance will lead to a lot of rain. And despite all this the Earth-pulling is treated as a happy moment. That's not to mention the gravitational disturbances throughout the Solar System and the Moon getting back into place. The original script has the Doctor say they still have time before the system falls apart but this goes unmentioned.
  • "The Lodger", made and set in 2010, mentions that the population of Earth is several hundred million less than the real life 2010 population. This leaves the conclusion that all the alien invasions the Whoniverse Earth has experienced have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. (One possibility is that these people have been erased by the cracks, meaning that they're back at the end of the season. Still an inferred holocaust, albeit a temporary one.)
  • In "Time Heist", the solar storm causes a literal holocaust as waves of fire wash over the surface of the planet. The bank patrons are last seen shouting in alarm, and Madame Karabraxos flees with what valuables she can grab, an act that suggests that even her most secure vault will eventually be destroyed by the flare.
  • In "Kill the Moon", mention is made of horrendous destructive tides. The moon's increase in mass would have many other repercussions for the weather, plate tectonics, etc. But no specifics are given; the only report from the earth is that things are going "badly", but apparently the developed world still has electricity, even the parts along coastlines.
  • "In The Forest of the Night":
    • What happened to aeroplanes in flight when every runway in the world was suddenly taken over by the forest?
    • If animals could escape from the zoos thanks to the trees, could prisoners escape from prison thanks to the trees? And speaking of which, what kind of ecological catastrophe could ensue if the zoo is unable to get the animals back? And what about critically endangered animals in captive breeding programmes? Wouldn't their escape cause a severe blow to international conservation efforts?
    • No way Nelson's Column is the only large structure to collapse from the growth of the trees. How many other such events occurred worldwide?
    • The reason humankind initially tried to burn down the trees was to make room for essential services. With that stymied, there are no ambulances to deal with medical emergencies or accidents. No quick relief for fires or crimes.
    • And what about the astronauts? Everybody on the space station probably got fried, unless it happened to be behind the Earth at the time. Is this why humans gave up on space travel by 2049?
• Informed Wrongness: Prime Minister Harriet Jones ^note Yes, we know who she is. ordering the destruction of a retreating Sycorax warship in "The Christmas Invasion". Yes, killing a retreating enemy isn't exactly honourable, but it is understandable. Jones' argument in her defence—that the people of Earth can't always rely on the Doctor to protect them—actually makes some sense, but it's instead used for a straightforward Humans Are the Real Monsters message. Later, in "The Stolen Earth", it is proven that she was right to try and arm Earth in case the Doctor isn't there, and actually set up a program that seeks out help in an emergency. It's especially notable because this is Ten, who is not above doing some fairly nasty things for vengeance rather than possibly-misguided protection of the Earth.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Nyssa. The Master kills her family and takes over her father's body, proceeding to wear it around while mocking her. Then her entire planet is destroyed. Then she starts travelling with the guy who was unable to prevent any of it, and was later unable to prevent one of their other friends from dying. And she still gets up in the morning and gets on with life and is sensible and quietly helps repeatedly save the universe and doesn't talk much about any of it.
  • In Series 5's "The Big Bang", Rory Williams spends 1894 years alone guarding his in-suspended-animation fiancée in a giant metal box, keeping it safe from outside influences, following it wherever it is taken, and writing himself into the myths and legends of a dozen civilizations in the process. Then in Series Six he has to deal with all his memories of 2,000 years threatening to overwhelm him, the constant suggestion that Amy prefers the Doctor over him (she doesn't), his wife dissolving into goo, then his child dissolving into goo, and then the revelation that River is his daughter. Poor guy.
  • The Star Whale from "The Beast Below". Say what you will, there's something touching about choosing to continue ferrying the humans who tortured you for roughly two hundred years.
  • River Song. To say she lived a very painful life is an understatement. Being used and abused by her kidnappers for her first couple of decades, losing her parents, and constantly meeting the Doctor when he won't remember her each time she sees him is depressing, especially when you remember the first time we see her in "Silence in the Library", he flat out doesn't know her.
  • The Ninth Doctor, both in show and meta. In show considering he firmly believes he wiped out the Time Lords in a desperate way to save all of time even if it meant becoming the last Time Lord. Meta considering Eccelston stayed on the show for one season for a myriad of reasons.
  • Amy Pond. Left behind by the Doctor when they first meet as a little girl, losing Rory to the Crack and forgetting he ever existed, losing her baby who then is revealed to be River Song, having her faith in the Doctor shattered MULTIPLE TIMES and a slew of problems that lead to her and Rory being zapped by the Weeping Angels, thus losing contact with the Doctor and dying in the past separated from him. God. For all her flaws, you gotta hug her.
• It Was His Sled:
  • New fans might be surprised that it took six seasons to be revealed that the Doctor is a Time Lord. And we only find out the name of his planet (Gallifrey) in Season 11!
  • The reveal of the Cybermen in part 1 of "Earthshock" was well-hidden. Today it is widely known; a Cyberman is even featured on the DVD cover.
  • All episodes in which the Doctor regenerates or a companion leaves the show suffer from this, often thanks to publicity before the episode is even broadcast.
  • Given the iconic status of the Daleks, it's very easy to forget that them having survived the Time War was originally a twist in the first season of the revival.
  • The announcement that a female actress would take the role of the Doctor in 2017 became viral pretty much immediately, both because of the announcement itself and the controversies that followed, many months before she even had her first full episode.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The Sixth Doctor's era is widely considered the nadir of the show, with its gratuitous violence, outrageous costume design, unlikeable and ineffective protagonists, and nonsensical plots. However, for all the era's faults, Colin Baker's committed and sincere performance as the Doctor is consistently worth watching.

TV Series Tropes - K to O

• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: The Doctor has been shipped with just about everybody, including themself. Some of the characters most popularly shipped with them include Rose, River, Romana, Clara, Fitz, Charley, Martha, Jack, Yaz, the Master / Missy, and the TARDIS.
• LGBT Fanbase: The show attracted a huge one during the Classic Series, as revival Show Runner Russell T Davies had repeatedly referenced on his previous series Queer As Folk. This is commonly ascribed to the show's long-time No Hugging, No Kissing policy, which meant that gay viewers didn't have the characters' heterosexuality rammed down their throats, and also made the Doctor into something of a symbol in the Asexual community. It doesn't hurt that most eras of the show were about a clever, snarky, flamboyantly-dressed hero who defeated bullying authoritarians with guile rather than violence. This eventually resulted in the Revival Series frequently nodding to this following, including openly queer companions like Jack Harkess, Bill Potts, and Yasmin Khan and establishing Time Lords as genderfluid, reinforcing the LGBT fanbase in the process.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Every time The Master is killed off. Ditto for the Daleks... and Davros... and the Cybermen. By 2008 or so, the writers had stopped even trying to pretend that it was the final end of those characters.
  • Russell T Davies implied this about Davros in "Journey's End". He stated that he didn't want to be the one to have permanently killed off such a legacy character. So as far as Word of God is concerned, he survived somehow. And he did — Darvros returns for the Series 9 opener.
  • Series 6 hinted very strongly that the Doctor is going to die For Realsies This Time and it in fact begins with a future version of the Eleventh Doctor apparently getting shot to death and cremated (except not really, as revealed in the finale). Since this would bring the entire series to an end, all but a few were pretty convinced he'd get around it somehow — the question lay in what the 'somehow' in question was. The same episode had Rory in trouble. The trailers for the next episode didn't even hide his survival.
  • "Night Terrors". Admit it, you were relieved when Amy turned into a doll. Nothing to do with how you feel about Amy. It's just that once Amy turned into a doll, you knew she and all the other dolls would turn back to normal by episode's end and this would be an episode where Everybody Lives.
  • "The Time of the Doctor". Even if Peter Capaldi hadn't shown up last time, this really wouldn't be fooling anyone.
  • "In The Forest of the Night". Killing a companion? Okay. Do timey-wimey things that would destroy the futures seen in previous episodes? Fair enough. Destroy Earth in a present-day episode... and one with kids in it, at that? No way.
  • The prologue short to the Series 9 premiere has the Twelfth Doctor in The Last Dance mode, preparing for a confrontation with an old enemy that will surely kill him once and for all, giving Ohila his last will and testament to deliver... but none of the pre-release publicity even pretended he wouldn't survive the opening two-parter and have more wacky adventures.
  • The preview for "Hell Bent" implied the Doctor would regenerate. The story's set on Gallifrey, where pretty much everyone can regenerate, but yep, it's totally the Doctor regenerating!
  • Every time the Doctor's morality is questioned. As the star of the show, he is not going to suddenly make some morally ambiguous/outright wicked choice that is going to make him lose audience sympathy for good; he always comes back from the Moral Event Horizon — even in the finale of Series 9, which sees Twelve temporarily become a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, he is brought back to his best self and accepts a karmic punishment for going too far.
  • "Oxygen" has the Twelfth Doctor becoming permanently blind due to him entering the vacuum of space without a helmet to save Bill. Some saw the "permanent" portion as this due to the already established fact that he can still use some of his regeneration energy to heal an injury, even if he isn't regenerating, and figured that it would be taken care of by the end of the season or even within the three-part "Monks" arc that started immediately afterward. Turned out that they were right — it's healed mid-arc, but at a heavy price, in "The Pyramid at the End of the World".
  • Later that season "World Enough and Time" teased two things at the top and bottom of the episode, respectively — that Twelve would regenerate before the Christmas show and Bill would die as the Cyberman that Saxon!Master converted her into, which would be a massive Downer Ending for the season. The outcome of "The Doctor Falls"? Twelve puts it off a little longer while Bill is saved and restored to humanoid form by Heather. Subverted in the Doctor's case because they would have done it had there not been a need for a Christmas Special for 2017 and the original plan to have it be Thirteen's debut didn't pan out.
• Love to Hate:
  • The Master. Always evil, always hammy, always magnificent.
  • Davros as well. There's a reason even casual fans know his "to hold in my hand" speech.
  • His creations, The Daleks also qualify, being A Nazi by Any Other Name but so iconic and cool that the franchise would not be the same without them.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Barbara Wright, fairly badass in the TV stories, is often treated by fandom as an unstoppable stone killer in pumps and a turtle-neck.
  • Stormaggedon, Dark Lord of All; because everyone who isn't "Mum" is either a peasant or "Not Mum" if you're his dad or the Doctor.
  • Ace. She took on a Dalek with a baseball bat and got it to call for REINFORCEMENTS.
  • Rory "Chuck Norris" Williams, the Last Centurion. He terrified Cybermen into submission with a single question (Where is my wife?) and the hotel that shows everyone their fears showed him the exit door.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Dodo is generally regarded as one of the least-loved companions of all time due to her poor acting, inconsistent accent, lack of personality and development and being as dumb as the bird she's named after. After four stories, she was written out and was deemed so unremarkable that she didn't even get a goodbye scene. The expanded universe didn't treat her any better, with one book giving her an STD and another killing her off entirely.
  • Adric is another unpopular companion due to his lack of any likable character traits - arrogant, condescending, sexist, whiny, self-important, egotistical, smug and having a bad habit of siding with the villains. Like Dodo, his acting also left much to the imagination. He did at least get a heroic exit, albeit he died failing to save the world. As if that wasn't enough, one of the Past Doctors books reveals that he suffers from body odour.
  • Adam Mitchell, who was literally designed to be a companion that doesn't measure up due to being a conniving, selfish opportunist. He remains the only companion to ever been booted out of the TARDIS. Add in the fact that his actor had career-ending allegations against him and you have a character that even Big Finish won't touch.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Yartek, LEADER OF THE ALIEN VOORD! is a classic one, stemming from a description of the story in tie-in material.
  • Many things associated with John Simm's Master; the four drum beats, his nice choice in music, the gas mask..
  • Eleven's "X are cool" catchphrase. From bowties to fezzes, he had a knack for picking up unusual clothing items and declaring them to be "cool", often against Amy's objections.
  • Every second of the Doctor Who cast and crew's 500 Miles music video.
  • Sue from Catering now has her own Facebook and Tumblr tag.
  • Goddammit Steve!◊
  • Thanks to Peter Capaldi's role as Malcolm Tucker on The Thick of It, the Twelfth Doctor has been almost universally characterized by the fans (prior to his debut) as incredibly foul-mouthed. Amusingly enough this is referenced in "Dark Water", where the psychic paper has swearing on it.
  • Stormageddon, the Dark Lord of All, Craig's newborn son that (according to the Doctor, who speaks fluent baby) dislikes the name "Alfy" and prefers the more grandiose title.
  • Thanks to Ten's most famous line, the phrase "wibbly-wobbly" has essentially become shorthand for "too complicated to bother explaining".
  • As is "Timey-Wimey" when used to explain complicated Time Travel plots.
  • EVERYONE is a Time Lord. Related, every female character is The Rani.
  • "Capaldi Intensifies!" is often used to describe Peter Capaldi's three-second appearance in "Day of the Doctor".
  • At least one meme points out that being a constant saviour of all of Timespace with little more than a time machine, a sonic screwdriver, and the greatest intellect in the universe, kinda dwarfs the exploits of certain other muscle-bound heroes in tights.
  • "Like a hybrid!"
  • Steven Moffat's reputation as The Scapegoat, including being blamed for any disliked changes whether or not he was involved, has led to several other fans to mock that portion of the fanbase by jokingly blaming Moffat for inane things, like one's coffee going cold.
  • From the classic series: The Ambassadors... ... ... OF DEATH! (Twang!)
  • After the reveal of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, her luscious blonde hair caused a very popular speculation that Thirteen's first line would be some surprised sputtering that seems to be over becoming a woman, until she instead says "I'm still not ginger!"
  • The Thirteenth Doctor's first scene ends with her falling out of the TARDIS as it blows up. Jokes she would not last long soon started; others thought the speed at which she ended up in mortal peril showed she was definitely the Doctor.
  • The scene also confirmed that Whittaker would be using her natural Yorkshire accent, prompting a lot of jokes about how this is the real boundary being crossed with her casting.
• Memetic Molester: The Doctor's tendency to get Ship Tease with female companions despite being at least 900 years old (and one, Rose, was 19 years old when she became a companion) has created the interpretation that the Doctor is a lecherous predator.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • An unusual example where the fans praised the writer because they read in too much satiric intent: Doctor Who had "Bad Wolf", an episode featuring Deadly Game Show versions of Big Brother and The Weakest Link where losing contestants were slaughtered. Many fans lauded these as brilliant parodies pointing out the vapidity of such shows. New series producer Russell T Davies likes these shows, and put that in as a tribute to them.
  • Played straight with some fans who have latched on to the Master, particularly his John Simm incarnation, especially where the Foe Romance Subtext was flowing thick and free; plenty of Fan Fics featuring the Master tend to treat him as a quirky, slightly sarcastic guy who just wants to hook up with the Doctor. Never mind that he's also a vicious psychopath who conquers the world, wipes out a tenth of the population, destroys Japan, enslaves the survivors of the human race, and possibly beats his wife.
  • Some fans who recognise how evil the John Simm version was now tend to write the Roger Delgado or Anthony Ainley versions as Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains simply because they weren't so glaringly Ax-Crazy and sadistic. This, despite, for example, the Delgado version manipulating Earth's two native sentient species into a genocidal war just because the Doctor liked one of them, and the Ainley version once accidentally destroyed a quarter of the universe, and after a moment of shock proceeded to take the remaining three-quarters hostage instead of showing real remorse. (Apart from that, when the dust had settled the new Master didn't exactly emerge triumphant, either.)
    • Destroying a quarter of the universe was a mistake; holding the rest hostage afterwards wasn't, and he sure didn't show any remorse about what he'd done. Also not an accident was taking over the body of Nyssa's father, or the very high body count he racked up any time he appeared.
  • Speaking of the Master, Missy is definitely this, even to her haters. Missy turned all of humanity's dead into Cybermen, and coldbloodedly murdered fan favourite Osgood. She was undeniably an evil monster in her first season. But the small vocal minority of fans who hate Missy hate her NOT because of her evil actions, but because she's a she and they're vehemently opposed to the concept of Time Lords genderswapping during regeneration, (the same reason that vocal minority is attacking Jodie Whittaker being cast as the 13th Doctor).^note Though strictly speaking, it's never been confirmed that Missy did genderswap during regeneration; The Master has stolen bodies before and may have done so again. Conversely, the larger majority of fans absolutely love Missy, despite her evil actions, even overlooking the murder of Osgood and blaming that squarely on Steven Moffat, because Missy's actress Michelle Gomez plays her with such batsh-t crazy glee that it's almost impossible NOT to love her.
