Billie Piper – The Strong Style Smark

Every Episode of Doctor Who Series 4 (2008 & 2009) Ranked

Series 4 is a bit of a strange one when it comes to grouping all the episodes in for a list like this, for the sole reason of the 2009 specials which some people group in with the rest of series 4 and others don’t. For the purpose of this list, I am because I don’t think ranking 4 episodes on their own would be very interesting and also because it brings us neatly to the close of David Tennant’s time as The Doctor and Russel T Davies’ time as head writer for the show.

I will probably write an article where I compare the head writer’s styles and what I do and don’t like about them at some point in the future, but in short I always thought Davies delivered a lot more consistent quality with his writing (I know there were many writers but Davies would often have a large hand in episodes written by others). Similarly, I think Tennant was one of the best at immersing himself in the role of The Doctor on screen, it’s no coincidence that when you mention Doctor Who, Tennant is often the first image in people’s minds.

NOTE: These Doctor Who posts are going become slightly less frequent from now on, I’m still aiming for one a month but I will likely miss that target as I’m getting busier as university starts up again this month and I don’t have as much time to rewatch all the episodes.

So let’s take a dive into the final series of this era of the show as I rank every episode from Doctor Who series 4.

15 – The Next Doctor

This is a tricky one to explain because like most Doctor Who episodes I quite like the ideas it puts forth, but the execution completely falls flat for me.

First things first, David Morrissey does a great job in this episode, the role he was given was quite complex, starting off as The Doctor and moving into a more human and vulnerable character as the episode moved on, but I think he did a great job here. He had the posture and booming voice to bring back memories of some of the classic era Doctors while maintaining that hint of fun that’s necessary for The Doctor in the modern era, I don’t think he could’ve carried a series as The Doctor, but in this one-off role, I think it was great.

Where this episode falls down for me is the story. For one thing, the Cybermen were completely unnecessary outside of drawing in the viewers because they served almost no purpose to the story that any other generic villain could’ve done (which is quite representative of the Cybermen as a whole during the modern era, but that’s neither here nor there). The Cybershades were a nice twist on the idea but awfully implemented given that they served absolutely no purpose to the plot at all, their presence was never given a second thought and we’ve never seen them since.

Finally, there’s Miss Hartigan, who is a really great villain in completely the wrong story to actually leave an impact. If she was in an episode in the middle of a series with real stakes outside of a lighthearted Christmas episode then I honestly think she could’ve gone down as one of the best one-off villains of the modern era, but she just felt out of place in this story more than anything. It didn’t make a great deal of sense as to why the Cybermen needed her for their plan in the first place, but then come the end of the episode she’s suddenly able to overcome the Cybermen’s emotionless programming which is something that happens way too much and makes the Cybermen look extraordinarily weak.

Ultimately this was an episode that didn’t play to any of Davies’ strength as a writer and it didn’t even have the usual level of fun that redeems the Christmas episodes from being total trash.

14 – The Doctor’s Daughter

In this instance, I don’t actually think the ideas were all that good.

I will say it was very clever to bring in The Doctor’s “daughter” on a technicality, not to mention a technicality that actually made sense and I’m willing to accept is a reasonable explanation. My main problem with this episode is that the characters get no development that’s worthwhile. One of the things that is endlessly entertaining in this episode is the banter between Donna and The Doctor, you can put those two characters in almost any situation, leave them to chat and it will be endlessly entertaining to listen to them go back and forth, but there’s almost none of that in this episode.

Secondly, I don’t think Georgia Moffett did a very convincing job in the role. Her performance always falls flat for me when I rewatch this episode, none of her dialogue is said with any conviction and most of her movements feel more awkward than like a soldier. If it felt like she was trying to play up the idea of a being that had only existed a couple hours was learning how to live, but instead it felt like someone trying to replicate natural human dialogue and failing.

In addition to this, Martha’s presence was completely pointless, she gave us a reason to see the Hath’s perspective through the tunnels but that was pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things. After a short while, we abandoned the main group of Hath anyway and the one that did stick with Martha was killed off fairly unceremoniously regardless so her being in the episode ended up being quite superfluous.

The one saving grace of this episode is the twist of how long the war between the humans and the Hath had actually been going on for. The idea that so many generations had been created and died in such a short time that a war that’s only been happening for a week can be misconstrued as years is absolutely genius and was telegraphed in just the right way to stop it feeling obvious while still drawing attention to it throughout.

Unfortunately, that one twist is not able to save the rest of this episode from being thoroughly unentertaining to watch, with actors that didn’t fit their roles, others that did fit but were pointless to the episode and a central plot that couldn’t carry the sheer volume of characters it had to deal with.

13 – Planet of the Dead

If you keep talking about how great a team The Doctor and a one-off companion would be, the more obvious it is that they have no chemistry at all.

I know there are some fans that have a soft spot for Lady Christina but I was not feeling her at all in this episode and I think the main reason for that is her complete lack of chemistry with Tennant. I quite like the idea of a companion that is fundamentally at odds with what The Doctor stands for – which is what makes Missy such a great character in later seasons – but it’s a kind of character that needs a whole season to grow and change, not 45 minutes.

In addition to Christina there was a cast of secondary characters that were entirely pointless because aside from the fact that the performances made them come across more annoying than anything else, they didn’t add any stakes. While I’m a big fan of The Doctor having a cast of secondary characters to save, once the big threat of the…stingray things were revealed, the small personal stakes of getting home to friends and family no longer mattered because their lives were on the line.

As far as I’m concerned, Tennant is the thing that saves this episode from being a total write off. While there isn’t much of a dynamic between himself and Michelle Ryan’s Christina, Tennant fills out his side of it as well as he possibly can, in particular being a great comedic foil when it came to Christina’s schemes. Unfortunately, that is pretty much it as I didn’t find much else to enjoy when watching this one back.

12 – Planet of the Ood

Since their first appearance in Series 2, the Ood have become quite a strange race in the Doctor Who universe because they just keep popping up everywhere, despite never actually being the focus of the episode, with this being the lone exception; and if I’m being honest, it proves why they shouldn’t bother.

I think the Ood would’ve benefitted from being a race that we never knew much about, it would create a better aura around them every time they showed up in the background of another episode. As always there are still some elements about this that I liked, such as all of the emotions of the Ood mind coming out in different and strange Ood behaviours, I just don’t think that the Ood as we know them were a very convincing race for this kind of story.

As we saw in The Impossible Planet/Satan Pit, the Ood are at their scariest when they’re slow and menacing, their expressionless faces make for a terrifying monster that just walks right at you and kills you if you get too close. So it wasn’t all that effective when some of them went rabid, partly because it’s to opposite of what we’ve seen of them up until now, but also their mode of attack seemed so stupid, it looked like they tried to maul people, but their mouth is full of tentacles, so how does that hurt anyone?

There were a handful of things to enjoy in this episode though, The Doctor and Donna have as good banter as they always do and although the characters in the corporation aren’t anything different from what we see in any story of this ilk, they were well performed and added as much as they could to the plot.

Ultimately, I can’t say that I dislike Planet of the Ood too much because the good points do shine through fairly consistently, but as a story about the Ood, it didn’t land for me.

11 – Voyage of the Damned

It’s another Christmas episode that’s perfectly fine, but nothing special as most of them are.

I’ve never understood this, how did the Titanic crash into the TARDIS? How did The Doctor fix it instantly and why does NO-ONE ever bring it up? I know it was just designed as the teaser for the Christmas episode, but it’s never addressed and I find it very weird.

Nitpicks like that aside, I don’t have a great deal to pick apart with this episode, as I’ve said before the Christmas episodes are almost always inoffensive fun and this isn’t much different. I liked the disaster movie style setup since it made for a nice and steady pace throughout and as always gave us a chance to get to grips with each of the characters in our party of survivors, which is one of the biggest strengths of the format.

The threat of the episode is really good right up until the end. The Heavenly Host are good in their role and while they would’ve been crap as the main danger, they are a great fit in the role of “temporary roadblock” for our main party. Where the episode, unfortunately, falls down is in that the big bad guy of the whole thing is extremely underwhelming and incredibly boring. Nevermind the fact that the whole thing was essentially one big insurance scam, which just isn’t interesting to talk about, but the performance is really over the top and way too cheesy, even for a Christmas episode.

