What's the worst episde of Doctor Who, classic series and reboot

[Ray Hardgrit]

Classic WHO took the time to spell out how the TARDIS still thinks and acts as a machine and despite having an allusion, is not alive in any actual sense.

The Doctor's opinions about the machine being alive have changed over time, with Edge of Destruction being a major turning point right near the start. Then you've got The Doctor's Wife as the last big turning point, which pretty much cements the idea, in the Doctor's mind at least. The Doctor considers the Tardis to be alive and knows that the Tardis considers others Tardises to be her sisters, so whether they are actually alive or not, it doesn't ring true that she'd be so cavalier about sacrificing them.

Also I don't think Doctor Who's ever had a showrunner who's seen all of it, (you can look at how badly Steven Moffat wrote the First Doctor to see how far back his knowledge went), but I watched through the classic series for the first time four years back and it took me two months watching three-four serials a day! So it's definitely possible for a new showrunner to watch all of it, but I could definitely forgive them if they only decided to watch the stories that led up to the ones they're writing. But seriously, if you're going to write for the First Doctor, watch a few of his serials first.

 

[StarMan]

Classic - haven't seen enough to weigh in.

Forest of the Night. That was just TERRIBLE.

Yep - I haven't watched it in full. First run I couldn't be bothered after several minutes. Tried again on a re-watch but didn't last the whole episode.

I can't remember why truth be told! It must have been pretty horrid for me to switch it off; I know I'd already started to check out of NuWho by then.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I kind of wish I'd quit Forest of the Night after the first few minutes as well. I remember thinking that it was interesting enough for the first half and I was curious to see where it was going. By the time I found out where it was going it was too late to get off and when it ended I was stunned by what I'd seen. It wasn't just the reveal of what was really going on that drove me out of the story, but the choices the characters made as well. Man that was a bad episode.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Don't forget girlfriend is now a slab of concrete. eek

Maybe the stupidest thing in the show ever.

 

[zarkon]

For classic first thoughts are the usual suspects like The Web Planet, The Invasion of Time, The Twin Dilemma & Silver Nemesis. I think probably The Invasion of Time, as it just feels really insulting lol.

For nuwho, maybe Hell Bent? Though part of that might be how much of a let down it was after Heaven Sent. Use of Rassilon in the ep was defo rotten though. Glad Dalton avoided that due to other commitments.

 

[Marc]

For classic first thoughts are the usual suspects like The Web Planet, The Invasion of Time, The Twin Dilemma & Silver Nemesis. I think probably The Invasion of Time, as it just feels really insulting lol.

Don't think the Invasion of TIme is that bad but Twin Dilemma and Silver Nemesis are absolute stinkers and I don't think I've ever watched them since the initial broadcast.

 

[Mr Awe]

Worst in the Classic Series: Greatest Show in the Galaxy
In the Modern Series: Fear Her

 

[TommyR01D]

I cannot think of many Classic serials that I have watched and actively disliked. I suppose Ghost Light is a bit confusing due to all the exposition being cut out, The Sun Makers can't make up its mind as to its message and the 1996 movie was flawed from the get-go.

In the New Series I must echo the examples already given - Kill the Moon insults the intelligence of its audience, In the Forest of the Night and Sleep No More are deathly tedium and the Monks trilogy from Series 10 felt like an excercise in pointlessness.

Overall, though, I too would go for Hell Bent. At first I thought it merely mediocre, but after a while the true extent of its depravity sunk in. Sure, it's visually stunning, but I cannot abide what the episode did to the franchise.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I kind of wish I'd quit Forest of the Night after the first few minutes as well. I remember thinking that it was interesting enough for the first half and I was curious to see where it was going. By the time I found out where it was going it was too late to get off and when it ended I was stunned by what I'd seen. It wasn't just the reveal of what was really going on that drove me out of the story, but the choices the characters made as well. Man that was a bad episode.

I remember watching "In the Forest of the Night" and, for the first ten minutes or so, thinking, "Oh, this is Doctor Who doing 'Inconstant Moon'" (the Larry Niven story about a solar flare hitting Earth, and the characters in the story are on the nightside and know what's happening on the other side of the Earth by the moon's illumination). If only!

