For a show as beloved as Doctor Who, its fans aren’t half critical of it.
Several episodes during the modern era have being crucified for falling short of the expected level of quality. Every season has (hopefully only) one of them. Those episodes that, shall we say, underperform in the post-season polls. For Season 9, that unfortunate cross fell on Mark Gatiss’s experimental ‘Sleep No More’.
Yet even their most ardent haters have to concede that those episodes contain at least one moment – be it shocking, funny or touching – that is quintessential Doctor Who.
Here are just a few of those best bits from Doctor Who’s ‘worst’ episodes…
“I was a dad once” in ‘Fear Her’
9.9 times out of ten, a Doctor Who fan will say the weakest 21st century episode is 2006’s ‘Fear Her’. For some reason, a riveting tale about tarmac, edible ball bearings and impressions of Inspector Morse just doesn’t do it for some people. Or maybe it’s just Rose and Ten at their peak of smugness.
But not all of the episode is as sketchy as a child’s drawing. Unusually, two of the most memorable moments feature the TARDIS. The bit where the Doctor parks it the wrong way around was the ship’s best sight gag until ‘Flatline’, while a later scene subtly adds to the show’s lore.
Out of nowhere, the Doctor casually drops the fact that he was once a father. While we had met his granddaughter a long time ago, the Doctor is not usually one to talk of his family, which made this such a striking scene.
A humany-wumany Christmas in ‘The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’
Doctor Who and Narnia should have been a match made in heaven. Sadly, Steven Moffat forgot to put all the best bits of CS Lewis’ creation – the evil white witch, the magical creatures, a god-like lion – into ‘The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’ and only remembered to include a precocious child running about in the snow for an hour.
However, the episode’s final scene is a lovely bit of festive schmaltz. After going their separate ways during the previous season, the Doctor returns to Amy and Rory at Christmastime where we learn that they always lay a dinner place for him.
Like the Doctor, the moment made us do some humany-wumany weeping.
Jackie’s “left behind” speech in ‘Love and Monsters’
‘Love and Monsters’, Russell T Davies’ love letter to Doctor Who fans, should have been a unique little episode to treasure but most viewers couldn’t get past a dodgy joke about human/paving slab relations and Peter Kay running around in a nappy.
Yet there are lots of great moments in the episode (not least Marc Warren’s likeable lead performance). Here we’ve plumped for Jackie’s touching speech about how it is hard being left behind on Earth while her daughter travels the stars.
The scene actually encapsulates what the episode is all about, how the Doctor’s adventures affect the people left behind on Earth, in both positive and negative ways. The love, and the monsters.
Continued on next page…