  • The Daleks got this back in the 1960s. Because Beauty Equals Goodness was assumed standard, it was hoped the audience would side with the Inhumanly Beautiful Race (the Thals) over the Daleks. However, the Daleks, with their menacing movements and Robo Speak voices, were significantly more entertaining to watch than the Thals, a race of sanctimonious, RP-accented blond men in leggings, and the fact that the Daleks' motives at the time were more sympathetic (even though they were achieving them in the nastiest possible way) meant that many viewers found the Daleks the sympathetic ones. A lot of the spinoff "Dalekmania" material produced around this time portrays Daleks as an Anti-Hero race, siding with their points of view (even if still leaving them enemies of the humans, the Doctor and Susan's then-unknown race, and the Thals) — Susan even gets a Dalek Implied Love Interest in a photo story in "The Dalek Book". Kids dressed up in Dalek costumes, ate "Dalek Death Ray" ice lollies, and there were even novelty pop songs released that literally were about partying with sexy Daleks. Later canon had no choice but to show them Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, invading Earth and constantly comparing them to Nazis, but they still have a bit of kitschy anti-hero appeal in the popular consciousness.
  • It also didn't help that the Thals got a bit less sympathetic with each appearance. The Dalek vs. Thal war, revealed mostly in reverse order, is basically summed up as: "Evil Versus Evil, but now the Thals aren't evil anymore and want to see if the same goes for the Daleks. It doesn't."
    • Dalekmania received Deconstruction treatment in the Expanded Universe audio story "Jubilee", which shows an alternate future England which has a Foreign Culture Fetish for the Daleks after a failed invasion a century prior - starting from Daleks being used to market everything from lemonade to toothpaste, and ending with England becoming an evil empire that reconquered America and is trying to take over the rest of the world, living by the Daleks' example.
  • Many haters of Moffat heavily criticize him for being unwilling to kill off any of the companions in his tenure, instead opting for fakeouts when death has already occurred for them. This is inaccurate — Moffat did kill some off for real, just not on-screen: Amy and Rory die of old age in "The Angels Take Manhattan", and Clara dies (or will have to eventually) in "Face the Raven".
  • The ending scene of "Can You Hear Me?", with Thirteen admitting she had no idea what to say to comfort Graham's fears of his cancer returning, got so many angry people complaining that the BBC had to put out a statement, with her "I'm going to pretend this conversation didn't happen"-response coming off as dismissive or insensitive rather than tongue-tied. This in turn sparked comments on how Doctors One through Twelve could be as abrasive as they wanted, while Thirteen has to be the "nice one", and the fact that she can barely deal with her own trauma let alone others'.
• Mis-blamed: Fans have a tendency to find one particular behind-the-scenes figure — John Nathan-Turner, Michael Grade, Russell T Davies, etc — and blame absolutely everything they don't like on that figure, regardless of whether they can be reasonably blamed or not.
  • Graham Williams replaced Philip Hinchcliffe's highly acclaimed tenure and was given the job of toning down the horror element and playing up the humour and whimsy. In additon, his era oversaw a whole slew of behind-the-scenes troubles, none of which were his fault. While his era is regarded as divisive at best, it's generally agreed that he did the best he could under very trying circumstances.
  • The low quality of Seasons 22-23 of Doctor Who's original run was for a long time blamed on Colin Baker's performance as the Sixth Doctor. After his surprisingly good performances in the Big Finish audio plays, he's largely cleared his name, leading fans to look to other scapegoats.
  • When Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) left after the third series of the revived show, some fans insisted she had either been fired or pressured to leave because the producers felt she could not live up to her extremely popular predecessor, Billie Piper (it didn't help that onscreen Martha left the Doctor for this reason). This was denied by all involved, but it still pops up occasionally as a conspiracy theory in the fandom. It's possible that she had only signed on for one series.
  • There has been no definitive proof that Christopher Eccleston, a 40-something actor, left after one series due to being "typecast". Eccleston has also been quoted as being dissatisfied with how some of the directors mistreated the other crew during long shoots as why he wasn't involved in the 50th anniversary show. When his autobiography was released in 2019, it was clarified that he also had a falling-out with Russell T Davies and was battling anorexia and depression.
  • Martha had also fallen victim to a Type 3: her character has received criticism for not being confident enough in herself (particularly in her unrequited feelings for the Doctor), and not being convincing as a professional adult. This seems to be based on a misconception by US viewers about the character's intended age: medical students in Britain start studying at age 18, so Martha could well be a teenager, and cannot be any older than 22 or so. There's no in-story reason for her to be particularly world-wise.
  • Steven Moffat often gets blamed for casting a woman to play the Doctor by those who disagree with the idea of a female Doctor. The idea to cast Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor was done by his successor, Chris Chibnall, though Moffatt did lay a lot of the groundwork by canonising the idea of cross sex regenerations. On a related note, the idea of a female Doctor has been around as long as regeneration and it was supported by Sydney Newman. Ironically, during his tenure Moffat often got plenty of stick from people on the other side of the line for not casting a female Doctor when he had the opportunity.
• Moe:
  • Jo Grant provides an excellent live action example.◊
  • Amy; the original entry on the Characters page compared the chibi-like fanart for her to Karen Gillan.
  • On the male side of things, Rory, with his adorkableness, Undying Loyalty and almost constantly sad eyes.
  • Polly, Victoria and Zoe definitely fit into this category too. Victoria has the appearance of a Disney Princess with her huge eyes and blushing, fragile-seeming Victorian era manner and appearance.
  • Clara's big and expressive brown eyes are an actual running gag during her tenure, and go together rather well with her short height and anxious, but sensitive and kind personality. Though the Doctor teases her about them, whenever she does use the Puppy-Dog Eyes, it's clear from the Doctor's behaviour that he can't stay mad at his companion.
  • Bel from Flux (Series 13) is a particularly cute and short Action Girl with an adorable voice and accent who works with a cute machine in her search for her partner, who she is happily in love with, so that they can raise their child together.
  • The Doctor themself is sometimes this, especially his Tenth incarnation. His Eleventh incarnation was basically a big, overgrown puppy in human form. The Eighth incarnation in Big Finish Doctor Who also falls under this at times. So, interestingly, is the otherwise acerbic Twelfth incarnation, especially during Series 9 where it's clear the man needs a hug but rarely gets one when he needs it, and he reverts to a near-childlike state briefly when he's forced to say goodbye to Clara, who is about to be Killed Off for Real.
    • The Thirteenth incarnation is full-on moe for being very cute, peppy, upbeat, Adorkable, and one of the most overtly kind incarnations of the character. This is in full effect during her first season, but gets a little downplayed during her second season when she deals with bigger personal issues and becomes emotionally withdrawn because of it (not wanting to get her “Fam” involved). She still very much retains that Moe energy in her second season despite that, however.
• Moff’s Law: Often a factor when fans get into emotional debate over an aspect of the series. Regardless of the era or the nature of the "complaint", someone will invoke the law at some point.
• More Popular Replacement:
  • While Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor was popular in his own right, it was Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor that became the best-known and highest-regarded incarnation of the character, owed to a mix of his resonance with '70s counterculture and his seven-year tenure, which still has yet to be matched.
  • Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor was this to Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor, who among the Doctor's regenerations was easily The Scrappy for his cowardice, crudeness, and was overall considered obnoxious. The Seventh Doctor on the other hand is one of the more popular regenerations for bringing an air of mysteriousness and mischief to the role that revolutionized future Doctor portrayals, but to be fair the Sixth Doctor was getting better as time went on and he's Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in Big Finish audio dramas after his actor got fired.
  • David Tennant's Tenth Doctor became this to Christopher Eccleston's Ninth with Ten possibly being the most popular Revival era Doctor — though plenty of fans still appreciate Nine, hence the adage "don't skip Nine" to new viewers who might be inclined to overlook Eccleston's respectable (if short) tenure just because Tennant ended up overshadowing him.
  • Vicki was seen not so much as a replacement for Susan, but an improvement, being smarter, more capable and less prone to screaming (it helps that Maureen O'Brien was a much better actor than Carole Ann Ford).
  • The brainy and playful Zoe was seen as a great improvement over the rather wet Victoria.
  • The first incarnation of Romana, played by Mary Tamm, wasn't widely disliked by any means, but her Ice Queen personality was a turn-off for many fans. Her second incarnation, played by Lalla Ward, was way, way more popular, and widely considered to be the Fourth Doctor's most popular companion after Sarah Jane Smith (who in turn is generally agreed on as the show's absolute most popular companion of all-time) and arguably Harry Sullivan.
  • Ace has a very, very committed personal fanbase, and outside that group is mostly remembered affectionately. She followed Peri and Mel, who are probably the two most widely-disliked companions in the history of the series.
  • Bill Potts was wholeheartedly welcomed by the fandom after she takes over from her polarizing predecessor Clara Oswald. Bill also wins points from the LGBT Fanbase for being the first openly gay main cast member.^note earlier seasons had already featured Extreme Omnisexual Jack Harkness as a recurring character, but he never became a regular companion, though he did get his own spinoff show Torchwood
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The characteristic TARDIS dematerialisation sound created, according to River Song, by the Doctor leaving the brakes on. (He claims it's deliberate because he likes the sound). Of course, this raises the question as to why Romana and the Master had it happen to them, but River could have just been messing with the Doctor.
    The Moment: You know the sound the TARDIS makes? That wheezing, groaning? That sound brings hope wherever it goes. To anyone who hears it, Doctor. Anyone. However lost. Even you.
  • Clara comes close to uttering the trope name when talking about how much she missed the TARDIS sound in "Last Christmas".
  • The TARDIS' Cloister Bell which rings when something is going badly wrong. While hearing it means something terrible is happening the sound itself (which is a gong being struck under water) is hauntingly beautiful.
  • Anytime the 9th Doctor says "Fantastic".
  • Martha's frankly adorable bubbly laugh.
• My Real Daddy: The series, technically created by committee, has had many producers and head writers, but these are a few of the most commonly-cited examples:
  • Verity Lambert, the show's very first producer. For starters, she is the one who ensured that some aliens called the Daleks made it to air. In fact, the story "Human Nature", which sees the Doctor become a human with no memories of his Time Lord self, claims that his parents were named "Sydney and Verity".
  • TV theme composer Ron Grainer wrote the score for the Doctor Who theme, but it was Electronic Music pioneer Delia Derbyshire's production that made it stand out, so the piece is usually credited in modern times to her. Even Grainer regarded the theme as Derbyshire's, famously asking her 'did I write that?' after hearing her rendition (she responded, 'most of it'). Due to Derbyshire's contractual status within the BBC at the time, she was denied a credit and made no money other than her usual employee wage from the piece.
  • David Whitaker, the show's first script editor, managed to establish multiple things that became part of the series' DNA forever after - the first TARDIS team (the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan), the first companion-switchover ("The Rescue"), the first post-regeneration story ("The Power of the Daleks"), and the first novelisation (Dr. Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks). He also established several important canon points like the TARDIS being a Magic from Technology Eldritch Abomination Sapient Ship, the Doctor being 'cut off from [his] own planet' with his exact backstory a Riddle for the Ages, and incorporated mystical and psychedelic themes into the early show that would go on to influence later writers.
  • The Daleks are Doctor Who's most popular and enduring monster, and their invention is credited to Terry Nation - but many fans doubt it was his writing that was actually responsible for making the Daleks a hit. Fans inclined to credit the design for their success are likely to credit them to prop designer Raymond Cusick (who, like Derbyshire, was only paid his usual wage for the work). Other fans celebrate David Whitaker, script editor of the first couple of seasons of Doctor Who and Nation's uncredited cowriter, who also wrote the highly regarded Adaptation Expansion novelisation of the serial "The Daleks", ghostwrote much of the "Dalekmania" spinoff material and wrote several fan-favourite Darker and Edgier Dalek serials ("Power of the Daleks", "The Evil of the Daleks" and the second half of "The Daleks' Master Plan"). In Whitaker scripts Daleks tend to be a formidable race, while in Nation scripts they're The Grotesque and rather pathetic. Nation, for his part, disliked Whitaker's take on the Daleks and worked hard to end Whitaker's influence on the aliens in the 70s by such measures as having Whitaker creations Exiled from Continuity. However, that didn't stop Russell T Davies' take from being clearly influenced by the Whitaker Dalek material more than the Nation stuff.
  • Even though William Hartnell was the first actor to interpret the character of the Doctor, many people feel the definitive 'first' Doctor performance was Patrick Troughton, who introduced many of the performance and character elements that would influence later Doctor performances - being funnier and warmer, being younger and more active, having a catchphrase, getting Character Focus rather than being part of an ensemble cast, Comical Overreacting, being more of an Ideal Hero rather than The Trickster, and so on. He was also the first actor who was playing the Doctor as an unambiguous alien rather than as an Ambiguously Human 'future' person, and the first to play an incarnation of the Doctor rather than just 'the Doctor', an element of the character crucial to how he is perceived.
  • Even though he was the fourth television Doctor, Tom Baker's performance was massively defining and influential, and it's easy to argue that every Doctor since has been in some way a reaction to him. He lasted almost seven years in the role, the longest tenure of any Doctor, and was the first Doctor consistently portrayed as being mad rather than just eccentric and the first to bring in elements of being a destructive force of cosmic justice, with a specific blend of darkness, whimsy and odd character quirks that became the 'default' take on character ever after. Due to his tendency to tinker with his scripts, add lines and occasionally entire unscripted scenes, and take charge of direction, he ended up being a heavy creative influence on the way the show was written and shot, with the result that much of the show's sense of humour is what he imprinted onto it. He was not the first Doctor whose performance was heavily based on his own personality, but he was the one whose performance was most based on his own personality, and due to the influence of his era many of Baker's real-life personality quirks run through the psychology of the character to this day.
  • Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts acted as the script editor and producer for the Jon Pertwee era of the show. Dicks is one of the franchise's most prolific writers, penning oodles of novelizations in addition to his TV work, which notably includes 20th anniversary special "The Five Doctors" and Patrick Troughton's swansong, "The War Games". Their era featured UNIT at its most prominent, and introduced such iconic elements of the show as the Master, the Sontarans, the Autons, and fan-favourite companion Sarah Jane Smith. Barry Letts is the only producer to return to the show in a similar capacity, when he acted as the executive producer for newcomer John Nathan-Turner's first year, and had also worked as a writer and director for a number of stories. Letts' influence bled past his run on the show and had a strong impact on the first year of...
  • Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe, who were respectively the script editor and producer between 1974 and 1977. The era when they were in charge is considered by many to be a Golden Age for the series due to a genuinely frightening "gothic horror" atmosphere, a fan-favourite Doctor (Tom Baker) and popular companions (Sarah, Harry, and Leela), as well as a seemingly endless streak of classic and beloved stories (including, but by no means limited to, "The Ark in Space", "Genesis of the Daleks", "Pyramids of Mars" and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". Holmes has written more individual TV episodes than any other writer, and in 2009 his story "The Caves of Androzani" was voted by the readers of Doctor Who Magazine as the all-time greatest Doctor Who story.
  • Andrew Cartmel, script-editor during Sylvester McCoy era, is widely hailed by fans as improving the show's quality in its last two seasons by making the Doctor a mysterious character again, introducing one of the most popular companions in Ace (thus creating one of the most iconic TARDIS teams), having darker and more mature storytelling inspired by the resurgence in comic books of The '80s and having an anarchic, overtly political edge. His approach stayed with the show long after it went off the air, with the Doctor Who New Adventures being the face of the franchise for most of The '90s and arguably inspiring the revived series approach.
  • Russell T Davies and/or Steven Moffat for those who started with the 2005 revival. RTD brought back the show for a whole new generation and is known for his sense of fun, adventure, and emotion, while those who prefer Moffat appreciate his more complex storylines that place greater emphasis on time travel and the Doctor himself. Up until his departure in Series 10, he was the only person to have written for every season of the revival.
  • For a generation of younger Who fans, David Tennant is largely synonymous with the Doctor; even those who have gone back and watched the earlier episodes are still prone to think of Tennant as "their" Doctor. A smaller contingent feels similarly about Matt Smith, but Eccelston's tenure was too brief, Capaldi's too alienating, and Whittaker's too controversial to gain the same degree of reverence.
• Narm Charm:
  • Often, the series manages to be cheesy while still being on-the-edge-of-your-seat-tense. Any non-humanoid Auton in particular.
  • In the Master's first-ever appearance in "Terror of the Autons", he fed a man to a chair and tried to take over the world with plastic daffodils. It's widely regarded as Roger Delgado's best performance in the role, and one of the best stories from Jon Pertwee's era.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Romana wasting several regenerations just so the Doctor would like her new look. It wasn't intended that way, but the story's writer didn't quite grasp how the process worked.
  • Adric being persuaded to approve of Monarch's evil plan in "Four to Doomsday" in about three minutes of conversation, which led to massive Flanderisation of him as "always siding with the villain".
  • The Sixth Doctor trying to strangle Peri, which they themselves don't get over until "The Mysterious Planet".
