Doctor Who

My opinion on series 2 is kind of related to my opinion on ten. There are some amazing standalone episodes and I have good memories of it, but I don't like the way the arc or the characters developed. A lot if it is due to the behind the scenes stuff being such a mess that series.

I feel the same way about series 4 too I think, there were some good episodes but it's hard to enjoy donna's character arc when it all gets thrown out the window for more ten angst at the end of the series.

For me, Series 2, 3, and 4 were mediocre at best. A lot of that goes to Ten, but even aside from that, the writing for a lot of these episodes left something to be desired. It didn't help that there was almost always something holding each season back. Season 2 could be a bit too goofy for its' own good, and the way Rose and Ten's relationship was handled and the way they enabled each other made you want to strangle them with a crowbar. Whereas with Series 4, the problem was twofold. On top of making Donna the best Nu Who companion up to that point only to metaphorically shoot her in the back, the episodes were often retreads of stories that had already been done to death ages ago. The Doctor's Daughter in particular was basically a Tom Baker episode with the only twist being, well, the Doctor's daughter. Series 3 was probally the best of them, but with Ten still being Ten, that can only go so far. (Not to mention the cop-out of a finale.)

I love Season 4 to bits and will defend it with my last breath. It contains some of my favorite episodes ("The Unicorn and the Wasp" is just fun throughout and "Turn Left" is one of the best episodes ever) and even episodes that I didn't love still have great moments in them ("I'm waving at fat!" from "Partners in Crime," "Forest of the Dead" has the excellent Donna subplot, even if I didn't like River Song at the time, and "Midnight" is still one of the scariest episodes of DW to date).

I will also defend the finale, but that's a whole other can of worms that nobody wants to open.

I didn't like any of the David Tennant specials, though. "The End of Time" was...just a mess. It has good moments in it, but overall is weirdly both overstuffed and undercooked? Like, I enjoyed the Master's return, but how he came back was...weird. And then suddenly he's a cannibal. And then suddenly he's not.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 8th 2018 at 7:37:10 AM

Ranking New Who Doctor eras and stating which is best and worst episode;

1. Tennant. Best: Midnight. Worst: Fear Her

2. Capaldi. Best: Heaven Sent. Worst: In the Forrest of the Night

3.Smith. Best: Vincent and the Doctor. Worst: The Doctor, the Widow and the the

Wardrobe

4.Eccleston. Best: Dalek. Worst: Boom Town

5. Whitaker. Best: Kerblam! Worst: Arachnids in the UK

DISCLAIMER: Whittaker episodes might change

Oh? I guess if I had to pick the best and worst episodes for different incarnations of the Doctor I'd go:

• 11 from Series 6 onwards: Best - "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS", Worst - It's kind of hard to choose. I want to give it to "Let's Kill Hitler" because that's what killed River's likablity but there are episodes that are so much worse. I can't decided.
• 12: Best - Either "Time Heist" or "Heaven Sent." Worst - "Robot of Sherwood"

Can't rank 13 because her first Series isn't even done yet. Likewise, while I've seen some of Ten's run I don't think I've seen enough to fairly judge it. I also, with the exception of "Heaven Sent", ignored two-parters and Christmas episodes because two-parters are hard to judge what with being made up of two episodes and Christmas episodes tend to not be that great in general so I didn't think it fair to judge them.

What strikes me about this is that for any episode of Doctor Who there exists at least one fan who appricates it, and at least one fan who dislikes it.

Yes, I know. For example: I dislike "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" immensely. Unlikable characters and a wasted premise all resulting in the Reset Button being hit hard. But still, I know it has its fans.

I also have a lot of love of In The Forest Of The Night, and Sleep No More despite being hated episodes.

I like the episode for Matt Smith's performance in it, and I like the idea of it as well. I also grew to like the monsters. What I didn't like is that this was the middle episode in a trilogy of episodes where the idea behind the monster was "let's impair your visibility of the monster, that's scary right? It's scary because you don't know what it is! Get it?" Three episodes of that in a row just gave me a gutful. Thank God for the Crimson Terror, the plot was a bit lame but A) the Doctor was in peril for once, and it was done in a pretty solid way, and B) the performance of the mother and daughter was brilliant.

