Blog:My Bottom 12 Doctor Who (2005) stories

Doctor Who has produced a lot of fantastic episodes since it relaunched in 2005, but it's face it, it's produced a few stinkers as well. Instead of doing a list of the Bottom 10 stories - which would basically be most of Season 11 and a couple of stories from Season 12 - I've taken the worst story from each season and put them in order from least bad to most bad to create this list:


 * 12. The Unicorn and the Wasp (S4) - Okay, Season 4's just pure awesomeness from start to finish, and this would still rank as one of the better stories in any other season. About the worst you can say of this story is that it's kind of cheap and cheesy in places, but other than that, it's still very solid. Alright, next!


 * 11. The Lie of the Land (S10) - Season 10's more consistently average than anything else, but that also means none of the stories are really that bad. The "Monks Trilogy" (at least its second and third chapters) is the low-point of the season, and between the two episodes, this one is the weaker. Still a lot of good ideas and neat visuals, and a somewhat enjoyable episode overall, but it's dragged down by the stupid test of character the Doctor puts Bill through, and the lame "power of love" ending.


 * 10. Aliens of London / World War Three (S1) - The weak link in the otherwise very strong Season 1, this two-parter demonstrates full well that Doctor Who does not do political commentary well in the slightest. They might have been able to get away with this story in 2003, but by 2005 it was just out of date (though the two world leaders being mocked were complete scumbags, so I'll go a bit easier on the story for that). That said, this story's main problem is the Slitheen - they just aren't very threatening villains, and their plan had been done before all the way back in the Second Doctor's era.


 * 9. The Rings of Akhaten (S7) - Now we're getting into the realms of genuinely bad stories. It's obvious that they didn't have enough story to fill up the full 45 minutes, and just padded it out to that length with speeches and songs. Both of which are reasonably well-done, but the end result is just this weird, over-long story that tries to be too clever for its own good.


 * 8. Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks (S3) - A classic case of a writer coming up with a good idea, but then not knowing what to do with it and then just falling back on the standard Dalek story formula. A Dalek-human hybrid? Okay, that's a pretty cool idea, and I actually don't think the hybrid Sec looks as stupid as his reputation. The real problem is that halfway through the second episode, he gets shoved off to one side and the rest of the story is just your average "the Daleks want to take over Earth" story. And seriously, whose idea was it for the Daleks to have pig-men as their minions?


 * 7. The Curse of the Black Spot (S6) - Trying to rip off Pirates of the Caribbean about four years after anyone really considered it relevant? Not a good start. The story does feature some decent atmosphere in the first half, but it quickly gets repetitive, and ends with a laughably corny climax that revolves around Amy doing CPR on Rory. Hey, guys, it was already pretty silly when The Abyss did it, and that was 22 years earlier!


 * 6. Victory of the Daleks (S5) - Okay, we all know where this story went wrong. The Dalek redesign. If it hadn't been for that one mistake, this could have been... well, maybe not a classic, but it would at least have been better than the Manhattan/Evolution two-parter. As a result, we have an incredibly rushed story that's basically window dressing to introducing the worst redesign of any monster in the show's entire history. It's enough to make you wish that someone would do a Doctor Who novel that's this story done right, just focusing around Winston Churchill and his new "Ironsides".


 * 5. Fear Her (S2) - Okay, as bad as "Love and Monsters" was, it's actually not the worst story of Season 2. At least I can actually remember what happened in that story. This one... it's just boring! Boring, cheap, and cheesy. We have a monster that starts out as a pencil scribble and then becomes some kind of alien dandelion seed, the worst child actor in Doctor Who history, a bunch of really annoying supporting characters, and a story that's just overall dumb and nonsensical. Oh, and as the icing on the cake, the writer tried the old "It's Made For Kids Excuse" when people criticized the episode.


 * 4. In the Forest of the Night (S8) - If you needed further proof that Doctor Who doesn't do message or political episodes well, three of the bottom four in this list fall into that category. Here, we have a story that's literally just lecturing the audience about how trees are our friends, and we shouldn't harm them. It literally gets to the point where we get dialogue where they seem to be lifting dialogue from The Legend of the Titanic, except with "whales" swapped out for "trees". And having an ending that's less scientifically accurate than an episode of Futurama? Epic fail. The main reason why this doesn't finish even lower is that there's some good atmosphere and visuals (well, that and it somehow being the one story that doesn't make Danny Pink look like a completely useless moron), and the remaining three stories can't even boast that.


 * 3. Arachnids in the UK (S11) - As I said at the start, Season 11 in general (aside from "Rosa", "Kerblam", and maybe one or two other episodes) is just a complete dumpster fire. As to which is the absolute bottom of the dumpster, it was close between this and "The Tsuranga Conundrum". And while I'll give that story a special medal of dishonor for introducing the monumentally stupid P'Ting, for me, this just beats it out as the worst story of the worst season of Doctor Who. There's two reasons for that - the first is that the Doctor comes across as more condescending, moralizing, and annoying in this episode, and the second is the Donald Trump parody. Again, Doctor Who has never done politics well, but having the person you're trying to depict as a loathsome scumbag come across as the most sensible and competent person in the story? That's a new low, even for this series and this season.


 * 2. Orphan 55 (S12) - Season 12, in general, was an improvement on Season 11... apparently because they decided to cram all the bad aspects of the season (well, apart from that twist) into this one episode, regarded by many as the single worst story in the show's 57-year history. Is it the absolute bottom of the barrel? I'm not sure it's as bad as the likes of "The Twin Dilemma" or "Time and the Rani" from the classic series, but it's sure as hell up there. It's an incoherent, disjointed story, with plot developments and character traits that come out of nowhere and are never seen or mentioned again, abysmal special effects, the central plot twist is ripped off from all the way back in the Sixth Doctor's era, and it ends the most idiotic and ham-fisted message the show has ever attempted. It might well be the worst-written story the show has done since it came back in 2005, but the worst story overall? It just, just misses out on that dishonor.


 * 1. Sleep No More (S9) - What's worse than a bad story? A bad story that's literally impossible to watch, because trying to do so will make you physically ill. This would have been an awful story regardless, as it's basically just 40 minutes of the main characters wandering around a space station, badly-written supporting characters who just get killed off at arbitrary times, the completely ridiculous idea to have the bad guys be sleep dust brought to life, and a lack of any real resolution to the story. What really takes this over the line into being the worst story of the Doctor Who relaunch was the decision to make this as a "found footage" story. It's already a gimmick that rarely works in movies, and what we have here is possibly the worst execution of it in any movie or TV show I've ever seen. This is the only story from Seasons 1-10 of the relaunch that I will not rewatch, because I can't stomach more than about ten minutes without wanting to barf, and for that reason, it has to take the number one spot on this list.