• Nightmare Retardant: The cheaper costumes of the classic era. Sometimes pops up every now and then afterwards, though more with the CGI than the prosthetics costumes.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The willingness of the Series 11 writers to reference contemporary social issues is a strong point of contention amongst fans. However, as this article points out, the show has a long history of social commentary which was, if anything, more overt in the past than it is now.
  • Chibnall has been blamed for destroying the Canon with the Timeless Child plot twist (in which it was revealed that the Doctor, far from being an ordinary inhabitant of Galifrey, was actually a mysterious child of unknown origin whom the Time Lords stole the power of regeneration from). However, this isn't the first time the show has alluded to the Doctor having had incarnations before the First Doctor or having an origin that differs from the one commonly given. "The Brain of Morbius" alluded to the Doctor having previous regenerations before Hartnell and the Seventh Doctor was also hinting at a mysterious origin and not being an ordinary Time Lord. So essentially Chibnall was simply just building on some ideas already introduced.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Tom Baker and Lalla Ward's punting scene in Sha- err, "The Five Doctors".
    • From the same episode, The Raston Warrior Robot slaughters a group of Cybermen and simply leaps into thin air, never to be seen again in the episode.
  • The disassembled, lone Cyberman's fight against the Doctor and Amy in "The Pandorica Opens".
  • A number of the Doctor's allies in "A Good Man Goes to War", including the Judoon, the Space Spitfires, and the pirate captain and his son.
  • Derek Jacobi has less than ten minutes' screen time as the Master, and only one kill to his credit, both by far the least of any incarnation of him. And yet, he is still so popular that Big Finish brought him back for a run of prequels!
  • Peter Capaldi's three-second appearance as the Twelfth Doctor in "Day of the Doctor".
• One True Pairing: Virtually every companion-Doctor partnership has, at one time or another, been considered an OTP by some aspect of fandom, regardless of whether any on-screen romance is depicted. Tends to intersect with Ship-to-Ship Combat, especially with regards to certain pairings such as the Doctor and River Song (who actually marry) and the Doctor and Clara (whose relationship threatens to destroy time itself at the end of Series 9).
  • However, in 2011, the series itself canonically established that the show's true OTP has nothing to do with humanoids. In "The Doctor's Wife," Amy Pond pegs it when she identifies the Doctor and the TARDIS (who, in the episode, is confirmed as sentient) as the true companions:
    Amy: It's always you and her, isn't it, long after the rest of us have gone. A boy and his box, off to see the universe.
• One True Threesome:
  • Doctor (usually 9)/Rose/Jack Harkness. This came as close to canon as possible for a family show: Jack and Rose are both in love with the Doctor, Jack and Rose also fancy each other, and the Doctor loves Rose (but Cannot Spit It Out and never states whether it's romantic love or something else) and merrily flirts with Jack. Their dynamic culminates in Jack romantically kissing the Doctor and Rose in the same scene, in front of each other, and neither of them make a fuss — the Doctor kisses Rose soon after. However, their lives get very complicated right after that and, apart from a brief battle against a Dalek army years later, they never actually get a chance to spend more time together.
  • Doctor/Master/Rani got some Foe Romance Subtext in "Mark of the Rani", though they don't get much support in comparison to the ever-popular Doctor/Master.
  • Two/Jamie/Zoe, as seen here◊; three characters, one hairdo. There's an RL platonic element to this one. The three actors were quite close and, according to Frazer Hines, even made some of the other actors jealous on the set of "The Five Doctors". Hines also stated that none of the constant hugging was scripted — it just came natural.
  • Eleven/Amy/Rory is a bit of a variation. Rory is completely Amy-sexual, Amy is in love with Rory but obsessed with the Doctor and wants to fit them both into her love life somehow, and the Doctor consciously represses his attraction to Amy (cf. "Amy's Choice"), but quickly grows to really like Rory with heaps and heaps of Ho Yay. Fandom seems to have embraced it big time. Their idea of a honeymoon is to run off with the Doctor in the TARDIS, And they look gorgeous◊. Though after Amy and Rory were revealed to be the Doctor's mother- and father-in-law, this ship was largely abandoned... until Eleven (being Eleven) decided that this was in no way a reason to stop randomly snogging Rory.
  • Five/Tegan/Turlough and Five/Tegan/Nyssa.
  • Ten/Rose/Handy (Handy here being the fan nickname for 10.5, the duplicate Doctor that grew from the Doctor's severed hand. Long story. Really long story.). Some people don't think it's quite fair that Rose should have to choose one of them and leave the other pining for her until the end of his days. Or something equally dramatic.
  • From the UNIT years, Three/Jo/Master is tremendously popular, especially now that it's canonical that the Master was flirting with the Doctor all along. There are quite a few official prose stories about the era in which Jo seems to ship it.
  • It's pretty much a grab bag with Torchwood, as Everyone Is Bi and the gang all have really screwed-up love lives.

TV Series Tropes - P to T

• Padding: Often suffered by the classic series, especially in the earlier years when stories would sometimes run for six or seven (and in one notable instance twelve) episodes, but also with the more standard four-parters; the stereotypical third part episode would involve the regulars, having been captured or imprisoned at the end of the previous episode, breaking free and spending a lot of time running up and down corridors before being recaptured at the end. In some of the worst cases from the Jon Pertwee era, entire episodes are given over to a 25 minute chase sequence which doesn't advance the plot at all.
  • The chase-scene padding in the Jon Pertwee era can often be put down to Wag the Director — Pertwee loved driving motor vehicles around very fast (in fact, the "Whomobile" seen in a couple of episodes was not the BBC's property, but his own personal car). The episode-long chase scene in "Planet of the Spiders" has been explicitly mentioned to have been a farewell present from the writers to him.
  • The one-shot special to announce the actor who would be playing the Eleventh Doctor was basically five minutes of padding and fifty-five minutes of mindless filler. The one made for the Twelfth Doctor's casting was almost as bad, albeit was at least shorter at just thirty minutes in all. Fortunately, the BBC seemingly got the message by the time Jodie Whittaker took on the role, with her casting simply being announced in a thirty-second TV spot in the middle of the 2017 Wimbledon coverage, without a single word of dialogue in the spot.
  • Particularly painful padding in the classic series is the long shots of characters turning knobs and levers ever so slowly, or lingering on them making tea (or doing something equally mundane) just a bit longer than necessary.
  • In "City of Death", there's a whole lot of shots of the Doctor and Romana just merrily running around Paris; excused partly by the BBC wanting to get their money's worth out of the location shooting (literally all they could afford was a silent shoot with Tom Baker, Lalla Ward and no other actors, and they may... um, not have asked permission to film from anyone), and partly for Scenery Porn.
  • "Inferno" has been described as a four-part story with episode three removed and replaced with another four-part story. Fortunately, both stories are generally considered classics.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The Autons. Basically anything made of plastic could come to life.
  • "The Waters of Mars". Don't drink the water. Don't even touch it. Not One Drop. Being turned into a monster if you touch something that your body physically needs is terrifying.
  • How about: "Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead! They are fast. Faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink! Good Luck."
  • Steven Moffat seems to be determined to give the entire planet a phobia of everything. So far he's covered ticking, statues, shadows and now cracks on the wall and... whatever the Smilers are.
    • And now anything that captures the image of a Weeping Angel becomes an angel. You have one on your television screen? It might just come out and get you, so don't look away. And if you stare at it too long, you might get one in your head. "Don't blink, don't look at it."
    • Makes people scared to death of their Gran's angel collection, too.
    • He's now extended that to Wifi, finding something that is completely undetectable to human senses and is virtually omnipresent.
    • In "Deep Breath", he managed to make you scared of breathing.
    • "Listen". Scared. Of. Literally NOTHING. This one should be fairly hard to top.
    • But "Last Christmas" may have managed it. Because you can never, ever, EVER be sure that one of those Dream Crabs isn't already slurping on your brain...
  • Gangers. Human clones with the same memories. So how are you going to tell the original and the copy apart? Well, you can't, unless the Ganger is incomplete and has that smooth, transparent face. Just hope you won't be seeing it in the mirror. And then there's the twist of "The Almost People": who's to say that you aren't unknowingly piloting a ganger right now, separated from all your friends and family who don't even know you're missing?
  • "A Christmas Carol". So you're just minding your own business, ruling a planet as the Scrooge you are. Then a guy comes into your house, shows you footage of your childhood, then appears in said footage and changes it, rewriting your memories in the meantime. At the same time, a guy appears when you're 8 and starts saying stuff like "I'm better than your nanny" at an age you can probably see the Double Entendre, even if the time-travelling alien doesn't. Then the guy almost kills you in your past several times, while you see the live feed in your present. And there's nothing you can do about it.
  • The Silence are made of this. They're everywhere on Earth, they could be in this very room, and forget about them every time you look away from them, and they can plan suggestions in your head forcing you to do something without you ever knowing why. If you know they exist, you'll still forget them after seeing them. Also, they look like Slender Man.
  • Moffat did it again with the Daleks of all things. In "Asylum of the Daleks" we are introduced to the Dalek Puppets; people that have been partially transformed into Daleks using nanotechnology. You can't tell they are Daleks until their eyestalk pokes through their forehead. And the kicker? The Dalek-ified people don't even realize that anything's wrong until they remember that they died. You or anyone else can be a Dalek and you'd never know it.
• Periphery Demographic: Doctor Who is famously popular with the autistic community, thanks to how relatable the Doctor is to them as an eccentric outsider with a strong sense of justice who doesn't completely gel with humanity's way of thinking but still bonds with them anyway. The fact that the Doctor is an alien is further used as a sign of connection given that a common metaphor for being autistic is being an alien from another planet. Dr. Tony Attwood, one of the first major voices in autistic advocacy^note though he himself is allistic and would grow more controversial in later years for his depictions of autism, once described using Doctor Who as a way to help autistic children navigate the world around them.
• Play-Along Meme:
  • Series 6 (2011) introduced the Silence, a religious order of creepy humanoids. Once anyone looks away from a Silent, they forget about them. However, these aliens use post-hypnotic suggestions. Many commenters act like they've never seen the Silence but remember what they said; it went as far as videos of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a major plot point in the episode "Day of the Moon".
  • In "Wild Blue Yonder", the Doctor and Donna accidentally interrupt Isaac Newton just as he figures out gravity, causing Newton to give the fundamental interaction of gravity the name "mavity" instead. From that point onwards in the show, all characters refer to the fundamental interaction of gravity as "mavity", including the Fifteenth Doctor. A lot of fans have taken this and run with it, including attributing the First Doctor mentioning "gravity" to one of William Hartnell's infamous line flubs, and various other incarnations of the character mentioning "gravity" being taken to be "bloopers that were left in by mistake", and so on.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Most of the video games based on the show have been incredibly poor. Until Doctor Who Legacy came along, probably the best were the Adventure Games released in 2010—2011, and even they suffered from uneven design and graphics that were barely PlayStation 2 standard, though at least they were free to people in the UK.
• Protection from Editors: Russell T Davies revealed in The Writer's Tale that he often rewrote writer's scripts, with the exceptions of Steven Moffat, Chris Chibnall, Matthew Graham and Stephen Greenhorn. When Moffat became showrunner, he had the opposite approach to his writers, largely giving them free rein.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • The Sixth Doctor was received in a very divisive way by the fandom during his two seasons on the TV series, to say the least. This was caused by his dubious character and more explosive personality, on several occasions behaving like an jerk with his companion Peri and the people he was supposed to help. Years later, the character was much better received by the fandom thanks to his stories at Big Finish, with the general consensus being that he is much better written in the audios stories.
  • The Seventh Doctor started his tenure as an annoying, over-the-top pratfalling clown with a tendency towards irritating mixed metaphors, who irritated many of the viewers. After his first season didn't go down that well, the production team decided to sober him up, taking away his more annoying quirks and adding a more mysterious, brooding depth to him. This met with widespread fan approval; however, it was arguably too late to save the series, which was cancelled after his third season. This Character Development continued in the Doctor Who New Adventures novels, which greatly increased the character's more sober, introspective Anti-Hero nature to widespread approval (although it's also often argued that, at worst, the novels had a tendency to take it too far with the Darker and Edgier stuff, and sometimes wobbled into making the character an unlikeable Knight Templar bastard). His Big Finish Doctor Who episodes largely take place between TV show episodes, and somehow, the writers took his first appearances as a bumbling goof and used that characterisation in two of the most well-loved audio episodes ever: "Bang-Bang-A-Boom!" and "Unregenerate!".
  • When Donna Noble made her first appearance in "The Runaway Bride", many fans were put off by the shrill, abrasive nature of the character (Given that she was played by comedian Catherine Tate, at least the British fans knew what to expect). The announcement that she would be a regular member of the cast during the 2008 season was met with mixed reaction at best. A few episodes into the season, however, she had undergone deliberate Character Development, and about half of the fandom had warmed up to her and even praised the "shrill, abrasive nature" that earned Donna so much hate in her debut. As of the end of Series 4, certain fans even considered her if not the Best Companion Ever, then at least the best modern companion.
    • It was partly helped by circumstances. When Donna first appeared, that "shrill, abrasive nature" was levelled against the Doctor himself (including slapping him.) This isn't a smart thing to do around Whovians. By the time the show came around, that nature was being pointed toward the actual enemies of the series, so she probably started getting liked more when she started hating the right people.
    • One of the more interesting things about this example was that the other characters acknowledged that this had happened and in the end her fate worse than death was to be returned to her Scrappy-state. Some of the fans that once disliked her were instead upset that such an anti-climactic fate had befallen her.
    • In many ways this also extended to Catherine Tate herself, since before her return to Who she was something of a victim of typecasting in roles which had a limited appeal. Donna started out as such a character, then changed incredibly.
    • Tate also picked up the Doctor Who Magazine's Greatest Contribution Award for 2008 for her performance. With twice as many votes as her nearest competitor, Russell T Davies, who had definitively proven Doctor Who was back and popular by leading it to its first #1 at the top of the weekly viewing figures in its history. If that's not proof how well the character turned around, what on Earth is?
  • Although Jenna Coleman's performance was praised by most people, a fandom drained with Arc Fatigue for Steven Moffat's Living MacGuffin female characters found "Impossible Girl" Clara Oswald to be a "generic companion" Flat Character, dressed in a melodramatic mystery arc we'd already seen several times before in this era. Due to the nature of the arc she was introduced in (her first two appearances were as different characters who died helping the Doctor — but implied to all be the same woman) as well as the main Smith-era arc still not having been resolved and the 50th anniversary special Wham Episode being set up, she was stuck doing nothing or having her character reset to zero for most of Series 7B, and conflicting production instructions meant different writers interpreted her in very different ways. The nature of her relationship with the Doctor (who didn't trust her, but was obsessed with her anyway) also meant he ended up acting like a creepy old man — but with this presented as a romantic ideal, and her actions in the Season Finale and the follow-up specials easily made her one of the most powerful companions ever. However, Series 8 completely overhauled her character, giving her a different job, a genuinely dramatic Part-Time Hero plotline and a complicated, Hubristic relationship with time travel, making her much more flawed, unique and interesting. The elements of her relationship with the Doctor that came across as unintentionally creepy were brought to the forefront and handled more deftly, without sacrificing the heartwarming qualities of their friendship. The recasting of the Doctor with a much older man moved their relationship away from the standard 'two young hot people in love' idea towards a more complex portrayal of the potentially devastating consequences of the traditional Doctor-Companion Undying Loyalty. This continued into the well-received Series 9, in which she became his Distaff Counterpart for better and for worse; although her ultimate fate ( she was Killed Off For Real, but due to the Doctor's mad attempt to rescue her she can have infinite adventures in the last moment of her life, complete with her own TARDIS and companion) caused a Broken Base, it was a loooooong way from where she started as a character in more ways than one.
  • Nardole (Matt Lucas) was just a cowardly comic relief one-off character in the post-Series 9 Christmas Episode "The Husbands of River Song". No one in the fanbase expected, much less wanted, him to become a secondary companion in Series 10 (with Bill Potts the principal) and reactions were split between "Ugh, not him again!" and "Huh, wonder how they'll manage it?" given his fate in that special — and given that there were several one-off characters introduced in previous Twelfth Doctor episodes that fans would have loved to see again (Shona from "Last Christmas" being particularly popular). However, his return as a cyborg Morality Chain with a Mysterious Past, timid and oft-maligned by the Doctor yet able to hold his own in snarking and capable of great intelligence, loyalty, and backbone as needed, made him a funny and endearing companion who also enhanced the Doctor and Bill's dynamic, making for one of the best-received TARDIS teams of the revival.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Barry Letts would later admit that Richard Franklin was miscast as Captain Mike Yates, as he felt that he was too young-looking and soft to play a military officer.
  • John Nathan-Turner's era as producer in general has been strongly criticised by many fans for Stunt Casting without much consideration as to whether the celebrity guest was actually suited to the role, one notable example being Beryl Reid as Captain Briggs in "Earthshock", due to Nathan Turner's love for light entertainment.
