YMMV / Doctor Who S30 E14 "The Next Doctor"

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• Fanfic Fuel: Russell T Davies said that he would like to write a BBC Books novel, set in the midst of that brief scene where Jackson Lake is in the Doctor's TARDIS in which the Doctor takes Jackson to another planet, ending with the "no no no" scene before Jackson invites the Doctor to spend Christmas dinner with him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Before the twist is revealed, it appears this episode is about a future incarnation of the Doctor who doesn't remember his past incarnations. Come "Fugitive of the Judoon" in Series 12, it turns out that the Thirteenth Doctor is this for real.
• I Am Not Shazam: Strangely, the "Doctor Who" misconception rears its head in the closing credits, making this the only new series episode after Series 1 not to credit the actor playing the Doctor as "The Doctor".
• Narm: Miss Hartigan screaming extremely hammily as the Cybermen and she blow up is the most unintentionally hilarious moment in the entirety of the Tenth Doctor's run.
• Retroactive Recognition: The "Next" Doctor is actually the Governor.
• Special Effects Failure: The CyberKing looks like something out of a PlayStation 2 cutscene, even by the standards of 2008.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In a sense. Once Jackson's identity is revealed and there is no longer a mystery to solve, Jackson himself becomes nothing more than an incidental character, with most of the work in the climax being done by the regular Doctor as Jackson stands by as a witness. As Diamanda Hagan points out in her review, Jackson could have easily confronted the Cyber-King in his balloon, and the Doctor could then have stepped in to throw it into the Time Vortex.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Well, wasted may not be the word, but despite the brilliance of the twist here, the untwisted concept of this episode is still arresting: getting to meet a future Doctor before they make their actual debut through a multi-Doctor episode where, instead of past selves coming back, it's a future self coming to help the then-current Doctor. We technically got that with Peter Capaldi's cameo in "The Day of the Doctor", but first, that was only one episode before the actual regeneration, making it a bit moot, and second, it was a one-second thing that didn't even really show his face, rather than a whole episode's worth of interaction. This may have not happened if the episode hadn't falsely advertised the next Doctor and been upfront about its premise.

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