Also, those brothers are unlikeable. Except the "android" one. But that scene at the TARDIS' reactor or whatever with the monsters, and then the cliff part, that was some of Matt Smith's best work in my opinion. Very emotive.

Anyway - clear of all that - I have a question. In one episode, I think Kerblam, Yaz mentions a childhood bully that messed her up for ages. The reason I think it's Kerblam is because I feel like she talks to Kira about it. I'm writing a story, and for this chapter I'm gonna mention the bully for consistency's sake - I'm writing about Yaz's past. Does anyone remember the name of that bully?

Last ditch effort will be to rewatch the episode, which certainly isn't a bad thing - but I thought I would put out feelers and see if there's anyone who might know the info on the platforms that I use. I've already checked the recap page, and the heartwarming/tearjerker pages.

For information that specific, your best bet is to check the episode transcripts themselves. It's a lot faster than rewatching an episode at any rate.

Just Google 'Doctor Who Transcripts', there's a couple good sites out there.

So... no thoughts on "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos"?

Felt more like the season finale to the Sarah Jane Adventures than Doctor Who

Why didn’t he just shrink down the Earth first? He wanted revenge and he clearly knew where it was. Also he looks like a Red Dwarf villain in this episode more than ever

My season ranking and best and worst episodes of this season are the same. Over all 1.5/5 for this season.

Edited by Archivist10 on Dec 9th 2018 at 11:00:03 AM

I mean it’s awkward to give an opinion when you know that the thread is going to devolve back into the exact same argument yet again any moment now.

Personally I found it a good episode, just didn’t feel like a season finale, more like a solid mid-point episode.

I quite enjoyed it.

Though it seems I am becoming less of a pacifist these days when I was almost rooting for Graham wanting to kill Tzim-Shah/"Tim Shaw". You know, this guy is really that much of a threat, the whole thing does seem like the heroic version of Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?

And the planets in glass cases? I almost thought they would be black holes!

It felt really weird to me that Graham would want to kill Tim Shaw , because for the past nine episodes he's been incredibly emotionally mature, especially about Grace's passing.

Maybe the combo of that fake Grace in the alternate universe and meeting Tim Shaw again kinda reared up some old wounds. You always think you are over something until it hits you again.

Graham was dealing with his grief well, but he was also never really over it.

Travelling with the Doctor made that easier for him, but not this time.

Overall opinion of the final episode: It was a bit flat, Tim Shaw was a weak villain who just kind of talks big but gets wiped out by an old man shooting him in the foot - though I personally welcomed the idea of him or other Stenza coming back into the show and I think it tries to go for the whole epic "final episode" theme but they put that into a regular-sized episode of Doctor Who. But I liked it even then, even if things would have been alleviated by having a two-parter with more stuff to see and do and a nice cliffhanger to establish the stakes.

I wouldn't say that this series was better than Moffat's best series, but it's certainly not as bad as his worst series. I think this ranks behind series 7 for me, but other than that it's one of the better series since RTD - because the episodes felt grounded and I liked the dialogue, and even with the occasional off episode I felt invested in each episode's conflict. I won't give it a number ranking, but I liked it a lot more than the previous seasons. It's finally sunk in - no more Moffat dialogue!

Also - I've been paying attention to the IMDB rankings, and Demons of the Punjab seems to have dropped a few points. I saw it recently and it was at like a 7.2 and now it's at around a 6.9.

Edited by MrMallard on Dec 10th 2018 at 4:28:32 AM

Kinda strange that they’ve decided to go on a hiatus throughout 2019

Felt kind of average. I didn't dislike it but I just don't care that much.

It did give Graham some good character stuff but Tim Shaw doesn't really feel interesting enough for a returning villain.

I think it was the worst season finalle on all of New Who. If feel like if RTD had decided to make WWIII the season finalle.

Also it probably doesnt reflect well on Chibnall than in the season with the first female Doctor only the men have story arcs and nons of the women do

My least favorite finale was The Time of the Doctor, because it was a season's worth of plot devices crammed into an hour long episode and it sure as hell felt like it.