Astrid was far and away the best part of the episode though, Kylie Minogue does a great job in the role and is the best character for grounding everything emotionally between The Doctor’s epic speeches and all the explosions. I think we all knew going in that Astrid wasn’t going to be travelling with The Doctor anytime soon, but I certainly didn’t expect her to die like she did and even though there’s only so much emotional attachment you can have to a character that was introduced an hour ago, the sense of sadness definitely lands like it was supposed to.

As I’ve said, this episode is perfectly fine, the plot isn’t anything overly clever but it’s enjoyable enough for a re-watch and my main complaint with the episode isn’t even a factor in it for the majority of the running time, so I think it’s a good effort.

10 – The Unicorn and the Wasp

It can be argued with this episode that the plot and characters could be quite weak at times throughout and while I agree with some of those criticisms, I think this episode is so much fun that I don’t care.

This episode does suffer a few of the problems that many of the other historical figure episodes do such as The Doctor fawning over Agatha Christie a bit too much and the villain is a bit contrived in order to have significance to Christie’s books. However, when it comes to a Doctor Who murder mystery, I certainly can’t say I’d have done it much differently.

All of the characters had enough personality and backstory to carry the out the mystery and although the culprit was fairly obvious if you were paying attention at the start, a decent effort was made of obscuring it throughout the episode. What carried this episode though is the dynamic between The Doctor, Donna and Agatha, watching these two run around the house chasing the wasp while bouncing off each other in the best way as they solve the mystery is so much fun to watch that I don’t care the plot isn’t all that robust.

Agatha herself is great in this episode, which is quite crucial when the episode tends to live and die on how much we like her. She has this raw scepticism about everything that grounds The Doctor as he bounces off the walls talking about space wasps, I get the feeling from her that she wants to believe what The Doctor says and can’t see any real reason to distrust him, but at the same time, she just can’t accept it.

On top of all that, this episode has some of the funniest moments in Tennant’s era as The Doctor, mostly thanks to his rapport with Donna. The highlights for me was Donna attempting to speak high-class 1920s English and the entire sequence where The Doctor is trying to expel the cyanide from his body. That second scene in particular always cracks me up, it had the potential to be way too cheesy but listening to The Doctor and Donna yelling at each other is hilarious and I always lose it at the line “HOW IS HARVEY WALLBANGER ONE WORD?!” Something about his face and delivery cracks me up every time.

This is an episode that’s never going to be considered among the best, but for light entertainment to occupy you for 45 minutes, I think it’s a good time.

9 – The End of Time

I really want to like this one more, I really do but there are so many problems I have with it.

Let’s talk about the good first. As a goodbye for both Tennant and Davies, I think it was fitting. The plot was big and mad which is what Davies has always loved doing and the pacing of the episode meant we got to see every side of Tennant’s personality in his role as The Doctor, so while I have my complaints, I think it was a fitting episode to go out on.

The biggest highlight of the episode, however – and honestly the main reason this episode landed this high – is Wilfred Mott because that man is easily my favourite companion The Doctor’s ever had. Bernard Cribbins is such a wonderful actor and he completely understood this part through and through. He’d had some stand out moments in other episodes this series, but here id where he does his best work and creates some of the most emotional scenes in show history.

I can’t help but choke up when I think about the scene on the Vinvocci spaceship as he switches so seamlessly between laughing with joy about being in space and seeing the Earth, to sitting down and talking about his late wife and wondering whether The Master had changed her in her grave. Then that scene comes to one of the most touching moments I’ve ever seen as Wilf begs The Doctor to take the gun; it’s impossible for me not to cry a little as Wilf breaks down mid-way through that last line about how wonderful he thinks The Doctor is.

I think that’s why Wilf is such a brilliant character. Not just because of how joyous and wonderful of a person he is, but because we see his elation at finally being shown the world. He’s an old man who believes he’s seen and done it all, that’s why he star gazes and looks for aliens because he wants to see something new and when The Doctor comes along and shows him a whole new world he never even dreamt of, you get the sense that he’s eternally grateful to The Doctor, forming such a strong bond in such a short length of time.

…ok so that was a lot longer talking about Wilf than I’d intended, but I don’t regret it.

A couple of minor points in this episodes favour are, The scene between The Master and The Doctor in the scrapyard; “I don’t wanna go” because it was delivered to perfection; The payoff to the “four knocks” prophesy was heartbreakingly brilliant and Timothy Dalton…just…Timothy Dalton.

Moving onto my problems with the episode, most of them come at the hands of how The Master was treated here. I don’t mind the way in which he came back or even the lightning powers, I just don’t feel like he acted like The Master for most of it. Outside of that one scrapyard scene, it didn’t feel like the villain role in this episode could only be filled by The Master, I think it could’ve been someone newly introduced in that episode and it would’ve worked just the same.

Although I’m never the biggest fan of involving Galifrey in modern Doctor Who stories, I think this is the best it’s been done in the modern era of the show. As I mentioned above Dalton played Rassilon to perfection and it was presented more as this intangible threat rather than an actual place to get involved heavily in the story.

My biggest issue though is that The Doctor becomes more of an action hero towards the end, which isn’t what The Doctor’s about. I don’t want to see him dramatically steering a spaceship away from missiles or dropping hundreds of feet through a glass ceiling with a gun, that’s not The Doctor. It’s pretty brief admittedly, but it takes so much away from the climax of the episode for me that The Doctor doesn’t even try to come up with another way until he sees the face of a mysterious woman (who has been unofficially confirmed by Davies as the Doctor’s mother).

The goodbye tour was something that is generally controversial, but I didn’t have a problem with it, it was the end of an era for the show and I liked giving everyone a little sendoff (although I’m not big of Martha & Mickey getting married, I liked Tom Milligan).

When push comes to shove, I thought this episode worked for Tennant’s finale, but when I break it down from the perspective with which I break down every other episode, there are a lot of things that just miss the mark for me.

8 – The Waters of Mars

This one gets a slightly different treatment to the rest of the episodes because I’m writing this straight after rewatching it. This was the first time I’ve watched this episode since about 2010, so I was never able to see what it was going for on the deeper level here, and more importantly whether or not it worked.

The Waters of Mars presents us with an idea that at its core is brilliant, it was explored in the Fires of Pompeii a little bit, but it took a different angle to it than this episode. The idea of The Doctor messing with fixed points in time is something that at the face of it sounds terrible, a sci-fi show breaking its own rules is usually a recipe for disaster, but this takes such a great angle to look at it.

Pompeii is easy, it’s hundreds of faceless people, who we don’t know and have never known, sure they go down in history, but as a collective, not independently. Here we have a base of just a handful of people, who all have names and lives that we know about, it faces the audience with that deep moral battle to which there is perhaps no right answer. The Doctor can’t stand to let people die, but he has to because the event is fixed.

But what would happen if he did save them?

This episode shows us, what happens when The Doctor breaks his own rules and changes a fixed point in time. Ignoring the inconsistencies with how that was treated in later series because it wouldn’t be fair, ultimately nothing of consequence actually happens. The history of the human race doesn’t change, just a couple of the minor details, so is the episode instead telling us The Doctor was right?

This brings me to my exact problem with this episode, and what I think ruined this idea that could’ve been absolute gold. It was simply contained to a single 45-minute story, and even then only the last 15 minutes or so are actually about this. The idea of The Doctor’s grief over losing absolutely everyone is something that never gets explored to its full potential, and that moment when he finally snaps and decides to save them doesn’t feel earned because of it.

I’ve read A Writer’s Tale and I understand that Davies wasn’t thinking about anything like this very far ahead of actually writing it, but if we’d have had an entire series where we saw The Doctor’s pain and despair build up slowly over episode after episode, then seeing him suddenly mentally snap like this in The Waters of Mars would’ve felt like the natural climax of the story, and I think it would’ve been absolutely incredible. Instead, we had him suddenly completely change his mind on what he believed (although I must say, that long drawn out scene, where he is walking away while listening to everyone die, was wonderful in an absolutely dark way), only for him to do a 180 back 10 minutes later when something about his plan goes wrong.

What frustrates me so much more though is that his actions have almost no consequences, The Master comes back sure, but that would’ve happened regardless of whether he’d changed the fixed point or not. Imagine how amazing The End of Time could’ve been if it was about the consequences of The Doctor making this massive blunder, with the Time Lords coming back, not only to escape the Time War but to punish The Doctor for his actions.

With no build, and no real pay off the entire thing just seems so pointless, which is so immensely frustrating to me because like I said at the start, the core of the idea is utterly amazing. Just imagine how iconic that very last moment of The Waters of Mars – where The Doctor simply proclaims “No” before it smash-cuts to the credits – could’ve been if it had been built to over a whole year of storytelling, leading into the biggest cliffhanger in show history up until that point.

