In Autumn of this year, Peter
Capaldi’s Twelf Doctor will be taking the show in a “new and raw” direction, so
now seems as good a time as any to look at what new-new-new who must not do.
So here we go; lets look at what
I think is the worst episode/s to be put to sceen since the return of Who in
2005. But before that some honourable mentions are in order. so in no particular order:
1 Fear Her
A bad
episode, defended by it’s writer as not for the older fans. It lacks the spirit
of the show, with the Tenth Doctor frequently departing from his most important
characteristic (his humanisation) and acting tactless and rude (not to mention
his suggestion that anything that's not human isn’t a person and shouldn’t be treated as
such - a very weird thing for an alien
to say). There’s also a repeated joke about the council that wasn’t funny the
first time and should have been trimmed from the script on the first reading.
2 Dinosaurs
on a Spaceship
In the preproduction
stages of series 6 Steven Moffat presumably asked for an episode that could
simultaneously use up a huge chunk of the special effects budget and waste a
pretty good supporting cast. Oh and special effort seems to have gone into
making sure it was poorly directed and edited too.
3 Doomsday
I’m with
Colin Baker on this one; enough with the Doctor romance plots; it’s a sci-fi
show. I’m not saying there should be no romance in the show at all, but this
episode marked the point at which it took over completely and it became very
evident that Russell T Davies didn’t want to be writing sci-fi, but drama
instead.
4 The Curse
of the Black Spot
Why the
hell did Moffat feel like it was necessary to shamelessly rip off the Pirates
of the Caribbean franchise? Are we seriously supposed to believe that ideas in
the writing room were running so dry that this episode got the green light? It
was poorly developed, uninspired and utterly stupid.
5 Journey’s
End
This is
where Davies’ writer’s block became very evident. Every companion from the
Tenth Doctor’s run thrown into one episode. This meant that none of them had
enough screen time to say or do anything significant one of them (cough –
Martha – cough) was stupidly out of character for the convenience of the plot
and the Dalek plan was so stupid that even someone who’s a fan of a show involving a
time travelling police box couldn’t swallow it.
6 Voyage
of the Damned
After
and overall refreshing series, the Christmas special was an unwelcome present.
With laughable slow motion sequences and a co-star who was there just because of
her pop-music career, this episode squandered a great opportunity to go after
James Cameron’s crowning glory.
Now here
we are, the worst episode of revived Doctor Who.
Daleks
of Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks.
This
two-part episode stands as the massive blemish on the only series of Ten’s run
that I actually liked. Series 2 and 4 have their individual episode that I
enjoyed and there’s no denying that Tennant was a great Doctor, but as far as I'm concerned the majority of his tenure was a massive misfire.
There’s
a story from behind the scenes of Tennant’s run that would have had an episode
of the show, where the world had become Harry Potter as a result of some
massively powerful alien merging with J K Rowling’s imagination. If you think
that’s a really stupid idea, you’re on the same page as David Tennant who
refused to take part in such an episode.
Now I
don’t know whether that story is true or not, but if it is, why the hell did
Tennant agree to this episode?
Main
Points:
At one
point in the episode the Daleks attack a homeless village that’s been set up at
the height of the great depression. The Doctor’s there and after the man who’s
apparently the leader of the camp gets killed, he gets up and starts shouting
at the Daleks, demanding that they kill him (their greatest enemy) in exchange
for sparing everyone else at the camp.
When did
the Doctor start being a moron? These are the Daleks; they live to kill
anything that isn’t a Dalek, the Doctor knows this, so why would he offer
himself up as a sacrifice when he’s fully aware that they’ll kill everyone
there anyway?
Then
when the Doctor learns of the Dalek plan to make hundreds of kidnapped and
comatosed humans into walking Daleks -
well I’ll run through the dialogue when the Doc is shown one of the victims.
Doctor:
“Is he dead?”
Dalek
Sec: “Near death with his mind wiped, ready to be filled with new ideas”
A few
lines later.
Doctor;
“so you’ve got shells; empty human shells ready to be converted; that’s gonna
take a hell of a lot of power”
WHAT!?
Where is the Doctor’s outrage at the
kidnap and effective murder of over a thousand people, why is the worst thing he
says about the whole plan that the logistics of powering it are impractical? This is a massive violation on a planet the Doctor loves and he doesn’t even
care about all the people who are dead.
Then we
get to the resolution the Daleks are going to use a sun flare and the resulting
gamma strike to power the conversion of the humans to Dalek. This gamma strike
will occur in the form of a lighting strike…which is a completely different thing
to a gamma strike. Ok I don’t expect the best science from a show that’s avoided
explaining how it’s time machine works for fifty years, but in an episode that’s
already so bad, this abuse of scientific principles (worthy of Star Trek
Voyager) sticks out like a sore thumb.
So there
it is the worst episode of the revived series of Doctor Who. Belated Happy New
Year everyone.
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