  • Nicholas Parsons' casting as Reverend Wainwright in "The Curse of Fenric" might appear to be an example of this at first glance, given that he was best known for being a quiz show host at the time of the story's airing. In reality Parsons was actually a pretty experienced actor, although he hadn't done any TV acting work for over a decade when the story was made. (The director wasn't aware of this prior to recording of the story, but when he noticed Parsons could actually act a number of scenes were hastily rewritten to give his character more development.)
  • Eric Roberts as the Master in the TV movie.
  • While the Russell T Davies era was praised for its intelligent casting of celebrity guests in roles that were suited to them, with celebrities who weren't really actors reserved for walk-on roles or cameos as themselves, some felt that not all their celebrity cameos exactly made sense, such as biologist Richard Dawkins being interviewed about the astronomical location of earth. As with many Doctor Who issues, others thought the casting brilliant, given that Dawkins' impassioned emphasis on factual evidence in the episode was identical to his impassioned statements against the position of Young Earth Creationists in the (real life) popular media. Of course this reaction could be partially down to Dawkins being a controversial figure even among atheists, which has increased since this episode aired.
  • The reaction of some fans to the casting of Matt Smith ("Too young!"), Peter Capaldi ("Too old!"), Jodie Whittaker ("A woman!").
  • Some fans aren't sold on David Tennant returning as a new incarnation of the Doctor, feeling it steals the thunder from Ncuti Gatwa's casting and sets a bad precedent where previous actors can play new incarnations at the expense of lesser-known fresh faces, that this is a step back for a franchise that has always embraced change, and that it gives Tennant special treatment for getting to play two incarnations of the Doctor while most actors have only gotten to play one; and, as always, dislike how it screws with the numbering. Of additional concern is the perception that he and Russell T Davies are returning due to Chris Chibnall alienating some longtime fans with some of his decisions as showrunner, and that this does not bode well for the franchise's health.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • In "The Sun Makers", Goudry is played by Michael Keating, better known for his later role as Vila Restal of Blake's 7.
    • On that note, Paul Darrow (Avon) is Captain Hawkins in "Doctor Who and the Silurians".
    • And in THAT story, Dr. Quinn is played by Fulton Mackay.
  • The policeman pursuing the kidnappers in "The Twin Dilemma" is Mr. Gibbs.
  • Lisa Bowerman and Adele Silva appear in "Survival".
  • Maxil is the Sixth Doctor
  • Five years before becoming the first actor to play Davros, Michael Wisher has a fairly minor role as a broadcaster in "The Ambassadors of Death". He also appeared in "Terror of the Autons" and "Carnival of Monsters" and voiced the Daleks in "Death to the Daleks".
  • Lon from "Snakedance" is Gary from Men Behaving Badly and Doc Martin.
  • The Celestial Toymaker is Alfred Pennyworth.
  • John in "Remembrance of the Daleks" is Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
  • Series 3 and 4 co-star Freema Agyeman shows up in the Series 2 episode "Army of Ghosts" Martha's strangely-identical cousin.
  • Merlin (2008) later cast quite a few Doctor Who alums:
    • Jeff from "The Eleventh Hour" is Sir Percival.
    • Jethro from "Midnight" is Merlin himself.
    • Reinette's friend Katherine from "The Girl in the Fireplace" is Gwen.
  • Frank from "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks"? Spider-Man.
  • King Richard the Lionheart from "The Crusade" and Count Scarlotti from "City of Death" would become General Veers and Walter Donovan, the last bringing the Retroactive Recognition inadvertently full circle.
  • Hal from "The Time Warrior" is Boba Fett.
  • Tom Milligan from "Last of the Time Lords" is Lucifer.
  • Anahson from "Face the Raven" is Princess Shuri.
  • Astos the nurse from "The Tsuranga Condundrum" is Roy Kent.
  • Clara the Clown, the Queen of Hearts, and Mrs. Wiggs from "The Celestial Toymaker" and Ruth from "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" are played by Carmen Silvera, who would later be best known for playing Edith Artois in 'Allo 'Allo!.
  • Lieutenant Commander Tony Mitchell from "The Sea Devils" is played by David Griffin, who would later be best known for playing Clive Dempster in Hi-de-Hi! and Emmet Hawksworth in Keeping Up Appearances.
  • Sir George Hardiman from "The Claws of Axos" is played by Donald Hewlett, who would later be best known for playing Colonel Reynolds in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum and Lord Meldrum in You Rang, M'Lord?.
  • Popplewell from "The Ultimate Foe" is played by Geoffrey Hughes, who would later be best known for playing Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances and Twiggy in The Royle Family.
  • Technician Penn from "The Space Pirates" is played by George Layton, who would later be best known for playing Paul Collier in Doctor in the House and Bombardier Solomons in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.
  • Marat from "Planet of the Daleks" and a Thal soldier from "[1]" are played by Hilary Minster, who would later be best known for playing General von Klinkerhoffen in 'Allo 'Allo!.
  • Scorby from "The Seeds of Doom" is played by John Challis, who would later be best known for playing Boycie in Only Fools and Horses and The Green Green Grass.
  • Maddy from "Paradise Towers" is played by Judy Cornwell, who would later be best known for playing Daisy in Keeping Up Appearances.
  • Hedges from "The Invisible Enemy" is played by Kenneth Waller, who would later be best known for playing Old Mr. Grace in Are You Being Served? and Grandad in Bread.
  • Vorg from "Carnivals of Monsters" is played by Leslie Dwyer, who would later be best known for playing Mr. Partridge in Hi-de-Hi!.
  • Wells from "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" is played by Nicholas Smith, who would later be best known for playing Mr. Rumbold in Are You Being Served?.
  • Harper from "The War Games" is played by Rudolph Walker, who would later be best known for playing Bill Reynolds in Love Thy Neighbour and Constable Gladstone in The Thin Blue Line.
  • Fred Mullins from "Spearhead from Space" and Dave from "The Green Death" are played by Talfryn Thomas, who would later be best known for playing Private Cheeseman in Dad's Army.
  • Toby from "The Evil of the Daleks" is played by Windsor Davies, who would later be best known for playing Sergeant Major Williams in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.
  • Lorna Bucket is played by Christina Chong, over a decade before her role as La'an Noonien-Singh.
• Robo Ship: Doctor and TARDIS. Hinted at at various occasions, especially during the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh Doctor's tenure. Now, official, in-universe canon.
• Ron the Death Eater: Dan Lewis as “Evil Dan” is among the very rare intentional uses of this trope. In the series proper, he’s a Nice Guy, a Friend to All Children, and unambiguously on the side of good. After a YouTube Poop video edited Dan’s lines into making him The Sociopath (“What’s the point of being alive if not to make others die?”), a Blatant Burglar (“Nobody needs soup more than me!”), and having an Evil Laugh (“Hah-ho!”), fans found it hilarious and now run with this villainous interpretation of him, which was nowhere to be found in the actual series, for Rule of Funny reasons.
• Rooting for the Empire: Let's face it, there are people out there who aren't Doctor Who fans per-se, but really Dalek fans. During the 60s when Doctor Who first started and the Daleks first appeared, the case of people rooting for the Dalek Empire was so great, it led to the Daleks becoming the first recurring enemy of the show, and subsequently a wave of pop culture surrounding them called 'Dalekmania', marked by an excess of Dalek merchandise, comic books focused on them, and film versions of their first two TV serials. They even got comic strips before the Doctor before their second appearance.
• Rule of Sean Connery: No matter how bad a particular storyline might be, or even an entire production era, odds are someone will point out that the best part about the episode/era is the actor playing the Doctor and often (but not always) the companion(s) as well.
• Salvaged Story:
  • There's a contingent of fans who felt that Donna Noble deserved better than her fate in "Journey's End": doomed to forget the Doctor with her potentially dying if she ever remembers him, which led to the Tenth Doctor's sendoff episode consisting of him partnering up with Wilfred Mott instead of Donna herself. As the Fourteenth Doctor, not only do he and Donna get a genuinely emotional reunion and a few final adventures together, Donna is able to remember her time with the Doctor because the metacrisis event that would have killed her was split between herself and her daugther, Rose.
  • "Wild Blue Yonder" is seen by some fans as a step in the right direction for the way it addresses the Doctor's trauma from the Flux and finding out they're the Timeless Child; the latter was seen as a major misstep by Chibnall by several fans, but Tennant's performance sells how overwhelmed the Doctor is, and how he doesn't really have anyone who he can relate to anymore.
• The Scrappy:
  • Dodo Chaplet from Season 3 has a pretty poor standing among the fandom. She was written to be a fashionable young Londoner - which might have worked, had the showrunner at the time, John Wiles, not had a rather negative view of young people of the time. As a result, her only real personality trait was being maddeningly dumb. Her character lasted only six stories before getting unceremoniously dropped from the show in a throwaway line. It's a mark of how little the fandom cared for her that a popular rumour was that she died of syphilis.
  • Adric was a failed attempt at the producers creating an audience surrogate for the prime fan base. Instead, he came off as a snotty, pompous, whining, arrogant and almost entirely unbearable maths geek. And despite being incredibly arrogant about his intelligence, he has a tendency to either screw up the Doctor's plans or, as in one notable case, gets suckered into helping the bad guy's Evil Scheme, despite it being very transparently evil, thus making his reported intelligence something of an Informed Ability.
  • Peri is hated by many fans for being considered a generic companion and quite sexualized by the production. Her dynamics with the Sixth Doctor was also criticized, for seeming uncomfortable at various times with an abusive relationship, with many fans questioning why she was still travelling with him.
  • The Sixth Doctor (at least his television incarnation) was found to be obnoxious, abrasive, and an empty attempt by the producers to make the show Darker and Edgier. Although Expanded Universe media have largely contributed to this character being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Mel is considered to be one of the most generic companions in the entire series, with her only striking feature being the fact that she screams quite loudly. That's it. It also didn't help that Colin Baker's firing made it impossible to give her a proper origin story which could have helped a lot in making her more interesting. When she returned in "The Giggle" she was portrayed as more mature and capable with a quirky sense of humor, highlighted her computer skills (which her original run largely ignored), and she didn't scream. Many fans commented that the episode made them view her in a much better light.
  • The New Paradigm Daleks. Audiences mockingly dubbed them the "Rainbow Daleks" or "iDaleks" due to their bright colour casings, and so they were quietly written out and the old Bronze coloured Daleks were brought out of retirement.
  • The Van Baalen siblings from Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS incur the wrath of fans primarily due to their morally reprehensible behavior, notably their manipulation of Tricky. Gregor's insistence on salvaging the TARDIS's parts, coupled with his deception of Tricky into believing he's an android, showcases a callous disregard for his brother's well-being and potential character development. This manipulation not only robs Tricky of his identity and agency but also prevents any chance of redemption for his siblings. Despite hints of growth and redemption throughout the episode, particularly in Gregor's brief moments of decency, the reset button employed at the end of the episode undoes any potential consequences or lessons learned from their actions. This reset undermines the narrative impact of the episode and negates the possibility of genuine growth and redemption for the siblings other than a small Pet the Dog moment. The fact that they remain oblivious to their past actions perpetuates the cycle of manipulation and stagnation within their relationship, frustrating viewers who expect more depth and nuance from the characters. Overall, the Van Baalen siblings' actions, coupled with the narrative reset, hinder any possibility of empathy or sympathy from viewers, cementing their status as disliked characters within the fandom.
  • Danny Pink. He is viewed as a pointless Satellite Love Interest with a forced rivalry with the Doctor and Die for Our Ship also comes into play for those who want to see Clara with the Doctor. His character in-and-off itself was pretty barebones, and can be summed as "he was a soldier once, and it made him kind of sad." What little personality he does have paints him as moody and insecure. His relationship with Clara also suffered from getting Strangled by the Red String and poor writing not helped by the actor who had a lot of Dull Surprise moments. Quite a few people were delighted when he was killed off in "Dark Water".
• Seasonal Rot: Being a Long Runner with a huge fanbase, the series seems to be called on this one with every season, with symptoms ranging from cast changes to shifts in direction to questionmark lapels appearing.
  • While not a severe case of this trope, the last full seasons for both the First and Second Doctors (Seasons 3 and 6 respectively) are felt to be a slight step down after two very solid seasons each. While both Seasons contain great stories, they also contain some of their weakest stories of their tenure in both seasons.
  • The Third Doctor's last season (Season 11) is often considered his weakest. It did introduce one of the best loved companions Sarah Jane Smith, in the well-received first story, "The Time Warrior", but "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" is a good story with awful special effects (even for the standards of the show), "Death to the Daleks" and "The Monster of Peladon" seem to contain a lot of Recycled Plot and "Planet of the Spiders" feels quite padded. It didn't help that the Master's actor had suddenly died, scrapping the original plans for an emotional sendoff to the Master and the Doctor.
  • While there's no general consensus about the Fourth Doctor era after the exit of producer Philip Hinchcliffe, many fans found Season 17 (the last season produced by Graham Williams and with Douglas Adams as scrip editor) to be lacklustre. Yes, "City of Death" is almost universally considered to be one of the best stories of all time, but it doesn't make up for the despised "Destiny of the Daleks", the innuendo-laden "The Creature from the Pit", the Anvilicious "Nightmare of Eden", the ridiculous "The Horns of Nimon", or the fact that the entire season was cut short by a poorly-timed crew workers strike.
  • The Fifth Doctor's middle season (Season 20) is generally considered the weakest of his three. "Enlightenment" is unanimously considered the best story, while "The Five Doctors" is fun as a tribute to the series' 20th anniversary. Meanwhile, "Snakedance" and "Mawdryn Undead" are considered good, but not great. The big problem is "Arc of Infinity", "Terminus" and "The King's Demons", which are considered three of the worst stories of the Fifth Doctor's era.
  • One thing nearly everyone seems to agree on is that seasons 22 through 24 (1985-7), better known as the two seasons of the Sixth Doctor and the first season of the Seventh Doctor, were the nadir of the classic series, although different fans pick different ones of those seasons as the worst.
    • Season 22 saw Eric Saward going overboard with the Darker and Edgier, with the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) acting like an arsehole most of the time (including to his own companion), grim plots with lots of Black-and-Gray Morality and murder, and enough Family-Unfriendly Violence to, for the only time ever, cause the fans themselves to start getting uncomfortable. Saward was also purported to dislike Baker's performance of the Doctor and reduced his role accordingly. "Vengeance on Varos" and "Revelation of the Daleks" are considered the only really good stories of this season.
    • Season 23 had the unpopular "Trial of a Time Lord" extended arc, some very lacklustre writing, and an ending that revealed the behind-the-scenes chaos the show had descended into by being almost incomprehensible, unintentionally. Both this and the previous season are also notable for bothersome amounts of Continuity Lock-Out and Continuity Porn.
    • Season 24 suffers from a Lighter and Softer shift that many fans considered to go too far into glitzy Camp, Sylvester McCoy playing the Doctor as an actual Ditz instead of his later, more popular performance as a world-weary Manipulative Bastard who occasionally engaged in Obfuscating Stupidity, and Keff McCulloch and his disco-aerobics brand of incidental music.
    • All three seasons also suffered from having two of the most widely unpopular companions in the show's history: Peri who was one of the few pre-1989 companions to genuinely be as hapless and frequently-demeaned as post-2005-only fans and lazy media commentators claim all of them were; and Mel who was just annoying and played by an actress who had an irritating public image and a lot of baggage from earlier roles.
  • One point that many fans and casual viewers of the revival era of Doctor Who can agree on are that Series 1, Series 4, Series 5, Series 9 and Series 10 are solid series overall with few points of contention. However, the rest of the series are subject to personal opinion as to which series of the revival era is the weakest.
    • Series 2 of the new series (season 28 overall) is considered the least of the first four, due in part to an over-reliance on the Doctor/Rose ship and the show in general becoming a little too goofy, even for Who. A lot of people also found 10 and Rose's smug, self-involved behaviour unbearable. It also produced three of the least liked Doctor Who stories, "The Idiot's Lantern", "Love & Monsters" and "Fear Her". On the other hand, it wasn't a complete disaster; David Tennant's performance as the Doctor was fantastic, catapulting him to star status and making him the most popular Doctor since Tom Baker. Another positive is the finale, which had Daleks vs Cybermen and a very satisfactory ending to the season's arc. Though that ending is becoming a bit of a base breaker due to Rose gaining quite a hatedom. And many people don't think the arc had a good payoff.
    • Series 3 also gets this. The general reasons are a major focus on the Doctor grieving Rose's departure at the expense of his new companion and the companion in question being not as developed. The finale is also considered by many fans to be the weakest of the RTD era. That being said, this series is still generally seen as good and an improvement over the previous series. It's even home to some of the best episodes of the entire show, including the Human Nature-The Family of Blood two parter, and Blink.