Right in the middle of the list feels like the only place I can put this episode because its ideas are without equal, but the execution left me so frustrated at what could’ve been.

7 – The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky

In all honesty, I didn’t expect this one to land this high when I was originally putting this list together, but actually, there’s a lot of stuff to like here.

Starting off with what I didn’t like though, Martha’s inclusion in this episode seemed a little pointless. Much like the Doctor’s Daughter, it didn’t really seem like she served any real purpose to the story other than bringing The Doctor to the situation in the first place followed by a quick exposition dump, which is probably why she got taken out of action for such a large chunk of it.

That’s more or less it when it comes to my major complaints though, all of the secondary characters are well written, with the UNIT officers being largely unlikable, which is generally their point while we also got to touch base with one of the soldiers on the ground in the form of Ross, which I think was a nice perspective to get and show the human side of big armies like this.

The concept of evil Satnav is also something great, it’s one of those ideas that just work both on paper and when put into action; the idea that something could just take control of your car and drive you into a river is genuinely scary because of how close to home it is. While I’ve never been a great lover of the Sontarans as villains, they’re handled about as well as they could be here. Unlike so many villains in Doctor Who they feel like they have a real personality behind them beyond a gimmick and it makes them fun to watch on screen.

There honestly isn’t much to complain about here, the only reason it’s not higher is that as much as it’s mostly good stuff, nothing blew me away or took the episode to that next level it was just a solid episode.

6 – The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End

As where the previous entry was solid the whole way through, this one is much more on the binaries, there are some things that I absolutely love and others that I can’t stand, although it averages out to an above-average episode.

In a weird twist, my biggest complaint in the episode is Tennant himself. He’s his usual self for most of The Stolen Earth but in the final act he just loses something in his performance for me and that carries over into Journey’s End. He still sits in the role well, but a lot of his dialogue comes out more unconvincing than usual and his chemistry with Billie Piper is absolutely gone. On top of that, he has to play the meta-crisis Doctor too who is easily the worst written character in this whole episode.

The meta-crisis Doctor as a concept is fine, I know many people see it as contrived and simply a way for Rose to have her own Doctor, but I disagree with that sentiment; it’s a crucial point in Donna’s story as well and served as a brief spot of introspection for The Doctor himself towards the end of the episode (although that was a thread that wasn’t pulled very far). My problem is that as a personality there was absolutely no spark which made him unenjoyable to watch. I got the impression that he supposed to be this weird in-between of Tennant’s Doctor and Donna, but instead, he just seemed to flip widely between the two with no rhyme or reason and Tennant utterly failed at convincingly performing the “Donna” side of the character.

There were plenty of positives with this story though, so let’s discuss those.

The biggest one is just about every other character in the episode performed their roles to perfection. Donna’s character leaned much more heavily on the soft emotional side of her character for this episode and it played so well, especially following a whole series of seeing her joking about. Praising everyone else individually would take too many words but all of the returning companions did a fantastic job and yes, their presence didn’t largely affect the story, but that wasn’t the point this time around this was the last chance we had to get all of these characters together for one big celebration of the era of Doctor Who and that’s exactly what it ended up being.

Although The Dalek army wasn’t very threatening as a villain they were exactly what the episode needed as they brought that grand scale a finale like this requires and Julian Bleach’s performance as the returning Davros was absolutely perfect.

Finally, there’s the absolutely iconic moment of Donna’s goodbye because that whole sequence is utterly heartbreaking in the best possible way. The conversation where Donna’s mind began to fail her, Tennant’s tragic expression as he went against the wishes of Donna who was literally begging him not to erase her memory and poor Wilf’s expression as he saw The Doctor cradling Donna is his arms (seriously, Cribbins’ delivery of the “Donna?” line makes me cry every time I watch it).

Ultimately, this was a fantastic episode dragged down in some key areas. If it wasn’t for those problems this could easily be a top 3-level episode but as it stands it’s an enjoyable episode with some fantastic moments and a couple of problems.

5 – The Fires of Pompeii

You know, that Peter Capaldi guy was really good in this episode…I wonder if they’ll ever get him back on the show for something?

This is one of those episodes that mostly remembered for one key scene and while that admittedly is mostly why I like it so much too, there’s a whole bunch of other great stuff in here too.

Watching Donna’s first real trip in the TARDIS is great because she bucks so many of the trends that most other companions went through. Donna is easily the most fully-formed companion when it comes to her character and in this episode, every aspect of her personality shines through in the best light. We see her fun-loving side at the start as she tries to speak actual Latin to see what would happen with the TARDIS translation matrix, which is a question I never knew I wanted the answer to until I got it. We also get a good sense of the dynamic between The Doctor and Donna as she constantly refuses to bend to The Doctor’s authority because she refuses to be seen as The Doctor’s subordinate, she’s his equal and she’ll make sure he knows it.

What really brings this episode to life though his her caring side. She has this almost maternal instinct with almost everyone she meets, especially Evelina who she immediately gravitates towards. Then, of course, there’s her determination to save the people who live in Pompeii as the volcano erupts and her sheer horror as The Doctor refuses to do anything about it. This leads us to the scene in the TARDIS where Donna pleads with The Doctor to just save someone, as she reminds him of what makes him better than his enemies, that he saves people; not everyone and not all the time, but always someone.

This angle could’ve been quite the big step so early on in Donna’s time in the TARDIS, but James Moran really stuck the landing when it came to the writing in this one to give us a perfect view of every aspect of Donna’s character going forward, managing to flesh her personality out almost entirely in a single episode.

4 – Partners in Crime

Fires of Pompeii was an episode that focused on Donna as a person, but as the series opener, the main focus on this episode was re-establishing the rapport between The Doctor and Donna.

The entirety of the first act is great stuff and watching both Donna and The Doctor independently investigating the Adipose Industries and doing pretty much the exact same things is really fun to watch and also immediately shows us how big of an impact The Doctor had on Donna’s life. On top of that, the fact that they constantly miss each other by literal inches at times is absolutely hilarious and you can call it cheesy all you want, but the scene where they’re miming to each other while Miss Foster is interrogating Penny Carter never ceases to entertain me.

Miss Foster herself is quite a good villain, especially for the first episode in the series. Her general demeanour is very domineering and she has this way of talking that’s surprisingly threatening. The Adipose themselves are a perfect fit for a one-off monster and there’s this sense of tragedy to them since they’re just children who have no say over what’s going on, but their very birth is killing people and that fact is seen in people’s reaction to seeing thousands of them walking the streets, people aren’t running away scared they’re just staring, not entirely sure what to make of them.

The one thing I’m not a fan of is the solution to the episode and the character’s reaction to it. They stopped the people transforming pretty quickly (so quickly it barely seemed like a threat in the first place), but several people still died and no-one seems to care. Moreover, as much as The Doctor tries to save Miss Foster, when she gets dropped The Doctor doesn’t seem that upset about it, he just gives this look that to me says “oh well” which is not how I’d expect The Doctor to react in that situation, he should’ve been furious at the Adipose parents for murdering her like that.

However, that issue isn’t a major one in the grand scheme of things because it’s not the point of the episode. The point of this episode was to get us into the groove of The Doctor and Donna being best friends and having adventures together and that is something it absolutely succeeded at.

3 – Turn Left

What’s most impressive about this episode is that it takes a wholey unoriginal concept and manages to work wonders with it.

Davies did a great job here of looking through and seeing what actually would’ve happened over the events of the previous two series without The Doctor’s involvement and is able to use previous allies of The Doctor offscreen effectively to add emotional impact to their deaths and to explain away the times when the world would’ve ended because of the lack of The Doctor’s presence.

Most of the episode focused on Donna and this was absolute to its benefit because as I’ve mentioned Catherine Tate is brilliant in the role and Donna herself is a great character. It’s clear she hasn’t gone through the same development that her adventures with The Doctor would have given her, but all of the aspects we expect to make up Donna are still there, just the emphasis is slightly shifted to be a bit less caring and a bit sassier.

The episode also does a great job of showing us a very believable version of modern Britain as a dystopia after London was destroyed. The way there are so many people crowded into a single house and the sheer humanness of it all really brings the idea of it close to home, followed up by the foreign family that Donna and her family have been living with being taken away to what’s implied to be internment camps is absolutely heartbreaking, a moment made by Wilf’s reactions to the scene and Donna’s breakdown as she chases the truck demanding to know where they’re being taken.