The whole attitude of Clara and Danny -- "Oh, sod it, we're all going to die and let's not do anything about it" -- was off-putting, the general impotence of the Doctor was bizarre, and the sense that everyone was going to forget this weird thing and neverr speak of it again left me stunned. I'll defend Danny Pink in other contexts, but every single character is awful in this. The episode's defenders, Moffat among them, take the approach that we, the audience, are too dumb to understand its brilliance, but no, this is a dumb episode, and no amount of bullshittery will change the fact that it's a dumb, dumb episode in what is, frankly, a dumb, dumb season.

I didn't want Matt Smith to leave in 2013, but I look at Series 8 and go, "Yeah, he dodged a bullet there."

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Smile was another episode I didn't like much because the Doctor was a dick in how the situation of the week was resolved. Didn't like that episode one bit

 

[The Wormhole]

Smile was also written by the same writer as Forest of the Night. While I do consider Smile to be a generally better episode (salvaged mostly by the great interplay between Capaldi and Mackie, like many episodes in Capaldi's final season) the two episodes have a very strange message saying it's wrong to mourn the dead. In Forest of the Night, Clara actually says it's better to let the children die so that they won't have to mourn the deaths of their parents while in Smile the fact that people were mourning the death of loved ones is what leads them to getting killed themselves. While it's true one should not lose themselves in grief when a loved one dies, there is nothing wrong with mourning the death of someone.

Clara's "logic" in Forest was also completely out of character for her. Just a year earlier, her tears for the children of Gallifrey who could have died were enough to convince three Doctors not to go through with destroying Gallifrey, despite two of them believing Gallifrey's destruction to be a fixed event that had to happen. And now she thinks it's better for children to die so that they won't miss their parents? Didn't she realize many of the children on Gallifrey likely had dead parents?

 

[kirk55555]

For me I can think of many picks, but staying to just one choice per era, the worst episodes/stories would be:

Classic: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. This is probably not a pick anyone else would make, but I hated it. its the 7th Doctor at his absolute worst, basically just being The Master without the murder. He treats Ace like crap for no reason (trying to "get her over her fear of clowns" isn't a legitimate reason, and is probably just a lie anyway), and the story in general is just bad.

nuWho: The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion. This story is just pure bullshit. Whats worse is that its trying to get a good message across (don't be an asshole to immigrants) but doing it so badly it undermines its point entirely. There are an almost infinite amount of planets the Zygons could be sent to, putting them on Earth is absolutely fucking stupid, and it is never justified in the story. The humans are 100% right to not trust them, and the Zygons have no right to the planet (or to steal peoples forms). The fact that there are, what, 25 million of them is even worse. If they could get to Earth, then they could get to another planet The Doctor could probably easily find for them. The fact that The doctor has a holier then thou speech is just the icing on this crap cake, it makes him look like a complete jackass.

 

[Jedman67]

I could never fully hate Love and Monsters. Mostly because it doesn't really fall apart until that very end. Up until that frickin monster comes up, its actually pretty decent, showings fans of the Doctor actually getting to enjoy each other's company.

Ughh, hated that episode. There were a few really awful ones in the nuWho era. Blink worked well as a "Doctor Lite" but not the others.
The warewolf episode was also a bit "meh" for me.

For nuwho, maybe Hell Bent? Though part of that might be how much of a let down it was after Heaven Sent. Use of Rassilon in the ep was defo rotten though. Glad Dalton avoided that due to other commitments.

Great two parter. I pretty much skimmed through after Capaldi's first season. Great actor but I just couldn't enjoy the storylines.

 

[diankra]

Original, Time and the Rani and Silver Nemesis. I've warmed to Underwater Menace since pt2 turned up (never judge a story by a single surviving episode).
New run... Fear Her needed another draft. Rings needed less singing.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

nuWho: The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion. This story is just pure bullshit. Whats worse is that its trying to get a good message across (don't be an asshole to immigrants) but doing it so badly it undermines its point entirely. There are an almost infinite amount of planets the Zygons could be sent to, putting them on Earth is absolutely fucking stupid, and it is never justified in the story. The humans are 100% right to not trust them, and the Zygons have no right to the planet (or to steal peoples forms). The fact that there are, what, 25 million of them is even worse. If they could get to Earth, then they could get to another planet The Doctor could probably easily find for them. The fact that The doctor has a holier then thou speech is just the icing on this crap cake, it makes him look like a complete jackass.