It had its moments, "Love from Gallifrey, boys!" and such, but the episode glosses over so much and goes on these long "And so the Doctor led his army to battle on the fields of Trenzalore, etc. etc." tangents that just sort of bugged me. Just eat up a thousand years of the Doctor's life and tell us about all the cool parts, that'll go over well. That's the worst finale in my book, even with the moments that I rather liked - because I did rather like Matt Smith, and I thought his performance in this episode was stellar. There was a lot that I liked in this episode, actually. But that can only carry the episode so far when it becomes more and more apparent that the episode is running a marathon through these plot beats and leaving a ton of stuff out because of the necessitated running time.

I would call this finale the most underwhelming one in New Who so far - again, I think it needed a two-parter with a juicy cliffhanger to really thrive. But I can at least say that I found it to be a decent enough episode of the show at the end of the day, and personally I was happy to see Tim Shaw return. While The Time of the Doctor, IMO, is jeopardized from the get go by its attempt to cram a thousand years of the Doctor's life into an episode, and taking breaks to narrate these awesome moments that they couldn't show on screen, probably for budget reasons but also to set that heroic, storybook tone to frame the Eleventh Doctor's final moments.

With the New Year's Day special coming in like... 3 weeks? I'm hoping to see an adventure that makes up for this slightly rushed, low-stakes finale. But I'm cool either way.

Time of the Doctor Is without a doubt a mess, but it had some great emotional moments and some quiet moments where it let the melancholy just sink in. Battle though, geez just saying the world in danger isn’t enough for a season finale anymore in Doctor Who.

The RTD era and 11th Doctor went and kept building up the stakes so much that when Capaldi came around even Moffat knew he couldn’t raise the stakes so he made them more personal.

The Doctor making a stand against an army of Cybermen to save a few dozen people is technically smaller scale then Battle, but the fact that the Doctor is dying, he has basically no resources, his companion has been converted into a Cyberman and that the only people who could help him refuse to do so, makes the stakes much more personal.

It’s like the difference between the climaxes of Age of Ultron and Civil War. The former is larger scale but the latter is more personal and leaves a lasting scar and impact.

The scale in this season finale feels like a mid season two parter and the emotional hook, Graham’s revenge, is just more of a side thing instead of a main component of the plot. Frankly Chibnall should have killed Graham off, have him die choosing to save Ryan instead of killing Tim Shaw.

Then give Ryan a scene like this with Tim Shaw once the latter has been disarmed after killing Graham.

That would have made for an emotional finale that affected the status quo and affected the relationship of team TARDIS. Could even kick start a character arc of the Doctor becoming too overprotective of her companions since she won’t leave them behind, she already knows how well travelling alone goes.

Or even have Ryan kill Tim Shaw and this causes a rift in the rest of the group, where in a big fight Ryan makes a point that the Doctor not killing Tim Shaw when she had the chance makes her partially responsible for all the death he’s cause. The Doctor proceeds to kick ryan out of the TARDIS back on earth and Yaz tries to be devils advocate for the situation.

That way the character arc for the New Years special and next season could be confronting and fixing this rift

Edited by Archivist10 on Dec 10th 2018 at 10:16:22 AM

Tim Shaw would've been better if he never took off his helmet. He looks ridiculous.

This whole season so far has been just kinda meh. Not bad, but not exactly knocking my socks off. I enjoyed "The Witchfinders" the most.

Edited by Eagal on Dec 10th 2018 at 2:41:43 AM

My opinion of the final is that it's not the best episode of the season (Which I would give to either Women Who Fell to Earth or Demons of the Punjab) but it's not the worst either (Which I would give either Ghost Monument or Witchifnders, Kerblam's awful politics aside.). It was perfectly serviceable and if anything probably works best if you think of it and Women Who Fell to Earth as a two-parter.

So after seeing the finale I think if I had to rank the series I've seen to completion I'd go something like this from best to worst:

• Series 7B
• Series 11
• Series 10
• Series 9
• Series 6
• Series 7
• Series 8

Though that could change once the New Years special drops.

Edited by Chariot on Dec 10th 2018 at 5:55:35 AM