Now that I've had a bit of time to digest the final episode and the series as a whole, I thought it would be fun to rank the individual episodes in series 6 to see which are the best and which are the worst. My rankings, from worst to best... 13. The Almost People 12. The Rebel Flesh 11. The Curse of the Black Spot 10. Night Terrors 9. Closing Time 8. The God Complex 7. A Good Man Goes to War 6. The Wedding of River Song 5. Day of the Moon 4. The Impossible Astronaut 3. The Doctor's Wife 2. Let's Kill Hitler 1. The Girl Who Waited
This is basically how I'd group them: 1. The Girl Who Waited 2. The Doctor's Wife 3. The God Complex 4. Day of the Moon/The Impossible Astronaut 5. The Wedding of River Song 6. Closing Time 7. A Good Man Goes To War 8. Let's Kill Hitler 9. The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People 10. Curse of the Black Spot 11. Night Terrors
From best to least best: 1. The God Complex 2. A Good Man Goes to War 3. The Doctor's Wife 4. Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon 5. The Girl who Waited 6. Wedding of River Song 7. Let's Kill Hitler 8. Closing Time 9. The Rebel Flesh/Almost People 10. The Curse of the Black Spot 11. Night Terrors
1. The Doctor's Wife: a perfect episode, felt right out of the RTD era in a good way 2. A Good Man Goes to War: jammed packed full of goodness 3. Wedding of River Song: pretty good ending to the story 4. Let's Kill Hitler: too bad they wasted the Nazi Germany setting but the River stuff was interesting 5. Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon: cool and epic opening! 6. Closing Time: I really enjoyed the fun after the recent bleak episodes 7. The God Complex: it's alright. 8. The Girl who Waited: well done but too bleak and depressing 9. The Curse of the Black Spot: not terribly interesting until the ending. 10. The Rebel Flesh/Almost People: boring. uninteresting. should've only been one episode. 11. Night Terror: I was just completely uninterested. I don't say that often with Dr Who. I think this might be my least favorite episode of the revival.
13. Night Terrors - The worst episode of Doctor Who i've ever seen. There are so many illogical plot points, not scary, not funny, boring characters, and then the dolls are defeated with love 12. The Almost People 11. The Rebel Flesh - This should have been one episode. The concept of a small group of people stranded with an enemy that looks like them is done to death. Boring. 10. The Curse of The Black Spot - Too much elements from previous stories. Monster of the week that turns out to be misguided medical thingy. 09. The Girls Who Waited 08. The God Complex - Not bad episodes, they just followed Night Terrors with two depressing episodes. If these episodes were shown in a different order i probably would have liked them much better. 07. Closing Time - Closing Time could have been great if it wasn't for the way the Cybermen were defeated. (combination of love and technobabble) The interaction between The Doctor and Craig is fantastic though. I hope we see Craig again (but not as a full time companion). 06. A Good Man Goes to War 05. Day of the Moon 04. The Impossible Astronaut 03. The Wedding of River Song 02. The Doctor's Wife 01. Let's Kill Hitler All excellent.
I've only seen "Fear Her" once back in the day, and I remember it being average but not terrible. I don't remember the details anymore. "Night Terrors" on the other hand just left me totally uninterested and completely uncaring if I saw the ending or not. I don't think I've ever felt that way about NuWho before.
From best to worst 1 - The Doctor's Wife (by a mile) 2 - Closing Time 3 - The Girl Who Waited 4 - The God Complex 5 - Night Terrors Then miles further down 6 - A Good Man Goes To War 7 - Let's Kill Hitler 8 - The Impossible Astronaut 9 - Day Of The Moon 10 - The Wedding Of River Song 11 - The Curse Of The Black Spot 12 - The Rebel Flesh 13 - The Almost People
So, in order of best to worst: 1) The Rebel Flesh. 2) The Almost People. 3) The Curse of the Black Spot. 4) The Doctor's Wife. 5) The God Complex. Those were the episodes I did kind of like. 6) The Impossible Astronaut. 7) Day of the Moon. 8) Closing Time. I didn't really like those episodes, but they had their moments. 9) Let's Kill Hitler. 10) A Good Man Goes to War. 11) The Wedding of River Song. 12) The Girl Who Waited. 13) Night Terrors. And these... well, better luck next time, eh? Not for the first time, I find that my tastes put me in opposition with 'the agreed wisdom'. But I stand by my choices, and I'm particularly sorry to see how little people think of the flesh 2 parter. Though it did perhaps suffer from a constrained budget at times, I found it to be full of interesting ideas, and had some actual emotional weight, unlike most of the smoke and mirrors we get from Moffat's era. As for Moffat, I'm surprised how highly I ranked some of his episodes, but that's perhaps more down to how truly self-harm inducingly dull I found The Girl who Waited and Night Terrors, as well as the sheer volume of clunkers from Moffat. In deference to the fact that the 'death' sequence of the Doctor in Impossible Astronaut was well executed, and because I kind of like the Silents, I was willing to mitigate my belief that the opening 2-parter was a painfully slow, confusing mess (plus I like Mark Sheppard in anything). I also continue to defend Curse of the Black Spot against its many, many detractors. The opening 5-10 minutes are fairly painful, as is the presence of yet another 'dying man's last words' (averted in this case, but we're getting quite a few of those too...) But otherwise, I found it a very solid and enjoyable episode, mercifully free of the all the fanwank and impossibly uninteresing arc material (what little COTBS did include at the end, was back when it seemed like it just might be interesting, but that didn't last long). Speaking of fanwank - The Doctor's Wife. Although I didn't like this anywhere near as much as everyone else seems to, it was still one of the better episodes of this tepid season. It still felt like Neil Gaiman by numbers, brought in something that I wished had not been (the TARDIS given a tragic human form etc etc - how many times have we seen this kind of thing from Gaiman and in sci-fi shows of all kinds?) But still... it was alright, and worth it just for the scenes with the 'Timelord collection'. Gaiman also wrote very well for Smith's Doctor, giving him much better dialogue than most did, this year. So overall then, this was a pretty awful season IMO. The first half was fairly enjoyable, once the stodgy 2 parter with Moffat endlessly recycling his bag of tricks was out of the way. But from 'A Good Man...' onwards, it all fell apart. The arc quickly shifted from 'reasonably interesting' to 'utterly dreadful', and with the exception of the alrightish God Complex, the second half of the season was just appalling. (And no, I can't believe I put Closing Time so far up either, but I really hated the episodes below it, so...) As should be plain, I do not approve of Moffat as showrunner. He had a decent start up until about 'Flesh and Stone', but since then, his episodes have been very, very poor. Very disappointing season, IMO - right 'up' there (od down there if you like) with Seasons 4 and 5 as the worst of the new series.