The last act of the episode also serves as a good context for The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End as that episode could’ve been bogged down with a lot os exposition if it wasn’t cleverly weaved into this one. Billie Piper is just as good in this episode as she always was as Rose, although she does suffer a little from not having Tennant to bounce off of. Finally, there’s the solution to the episode which is another great moment as Donna realises the only way to change her mind is to throw herself in front of a truck and cause a traffic jam.

It would be easy to write off Turn Left as just setting up the finale that came right after it, but there’s so much squeezed into this one that makes it a brilliant episode in its own right.

2 – Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

Don’t get me wrong I’m going to be making plenty of complaints about Steven Moffat’s writing in future lists, but every episode he wrote in the Davies era made the top two of their respective lists, so there’s a reason he took over as head writer.

There’s so much to unpack in this story since there a number of factors from following seasons that this episode is partly responsible for, not to mention both of the episodes in this two-parter feel very different from one another. One of the things Moffat is best at is setting up mysteries, maybe not always paying them off (although he is in this story) but the set up is almost always brilliant and there’s plenty of examples across this entire episode.

Silence in the Library is more or less entirely dedicated to setting up these mysteries as we get fed so much information that puts all of the pieces in place to be revealed in Forest of the Dead. The “4022 People saved, no survivors” is such a brilliant paradox that I didn’t see the solution to until it came out and it didn’t feel like a cop-out either; but the big mystery that gets set up here is River Song.

The idea of The Doctor meeting someone from his future was always ripe for the picking, but somewhat impractical to execute with how TV is produced – that’s why we never see episodes like Day of The Doctor from the younger Doctor’s perspective – however this was a brilliant way to set it up because I always felt very heavily that River was someone extremely important to The Doctor’s life and her heartbreak, when she realizes that he’s never met her before, is so real. Not only that but the whole thing becomes even more hard-hitting and emotional when you rewatch it already knowing how her story plays out, especially her death scene and The Doctor saving her which always gets a tear or two out of me.

In addition to this, the Vashta Nerada are a brilliant villain because of how inconceivable they are. Not only are they invisible, but the way they act and move is completely unknown to us, then there’s the added fear of “not every shadow, but ANY shadow” which somehow makes it even more terrifying. That’s not even mentioning the fact that it’s a shadow, something which is almost impossible to avoid, especially in a big built-up area.

One of my favourite ideas from this episode is Donna’s life inside the library’s data core, the weird way in which time jumps forward to skip the boring bits and how it’s clear something feels wrong, but you’re not sure what. We see Donna making a life for herself and as much as we know it’s a good thing that she’s being pulled out by The Doctor that tragedy of her losing her children and husband is still very real.

Outside of that, The Doctor’s side of the adventure is quite the thrill ride as they run from place to place trying to avoid any shadow they come across. It also gave us the first real instance of The Doctor lording himself over the villain in a trope that would eventually become overplayed but here I loved it. The simplicity of the “Look me up” line sends chills down my spine.

The only real complaint I can think of is that the secondary cast, other than River Song, was quite lacklustre as characters, generally just serving as fodder for the monsters to show how threatening they are and the one that survives only does so because he’s needed for exposition.

That’s a relatively minor complaint though because this episode is absolutely great to rewatch, everything Moffat was attempting in this episode really came together to make something I thoroughly enjoy watching.

1 – Midnight

Perhaps the only episode of Doctor Who I’ve ever seen that I can honestly describe as flawless.

It’s an episode based entirely in a single place, with a bunch of character’s we’ve never met and a monster we never discover anything about, we don’t even see the TARDIS at any point and yet every single element comes together to create an experience that is unlike anything else the show has ever produced.

What carries this whole episode is the secondary characters, of which there are a lot, but they all feel like fully formed people and Davies achieves this in the space of the opening 15 minutes as we see them board the shuttle bus and immediately get to grips with everything we’re going to need to know about them as we get to watch The Doctor go around and talk to each of them and make friends with all of them as The Doctor does.

Knowing these secondary characters so in-depth is crucial for making the episode what it is because after getting time to grow to like every single one of them, we get to see each of them completely break down and fail to be true to themselves as this unknown horror terrifies them to the point of madness. The writing in this episode shows a clear understand of exactly how people react in a crisis, especially those with no experience in those situations and you can easily sympathise with everything they do because you know that you would do the same. If some unknown creature possessed someone in front of me and there was one guy taking complete control and actin like this was normal for him, I’d be very suspicious of him as well, especially with my mind warped by fear of what’s happening.

The monster is also absolutely terrifying for a multitude of reasons. First of all, we never find out anything about it, what it is, what it wants, why it possesses people, any of it; all we’re ever told about it is that it’s living in a place where no living thing should be able to survive. Then there’s the copying thing, which is inherently creepy but it’s even more terrifying for The Doctor, who’s greatest weapon is his words and now they’re being weaponised against him.

The situation gets all the scarier as it possesses The Doctor because again, we have no idea why any of it’s happening. Why did it lock on to The Doctor? How did it lock onto The Doctor? and what is it planning to do now it’s in a body that can freely move? We just don’t know and we’ll never know which puts us in the exact same state as the terrified passengers who completely brake and decide to throw The Doctor out. The hostess feels like such a hero when she finally realizes what’s going on because she was the only person who was able to rise above the fear and primal instincts inside of her to save everyone, especially after being shouted at and branded as useless by many of the other passengers and death made all the more tragic when The Doctor asks simply “What was her name?” only to discover no-one knew.

This episode was a creative risk to take because if any one of the key factors had been any less than perfect it could’ve brought everything else tumbling down with it, but Davies absolutely nailed every single aspect in this episode to make one of my favourite ever episodes of the show.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, make sure to let me know what you thought of the series in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Make sure you drop back here next weekend for my coverage of WWE Clash of Champions 2019!

Every Episode of Doctor Who Series 2 (2006) Ranked

Series 2 is an interesting one because it’s got episodes from all ends of the spectrum. While Series 1 didn’t have any episodes I hated, series 2 has a whole bunch of them, but it isn’t short of the usual brilliance either.

David Tennant naturally had a very different feeling to Ecclestone as The Doctor, and while I personally preferred Ecclestone, it’s undeniable that Tennant’s performance in this season drew a lot of new eyes to the show and is remembered very fondly by the audience at large because of this season.

Make sure you check out my rankings of series 1 first, but for the rest of you let’s take a look at my rankings of Series 2.

11 – Love & Monsters (Episode 10)

No prizes for guessing this one would be last.

When I was rewatching this I tried to go into it open-minded and to look through it and draw out all of the good in amongst the piles of awful, but there wasn’t really much to be found.

I’m gonna go through what I liked first, which is pretty much just the story with Jackie. Doctor Who has often tried to touch on what happens to those that get left behind, but it never normally gets enough time to breathe in order to be worthwhile. This episode lets us see that though, we were able to see Jackie without interference from The Doctor or Rose for once.

That loneliness is clear and the idea that she’s desperate just for someone to talk to is apparent, but we also get to see Jackie stand up for herself for pretty much the only time, and were able to see exactly what it is Jackie goes through day-to-day and that’s important to ground the character when she’s part of the adventure later on in the series.

Now to the crap…

There’s a lot to go through so I’m not going into too much detail; first the Absorbaloff. To quickly address the elephant in the room, I know that it was designed by a child in a contest, but that doesn’t make it any less bad. I don’t hate the idea of a monster that absorbs people, it could be quite scary if it’s done right, but this was not done right at all. The design is so unintimidating to the point where it’s comical, which didn’t help when they cast Peter Kay to play him, which isn’t an inherently bad decision, but he wasn’t helped by his supporting cast.

Which brings us to all of the humans in LINDA, who are all one note, boring and not particularly well acted. I found the man who played Elton to be extremely annoying, which I get was the point in some places, but it persisted even when the episode was trying to be serious. All I could think of whenever he was talking was how much I wanted to punch him in the face, and this guy is supposed to be your hero. It didn’t help that they were all idiots as well, who couldn’t seem to see what was right in front of their faces the entire time.

More importantly, with Elton, he doesn’t do ANYTHING. He just happens to be there while the world goes on around him. He stumbled upon The Doctor twice and doesn’t do anything either time, he only got in with Jackie because she engaged him, and The Doctor only showed up at the end to save him because of Jackie. I don’t have any reason to root for the guy because he’s done absolutely nothing of his own, he’s completely inconsequential to his own story.