Have to agree with all of this but that speech yeah that was a bit too much. Also TARDIS he could have relocated the Zygons in a jiffy. But nope.

 

[TommyR01D]

nuWho: The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion. This story is just pure bullshit. Whats worse is that its trying to get a good message across (don't be an asshole to immigrants) but doing it so badly it undermines its point entirely. There are an almost infinite amount of planets the Zygons could be sent to, putting them on Earth is absolutely fucking stupid, and it is never justified in the story. The humans are 100% right to not trust them, and the Zygons have no right to the planet (or to steal peoples forms). The fact that there are, what, 25 million of them is even worse. If they could get to Earth, then they could get to another planet The Doctor could probably easily find for them. The fact that The doctor has a holier then thou speech is just the icing on this crap cake, it makes him look like a complete jackass.

Have to agree with all of this but that speech yeah that was a bit too much. Also TARDIS he could have relocated the Zygons in a jiffy. But nope.

I'd like to see someone do a fan edit of the two episodes (perhaps retitle it "The Zygon Invocation" per Sandifer) cropped to 4:3 and filtered to look like mid-TNG, maybe with the music and effects changed as well. Tonally I think it would fit right in.

I agree that the presentation of the settlers was flawed - we're told that the majority are peaceful but all the ones we actually get to see are the terrorists. In general, despite its attempts to depict a global-scale phenomenon, the story ends up feeling rather small, with all the important action confined to the few regular cast-members and the exotic locations typically being empty.

Classic: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. This is probably not a pick anyone else would make, but I hated it. its the 7th Doctor at his absolute worst, basically just being The Master without the murder. He treats Ace like crap for no reason (trying to "get her over her fear of clowns" isn't a legitimate reason, and is probably just a lie anyway), and the story in general is just bad.

Mr Awe already did make it five posts before yours, and I was thinking of making it as well. I know it's quite revered among the fandom more generally, but when I actually watched it the whole thing felt embarrassingly amateurish (the home video look of most episodes from that era doesn't help). It sort of confirmed to me why the series was cancelled, which is a little ironic given the subject matter.

 

[Starkers]

The Doctor moving immigrants somewhere else wouldn't have been a great look!

In terms of modern Who Fear Her is terrible, but in fairness it was a last minute replacement. Love and Monsters shows RTD at his best and worst. I loved the portrayal of Jackie, loved the metaphor of the LINDA lot (basically Dr Who fans coming together because of their love of the show then realising they have more in common than just the Doctor) but Peter Kay and the paving slab stuff ruin it.

Forest of the Night and Kill the Moon aren't great. Also plenty of Chibnall era episodes are awful, the worst being The Tsuranga Conundrum, surprised no one's mentioned Orphan 55, though frankly it's so bad it's good, or at least laughably enjoyable. I'll add another voice to The Timeless Child, just because of how little the agency the Doctor has in that episode. I can live with the revelations, I just hate the Doctor being masterplained to and having to rely on an old man to sacrifice himself instead of her!

 

[Chaos Descending]

Classic: The Gunfighters, The Twin Dilemma, Time and the Rani.
Honorable Mention: The Web Planet. It's so horrible that I love everything about it.

New Series: Where do I begin? Put a gun to my head and I'd have to pick "Kill the Moon".

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The Doctor moving immigrants somewhere else wouldn't have been a great look!

Only in this case I don't think the term immigrant applies.

 

[kirk55555]

The Doctor moving immigrants somewhere else wouldn't have been a great look!

Well, thats the writers fault. The Zygons had no place on Earth, they had no right to just start squatting and stealing peoples identites, especially when there was literally thousands and thousands of other planets for them that either The Doctor or the Zygons themselves could have found. That is not the same as Earth immigrants or refugees, who 1) are from Earth and 2) don't have the universe of alternatives that the Zygons do.

Only in this case I don't think the term immigrant applies.

Yep. While the episode is trying to use the Zygons as a stand in for real world immigrants and refugees, they just don't fit the role in my opinion. They're a species of space traveling aliens, and quite frankly not a very sympathetic one. The whole attempted message of the story is just completely ruined by trying to get them to fit the role the writer wanted. Its not surprising that this two parter was done by the same writer as the terrible Kill the Moon, although I think this episode was worse because of its length, The Doctor's insipid speech and just how bungled its message was.