    • The "Specials Year" that saw out Tennant's tenure is seen as a step down compared to Series 4, with the first two stories being fairly average and unmemorable, the third actually pretty decent, and Tennant's final story massively divisive, with some considering it a worthy Grand Finale to both Tennant's and Davies' time on the show, but others seeing it a bloated and Wangst-filled example of Russell T Davies overindulging in some of his worst flaws as a showrunner, and bringing Donna back after her heart-breaking exit only to do nothing with her.
    • The general consensus for Series 6 is that the series had a lot of good, ambitious ideas that were sometimes tripped up by shaky writing. Fans complained that the constant twists in the convoluted story arc hurt the overall flow of the season, causing odd swerves in tone and character development. Some accused the River Song arc of being a Romantic Plot Tumour, or just disliked her in general. Amy's pregnancy was another source of controversy, with some taking offense to how it was portrayed. On the flip side, many of the episodes from that series like "The Impossible Astronaut" / "Day Of The Moon", "The Doctor's Wife", "A Good Man Goes To War", The Girl Who Waited" and "The God Complex" are well liked by fans and critics, and have come to be regarded as some of the Eleventh Doctor's best stories in retrospect.
    • Series 7 had problems ironically partially caused by trying to get away from the problems of Series 6. The overly-complex Silence plotline was dropped completely, only getting a belated and perfunctory tie-up in the next year's Christmas special. Writers instead focused on standalone episodes, but these suffered from lacklustre execution, sometimes as a result of pacing. Casting changes were also criticized. Some fans don't think The Ponds got the exit they deserved, and Clara is either one of the best companions of the new series or a glorified MacGuffin Girl and Creator's Pet.
    • Series 8 isn't as badly regarded as Series 7, but the Twelfth Doctor's debut season suffered for Clara's belated Character Development eating up lots of screen time; Twelve's unusually prickly, if not unlikeable, initial characterization and relationship dynamic with her proving inconsistent; a Romantic Plot Tumour between Clara and Danny Pink; a pair of too-silly-even-for-Who plots in "Kill the Moon" and "In the Forest of the Night"; and an ultimately gloomy Story Arc with a Bittersweet Ending that felt more like a Downer Ending for the leads.
    • Although unfortunately the reception of Series 11 was affected by misogynist fans who did not approve of the concept of a female Doctor, even many of those who supported Jodie Whittaker's casting conceded that it suffered from Yaz being an under-developed companion, several weak and unmemorable stories (with "Rosa" and "Demons of the Punjab" being exceptions), and an underwhelming finale. Jodie Whittaker's performance is praised, but a lot of those excited for a female Doctor were rather put off that Thirteen's initial season made her the most ineffective Doctor since the Fifth Doctor, hardly ever getting a clean win as Karma Houdinis abound. History Repeats as well with the issue of Yaz's underdevelopment, since a major criticism of the Fifth Doctor's era was his having too many companions.
    • Series 12 was seen as a case of two steps forward, one step back — or vice-versa, depending on who you ask. The overall quality of stories was seen as an improvement, in no small part thanks to the show starting to make use of popular recurring villains such as the Daleks, the Master, and the Cybermen again, and even managing to sneak in a surprise return by Jack Harkness. However, lack of character focus remained an issue (this time giving Yaz more development, but at the expense of mostly pushing Ryan into the background), and the season's reception was weighed down first by "Orphan 55", which was widely regarded as the worst post-2005 episode by no small margin, and then by an incredibly divisive retconning of the Doctor's (and by extension, the entire show's) backstory in the season finale.
    • Series 13 (Flux), while generally regarded as the best of the Thirteenth Doctor's seasons, still had its issues. The shortening of the season from ten episodes to six, while enforced by the COVID-19 Pandemic, ultimately made for a more focused and faster-paced narrative, with "The Halloween Apocalypse", "War of the Sontarans" and especially "Village of the Angels" being some of the better-received stories from this era. However, "Once, Upon Time" and "Survivors of the Flux" were both regarded as pretty forgettable and exposition-heavy, and "The Vanquishers" was seen as a yet another underwhelming finale.
• Shipping:
  • Ian and Barbara. Canon as of The Sarah Jane Adventures' fourth series, which mention an "Ian and Barbara Chesterton".
  • Ben/Polly. Running an orphanage according to the above SJA episode.
  • Jamie with Victoria, Zoe and Peri. And The Second Doctor.
  • The Fourth Doctor/Romana (especially her second incarnation). For one thing, she was the first woman the Doctor explicitly noted as attractive. Helps that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were in a real-life relationship at the time.
  • Nyssa and Tegan.
  • In the revival series, the writers were more open in implying romance between the Doctor and their female companions. While "Shipping" usually refers to wished-for, rather than canonical relationships, the decision to institute The "I Love You" Stigma and depict romance in a more subtle fashion has led to shipping debates related to the Doctor and companions such as Clara Oswald.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: People pretty much ship Anyone/Anyone on the show. Canon or not, they can get very defensive over their ship(s), and woe betide the series if it introduces a new love interest (whether real or just perceived) for the Doctor.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The series does outdo itself constantly in this area due to thrills and scares, but very few can compare to the sudden reemergence of the TIME LORDS in the final scene of "The End of Time" Part One, and their Title Drop of just what they plan to do.
  • Specifically, when the viewer gets out ahead of the plot on that one and realizes what's coming just soon enough to scream 'HOLY SHIT' about twenty times before the event actually happens.
  • The Daleks returning at the climax of "Army of Ghosts"? That was a big secret held by the production team at the time. These days, the following episode "Doomsday" is generally known for being Daleks v Cybermen.
  • The Doctor on the point of near-death dies ten times, and has his appearance forcibly changed at the end of the Patrick Troughton era.
  • "The Name of the Doctor": the Doctor had a secret incarnation that he hid because he did something so terrible that he renounced the name of "the Doctor": He was the one who ended the Time War by wiping out the Time Lords (or, as it turned out, only believed that he did).
  • "The Day of the Doctor" provided this just through the extent of its Call Backs to the show's history, from every Doctor showing up to help freeze Gallifrey in the show's climax, to the revelation of the Twelfth Doctor's input, to the appearance of Tom Baker as the Curator in the episode's epilogue (marking his first appearance in an official episode of the show for the first time since leaving it in 1981).
  • Meta example: After the announcement of Peter Capaldi stepping down as the Doctor, speculation went around for who would be the next Doctor, the most popular theory being a female Doctor. Come July 16, 2017, it was revealed that actress Jodie Whittaker was selected as the Thirteenth Doctor, the first ever female to take on the lead role.
• So Bad, It's Good: In a long-lived series like this one, some stories have earned some good-natured infamy.
  • "The Underwater Menace"; one printed review in SFX magazine describing it as "Plan Nine from Doctor Who".
  • "The Invisible Enemy" can count since it has many special fx failures, an insane plot and a hilariously unthreatening villain, but it is entertaining and the script is decent; plus it introduced K-9, one of the most iconic companions.
  • "The Horns of Nimon" has this reputation. Graham Crowden's performance as Soldeed is by far one of the hammiest, most over-the-top performances in the entire series, and that is really saying something. His death scene is proof enough.
  • The cheesealicious, chock-full-o'-synthesizer soundtrack of the late-1980s, especially in "Remembrance of the Daleks".
• So Okay, It's Average: With a long running franchise such as Who that's had its highs & lows, there have been a lot of episodes/serials that are just kind of average & forgettable.
• Sophomore Slump: The second years of the first two revival showrunners (Series 2 and Series 6) have been accused of this:
  • General fandom consensus is that the second series has its gems (like the wonderful "School Reunion", "The Girl in the Fireplace", and "The Impossible Planet"), but as a whole it's rather unimpressive and bland, especially compared to the Ninth Doctor's tightly written character arc from the previous first season. Series 2 was bogged down by terrible CGI, too much time spent on contemporary Earth, and some of the blandest, poorly written filler episodes in the show's canon, such as "The Idiot's Lantern", "Love & Monsters" and "Fear Her". There was also a story arc that didn't give as great a reveal as other Series, and which many fans felt was there for Russell T Davies to set up his own show. Also, despite many fans loving the Doctor/Rose romance, there is quite a group that felt it was becoming a Romantic Plot Tumour; even those who liked Rose in the first series felt she and the Doctor were becoming unlikable here due to their codependent attitudes and their callous disregard for everyone else beyond each other that was woven throughout the entire season and eventually came to a head in the finale.
  • The sixth series is this, being the second season of Steven Moffat's tenure as show runner (with a new Doctor, new companion, and a lot of new people behind the scenes). The general reception to Series 6 was mixed to positive, compared to the outstanding response to Moffat's first series. Some of the show's best episodes ("The Impossible Astronaut" / "Day Of The Moon", "The Doctor's Wife", "A Good Man Goes To War", The Girl Who Waited" and "The God Complex") were alongside some of that era's weakest instalments ("The Curse of the Black Spot", "Night Terrors"). Additionally, many felt like Moffat was trying to do a little too much and the plot got tangled, and the characterization of River Song took a hit. In a season review from the Nerdist (one of Doctor Who's biggest cheerleaders), the writer even uses the term Sophomore Slump to describe it.
• Squick:
  • The pulsating brain in "Mindwarp" is nauseating. Great effect, though.
  • In "Love & Monsters", Elton mentions having a love life with a slab of concrete, with the slab rightfully telling him not to go into any more detail.
  • In The Beast Below, the Doctor gets himself and Amy ejected from a giant mouth by making the animal vomit. They go out screaming, with their mouths open.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • "The Invasion of Time": Companion Leela decides to stay on Gallifrey and marry the guard Andred. There's been nothing romantic between them. While the actors tried to suggest attraction in the story with their acting, the script didn't give them much to work with. It was basically, Doctor: "Come on, Leela, let's go." Leela: "No, I'm going to stay here and marry Andred." Doctor: "Okay, bye." This happened because the actress told the producer she was leaving at the end of the season, and he kept trying to change her mind. The Big Finish audio drama series Gallifrey ends up subverting this relationship in a fairly satisfying way.
  • The posthumous pairing of Peri with King Yrcanos at the end of "Trial of a Time Lord". Apparently, Colin Baker was distressed by Peri's death at the end of the "Mindwarp" portion of the Story Arc and mentioned this to producer John Nathan-Turner. JNT, in his usual subtle way, fixed the problem by giving the Inquisitor a quick line stating that Peri is living happily with Yrcanos as a warrior queen, despite how nothing in the story apart from the brief clip of his putting his hand on her shoulder that is shown after that line supports that romance, and doing a Retcon of it makes a hash of the entire end of the story.
  • Martha Jones and Mickey Smith, two characters who before "Journey's End" had never even met, and had only been onscreen together in the scene where everybody from the new series ever flies the TARDIS, are shown in their "happy ending" vignette in "The End of Time" as a married couple, freelancers and fighting a Sontaran. This is despite the fact that Martha had been shown to be engaged in a previous appearance (though her fiance never showed up). This naturally got a lot of accusations that they were only paired up because they're both black.
  • River and Eleven for some, due to the main gimmick of their relationship being that they meet in the wrong order and therefore one tends to gain affection as the other loses it. Post-"The Wedding of River Song" they seem to be on the same wavelength, alleviating this aspect of their relationship.
  • Clara Oswald and Danny Pink are this to some fans too. The relationship has rushed development that includes getting together at the end of "Listen" when they'd just endured a disastrous date. Wooden acting and bad writing on Danny's end really did not help, nor did the unsubtle introduction of a Love Triangle -esque scenario midway through the season (Clara continuing to travel with the Doctor while lying to Danny about it). The entire introduction of Danny was perceived my some as an awkward attempt to give Clara a new love interest in the mistaken assumption that viewers wouldn't accept the relationship between Clara and the Doctor established in Series 7 continuing with an older actor in the role; this backfired.
  • River Song again, this time with the Twelfth Doctor. Despite River having been written out twice by Steven Moffat during the Eleventh Doctor's era, he decided to bring her back for a romantic dalliance with the Twelfth Doctor in the 2015 Christmas special. Which would have been fine if said special hadn't aired a mere three weeks after the conclusion of the ill-fated romance between the Doctor and Clara Oswald ^note Expanded Universe comics have it that it was much longer for the Doctor in-universe, with him taking on several short-term companions in turn. One chunk of the fandom was glad to see Twelve finally thrown a bone after a season that had no Breather Episodes and unimaginable personal suffering; the other chunk felt he moved on from Clara too quickly even though 1) they mutually realized it was no longer a healthy relationship and 2) he doesn't remember what made him love her thanks to the mind wipe, meaning he doesn't have much to brood over in the first place.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • In "The Sontaran Stratagem", the Doctor insists that he is going to handle the situation and that Colonel Mace of UNIT should listen to him and not attack the Sontarans who have already killed several dozen people and are warming up a full force invasion. While the Doctor is right that something fishy is going on with the Sontaran tactics and that UNIT could easy be crushed if the Sontarans actually tried, Colonel Mace is dealing with an alien invasion; he knows that attacking that building may end with all of his men dead, but he points out that they cannot simply sit around and wait to be conquered.
  Colonel Mace: Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much for your lack of faith, but this time I'm not listening. He pulls off his gas mask and dons his badass hat.
  • In the serial "The Invasion", aspiring glamour photographer Isobel suggests getting proof of the Cybermen's presence in the sewers by going down to take pictures. The Brigadier agrees, but intends to use his own men instead, on the basis that such a situation is no place for a lady. Isobel blows up at how backward and sexist he's being, but the Brig refuses, and both girls gang up on Jamie for agreeing with him and both she and Zoe walk away in a huff to get the pics themselves with Jamie worriedly tagging along, which ends up getting a police officer and a UNIT soldier sent to rescue them killed. While it could easily be argued that the Brig was in the wrong to assume they could not handle themselves for being women, it might have been better to let trained and experienced soldiers do the dangerous work, and neither of the girls are called out for their reckless actions getting two men killed. To add insult to injury, Isobel's photos end up being useless since she's never done any surveillance or dim-lighting photography.
  • Both Harriet Jones and Torchwood One are presented by both the Doctor and the script writers as being entirely in the wrong for respectively shooting the Sycorax In the Back while they were retreating, and harvesting alien technology. However, both characters make the accurate point that the Doctor, being functionally immortal, is reckless and treats death like a game, and is often not there when the Earth needs him which requires them to have other options to defend themselves against less friendly aliens. Furthermore, he is indirectly responsible for a good portion of the threats the Earth encounters in the first place—which is ironically showcased by Ten forcing Jones out of office in retaliation for the Sycorax, paving the way for the Master to become Prime Minister two seasons later.
  • In "Journey's End" the Doctor is disgusted when his clone destroys the Dalek fleet and treats him like a monster, even though the Daleks are fanatical mass-murderers who never negotiate and letting them live would inevitably lead to countless more deaths. They had just come close to destroying the Universe and it probably wouldn't be too difficult for them to try again, considering from what we see the Doctor was just willing to leave them like they were, when it probably wouldn't be too difficult for them to recover. We later see that a few Daleks surviving rebuild their race, which has led to a lot more death and destruction throughout the Universe.
  • Whizkid in "Greatest Show In The Galaxy" is a cruel stereotype of the Doctor Who fans of the period, complaining that "although I never saw it in the early days I know it's not as good as it used to be." Except, as pointed out in The Completely Useless Encyclopedia, Whizkid is right about the circus, and the reasons are pretty much exactly the criticisms fans were making about eighties Doctor Who.
  • In "The Curse of Peladon" Hepesh is treated as an unreasonable nationalist willing to do anything not to deal with the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. But "The Mutants" two serials later shows that an earlier Human Empire did to the planet Solos exactly what Hepesh feared would happen to Peladon, exploited to the point of destruction and with the native population almost wiped out. Decades later, "Planet of the Ood" would give another good reason to dislike the empire.
  • The Doctor often criticised the Time Lords in the original series for sitting around being pompous instead of using their powers to intervene more, content to let whole civilisations be destroyed on their watch. However, with all the dangerous renegades like the Monk, the War Chief, the Master, and the Rani running around with all the damage they cause, and the Doctor himself often centimetres away from full A God Am I status, it makes sense that the Time Lords prefer not to intervene except for major problems. When they first appeared they did interfere, the Doctor calling them in to stop a plan to conquer a galaxy with an Army of The Ages assisted by a rogue Time Lord, and the Time Lords occasionally sent the Doctor, especially the Third, to assist affairs on an important scale. That's before considering that when the Time Lords intervened in "The Trial of a Time Lord", this action almost destroyed Earth, and when they sent the Doctor to destroy the Daleks before they were created it ended up being the first shot in a Great Offscreen War that nearly destroyed the universe. The serial "Underworld" even reveals that when the Time Lords first interacted with another planet by giving them advanced technology, the planet and nearly all of the species were wiped out.