There’s a whole bunch of more minor things that annoy me about this episode, like the vlog style of storytelling and that joke at the end of the episode, but I’ve gone on about this episode long enough, and I want to get to something better.

10 – Fear Her (Episode 11)

Fear Her is bad in a different way to Love & Monsters, because Love & Monsters was doomed from the premise alone, I can’t really see a way that any of the themes could’ve worked with different writing, however Fear Her touches on some really good ideas and has some themes that could make for an interesting story on their own, but they all seemed to get drowned out and forced to take a back foot to a lot of less good ideas the whole way through.

First off there’s Chloe and I’m not going to spend ages ragging on a child actress, but I really didn’t like the performance of Chloe in this episode and it really took away a lot of the emotional weight of the episode for me. The character is more interesting, because the episode touches on the fact that she used to have an abusive father in the house, which is quite a delicate topic and this episode really doesn’t treat it with the care it deserves (which is weird considering this was the second time in series 2 they’d tried this. they bungled it the first time too, but we’ll get to that.)

Granted the character is possessed for a large chunk of the episode, she doesn’t seem to act like a child in that situation would act. Maybe it was in the writing and just didn’t come across in the performance, but for the most part she just seemed to act like any other child would, she just seemed a bit angry was all.

Looking at the monster, I think the idea of people being trapped in drawings, and drawings coming to life is something that can be a pretty scary threat, but like with Love & Monsters, the execution didn’t really work. I liked the motivations of the monster, that it was just a child who was lost and lovely, and I even liked removing The Doctor from the picture about halfway through, but it didn’t do enough with any of these ideas.

9 – The Idiot’s Lantern (Episode 7)

The Idiot’s Lantern is an interesting one because while I don’t explicitly hate it, it does falter at multiple points.

The first and most notable of which is The Wire. The idea of a monster that lives in the TV and slowly eats your brain is something that I was never that keen on, and while the imagery of a person without a face is shocking the first couple of times you see it, it’s certainly nothing terrifying. Using the style of an old continuity announcer was a good way to present it, with a kind and smiling face that suddenly goes evil is pretty good, unfortunately, the actress they got to play The Wire could not do the evil side very well at all.

When she’s in continuity announcer mode, she’s very good in her role, and can even pull off the subtly sinister tone she sometimes spoke in very well. However, once the illusion broke and she had to start talking like a villain it completely fell apart for me. She would just constantly yell the most obnoxiously awful manner, and every time I heard her yell “huuuungrryyyyy” or “feeeeed meeee”, I just wanted to plug my ears because it was so annoying to listen to.

Outside of that, we have a secondary antagonist in the form of the controlling and manipulative father, who is perhaps one of the worst written characters ever in modern Doctor Who. For a start, he’s so over the top when it comes to his performance, to the point where it comes off more as comical than serious, and while the moment that the wife decides to kick him out is satisfying, it’s undercut not too long later by the interaction with the son.

The idea that the son has to go and help out his abusive and toxic father because “he’s your father” is something I really don’t like the message of. I understand that Doctor Who often tries to send out the message that everyone’s redeemable, and Rose grew up fatherless, but when a family member is as abusive and controlling as that father was presented to be, then you should be allowed to cut them the fuck out of your life. It pushes the idea that you have to always stick with your family no matter how horrible they are to you, which is something I fundamentally disagree with.

Ignoring the politics of it all though, what you’ve got is a fairly basic story where the mystery reveals itself way too soon, the monster is awful and none of the secondary characters have anything interesting about them. Not very interesting.

8 – New Earth (Episode 1)

New Earth was something fairly unique for the series, since we’d already got the new Doctor stuff out of the way in the Xmas special, and we didn’t have any new companions to worry about, Episode 1 of Series 2 didn’t need to focus on establishing any new characters and instead was able to give us a regular Doctor Who adventure.

In terms of the adventure itself it was fairly good, we had a whole bunch of mystery and weirdness that only Doctor Who can pull off in the right way, so there was plenty of fun to be had the whole way through. We even got a returning villain in the form of Cassandra, so people tuning back into the series after series 1 had plenty to enjoy.

The main thing that pulls me out of the episode though, is sadly David Tennant’s performance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still great, but he clearly hadn’t quite found his voice as The Doctor yet and it still felt like he was settling into the role. Thankfully this is the only episode in the series where I feel like this, but that doesn’t help New Earth since it arguably stands out more for that fact.

The Cassandra story also felt very secondary to everything else that was going on, and during the middle act of the episode, it felt entirely filler. I can understand why you’d want some form of recurring villain from Series 1 to tide over viewers, but for one thing, there were plenty better than Cassandra to chose from and for another, it really should’ve been the main focus of the episode instead of a side plot that admittedly pays off nicely at the end, but it could’ve been a lot more.

And that’s really all I have to say about New Earth, it’s fine, but doesn’t hold up compared to most other episodes of the series.

7 – The Christmas Invasion (2005 Xmas Special)

This is why I find Tennant’s performance in New Earth weird because although he didn’t do a whole lot in this episode, he seems to fit the role just as well as he would in his best episodes. Maybe he was more motivated by it being his first outing, but whatever, on to the episode.

The Christmas Invasion had a pretty big job, since, for those who had never watched the show before, the idea of a regeneration is brand new to them, so this episode had to convince an audience who had just spent a year falling in love with Christopher Ecclestone, that this new guy was just as good. It did a pretty good job if you ask me.

As with most of early revived Who, the show does a great job of taking the audience through it by presenting the process entirely through Rose’s eyes. We see her have to come to terms with the idea that this brand new man is still the same person she’d been falling in love with all this time. Not only that, but taking him out of action for most of the episode was also a brilliant idea, because it meant that we spent the whole episode longing for The Doctor to leap into action, so it meant that when he finally did we were extremely excited to see him, even if he was a brand new man.

Once again, this alien threat is very solidly OK in this episode. Davies’ Xmas specials were always written to be pretty simple light-hearted adventures for the stuffed British public of a Christmas evening. I actually quite liked the visual design of the Sycorax and it’s one of those villains that I wish we got to see again some time after this episode, but oh well.

Regardless of that, The Christmas Invasion does exactly what it’s supposed to do, and shows us that this brand new Doctor is still the fun-loving, intelligent hero that he was before, and got us ready for the new series.

6 – Tooth and Claw (Episode 2)

Now here’s the 10th Doctor we all know and love!

In the same way that New Earth was only as low as it was for Tennant’s lacklustre performance, Tooth and Claw is as high as it is because Tennant is just wonderful the whole way through.

Tennant’s trademark energy of The Doctor is one full display in this episode, to the point where he almost overshadows everything else in the thing. Watching him prance about the screen, yelling, whispering and generally being a joy to watch captures pretty much everything I loved about Tennant’s Doctor. He had this ability to take a mediocre script and make it an absolute joy to watch, and Tooth and Claw is perhaps the best example of this.

Queen Victoria was an interesting choice for the historical figure in this one. It made sense for the setting and gave an easy motivation to why the villains are doing their thing, but there’s nothing really unique here to distinguish why it HAD to be Queen Victoria. You could take out Victoria entirely and replace her with pretty much any women of high status from the time period and it would’ve been pretty much the same episode.

Usually, the main charm of the historical figure episodes is that the entire story is tailored around them. If you look at The Shakespeare Code, The Unicorn & The Wasp or Vincent and The Doctor, the stories of their respective episodes would only ever work with that historical figure in particular. I just don’t get that feeling with this episode.

The Werewolf is actually a pretty threatening villain, and while it doesn’t exactly make your spine tingle, it does have moments where it blows you away with its pure power or viciousness.

Ultimately, while this episode does have some weak points, Tennant’s performance and the Werewolf itself combine to make what I think is a pretty fun adventure to watch.

5 – Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel
(Episodes 5 & 6)

I’m honestly surprised that this story landed as high as it did on the list because watching it at the time (and especially in the first part) it felt like a bit of a big spray of ideas, where a bit of everything got thrown at the wall all at once. That said, once the episode reels in its focus, it was very good at running with the ideas that stuck.

A parallel universe is something that is always a great premise for a sci-fi show because it lets the writers take a lot of liberties with the world we know, and opens everything up to a load of “what if” scenarios. I don’t think it was used to its full potential here, but it wasn’t necessarily the point of the episode when you take a look at the big picture.