1. The Doctor's Wife 2. A Good Man Goes to War 3. The Girl Who Waited 4. The God Complex 5. Day of the Moon 6. The Impossible Astronaut 7. Let's Kill Hitler 8. Closing Time 9. The Wedding of River Song 10. The Rebel Flesh 11. The Almost People 12. The Curse of the Black Spot 13. Night Terrors
13. The Curse of the Black Spot 12. Let's Kill Hitler 11. The Wedding of River Song 10. A Good Man Goes to War 9. The God Complex 8. Closing Time 7. Night Terrors 6. The Almost People 5. The Rebel Flesh 4. The Girl Who Waited 3. The Impossible Asronaut 2. Day of the Moon 1. The Doctor's Wife
1. Doctor's wife 2. Good man goes to war 3. Impossible astronaut/Day of the moon 4. The god complex 5. Closing time 6. Night terrors 7. Wedding of River song 8. Girl who waited 9. Almost people/Rebel flesh (should have been one episode) thus endeth the ones I liked 10. Black spot thus endeth the one that was "meh" 11. let's kill hitler thus endeth the one with the most tacked together plot I have ever seen. sorry Hitler :P
TIER I: Episodes I loved 1.The God Complex 2.The Girl Who Waited 3. The Doctor's Wife 4. Day of the Moon /The Impossible Astronaut 5. A Good Man Goes to War TIER II: Episodes I enjoyed 6.The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People 7. Let's Kill Hitler TIER III: Episodes I thought were average 8. Closing Time 9. Night Terrors 10. The Wedding of River Song TIER IV: Episodes I did not enjoy watching 11. Curse of the Black Spot It's a shame about The Curse of the Black Spot...I'm a big pirate fan. : (
1. The Doctor's Wife 2. The Girl Who Waited 3. The Impossible Astronaut 4. The God Complex 5. Day of the Moon 6. A Good Man Goes to War 7. The Wedding of River Song 8. Closing Time 9. Let's Kill Hitler 10. The Rebel Flesh 11. The Almost People 12. The Curse of the Black Spot 13. Night Terrors
1. The Doctor’s Wife. Just brilliant. 2. The God Complex. Fine example of how to do spooky in a claustrophobic location (Gatiss take note) 3. The Girl Who Waited. Not perfect, lumbering start, but once Amy 2 shows up just brilliant. 4. A Good Man Goes to War. Just fun from start to finish. 5. Closing Time. Sweet and funny, I’m no fan of Corden but he’s great as Craig. 6. Let’s Kill Hitler. Mad as a box of frogs. 7. The Wedding of River Song. Brilliant and frustrating in equal measure. 8. The Rebel flesh. Brilliant opening half to a story, very classic Who in feel…shame about pt 2 really. 9. Day of the Moon. Really need to go back and re-watch this in hindsight, but if nothing else fantastic last few minutes. 10. The Impossible Astronaut. Not terrible, but I just couldn’t connect with it for some reason. 11. The Almost People. Lousy second part, all over the place. 12. Night Terrors. ZZZzzzzz 13. The Curse of the Black Spot. An entire character vanishes and then we get an ending lifted straight from The Doctor Dances. Just really bad!
This was actually the first season of the revival not to contain one single episode I didn't like. Yes, I even liked The Curse of the Black Spot, which I considered the "most classic-style" story of the bunch; forgetting the bells and whistles of which companions, this was a pure Tom Baker story, just substitute Leela for Amy. Or make it a Harry/Sarah Jane story if you like. Several of the stories pushed Doctor Who into an area it rarely enters - hard SF. The God Complex was one (yes, even with all that faith business), and definitely the gangers two-parter. Three stories pushed this season to a new level: The Doctor's Wife, which rewrote the rulebook for the series, A Good Man Goes to War (which any other season would have been the finale; meanwhile, it expanded the universe by providing us with several new characters arriving fully-formed for later return by Moffat or expansion by the fanbase); and the aforementioned God Complex which is one of the best "bottle shows" the franchise has done in years (and would have been a perfect Pertwee or Davison episode). A perfect season? Of course not - that can't be done in any series. But it definitely, for me, was the most consistent in terms of quality and engagement. My only big complaint is I did not like the decision to split it, because it made the two halves go by too quickly. I think The Wedding of River Song would have had more impact (and maybe more people would have been able to follow it) had it come at the end of a 13-week run rather than a half-dozen. Alex
1. The Doctor's Wife 2. A Good Man Goes to War 3. The God Complex 4. The Girl Who Waited 5. The Curse of the Black Spot 6. The Wedding of River Song 7. The Impossible Astronaut 8. Closing Time 9. Day of the Moon 10. The Rebel Flesh 11. The Almost People 12. Night Terrors 13. Let's Kill Hitler