My Doctor Who Reviews

Hi! I'm Kate, and I'm on a mission.

In classic "me" format, the mission is overly-ambitious, but we do our best. Here's the deal: I want to review every episode of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who is a comfort show for me. I watched Tom Baker’s 70s episodes as a kid, when I was about 12 I started watching the 2005 Christopher Eccleston series with my mother, and I regularly check DVDs out from the library from throughout the history of the show. So I decided - “Hey - why not look through all the episodes? Not just the ones you’ve seen before or the good ones, but all of them?”

Some of these are going to be hidden gems. Some of these I am going to wish I had skipped! Let's find out which are which!

I'm starting with The Web Planet (story #13, s2e5) not because it's particularly good or notable, but more because that's just where I happened to be after watching a lot of early stuff with my family some time ago. I make no promises as to chronological order, but I tend to like to move in groups of stories sequentially until I get bored. Unfortunately I have a very short attention span.

I'll be rating each story not out of ten, but in terms of how good I think it is compared to the stories surrounding it, so each season will ideally end up with a ranked list of stories, and then if I want I can order seasons by each Doctor.

First Doctor (William Hartnell): 1963-1966
Season 1 (no reviews yet) (1963-4)
  • An Unearthly Child
  • The Daleks
  • The Edge of Destruction
  • Marco Polo
  • The Keys of Marinus
  • The Aztecs
  • The Sensorites
  • The Reign of Terror

Overall rankings:

  1. The Edge of Destruction
  2. The Daleks
  3. An Unearthly Child

    4. Note: it can be fun to watch these top 3 (the first 3 stories of the season) in order, if you can get around a little padding there's some great stuff.

  4. The Sensorites
  5. The Keys of Marinus

    6. note: while I have Sensorites rated above Marinus here, Marinus is definitely the faster-paced serial, which helps to hide some of the lack of substance. not bad

  6. The Reign of Terror

    7. Note: below here is the ones I recommend against seeing.

  7. The Aztecs

    8. If you need to see a racist 1st Dr story I guess do this one, it has a cute subplot where the Dr accidentally proposes. rest of it sucks tho

  8. Marco Polo

    9. three hours of a bad powerpoint presentation. also very racist

Season 2 (1964-5)

Overall rankings:

  1. The Time Meddler

    2. Really very fun. Excellent standalone for "doctor is now fun and not mean" especially. first real Steven ep

  2. The Space Museum
  3. The Rescue

    4. first Vicki ep and short enough to be paced wonderfully, fun ideas. a keeper

  4. The Chase

    5. a little loose, a little whimsical, a great time and a phenomenal companion departure

  5. The Dalek Invasion of Earth

    6. Invasion is a better plotted story than Chase, but it does have one of the most heinous companion departures ever at the end. the rest fucks tho

  6. The Romans
  7. Planet of Giants

    8. Note: there's a sharp dip in quality around here: all of the stories above I'd say "sure!" if you asked to watch them together. these two aren't really worth it tho

  8. The Web Planet
  9. The Crusade

    10. Note: racism: it's back.

Season 3 (1965-6)

Overall rankings:

  1. Nightmare on Planet Kembel

    2. i subdivided The Daleks' Master Plan into several smaller chunks: this is the first one, from Mission to the Unknown thru The Traitors (5 parts).

  2. The Myth Makers

    3. Vicki deserved a better exit but it's a pretty solid story

  3. Galaxy 4

    4. The animation is interesting, but the story is sort of meh

Overall season rankings:

  1. Season 2
  2. Season 1
Companion Retrospectives

Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker): 1974-1981
Season 14 (1976-7)

Overall rankings:

  1. The Robots of Death

    2. real solid. all-timer? unsure. but very good

  2. The Face of Evil

    3. intro to Leela and a startlingly less problematic than i expected story

  3. The Talons of Weng-Chiang

    4. ah. this is where they took all the racism they excised from The Face of Evil. Do Not Watch It.

Season 15 (1977-8)

Overall rankings:

  1. Horror of Fang Rock

    2. possibly Leela's best story yet

  2. The Sun Makers

    3. tie for best story of the season with Fang Rock, but sci-fi this time

  3. Image of the Fendahl
  4. The Invisible Enemy

    5. K9's first appearance and a story that isn't quite sure what it wants to be, but is not all that bad

Season 17 (1979-80)

Overall Rankings:

  1. City of Death

    2. Widely considered one of the best Dr Who stories of all time. I don't disagree

  2. Nightmare of Eden

    3. really quite a solid fun little episode

  3. The Creature from the Pit

    4. the monster looks like a penis, but it's kinda great. SIC THE WOLFWEEDS ON HIM

  4. Destiny of the Daleks

    5. fun, but slow and a little inconsistent. davros!

Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) 1987-1989(/-1996)
Season 24 (1987)

Overall Rankings:

  1. Paradise Towers

    2. I LOVE CULT TELEVISION

  2. Delta and the Bannermen

    3. Could've used another episode but is just buckets of weird fun

  3. Dragonfire

    4. it's alright. ace is great

  4. Time and the Rani

    5. i do not care enough about it to write a review. the rani pretending to be mel is great

Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston): 2005
Series 1 (2005)

Overall Rankings:

  1. Father's Day

    2. just, The Best character episode. one for all time.

  2. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

    3. it really is very good

  3. Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

    4. a brilliant ending to a brilliant season

  4. Dalek

    5. quite good! great reintroduction to the villain

  5. The End of the World

    6. just downright Crisp

  6. Rose

    7. great jumping on point.

  7. Boom Town

    8. i like boom town weirdly a lot, but frankly i don't think it's as good as some of the others

  8. The Unquiet Dead

    9. not as solid as the first two but still good

  9. Aliens of London/World War II

    10. excellent character work! terrible fatphobia. at least watch the first 10 minutes on a season viewing

  10. The Long Game

    11. not BAD per se, but doesn't really add anything except tying up a season plot cul-de-sac. simon pegg is fun tho

Series 1 is unique in that I would recommend watching it front-to-back, because despite some low points (like The Long Game and Aliens of London/WWIII) it works as a single overarching story really well I think

Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) 2005-2010
Series 2 (2002)

Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi): 2014-2017
Series 10 (2017)

Overall Rankings:

  1. Thin Ice
  2. The Pilot

    3. great jumping on point again! love bill.

  3. Smile

    4. the resolution is quite shit but the rest of the episode's quite good, especially the doctor & bill's dynamic

Big Finish Audio Stories
By Doctor:
First Doctor (Actor Varies)

Overall Rankings

  1. Farewell, Great Macedon

    2. What If The Historical Stories Were Really Good? long but worth it.

  2. The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance

    3. very short. useful as an onboarding to the format but not exactly exciting

Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)

Overall Rankings

  1. The Foe from the Future

    2. an all-timer. HIGHLY recommend.

Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann)

Overall Rankings

  1. The Chimes of Midnight

    2. my candidate for greatest Doctor Who story ever. listen to Storm Warning first though

  2. Storm Warning

    3. decent, but introduces Charley (great)

  3. Sword of Orion

    4. despite being Charley's first voyage, eminently skippable

By Release:
The Monthly Adventures
The Lost Stories