It did, however, achieve some pretty important things: 1) Rose’s dad being alive, 2) It let us mess with London in a way that didn’t affect the real thing and most importantly 3) It gave Mickey the exact kind of character development he’d needed for so long.

Mickey had been a character that I’d always liked but was nothing special up until this point. He’d had his moments of course, but for the most part, he just came across as the jealous ex-boyfriend who was mostly comic relief. This episode gave him so much more character than we’d ever seen in him up to this point. We learn about his life, and exactly what it is he stands for, we get to watch everything click into place for him and work out what he wants to actually do with his life, it makes the moment at the end where he decides to stay quite heartbreaking, but also slightly triumphant since it was a character we have grown to know and love finally reaching his full potential.

This was also a very good reintroduction for the Cybermen, particularly the end of Rise of the Cybermen where they just wandered around killing everyone was great, and I remember being absolutely terrified by it as a kid. The second part could’ve done a bit more with that threat, and it never really felt like any of the characters were in any immediate danger except for when they got killed out of nowhere, but ultimately I think it worked for the story it was telling.

Funnily enough, I don’t think the Cybermen have been done anywhere near as well since this episode, it was an episode purely about showcasing what the Cybermen were about, and from that angle, I think it worked.

4 – The Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
(Episodes 12 & 13)

This is one of those rare instances in Doctor Who, where I very much prefer the first part to the second because I think The Army of Ghosts has a very good structure that Doomsday doesn’t capitalize on as well as it could have.

The Army of Ghosts is entirely about the mystery, while the episode is constantly presenting questions to the audience: Why are there ghosts? What are they really? What’s in the Sphere? Where can I watch the full Eastenders episode with the ghost in it? And while it gives you little bits throughout, it holds back on answering most of these questions for as long as it possibly can to maximize the impact it has at the end when all of these questions get their answers at once.

That final ten minutes when everything goes down is such a thrill ride, where you keep finding out shocking thing after shocking thing (it would’ve been a bit better if they didn’t show you a Cyberman earlier on in the episode, but oh well), and not only that but uses each shocking reveal to make the next one even more shocking. An army of Cybermen come through and invade Earth, so when the Sphere starts to go mental at the same time, you naturally assume some sort of Cyberking or something will be coming out of it, only for the camera to pan up and reveal the Daleks in what is such a brilliant cliffhanger.

My main problem with Doomsday is that, until the climax, it moves quite slowly. It takes it’s time presenting more mystery and questions, when really, once we’ve had our shocking reveals at the end of Army of Ghosts, the only real questions left should be: What do they want? and How do we stop them?, but instead so much time was dedicated to sitting around chatting, I just feel it should’ve been a lot more action-packed than it was.

That said, when it did pick up, it was very fun to watch indeed. The Daleks and the Cybermen going back on forth was pretty cool to see, even if it was a bit cheesy, but watching The Doctor caught in the middle of it all trying to make sense of what is going on and how to stop them.

Then we get Rose’s farewell, and while I’m not the biggest fan of Rose, I still find that the entire final sequence to be so emotionally charged and truly heartbreaking. In a way, the fact that Rose didn’t die kind of made it more heartbreaking because she was totally fine, living her life on a parallel world, but completely trapped and unable to ever see the love of her life again. I also want to give a special mention to the music here because “Doomsday” is perhaps my favourite track ever from Doctor Who and it adds so much to the scene.

It’s a finale where The Doctor takes the back foot for the most of it, but I think that somewhat adds to it, because it makes everything feel very chaotic, building to a big climax before crashing down into an upsetting goodbye.

3 – School Reunion (Episode 3)

Bringing back a classic companion was always going to be a difficult thing to achieve, the change in the style of writing from classic and new who risked potentially betraying the character in this new incarnation. I haven’t seen the largest amount of classic Sarah Jane, but I’ve seen enough to know what kind of a character she was.

So School Reunion comes along, and not only keeps the character consistent but adds much more to their story. We see through Sarah Jane what happens when The Doctor leaves his companions, which was something the ended up being pretty important for the new series since, at the time this episode was broadcast, we were yet to say goodbye to any long term companions.

It shows us the kind of life she led because of what The Doctor gave her, he changed the view of the world and now she’s investigating possible alien incursions all over the place, so naturally, she was going to run into The Doctor again eventually. It touched on the “Curse of the Time Lord” a point that would eventually come full circle in series 4, about how hard it is for The Doctor to spend his whole life losing people.

Not only this but when we look towards the villain of the episode, we have the brilliant actor Antony Head. The scene in the pool is such a tense scene watching these two wonderful actors just talking to each other, we still didn’t have the most fully formed idea of Tennant’s character just yet, and this was a great way to show how well he could play a serious Doctor.

Overall it led to an episode that managed to hit pretty much all the right notes at the right time as it progressed, and it allowed Sarah Jane to exists in the Doctor Who universe for a great spin-off show.

2 – The Girl in the Fireplace – (Episode 4)

The idea of The Doctor popping in and out of someone’s life, while someone else is forced to take the “slow road”, is something that Moffat would explore with companions at various points in later seasons, but this episode is unique in that aspect, as it tells the story entirely focused around a single person which we’re introduced to for the first time in this episode.

I find myself connecting with Renette a lot more than I do with most one-off characters because the episode doesn’t need to take time out to explain the character’s backstory to us, instead it shows us exactly who she is, how she thinks and what she wants. Not only that, but it doesn’t need to rely on flashbacks or dream sequences because it cleverly weaves her entire life into the story because realistically, she IS the story in this episode.

Focussing your entire episode around one character that we’ll only ever meet this once can be quite the risk because it means the entire episode hinges on how good the character is, but luckily it pays off here because Renette is brilliant. She saw everything to with this story (clockwork monsters and The Doctor) when she was a child and while she stored it in the back of her mind, she never let herself get obsessed by it, we can clearly see that she’s mentally strong enough to move on with her life, while accepting that every now and then The Doctor and monsters will appear in her life, and disappear just as fast.

Not only that, but when she’s confronted with the world that The Doctor lives in, she flat out rejects it, she’s strong enough to understand what’s being going on in her world, but she has her limits, and that little detail makes her feel so much more like a real person.

Then there’s the tragedy of the episode, where The Doctor constantly taking the fast road leads to him missing out and losing Renette to time. That moment when The Doctor realises he can go back, The Doctor asks for Renette to “wish him luck” and the absolute misery in her voice when she says “no” is so damn good because you just know that it’s the last time he’ll see her. It furthers the point that School Reunion made, but is able to show us instead of the tragedy of The Doctor’s life and how often he ends up losing people.

The mystery of the episode is also rather good, since it gives you just enough information to get you most of the way to understanding, but refuses to give you the final piece of the puzzle until the last second. For example, it’s clear pretty early on that what the monsters want from Renette clearly has something to do with her age, with the constant references to her “not being ready”, but it doesn’t let you know exactly why until we’re ready for the climax.

That side of the episode isn’t really what’s important – though it’s a nice bonus – because this episode is so focused on Renette as a character and absolutely nails it and is able to tell a story that I don’t think Doctor Who has done quite like this before or since.

1 – The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
(Episodes 8 & 9)

Tension is something that I often think a lot of Doctor Who episodes lack. Sometimes that’s fine, in an episode that’s supposed to be about running all over the place trying to avoid monsters then it’s fine to have the focus be on the action, but every now and then an episode will take the idea of tension and use it to absolute perfection.

There are a lot of strings in this story that at first feel like they’re pulling episode in all sorts of different directions. There’s a planet circling a black hole but miraculously isn’t falling in; a slave race called the Ood who have one of the strangest introductions I’ve ever seen for a Doctor Who alien; the mystery of the crew drilling into the planet and what they’ll find there and an ancient language which seems to be possessing a guy. When you watch these episodes for the first time, it doesn’t really feel like any of these elements fit together very well, but this story is brilliant at slowly connecting the dots, at drawing these strings together in a way that makes sense, but isn’t predictable.

The story also goes to great lengths to make full use of the two episodes that it was given, there’s not a single scene in either of these two parts that is wasted, even in some of my favourite episodes there are scenes I’d quite happily cut, but everything is important in this two-parter. Not only that but each part has a very different feel. The Impossible Planet is slow and creeping, the mystery builds itself one scene at a time and doesn’t rush to give you any of the information, it’s a master of the tension I was referring to at the beginning, because the whole time it feels like things should be going wrong, but aside from one moment in the middle and right at the end, they never really do.