  • In "The Day of the Doctor", Ten and Eleven criticize Kate Stewart for being willing to blow up the Black Archive (and a good chunk of London with it) in order to keep the Zygons from using the technology stored in the Archive to conquer Earth. Sure, the Doctors come up with an alternate solution, but at the time, Kate didn't see another option (although there were only a few Zygons, and she could summon an army).
  • "Arachnids in the UK": Robertson is a Jerkass, Never My Fault, Screw the Rules, I Have Money!, trigger-happy American stereotype who kills the mother spider by shooting it with his dead bodyguard's pistol. However, the spiders had killed at least four people (including said bodyguard) with the intent of eating them like flies, they were nonsentient and could not be politely reasoned with, and the mother spider was already suffering a horrible and slow death by asphyxiation.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The ads for Series 11 got quite a bit of controversy for leaning hard on the new Doctor being a woman, with one especially infamous one showing her literally breaking a glass ceiling. Note that this was after months of the crew insisting they wouldn't be making any kind of big deal out of it.
  • Furthermore, some fans took issue with the adverts for not revealing much information about the new series beyond the identities of the Doctor's new companions, which could have been taken to suggest a lack of confidence on the BBC's part. However, given that this stands in stark contrast to promotional material for previous series (which were criticised for giving away full-on spoilers), it may simply be the BBC learning from its mistakes.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • The Doctor certainly has some choice words for Adric and his dubious behaviour in "Four to Doomsday":
    5th Doctor: Now listen to me, you young idiot, you're not so much gullible as idealistic. I suppose it comes from your deprived delinquent background.
  • And earlier in the same story, Nyssa tells him to shut up.
  • In an extra on the DVD version of "Earthshock", Adric survives the spaceship crash, lands on prehistoric Earth... and is promptly eaten by a Tyrannosaurus. A detached Cyberman head remarks, "Excellent."
• Tear Dryer: In "The Tomb of the Cybermen", the Doctor awakens to find his new companion Victoria who is clearly still very sad over her father's death at the hands of the Daleks in the previous serial. Comforting her, the Doctor assures her that her memories of him won't be always be sad, and explains to her the sheer wonder of their opportunity to travel all of time and space.
• Theme Pairing:
  • There's a portion of the fandom that ships Adric/Nyssa because they are Orphaned, Human Alien, Teen Geniuses traveling through time and space together.
  • The Doctor and Sailor Pluto from Sailor Moon share many things: filling the role of The Only One, being Time Travellers, having Survivor Guilt, and being Genocide Survivors.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Fan reaction to almost any regeneration and companion addition, sometimes initial, sometimes permanent. Given that the show is over 50 years old and finished its 39th series in 2022, with regular change of cast and the lead role being played by fourteen actors and counting^note this includes John Hurt's "War Doctor", who only played the lead in Big Finish Doctor Who, it is bound to invoke this trope.
  • This is particularly true for Matt Smith's run as the Doctor since they changed basically everything at the same time: new Doctor, new companions, new showrunner, new tone, new cameras, new TARDIS interior, new title sequence, new theme song arrangement, new foes (including a new look for the Daleks, though this was relegated later on), and even a new sonic screwdriver. Then you add the facts that Matt Smith is the youngest actor ever to play the Doctor, that he directly succeeded David Tennant (who as of 2013 is still considered the most popular Doctor and casts a gigantic shadow over Eleven and Twelve, especially to younger fans), and that Smith's Doctor was the goofiest yet of the revived series (Tennant and even Christopher Eccleston had their moments, but that was it). It's typical for Who actors to say they owe a great debt to their immediate predecessor, but Matt Smith sounded like he genuinely believed it.
  • After Matt Smith, the fandom was expecting someone just as great, or better. Matt was 26 (and looked 18, perfect skin and all); younger fans may have been disappointed with the 55-when-cast Peter Capaldi in the part of the Twelfth Doctor out of hoping for another Doctor who looked their age. Moreover, Twelve's by-design pricklier, broodier personality didn't sit well with those used to cheery Ten and Eleven. That said, Twelve has a lot of Character Development and becomes younger in spirit as time passes. In a case of Critical Dissonance, Capaldi is regarded by critics as one of the, if not the, best actors to have played the part and deserving of a better reception, with his seasons (Series 9 especially) regarded as Growing the Beard for the show again after the Seasonal Rot of Smith's final two seasons.
  • Series 11 under Chibnall has been criticized for a lack of a story arc, the first series in the revival to dispense with one; this resulted in a very poorly received Season Finale that felt like an average episode than the game changer the Season Finale usually is. The fact that many feel that the writing of the episodes themselves was poor, and the greatly reduced number of Continuity Nods, didn't help anything either.
  • Under Chris Chibnall a lot of changes were made - a reduced episode count, moving the show to Sunday, and more focus on new aliens instead of bringing back fan favourites - amongst others. But moving the annual holiday special from Christmas to New Year's Day is something that rankled a lot of fans who've come to see annual Christmas special as part of their holiday traditions and really don't appreciate the change, especially since Steven Moffat wrote "Twice Upon a Time" to keep the tradition since Chibnall didn't want his Doctor to debut at Christmas. However there was already a feeling among some that the show was running out of ideas for Christmas and that this was justified.
    • There are a lot of fans who strongly dislike the Timeless Child twist, seeing it as disrespectful to the show's lore due to undermining the First Doctor and making the Doctor, who has always been merely a traveller (albeit one who has saved the universe multiple times), far too important to the Time Lords' existence and having little to no impact on anything that happens even within the story, as the Doctor seems to get over the whole thing rather quickly and continue as before and the Time Lords being wiped out again means that she can't even confront them over it. (However, Series 13 shows the Doctor was putting a face on — which she's very good at — as her obsessive pursuit to learn more about her forgotten past leads her into the events of the season's story, which is very much driven by characters from that part of her life.)
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Shapeshifting android Kamelion was shoehorned into the series in "The King's Demons", then promptly never appeared again until "Planet of Fire" where he was killed off. Apparently the complex animatronic puppet that represented the character was a nightmare to operate, never really worked correctly in the first place, and just to really top it off, its creator (who was the only person who really knew how to work the damn thing) had died without leaving any instructions. Ironically, it was only in "Planet of Fire" where they used the character in a way that should have allowed him to appear in the other intervening episodes - being a shapeshifting android, Kamelion takes the forms of Peri's stepfather and the Master for most of the serial as he acts under the Master's control. It baffles the mind that they didn't simply have Kamelion shape-shift into a human actor (or even several) to take part in the story if they had any interest in using the character.
  • The Valeyard is the Doctor's dark side, which has split off from him... or something. Basically, he's an evil version of the Doctor from somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnation. The concept of the Doctor going bad is terrifying in so many ways, and the Valeyard is still out there as well. And yet, he has only ever shown up in one season, "The Trial of a Time Lord", and his true nature was only revealed in the last two episodes.^note This is actually because Robert Holmes didn't intend the twist, but died before writing the final story, with the new writing team legally forbidden from knowing his intended ending during the writing process. He has expanded universe appearances as well, but nothing whatsoever in the show since then, aside from a shout out by the Great Intelligence. Whether he will ever come back or not is up for debate.
  • The Great Intelligence in the second part of Series 7. The show makes an effort to reimagine him as an Evil Counterpart to the Doctor, and seems to leave the impression that he'll be an interesting long-term enemy. Not only are the implications or similarities between the Doctor and Great Intelligence left mostly unexplored, but by the end of the series, the Intelligence is most likely dead, or at least won't be appearing again for a long time. Not to mention that fact that, according to the EU, he is the disembodied mind of Yog-Sothoth, embodiment of time and space.
  • Canton Everett Delaware III. "The Impossible Astronaut" almost outright states that he's one of the Doctor's most trusted still-living human allies, since he's one of just five people that he chose to tell about his impending "death" (the other four being Amy, Rory, River, and himself). Aside from that, he's a very memorable Badass Normal maverick FBI agent who answers directly to the President of the United States, and he's openly engaged in an interracial same-sex relationship in the 1960's. In spite of all that juicy development, though, he's completely dropped after the two-part opener of Series 6 and never mentioned again. The last we see of him from his timeline is the older Canton 40 years later coming to see the Eleventh Doctor's "death" and then outright saying that this will be the last time he'll be seeing Amy, Rory, and River.
  • With the Thirteenth Doctor having three companions, one of them typically gets the short end of attention from each script, and Ryan and Graham's complex and fertile relationship means that most of the time it's Yaz. In particular, her being a police officer hardly ever gets brought up, even with there being a few situations where it would come in handy.
  • Ashad, the Lone Cyberman, was one of the more interesting and complex villains introduced to the rebooted series and helped make the Cybermen legitimately threatening again. His multi-episode story arc sadly ends with him taking a backseat to yet another one of the Master's plots and becomes nothing more than a literal prop for a confrantation between the Doctor and the Master.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Nyssa and Tegan's introductions saw the Master steal the former's father's body and accidentally destroy her home planet and murder the latter's aunt. None of these plots were ever resolved, in fact he was still making appearances long after they departed.
  • At the end of "The End of Time" Part 1, the Master has turned every human on Earth into the Master except two people: the Doctor's current companion, Wilfred Mott and Wilfred's granddaughter, former companion Donna Noble and Donna's starting to remember! OMG! Are we about to see the return of the Doctor Donna? Maybe she'll find a clever way to keep her memories without dying! At the very least, she's bound to play a key, pivotal role in Part 2, right? Right?? Wrong. At the start of Part 2, she gets chased around a little, then some Applied Phlebotinum the Doctor left in her brain kicks in, knocking her and her pursuers out, and she doesn't wake up (and isn't seen again onscreen) until after the main crisis is over, and she wakes with her damn amnesia still intact. Also, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures are going on at the same time — what happened to those people? Gwen was pregnant around the day the Master created his new race. Luke apparently didn't change, because he is an artificial human manufactured by the Bane with strange differences from ordinary human DNA. Too bad that's never explored.
  • "Let's Kill Hitler" has the TARDIS travelling back to Nazi Germany, the reveal that River Song was in her previous incarnation a childhood friend of Amy and Rory, and the Teselecta, a shapeshifting robot that travels through history punishing criminals who were never punished. However even though some of these ideas could have carried an episode on their own them being in the same episode means they don't get enough focus.
  • "The Power of Three" had Amy and Rory wondering if they should stop travelling with the Doctor and have a normal life; this is under-explored in favour of the cubes, and considering what the next two episodes held for the Ponds, some would have preferred it if they had left that episode.
  • The most consistent complaint about the Series 9 finale "Hell Bent" was that an event that one would have expected to be the focus of an entire episode — the Doctor returning to Gallifrey for the first time since the Time War and confronting Rassilon — is, rather, the setup for the endgame of his relationship with Clara.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: A common criticism of the Sixth Doctor's era is that because the Sixth Doctor himself is an arrogant jerkass and his companion Peri has a combative and highly toxic dynamic with him most of the time, they tend to come off as unlikeable as the villains of their stories.
• Too Cool to Live:
  • The claim for shortest tenure belongs to the Eighth Doctor, whose entire tenure consists of one TV movie. Even fans who disliked the film will agree that Paul McGann gave it all it was worth and was a great Doctor nevertheless. He would end up the breakout star of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas, and enjoy a brief return to regenerate in "The Night of the Doctor", then a cameo as a Guardian of the Edge.
  • The Ninth Doctor has the second-shortest tenure — one TV series of 12 weeks. It took a lot of convincing for Christopher Eccleston to sign on to do audio stories of his Doctor, and his soul-crushing experiences on set during production of Series 1 have made him adamantly refuse to come back on the TV series to reprise the role.
  • The War Doctor has a paltry screen time of under an hour, even less than McGann — he's really a guest star (retroactively added to the show's timeline to boot) instead of a tenure holder. This being the incarnation who fought a huge and terrible war.
  • The Fugitive Doctor is also a guest star Doctor, getting four appearances during Thirteen's era, only two of which take place during her incarnation's life.
  • Father Octavian from "The Time of Angels" / "Flesh and Stone". He sets a standard for Face Death with Dignity that from now on everyone's going to be struggling to match.
  • Isaac from "A Town Called Mercy". He's loyal, brave, is a man of integrity and a leader that everyone seems to trust, has a dry sense of humour and is quite easy on the eyes (being played by Ben Browder). Of course he's doomed.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Colin Baker's run was characterised by weak writing and a characterisation for his Doctor that was designed to start out as unlikeable as possible, but he never once phoned in a performance and always treated the scripts with absolute conviction.
• Too Sexy for This Timeslot: Some of the papers felt that Amy's policewoman outfit was this.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • Everyone's favourite Doctor is a tough act to follow — not to name names; you know where the bases are broken.
  • Some purists also apply this trope to the Modern Era (2005 onwards) versus the Classic Era (1963-1989). Certainly, in terms of longevity, the Modern Era is unlikely to equal the original, although it still has run far longer than most English-language sci-fi series. (Though it does depend whether you're counting by years or seasons, due to the number of hiatuses during the Modern Era - by 2023, it had been running for 18 years and 13 seasons, with more to come.)
  • The First Doctor's era was one to the Second Doctor's era. At the time Patrick Troughton took over the role, William Hartnell was THE Doctor and audiences weren't accustomed yet to the idea of regeneration, and so Troughton's era suffered a ratings decline as a result. Although nowadays his era is largely seen as Vindicated by History, with Troughton himself being seen as the actor who did the most to shape the Doctor's personality in the show's early years.
  • The Fourth Doctor. Regardless of who your favourite Doctor is or what you think of the quality of the show when he was the star, the simple fact is that Tom Baker played the Doctor on television for the longest period of time and was watched by more people in the UK than any of his predecessors or successors (episode four of "City of Death" continues to hold the record for the largest amount of viewers that a Doctor Who TV story has enjoyed on first UK broadcast). His episodes were also the first ones to break into the American market. His look, with the distinctive curly hair and eighteen-foot multicoloured scarf, is instantly iconic, and it's fair to say that almost every one of his successors, including those in the modern revival, has been inspired by or drawn on his portrayal in some way. It's also telling that Tom Baker was the only classic series Doctor to appear in the 50th anniversary special in person rather than as just stock footage. Put simply, even today for many people the Fourth Doctor simply is the Doctor.
  • Philip Hinchcliffe's tenure as producer (1975-77) is widely seen as the show's golden age. His replacement Graham Williams not only had to follow that, but he inherited a series with all sorts of production issues - budget problems, script problems, labour problems and a difficult star. While his era is era did produce some classic stories, it's widely considered inferior to his predecessor.
  • "The Caves of Androzani" just feels like it set the bar way too high for "The Twin Dilemma". The producers should have waited until the next year to introduce the Sixth Doctor and formulate a better story, instead of rushing to the plate with the hype for Colin Baker's portrayal. At least that would have provided a lot of time for a better script.
  • In terms of the modern series, the Tenth Doctor as played by David Tennant has become the Doctor to whom his successors tend to be compared to. While his successors have hardly been unpopular or disliked, Tennant took on the role at a point where Doctor Who was experiencing popularity and ratings success it hadn't seen in decades, his stories experienced both wide popular and critical acclaim, and even after leaving the role his Doctor remains widely popular.
  • As Series 9 was critically acclaimed by fans and critics alike for its multi-part episodes, deeper Character Development carried from Series 7B and 8, and extreme emotional heft regarding the relationship between the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald, it was initially seen as this to Series 10, which came after a year-plus hiatus spelled only by two breather Christmas specials and displayed an more-or-less clean slate (albeit with a lot of Continuity Nods) from the first episode alone (which was even called "The Pilot"). While it still received a lot of acclaim, thanks in large part to the very well-received team of the Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts (plus secondary companion Nardole), there were complaints up through "Knock Knock" that it was too lightweight. Then the stakes were dramatically raised with "Oxygen" (and its shocking ending revealing the Doctor was still blind) and the Monks Trilogy mid-season, and there was rejoicing. Of course, there's also a subset of fans who DIDN'T like Series 8 and 9, often because of the focus on the Twelve/Clara relationship, who were won back with early Series 10, often wishing that Twelve's era had been like this from the start. Not all of these fans were happy to see it take a darker turn.
  • In later years, it's become a trend that while most people do love and accept Thirteen as who she is despite the sheer idea of her being the first ever female Doctor on the show upsetting a huge bunch, Series 11 is considered very underwhelming, especially after the rather impressive success Series 10 had with being Twelfth's final run (which is ironic considering Series 10 itself was considered underwhelming compared to Series 9 sans "Twice Upon a Time"). And even with that, Thirteenth's generally playful and energetic personality (and how she handles villains often leading to Karma Houdini) generally are seen as mixed bags compared to Twelfth's techniques to deal with his adversaries. Season Twelve gave her deeper characterisation, explaining the previous season was her running away, and she has to face the consequences of her past, continuing to push away her companions in depression and admit the team structure isn't always flat.