All that means is that when shit finally hits the fan, it feels huge and that’s what most of The Satan Pit is all about and yet it doesn’t lose that tension that the first episode built up. Most of the scenes are now action and chase scenes, but the way they designed the Ood as monsters means that the tension still runs high the whole time and it makes for such adrenaline fuelled viewing. Even watching it now, when I know what’s going to happen I still get caught up in the action of the moment as the group are crawling through vents to get away from the Ood, or as Danny stands there are stares down the Ood locked outside the control room, or best of all in that beautiful moment when The Doctor decides to unclip from his harness and blindly drop into the pit.

What gets me most about this story, is that once it’s all said and done, with the monster defeated and as many people saved as possible, The Doctor still doesn’t know what this creature is. He stood before it, spoke with it and even destroyed its mind before casting it into a black hole, but when Rose asks him what it was, he still doesn’t know, and just has to comfort himself with the fact that, whatever it was, they beat it. It’s a mystery that never gets solved, and honestly, it’s something I never want to be solved, because that total lack of knowledge of what this creature was is a huge part of what makes it so terrifying.

So there you have it! Those are my thoughts on every episode in Doctor Who series 2! Let me know what you think in the comments below, or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Come back next month for my rankings for the episodes of series 3, and check this space next week for my coverage of WWE Stomping Grounds!

Every Episode of Doctor Who Series 1 (2005) Ranked

It is time for a mighty quest to begin.

I recently decided to go through every single episode of Doctor Who since 2005 (thanks to BBC IPlayer), and I decided I’m going to get some prime content out of this because I’ll take every opportunity available to talk about Doctor Who.

Once a month I’m going to be taking every episode in each series, and ranking them based on how much I enjoyed them, and then talk a little bit about why. This will conclude once I’ve done all 11 series, I will write a list where I rank the series themselves from worst to best.

Christmas specials will usually be attached to the series they come before, with a couple notable exceptions, those being: The 2009 specials will be counted in series 4, The Day of The Doctor & The Time of The Doctor will be counted in series 7, and finally Resolution will be counted in series 11, since there is no series 12 yet.

Lastly, as always, I will be counting multi-parters as a single entry.

So with the rules in place, let’s start with ranking all the episodes in series 1.

10 – The Long Game (Episode 7)

This is the thing with covering series one. Sure, this is the worst episode, but it’s also still great.

Not from a singular narrative perspective, of course, the whole thing with Satellite 5 and the Jagrafess is pretty cookie cutter and not very entertaining, but overall it takes it’s time out to make a point about companions. Given that this was the first series since the ’80s, it could quite easily have been assumed by the audience that The Doctor simply decided to travel with Rose because she was the first person he came across. This episode uses Adam to show the audience that not just anyone can do this.

Adam is a bumbling idiot, who goes around making stupid decisions and having mind-altering surgery without considering the consequences. Sure he’s an unlikable idiot, but that’s the point, you need him to show us exactly why Rose is so good as a companion for The Doctor. We never really see companions get thrown out of the TARDIS like that, but when it happens to Adam, you feel like he deserves it and the line from The Doctor “I only take the best” does wonders to serve Rose as a character.

Most of the episode may just be set up for the finale, so I can’t rank it that highly, but it does serve a pretty important purpose for the first series of Doctor Who.

9 – The Unquiet Dead (Episode 3)

I didn’t expect this one to be quite this low.

This is quite the testament to just how good the rest of series 1 is that this ended up this low down because I think there’s a lot to like here. It was the first instance in modern Who of us meeting a historical figure, so it had to essentially set a template for future series, and I think it did a pretty good job of it.

It set the template for what the monster should be – something relevant to the historical figure, in this case, ghosts – it also set the template for what the goal of the episode should be about. As much as there are monsters and adventure, the ultimate goal of the episode is for The Doctor and his companion to in some way change that historical figure’s view of the world, or inspire them to make one of their most notable works.

This also had the twist of Dickens being extremely sceptical of the world around him, and for the longest time refuses to believe that these ghosts can exist. This point leads to something I wish we saw at least a little more of in future episodes like this, which is The Doctor putting his foot down, taking a second out from showering the person in praise and sternly tell them how it is.

Many of the future episodes consist of nothing but The Doctor swooning over whatever figure they’ve got for the week and it ends up hampering what I mentioned the goal should be.

Ultimately, this episode set the template it needed to for these kinds of episodes and is arguably the best example of that template in the Russel T. Davies era.

8 – Rose (Episode 1)

Talk about an impossible task.

This episode is great for a pretty simple reason. It had 45 minutes to get an entirely new audience caught up and understanding of what Doctor Who is, and make it an exciting adventure to keep people coming back next week. And it did it.

It glosses over some things that would be expanded upon further in future episodes, but ultimately Rose is able to give us our 101 course in Doctor Who, give us some quick thrills and scares, then be home in time for tea. It took pretty much the perfect angle to do this as well, which is having us view the entire episode from the perspective of Rose.

This means that for one, we get to intimately know Rose’s character within the first ten minutes of the episode, we watch her throughout her day; see how she responds to a situation she’s not used to, and also see what her home life is like and gives us the impression that she wants to get out. It also means that the audience doesn’t feel like we’re missing out at any point, because we learn exactly what Rose does about The Doctor, at exactly the same time she does. We uncover this mystery of who The Doctor is together which both makes us connect to Rose and become more invested in finding out what The Doctor can do.

In 45 minutes, we got a ground level understanding of everything Doctor Who and it was at no point boring, which is why this is such an achievement.

7 – Aliens of London & World War Three
(Episodes 4 & 5)

So up until this point, Doctor Who had shown off a lot of what it was all about, with a sense of mystery and peril being ripe throughout the first three episodes, with a sprinkling of humour, but only enough to make the tone light enough.

With that light tone, it had never really gone full into comedy, it had kept quite a large sense of drama and danger throughout. What Aliens of London (and the first half of World War Three) does is show the much lighter side of Doctor Who. Sure there are monsters that live inside people’s skin, but they’re fat and fart a lot, which is childish yes, but funny nonetheless.

The Doctor also shows his comedic chops in this story, not to the point where he’s cracking jokes all over the place, but Ecclestone’s comedic timing is impeccable, and it can have even the smallest quip seem hilarious. I think after three episodes, that got fairly dark towards the climax, an episode like this was needed to remind us all that Doctor Who can be a fun experience too.

The Slitheen are also generally just a rather comedic villain, to the point where their big plan is simply for profit. They don’t want to take over or enslave the human race, they just want to make a quick buck and then move onto the next one; despicable sure, but ultimately pretty rubbish. That’s the thing with the Slitheen, from the perspective of a monster, they’re pretty rubbish, but when you look at the picture as a whole you realise they’re a perfect fit for the episodes that they appear in, and ultimately that is what a monster should be for.

6 – The End of the World (Episode 2)

Episode 2 had arguably a bigger task than episode 1 in Series 1. Not only did it have to keep everything that was in the first episode running strong, while developing the characters further, but it also had to give us everything alien in order to truly showcase the wonders you can experience when travelling with The Doctor.

The End of the World took a pretty good approach to this, by bombarding us with a whole bunch of aliens straight away to get everyone used to the idea of seeing strange stuff. Not only did it give us aliens though, but it also gave us Cassandra, a human who doesn’t even slightly look human. It meant that this episode introduced us to new things, while also managing to force us to take a look at what the human race could become.

Rose is a really good way of communicating all of this to the audience because she ends up reacting in the same way that I think most of us would in that scenario. She’s slightly overwhelmed by it all and it takes a chat with a simple maintenance worker in order to ground her thoughts and make her realise that these aliens aren’t so dissimilar from us, and the nice little point that the only other human is, in fact, the one that’s a freak.

That said, it doesn’t get too preachy about it. The episode could’ve quite easily lingered on the “humans are the real monsters” message, but instead, it took it’s time to focus on the action and the characters themselves. This episode works so well thanks to how it gives us all of the “alien” we can handle while ramping up the action and intensity from the first episode to show everyone exactly how exciting a Doctor Who adventure can be.

5 – Father’s Day (Episode 8)

Father’s Day is an episode that seems to divide opinion in the fanbase at large, but I think a lot of the people who don’t like it are looking at it from the wrong angle.