TV Series Tropes - U to Z

• Ugly Cute:
  • The Adipose (cutest Body Horror ever!)
  • Prisoner Zero can be this when it's not trying to scare people. Especially when you hear its voice.
  • The Ood. In fricking spades.
  • Ganger-Jennifer. Her degeneration makes her look like Voldemort's younger sister.
  • Every actor to have played the Doctor, with only a couple of exceptions, blend a handful of strikingly handsome or even beautiful physical traits with a slightly larger amount of funny-looking ones. Add in the requisite dorky mannerisms, charisma and loveable character acting and you've got the recipe for several decades of slightly embarrassing Celeb Crushes. Steven Moffat said every actor to play the Doctor should be "arresting" and "attractive in a very odd way".
    • Even Jodie Whittaker, arguably the most conventionally attractive of the actors to play the part, has a tendency to pull very odd but very endearing facial expressions.
  • The Sensorites from "The Sensorites", being a subversion of Beauty Equals Goodness and a rather sweet and feeble species prone to Sensory Overload.
  • The Rills in "Galaxy 4" are another Beauty Equals Goodness subversion and look quite endearingly like walruses.
  • The Marshchild from "Full Circle", a creature that's essentially a baby swamp monster. In one of the first scenes in which it appears, it's shown peering at the Doctor from behind a fallen tree, its obvious timidity combined with its endearingly ugly face giving it an almost irresistible cuteness. That cuteness is only enhanced by a subsequent scene in which it's shown materializing in a spaceship corridor behind the Doctor, only to go scurrying back out of sight a moment later. It doesn't help that its subsequent ill-treatment by a bunch of (apparent) humans propels it firmly into Woobie territory.
  • Daleks in general, at least their metal casings. What's not to love about a metal pepper shaker with a plunger and half an eggbeater for arms? Special reference goes to the squeaky-voiced and gurgly humanised Daleks in "The Evil of the Daleks", Dalek Caan and the Ironside in "Victory of the Daleks".
  • The Ood. Due to their benevolence and the fact they are all Woobies, once you get past the fact they've got mince meat where their mouths should be, they are very sweet.
  • The tiny old Doctor that the Master kept in a birdcage from "Last of the Time Lords". He was so tiny and sad! And kind of looked like Tweety Bird, between the birdcage and the huge head. Also, there's something very endearing about the Doctor's personality in that minuscule body.
  • The baby Adiposians. Basically a pound of roughly humanoid animated fat. Possibly the cutest thing the show has ever featured. They become less cute when you remember that that pound of humanoid animated fat killed people when they came into existence, although 99% just detach from a human and walk away one by one. The main characters even comment that it's not that bad a weight loss program, all things considered.
  • The Gangers are incomplete, unstable copies of human beings, all with a smooth, featureless Nightmare Face with visible veins that looks like they are melting. They also managed to look vulnerable and sweet, especially the positively dainty Ganger of Jennifer.
  • Mr. Sweet from "The Crimson Horror" has elements of this, with his big black eyes.
  • The P'Ting from "The Tsuranga Conundrum". Relentless, bad-tempered, highly dangerous, and something to be desperately avoided, it still manages to be adorable especially when it has a full belly.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Nardole in Series 10. The announcement that a bumbling comic relief character created as a one-off would be a companion from "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" onward came completely out of the blue — especially given his state at the end of "The Husbands of River Song" — even more so because Bill was announced to the public first and no publicity so much as hinted that there would be a Team TARDIS in Series 10. Also, there are a lot of characters the Twelfth Doctor's encountered whom fans thought would make good post-Clara companion material: Journey Blue (turned down by the Doctor over her soldier status), Psi and/or Saibra, Perkins (turned down the Doctor's offer because he didn't want the attendant Character Development), Rigsy, Osgood (one might have accepted his offer but was killed by Missy; the other chose to work on the Zygon-human peace instead), Shona (who wanted to be friends with him and Clara in reality), Ashildr/Me (turned down by the Doctor because her immortality was a bad fit for him; ended up with Clara Oswald instead)... no one ever considered this guy!
  • The trailer for the BBC Centennial Special revealed three characters no-one expected...Ashad (who had been seemingly killed off in his last appearance), Tegan and Ace (since Classic Era companion returns, aside from Sarah Jane and K9, were limited to The Sarah Jane Adventures). For the episode itself, no-one was expecting cameos from past Doctors, or from other old companions like Ian and Mel.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Many villains and antagonistic characters can come across this at times, with many viewers finding their actions justifiable considering the situation or at the very least underserving of the fates they suffered. For similar reasons the Doctor and their companions can come across as unlikable due to their Protagonist-Centred Morality.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Quite unavoidable — the special effects and fashions give the production decades away within minutes. When the stories have been restored to DVD with new special effects, the Restoration Team have very deliberately shot many of the new effects in appropriate styles so they wouldn't clash with the source material. So the Special Edition of "The Five Doctors" has new and improved CGI effects that actually look like Eighties effects.
  • And once again used deliberately in "Time Crash", which alternates between the grand orchestral score of the Tenth Doctor's era and the synthesized background music of the Fifth Doctor's era.
  • Watch's 50th Anniversary rundown of the Doctors pointed this out while discussing each Doctor — pointing out how each Doctor's personality, the personality of the threats they faced, and especially their personal appearance was informed by the era from which they came. For instance, the narrator suggested that the addition of Mel was inspired by the 1980s fitness craze, and most of the talking heads seemed to agree that, while Colin Baker's outfit was incredibly awful even in-universe, it's really only a mild exaggeration of hideous things people sincerely wore in the 80s.
  • Played with in the novelization of "Shada", which was a 1979 Development Hell episode originally written by Douglas Adams,^note the basic plot and many characters of which would eventually see the light of day as Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, mildly retooled to take place in their own 'verse and eventually novelized by Gareth Roberts in 2012. As a result, the 1970s setting, which was Like Reality, Unless Noted for Adams, is deliberately played for kitschy absurdity — the male companion is specifically noted to have long, feathered hair and a taste for denim jackets (which would have been assumed default in the '70s), a very Douglas Adams joke about humanity's obsession with digital watches goes from being satirical (similar to a modern joke about fixation on smartphones) to being funny entirely because of the anachronism of it, and the band Status Quo show up at one point, for laughs. At the same time, the Time Lord tech is altered to be more like modern tech, with K-9 being given a battery charge indicator that works like one on a modern phone, and Chronotis' time telegraph having a touch screen and a "Sent Mail" folder, and it's likely this was intended to look equally silly in the future.
  • The first revival season ends up falling into this, much of which was toned down once the series became a confirmed hit. The Tylers' (and a few other characters') Chavvy fashion style is significant, Rose has to visit her boyfriend's house to use the internet (which is a mixture of Timecube-esque personal sites and Livejournal) and uses a Nokia brick phone which is nevertheless talked up, homosexuality is discussed in slightly edgy pre-civil-partnership terms.
    
    The second story involves Britney Spears' "Toxic" as "a traditional Earth ballad", the fourth is a Whole-Plot Reference to 9/11 conspiracy theories and the 'sexed up' Iraq September Dossier, and the finale is about the Doctor (and the Daleks) getting trapped in Deadly Game versions of 2005 light entertainment shows, like The Weakest Link, Big Brother and What Not to Wear, complete with celebrity parodies immediately recognisable to the contemporary audience but rather dated now. (There was a certain Reality Subtext to this last part, as the main feeling in the television industry was that the Doctor Who revival was doomed as "family television" didn't exist as a format any more except in the form of Soap Opera and reality or game shows.)
  • In "The Time Meddler", the Doctor discovers that the Meddling Monk is not from the Middle Ages (but from the distant future)... because he uses a record player to re-enact the sounds of monks praying.
  • Classic DVD releases all come with a little booklet which gives some details about the story in question. However, some of the "facts" within them are no longer true. The booklet for "The Romans" (released 2009) talks about the current incarnation of the Doctor, a man who is now several Doctors ago. The Lost in Time set (released 2004) claims there are 108 missing episodes, when actually there are now only 97. "Arc of Infinity" claims that Colin Baker is the only person to be in Doctor Who before being the Doctor, which Peter Capaldi may now disagree with.
  • The 1970s era, particularly the Jon Pertwee era. Everyone uses Trim-phones, and in some of the earlier episodes, people still ask for operators before calling somewhere. The 1970s, in which Britain let go of most of its colonies, saw officers returning from these places and put in British military middle-management, a social change that the character of the Brigadier satirises (as well as forming the allegory in stories like "The Mutants"). The Green Aesop is omnipresent, but in terms of "pollution" rather than global warming, and miner's strikes feature in several stories. The Clangers is referenced, Jo talks about her "O-levels", and both she and Sarah Jane talk about "women's lib". One winceworthy moment is when the Doctor in "The Mind of Evil" claims to be a good friend of Chairman Mao... The Tom Baker era is a bit more timeless, but still features a Doctor with pretty incredible '70s Hair who wears clothing parodying 1975 fashion in his first season (compare his outfit to what Mike Yates wears in "Planet of the Spiders"). The more satirical tone of his era also leads to references that come across as rather cryptic to modern viewers: the "Harry is only qualified to work on sailors" line in "The Ark in Space" is a joke about the often overly restrictive union regulations of the day, and the exchange in "The Seeds of Doom" about the seeds "travelling in pairs like policeman" — a normal safety precaution then, since discarded as inefficient. "The Deadly Assassin" is especially 70s, containing references to then-contemporary political scandals (such as the line about the Presidential honours list) that only serious politics anoraks will catch nowadays. This is partly responsible for the UNIT dating controversy; by the mid-eighties, it seemed pretty clear the UNIT Era couldn't possibly have been 20 Minutes into the Future.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Even accepting the retcons and the wonky production values, many people trying to get into the Hartnell/Troughton era nowadays find it hard due to the rather questionable portrayals of race and gender in it.
  • Even allowing for some Deliberate Values Dissonance of the 'Victorian horror-adventure pulp' feel it's evoking, "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" itself reflects attitudes towards race that, while standard for '70s Britain, aged horrendously and stoked controversy in other countries right from the outset (to the extent where Canadian broadcasters refused to air it). In particular, Li H'sen Chang, a Chinese character, is played by a white actor in yellowface. Granted, Chang is otherwise depicted in a well-rounded and even sympathetic fashion, but even so.
• Values Resonance: "Vengeance on Varos", despite being made in The '80s, could almost be a parody on certain forms of modern reality TV, seeing as Varosian society (with televised Bread and Circuses entertainment and viewers voting if people live or die) almost seems to resemble Big Brother or The X Factor meets Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Alpha Centauri, an alien hermaphrodite, who has an obviously female voice and mannerisms but is usually referred to as "he". Apparently he was meant to be played like a gay civil servant.
• Viewer Name Confusion: In addition to the whole "show title = protagonist's name" assumption, some people think that the Doctor's actual name is "Doctor" or "The Doctor", when actually it's more of a title. Other people think his name is Theta Sigma, but that's just an Embarrassing Nickname he had at school. His real name is unknown, and it's said to be dangerous if a human were to find out.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:
  • The name of the Dalek species is pronounced in the show as "dah-leck." However, a sizable number of folks in the US and Canada mispronounce it any number of ways (e.g. reading the "a" like "apple" or "aphid" rather than "father") due to preexisting differences between British and North American dialects tripping them up. This is poked fun at in An Adventure in Space and Time, where Verity Lambert has to repeatedly correct series creator Sydney Newman's mispronunciations of "Dalek" (Newman was Canadian).
  • Davros's name is always pronounced in the show as "DAV-ross", but many North American fans pronounce it as "DAV-roce" or "DAHV-roce", reflecting a common difference between British and American accents in the pronunciation of words ending in "-os".
  • Clara Oswald's first name is pronounced "CLAH-ra", but North American viewers sometimes pronounce it as "CLAIRE-a", as that is how the name Clara is usually pronounced in North America.
  • In "The War Machines", the name of the evil computer WOTAN is pronounced as "VOE-tan", but many viewers pronounce it "WOE-tan" as spelt.
  • In "The Masque of Mandragora", the word "Mandragora" is clearly pronounced as "man-DRAG-uh-ra" throughtout the story, but many fans instead pronounce it as "man-dra-GORE-a".
• Villain Decay:
  • The Classic Series' Cybermen went from "no known weaknesses" to "gold dust interferes with their respiratory systems" to "holy crap, anything gold kills them dead". "The Five Doctors" and "Attack of the Cybermen" didn't utilise any gold weaknesses, but they were still quickly shot down in droves, including one who forgot it was immune to ordinary bullets. The trend has been reversed since "Rise of the Cybermen", the first Cyberman episode since the Sylvester McCoy era. Although the ones that appeared from 2006-2008 weren't from Mondas, a single Cyberman in "The Pandorica Opens" has more nasty tricks up its sleeve than they ever did in the classic episodes — including lasers, tranquilizer darts, Combat Tentacles and the ability to function separately as a body and a severed head when necessary. Three years later, "Nightmare in Silver" (described by Word of God as a "cross-breeding" of Cybus [the corporation that created the 2006-08 Cybermen] and Mondas tech, and in-story using some of the source code of the older Cybermen in its Cybermites) added Adaptive Ability and Super-Speed to their arsenal, while keeping a nod to the "body working separately from the head" seen in "The Pandorica Opens". Ironically, the episode also brought back a mild form of gold weakness.
  • The Master underwent some serious Villain Decay in his two stories opposite the Sixth Doctor, "The Mark of the Rani" and "The Ultimate Foe", in both of which he achieves very little and mostly acts as comic relief to the Doctor's conflict with a new Time Lord villain. (The fact that he isn't the title character in "The Ultimate Foe" sums it up.) This was fortunately reversed in his only Seventh Doctor story, "Survival", in which his desperation to escape a decaying planet makes him even more ruthless than usual and his sadism is played up considerably more than it had been for a long time. However, it was reversed quickly by the TV movie, where the Master's behaviour is outright ridiculous (his portrayal by Eric Roberts was also poorly received by many fans). And this was later reversed again in Utopia, when they got Derek Jacobi to play the Master while he was "Professor Yana", a kind old scientist trying to help humanity survive at the end of the universe. And when then he turned back into the Master, Jacobi's performance was nothing less than thrilling. Then John Simm came along and brought out the crazy in the Master, giving us an entirely new side to him. Later, they brought Michelle Gomez to play "Missy", a female incarnation of the Master, and subsequently took it up a notch in both craziness and hamminess. Sacha Dhawan would later continue amping up those two points for his version of the Master (albeit in a different direction).
  • The Slitheen were fairly menacing (if pretty goofy) in "Aliens of London", "World War Three" and "Boom Town" in Series One. By the third series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, they were quickly caught by their own "cousins".
• Vindicated by History:
  • "Pure historicals", stories set in historical periods with the presence of the TARDIS crew being the only science fiction element and usually dealing with questions like the morality of interfering with history, were considered by contemporary audiences to be dry and boring and got progressively more and more unpopular as the series progressed. Ratings tanked especially hard during "The Gunfighters", the story which all but killed the format. There has always been a minority calling for the return of this format, but today it is generally agreed upon that William Hartnell's pure historicals tend to be his best stories. They tend to have rather more mature and witty writing than the show's early attempts at science fiction, don't suffer from Special Effect Failure to the same extent, and have less Early Instalment Weirdness than many of the surrounding stories, despite the fact that being a historical is itself Early Instalment Weirdness. Pure historicals usually cited as amongst Hartnell's best include the rather mythologised Missing Episode "Marco Polo", "The Romans", "The Myth Makers", "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve", and "The Aztecs" (often given as a contender for his very best story). "The Crusade" and "The Reign of Terror" are less popular, but have more defenders than the contemporarily highly popular sci-fi serials "The Web Planet" and "The Chase". The only pure historical that is generally considered bad is "The Gunfighters", although that's a special case: 1) fan lore held that it was an awful story due to an especially damning write-up in the review book Doctor Who: A Celebration which was around before home video, so fandom took its opinion as gospel (although its loving write up in the later review book The Discontinuity Guide is eroding its reputation), and 2) it's a comedy and to some extent a Musical Episode, so was always going to be a divisive story. The two remaining pure historicals, "The Smugglers" and "The Highlanders" generally don't seem to attract too many opinions one way or the other due to them both having little-to-no surviving footage and being situated either side of two far more significant stories, though the latter is at least given credit for introducing Jamie.
  • Patrick Troughton's era actually resulted in the ratings decreasing after the popular Hartnell era, to the point that the series was facing cancellation by the end of his tenure and Jon Pertwee's era was a complete Retool. Troughton is now widely regarded as having had the most influence on the character of the Doctor than any other actor, and the fandom goes wild whenever one of his missing serials turns up.
  • Doctor Who has a lot of Missing Episodes which tend to get regarded as 'classics' simply because they can't be watched, but no-one really cared about "The Enemy of the World" - it's a bit of an Out-of-Genre Experience in that it's a spy story focusing on a human Diabolical Mastermind and with no monsters, and the recons made the story seem silly and difficult to follow (not helped by the fact that it's about a Criminal Doppelgänger and Impersonating the Evil Twin). Additionally, the only episode to survive in full was a comic-relief one with many deliberately-silly scenes. But when the whole thing was suddenly discovered in Nigeria, fans suddenly were able to see the surprisingly good action scenes in the first episode, and observe the character acting from Troughton that made the story make sense, and suddenly reappraised it as one of the best Troughton stories. DWM pointed out that in their top 200 stories poll of 2009 it was the 30th rated story of the '60s, but in 2014 it was the 10th rated.
  • "The Deadly Assassin", a Doctor Who storyline with no companions, a focus on alien politics, and with an awful lot of Family-Unfriendly Violence was viewed at the time as a failed experiment at best (the absence of The Watson made the plot much harder to follow than normal, and the execs said it was never to happen again no matter how much Tom Baker insisted that it worked) and tasteless and audience-inappropriate at worst (notoriously attracting so many complaints that the show was Re Tooled into a much less violent, more comedy-based series for most of the rest of his run). Fans nowadays tend to appreciate the attempt at trying something other than Monster of the Week, the more impressionistic and political tone, the especially brutal and exciting action, and in particular the Alternate Character Interpretation that the Doctor gets in the story; due to not having an ally to talk to, he comes off as a brooding, quiet, and much more mysterious character with a pinch of Spaghetti Western hero about him, a sharp contrast to his usual funniness and Obfuscating Stupidity. It's not a usual candidate for Baker's best serial (those would be "Genesis of the Daleks", "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", or "City of Death") but is often listed as a standout, must-see episode and a bit of a hipster favourite. Its reputation may go up further now that it's had a Spiritual Successor in the wildly-acclaimed modern-Who episode "Heaven Sent" (no companion aside from a mental construct the Doctor's using as a coping mechanism, extremely dark story involving a deadly adversary in an Eldritch Location, Family-Unfriendly Violence, the Doctor at his broodiest, etc.). Further vindicating it is this particular serial's very unique portrayal of the Master, to the point that this incarnation of him is widely regarded as a One-Episode Wonder for many fans. While this incarnation is not as popular as other incarnations, this one stands out for being at the most Omnicidal Maniac the character has ever been, complete Nightmare Fuel in both appearance and personality, and actually being a No-Nonsense Nemesis for once due to dropping his usual Friendly Enemy shtick and being Out of Continues. While this same incarnation technically shows up in a second serial, he is portrayed by a new actor and dialed back to be less scary (though certainly still much more frightening than his typical portrayals). Many fans look back on this episode with much more appreciation for that reason alone.
  • Season 16 has risen in the opinions of fans, with the consensus being that while it contains no true classics, it begins with one of the most solid runs (four good stories) in the series' history and that the overall "Key to Time" arc was at the very least an interesting attempt at something different, even if it did come to a severe Anti-Climax.
  • While the contemporary criticisms of Season 17 for being too silly remain agreed upon (although with some grudging admission that it was amazing they got anything on the screen at all with all the strikes, budget problems and lead actor mental health issues), "City of Death" was much hated by the fanbase when it aired for being too farcical and stupid. Nowadays, it's one of the most beloved Classic serials and frequently makes top ten lists. Steven Moffat is a huge fan, and 4chan's perennial Doctor Who discussion thread "/who/" even voted it the best Doctor Who TV story ever.
  • Colin Baker - often proclaimed "Worst Doctor Ever!" - made a great many fans come around with his outstanding performances in the Big Finish audios. Additionally, over time there has become a growing agreement in the idea that Colin Baker himself was not to blame for the show's problems, but rather the quality of the scripts as well as behind-the-scenes difficulties. The infamous rainbow coat is still much-maligned, but on the other hand, Vengeance on Varos and Revelation of the Daleks are now considered two great serials.
  • Bonnie Langford and the companion that she played, Mel Bush, were for years regarded in a very negative light, only remembered for her constant screaming and being perky and upbeat to the point of annoyance. Much like Baker, the Big Finish audios have done a lot to redeem her in the eyes of fans, and many also now agree that having a much more upbeat companion after Tegan and Peri (both of whom the Doctor tended to argue with a lot) was entirely the right decision, with Langford/Mel simply being unlucky that her run on the show happened to coincide with a period of major creative turmoil that didn't do her any justice.^note That and having half of her stories written at least in part by Pip and Jane Baker, another set of creators from this era of the show whose work has been re-evaluated in a much more positive light in the years since, but ones whose major weaknesses as writers are generally agreed to be in the departments of characterisation and dialogue, which unfortunately didn't do much to help define Mel as a character.
  • During the era of the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), Doctor Who received poor ratings and drew much criticism, resulting in it being put on hiatus for 15 years. The second and third seasons of that Doctor's tenure is now widely praised for its gritty realism, complex plotting, and return to a more mysterious portrayal of the Doctor. Even his first often gets some credit for sowing the seeds for the later renaissance.
  • Paul McGann. While many proclaimed him the worst Doctor for the TV Movie, a lot of people over time have decided he actually gave a great performance and was hardly at fault for the poorly-received script, and his many appearances in Big Finish have won him a lot of fans. "The Night of the Doctor", showing his regeneration and acknowledging his audio adventures as canon, has also helped.
  • To many fans who started watching at the point of the 2005 revival, and grew attached to Rose Tyler as the companion, Martha Jones was seen as a Replacement Scrappy, which wasn’t helped at all by the Doctor even treating her as this In-Universe by frequently comparing her to Rose in unflattering ways. After these fans became used to the show’s frequently-changing cast, and therefore more open to changes in companions, many look back on Martha much more fondly. She’s even seen as one of the most competent and intelligent companions that the Doctor has ever had, standing out from most of the revival series’ companions for saving the world by herself without requiring any special powers granted by the plot, along with leaving the Doctor on her own terms (while still continuing to fight alien threats on her own) without requiring some kind of tragedy to force her away from him. When fans rewatch her episodes now, they tend to think that the Doctor is being unfair to her and side with her over him whenever he makes unflattering comparisons to Rose.
• Wangst:
  • Tegan was always whining and complaining about something.
  • These moments were very common during Russell T Davies' run on the show, with the Tenth Doctor and Rose getting the worst of it.
• Watched It for the Representation:
  • The show saw considerable interest for the introduction of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, the first onscreen incarnation of the character in the series proper to be played by a woman, with a jump of 3 million viewers between the Twelfth Doctor's final story and the Thirteenth Doctor's first, from 7.92 million to 10.96 million.
  • Following the introduction of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor, the 2023 Christmas special The Church on Ruby Road became the highest rated winter holiday special for several years at 7.49 million, an increase of 3.1 million over 2022's New Year's special Eve of the Daleks, which got 4.40 million. Gatwa is the first Black British man to play the role and the first openly queer man to play the role.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show itself is considered family viewing, despite its dark tone of certain episodes and surprising amount of sexual innuendo and it is usually shown around the supper hour on a Saturday. Doctor Who is over sixty years old and neatly matches the second paragraph of this trope's description. It's very much seen as a family/children's show, but it's been violent from the very beginning. A BBC audience research survey conducted in 1972 found that Doctor Who was the most violent show it produced at the time. The show was especially violent during the first few Fourth Doctor seasons, consistently getting complaints, and the show was also so violent in 1985 that it got the show cancelled for 18 months. For instance, "The Brain Of Morbius" (1976) featured a man getting shot in the stomach with an explosion of blood, then crawling, dying, down a corridor.
  • Even the first few stories could be really dark. In the first story "An Unearthly Child" the Doctor is a quite morally ambiguous figure, and there were some surprisingly violent scenes, such as a Caveman covered in blood and a cave of broken skulls. "The Edge of Destruction" uses haunted house tropes and has Susan wildly stabbing a bed with scissors.
  • Also a number of classic and revival stories have been rated 12 by the BBFC.
  • A lot of stories from the '80s, thanks to writers and producers making the show Bloodier and Gorier. Attack of the Cyberman has a 15+ rating in Australia, but it was still shown at 6 o'clock at night.
  • Season 22 is notorious for this, showing someone having their hands crushed and showing several people being stabbed to death. This is lampshaded in "Vengeance on Varos".
  • John Simm stated that Doctor Who being a kids' show was the main reason why he decided to play as The Master (he wanted to show his son that he could act). Of course, the episodes he was in involved twisted monsters from the future wiping out a good portion of humanity, the Master being resurrected as a superpowered being who devours humans to satisfy his endless hunger, and turning the entire human population into copies of himself.
  • Show runner Steven Moffat has written about how annoyed and insulted he is whenever people use the phrase "kid's show" as a derogatory thing.
  • According to some critics, Chris Chibnall's run goes too much into the other direction, removing much of the Darker and Edgier elements of previous seasons and making the show feel much more like a full on Edutainment Show than a proper science fiction series.
  • Some reactions to it being shown on Disney XD involved this. Though BBC America markets the show to an older audience, Doctor Who is considered family viewing in the UK. (Even in the UK, the extent to which Doctor Who is family friendly is debated, especially later seasons.)
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • Pretty much every time they've shown up, there's some sort of political tie-in that can be debated with the Silurians. The old-series seemed to have a more Soviet/Communist slant to the reptilians, while the modern re-imagining almost mirrors conflicts between native peoples of a land and those who would come to settle on it.
  • The McCoy era has had several examples of this, some confirmed, some jossed. Word of God has specifically denied fan theories that the red, blue and yellow Kangs were a reference to the colours of the UK's three major political parties at the time.
  • In the Russell T Davies era, UNIT took a much more aggressive and morally questionable approach towards alien threats all in the name of "Homeworld Security". Notably the Brigadier is not impressed at this new mindset at all and says as much in The Sarah Jane Adventures:
    The Brigadier: Homeworld Security. That's the trouble with UNIT these days. Too many buzzwords, too many directives. At least in my day we maintained the benefits of common sense.
  • The Twelfth Doctor's "Independently angry eyebrows" may be a jab at the Scottish independence movement. Clara's mouth wanting to "go solo" might be taken as a second comment in that direction. Bits of one's face running off elsewhere is rather problematic.
  • "The Zygon Inversion": The Doctor's war speech at the end is unapologetically political, coming near the end of a storyline that directly references the concept of terrorism and refugees.
  • "The Husbands of River Song" includes a near-Big-Lipped Alligator Moment where the Doctor for no real reason begins to rant against the concept of the monarchy.
  • "Orphan 55" is infamous for the Doctor essentially lecturing her companions about the dangers of global warming. Especially as an episode the following month, Praxeus, also addressed environmental issues, namely plastic pollution, in what was considered a much better way.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Ratings sagged towards the end of the Second Doctor's tenure, to the point that the series faced cancellation. To compensate for the reduced budget whilst taking advantage of new technology, the first season of the Third Doctor's era had the Doctor stranded on Earth to avoid any unnecessarily expensive sets, working with UNIT to build a strong cast of supporting characters, and broadcast in full colour. It worked.
  • The ratings during the Fourth Doctor's last season (the first under John Nathan-Turner) were the lowest the series had seen since 1969. Ratings during the Fifth Doctor's first season were much higher, as the show got Darker and Edgier with slicker production values, the return of fan favourites like the Cybermen, and aimed for a more mature audience.
  • The 2005 reboot was a resounding triumph for the Britain's biggest sci-fi hero following the series' ignominious death back in 1989 and the failed pilot on Fox.
  • Following "Kill the Moon" proving to be incredibly polarising, Base Breaking and poorly received with a large portion of the audience, "Mummy on the Orient Express" was received with near universal admiration. To the point multiple fans have outright referenced this trope when talking about it.
  • After the polarising Series 8 (which was critically acclaimed and heavily criticized in equal measure), Series 9 did this with fans and critics alike, with many episodes attracting strong critical praise. Its Story Arc is thematic/conceptual (hybrids, consequences, the Doctor's lonely existence, Clara becoming his Distaff Counterpart), allowing for strong almost-standalone stories where most Series 8 episodes were bogged down by the Clara's double life/Danny Pink/Nethersphere arc. The return of the "multi-parter" format allowed plots and characters to be fleshed out better. The Twelfth Doctor's character also warms significantly; he is no longer has quite the cynical, misanthropic personality that some fans found rather jarring. Its overall critical reception was probably the best since Series 5.
  • Although Series 10's initially "back to basics", less continuity-dependent approach has caused fans of Series 9 to see it as a case of Tough Act to Follow, it also won back a chunk of viewers who didn't like the Twelfth Doctor — and especially the Twelve/Clara relationship — in Series 8 or 9, with some of them vocally wishing Twelve and new companion Bill Potts weren't getting just one season. And then, after the one-two punch of "Oxygen" and "Extremis" raised the dramatic and emotional stakes significantly, frustrated Series 9 fans were won back.
  • Series 12 has done this for several naysayers of the Whitaker era. Chibnall has raised the stakes from the standalone stories of Series 11 with continuity, deeper characterisation, and a sprawling Story Arc that contains more than a few Unexpected Characters that were not Spoiled by the Cast List.
  • For those who were not fans of the 13th Doctor era, the revelation that David Tennant was returning to play the 14th Doctor sent screams of delight throughout the fandom.

• WTH, Costuming Department?: The series runs into this sometimes, especially in the old series. Alien fashion or no alien fashion, some of those costumes were just plain hilarious. Usually it just adds to the show's Narm Charm.
  • "The Dominators" is known for having unusually bad costume design for the era. For the Dulcians, it consists mostly of curtains. The Dominators wear horrible fringe-covered plastic jumpsuits with massive foam collars and a lot of eyeliner.
  • In the same season, "The Seeds of Death" puts most of the human guest characters into absolutely hideous Space Clothes whose design around the hips makes them look like nappy fetishists.
  • The Doctor themself has often worn fairly ridiculous outfits. They generally get away with it, with the exception of the Sixth Doctor, whose costume is usually regarded as being too crazy and hideous for even the Doctor to pull off. Even Colin Baker realized this, arguing for a basic black ensemble for the Doctor to showcase his darker persona in this regeneration. He was overruled by John Nathan-Turner, who felt that the "Technicolor Timecoat" fit Six's "fractured personality". Judging from the other Time Lords, it seems to be a species trait.
  • John Nathan-Turner is particularly un-fondly remembered for his desire to give the Doctor Symbol Motif Clothing for Merchandise-Driven reasons. This led to Doctors from the time of the Fourth's burgundy outfit onwards to incorporate red question marks, usually on the shirt lapels and braces, though by the time of the Seventh Doctor they'd leaked out into a fair isle design on a Homemade Sweater from Hell and onto the handle of his umbrella.
  • The Third Doctor's plaid overmantel which simply does not go with any of his velvet jackets.
  • Some fans do not like the Thirteenth Doctor's outfit◊. The decision to give her trousers that are too short make her look like a child playing dress-up and highlight Jodie Whittaker's stature. Furthermore, the decision to give her a fanny pack is not only unfashionable, but redundant seeing as her pockets are supposed to be bottomless.
  • The Twelfth Doctor's polka dot shirt in "Kill the Moon". Thankfully he's in the Sanctuary base 6 suit for most of the episode.
  • "The Androids of Tara": The planet Tara gives new meaning to the phrase Planet of Hats, with the absurd royal crown, the spiked helmets, Romana's apparently fashionable giant purple hat, and above all, the Archimandrite's tall, sparkly, rainbow-coloured hat.
    • In Paul Cornell's sequel "The Trials of Tara" in Decalog 2: Lost Property, the Taran Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"? question is "[i]s the Archimandrite's hat not silly?"
  • Lalla Ward said later that the costume department let her wear pretty much whatever she wanted. This got her into a little bit of accidental embarrassment, as in "City of Death", she decided to wear a Victorian girls' school uniform, innocently unaware of the reaction that some adult male fanboys would have to it.
  • Castrovalvan leaders wear various silly plastic bucket hats. The Portrieve, their leader, is signified by a two-tiered silly plastic bucket hat.
  • Lampshaded to an extent in the episodes featuring the Eleventh Doctor — after proclaiming that "bowties are cool" and "fezzes are cool" in series five, the fandom embraced those statements and now the Doctor's penchant for ridiculous headgear is a running joke. This, however, is far more tame than most examples, as Eleven's base, nerd-chic outfit isn't bizarre.
  • The Time Lords' high-collared robes and ornate headpieces that appeared in any Gallifrey story from "The Deadly Assassin" onwards. In "The Deadly Assassin", these are explicitly supposed to be ceremonial garb, so the impracticality can be forgiven. However, later stories make them the standard everyday wear for Time Lords in a costume example of Flanderization.

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