If you look at it like it’s a standard Doctor Who adventure, then yes it’s a bit disappointing and seemingly has a lot of missed opportunities, but I don’t think that’s what the episode is supposed to be about. It had the obvious point of the dangers of messing with time and exactly what can go wrong, but also the idea of just what grief can do to people, and how people who lost a parent before they were born/old enough to remember can do to someone.

Rose had always lived with the knowledge that her dad died and we saw her mum tell it to her as a child right at the start of the episode, and you get the impression that she’s always lived with curiosity. The idea that there’s this man that she can’t remember meeting, but still has such a strong emotional connection with her is the kind of thing that is clearly very confusing for her to have grown up with, and when she actually saw him for the first time it became very real all of a sudden.

The entire episode is essentially about Rose having to finally deal with her father’s death for real, and finally getting an opportunity to grieve for him, after growing up curious about him. We see when Rose is talking to Pete that she ends up creating this ideal world where her dad was always there for her and provided for her, and we see Pete come to that realisation that none of it’s true. He knows that he could never be the kind of dad that Rose says he was, and when he comes to the realisation of what he has to do, he’s finally able to do for Rose was he believes a dad should, which is protect her, at any cost.

It’s a heartbreaking episode right from the beginning because we know what’s going to have to happen, but it’s able to make statement after statement about just what growing up in the situation that Rose can do to someone, and it manages to do it without feeling like it’s trying to push an agenda about parenting, it’s just the characters acting like you’d expect those characters to act, which is always where the best drama comes from in my opinion.

4 – Boom Town (Episode 11)

I talked earlier about how the Siltheen is an inherently funny villain, and Boom Town seems to take that concept to its logical extreme.

This entire episode seems to be designed as a light-hearted adventure to bridge the gap between the rather dark tones of Episodes 9/10 & 12/13 and it fits perfectly into that slot. There are some jokes that don’t quite work, but for the most part, I thought this episode was a blast.

It’s got a little bit of an edge to it and tries to throw in a bunch of threats towards the end, but that’s not the focus of the episode at all. Margret Blane seems to fit her role perfectly, as the bumbling villain who’s just trying to get away, and if she can do some evil while she’s at it then that’s great. The main thing this episode does though is just let the characters loose and let them have fun interacting with each other.

There’s plenty of dynamics going on like Mickey and Jack which is the clash of men trying to alpha up and then the idea of what Mickey has to cope with while Rose away. The best example of this that I can think of in the episode is The Doctor having dinner with Margret in the restaurant. That entire scene is very comedic but sits with a rather dark undertone that only serves to make the humour even funnier.

This entire episode has that sense of fun to it that I love Doctor Who to have from time to time, especially between two darker stories like what we got in season one. It’s the perfect way to bridge the gap.

3 – Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
(EpisodeS 12 & 13)

This is a story absolutely brimming with inventive ideas. Daleks aren’t anything new I know, but the way the threat was presented in Bad Wolf was pretty fresh for the time.

While the idea of the British game shows haven’t aged well since all three of the ones featured have since been cancelled, and it wouldn’t surprise me if people watching this episode in 10 years time had no idea what was going on, and if you’re American then you probably didn’t understand it when it aired.

That said, as a Brit who was around when all these shows were airing, I thought it was quite entertaining. The idea of the deadly game show is nothing new, but Davies gave it that British charm that made it feel like a fresh idea and was able to re-add the joy that had been sucked out of ideas like that over the years.

It once again presented us with Rose potentially dying yet again this series, and while usually, it’s pretty obvious that she’s not going to die, the way the story was written made you believe that perhaps it was possible that this was the end. It was the season finale, and Rose’s death would give The Doctor the fire he needed to take down the station for good.

The second part of the episode is running with high emotions, with the Daleks going around and killing everyone one by one was the best way to keep that level of a threat going that was established in Dalek earlier in the series. Then you’ve got some brilliant moments like The Doctor telling the Dalek’s exactly how he’s going to get Rose back, or the entire sequence where Rose is trying to get back to The Doctor.

This also defines The Doctor’s character post Time War, he was so desperate to end it that he was willing to potentially wipe out the human race just to finally be rid of them. When he’s finally confronted with that choice though, his declaration of “Coward, any day” making a bold statement that he will always do what’s right, even when he’s probably going to die because of it.

Rose suddenly appearing to save the day is something that does feel a little bit cheap on a rewatch, but it was built to and makes sense in terms of the story, so that makes it ok as far as I’m concerned. Ecclestone’s regeneration was exactly what it needed to be as well, and exactly what every subsequent regeneration has been as well, giving a big climactic speech where he says goodbye and then we get flung straight into the madness of the new Doctor.

2 – Dalek (Episode 6)

This was the first time that a lot of viewers of the show would have ever seen the Daleks, which means this was an episode that had a hell of a lot riding on it. It was the one chance that the show had to show us just how deadly and terrifying the Daleks are, and why we should be absolutely terrified of them.

First of all, updating the look was essential, while the original Daleks are iconic, they certainly wouldn’t have looked very tough and terrifying by modern standard, so encasing them in a tough looking golden metal updated the look so that they actually looked the part for this episode.

Then, right at the start of the episode, the writers made a statement on how scary these things are before it was even loose, simply by putting it in the same room as The Doctor and watching his reaction. This is the first time The Doctor will have seen a Dalek since he ended the Time War, and his reaction is written and acted to perfection. That disbelief and pure terror when The Doctor realises it’s trapped in the cell with this thing, which then turns in a borderline psychopathic joy when he realises it can’t touch him.

Taunting, insulting, torturing, these things completely go against what we’d seen out of The Doctor up until this point. Seeing what the Dalek could do to The Doctor just by existing already makes it terrifying enough, and then it gets loose.

Watching it break out of the cage in an instant and then “downloads the internet”, which is a very 2005 thing for it to do, turns it very quickly from a dying soldier into a killing machine that will stop at nothing to get it wants. Once it starts killing it gets even more scary, with bullets not even being able to touch it, and it is able to intelligently overcome every obstacle that’s placed in its path; the Dalek is able to build up this aura of being completely indestructible.

Then it turns out it’s conflicted because of what Rose imprinted upon it when she restored it, with The Doctor noting that it hates its own existence manages to make it even more terrifying. Then we get a touching moment at the end, where The Doctor is so desperate to kill this thing that he doesn’t even question what’s going on, and it takes Rose once again “imprinting” on him in order to make him realise what’s going on.

The Dalek killing itself at the end is something that is able to land perfectly on an emotional level. This is pure evil, it’s killed loads of people and is a ruthless monster, but you can’t help but feel sorry for it when it feels like it has no option but to wipe itself out because it’s become impure.

This episode re-established Doctor Who’s most iconic villain as a major threat and set them up for when a whole army shows up in the finale, while also serving to be its own fantastic self-contained story.

1 – The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
(Episodes 9 & 10)

I struggled so much picking between this and Dalek for number 1.

This episode was the first one to be written by Steven Moffat, and it didn’t disappoint. Not only was Moffat able to create an iconic villain in the gas mask child, that managed to make the phrase “Are you my mummy?” terrifying, but he was also able to create an extremely clever and fully formed narrative, worthy of a Hollywood action film.

The introduction of Captain Jack added a new dynamic to the TARDIS crew and in such a short time we see him transition from a conman out to make a profit to someone who’s willing to sacrifice himself in order to save the day. Moffat was able to create a character that was truly able to stand the test of time in the Doctor Who universe, with his own spin-off series, multiple appearances in the main series and was even originally intended to be featured in “A Good Man Goes to War” if it wasn’t for Barrowman’s scheduling conflicts.

The plotline with Nancy is a brilliant part of the story too because the whole way through we know that she’s important to the solution and we get little nuggets and hints of what role she plays but it’s never revealed or made obvious until right at the end when it’s important. This episode goes to great length to create tonnes of mystery, with the pacing of when each question is answered near perfectly plotted out.

I love the level of emotion that comes out towards the end of the episode, with the utter despair of their seemingly being no solution in sight, with the complete one-eighty into absolute joy as things turn around, that pure unadulterated joy in The Doctor voice as he proclaimed that “Everybody lives!” is perhaps my favorite Doctor Who moment ever.

This episode has just about everything that a Doctor Who story should have, the mystery, the monsters, interesting and likeable secondary characters, a dash of humour here and there with the absolute joy at the end.

So that’s it! That’s what I thought of every episode of Doctor Who series 1! I hope you enjoyed, and let me know what you think of this series in the comments below and on Twitter @10ryawoo. Make sure to come back this time next week, where I’ll be ranking every game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise!