Put me in the group that loves Rory more than Amy. Not only that, but Rory makes Amy better. I'm not a huge fan of the character overall, but I love the way she looks when she looks at Rory. You can tell she really loves him.
1. Season 1. This season did the impossible by not only bringing a 42 year old series back to us, but by infusing it with a freshness that made it feel like nothing else on TV. And while some viewers ding it for episodes like "Aliens of London," "World War Three," & "Boom Town," I don't think the season had a single misstep. Okay, the farting Slitheen were a little too silly but I love the bits in "Aliens of London" where Rose has to deal with the fall-out of her year-long absence. These are the kinds of obvious emotional issues that the original series had never addressed, and it was so gratifying to see the new series tackle them with such earnestness. "Boom Town" has that great dinner table scene with the Doctor & the Slitheen woman. And the Rose/Mickey B-plot breaks my heart. Not to mention all of the universally regarded excellent episodes here, like "Dalek," "Father's Day," "The Empty Child," "The Doctor Dances," "Bad Wolf," & "The Parting of the Ways."
2. Season 4. Mostly because of Catherine Tate. I'm a huge fan of her sketch comedy show. Here, she demonstrates her mastery of both comedy & drama and the careful blend between the 2 that
Doctor Who requires. Plus, because she's able to handle the comedy side of things, it occasionally allows Tennant to CALM THE FUCK DOWN! All of the episodes are solid (although "The Doctor's Daughter," "Turn Left," & the end of "Journey's End" all went a little over the top). I loved "The Unicorn & the Wasp." River Song was an excellent addition. "Midnight" was a brilliant bottle show that creeps you out and takes the Doctor well out of his comfort zone (which is always a good choice for the series, IMO). The massive Dalek invasion in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" is way too over the top. And I don't think the Doctor clone coda added anything useful to the Rose Tyler storyline. However, I'm a big
Torchwood fan and a huge sucker for crossovers in general, so I give it a thumbs up.
3. Season 2. At this time, I shall yield the floor to the honorable
Gep Malakai.
[Season 2] gave us "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" (my favorite of all the two-parters), the new Cybermen, a conclusion to the Tyler family arc, and "Girl in the Fireplace." Hell, I even love "Idot's Lantern," which is about the best a throwaway one-off epsiode can get. The show's interpersonal dynamic never got as good as it did with the Mickey/Doctor/Rose/Jackie/alt-Pete...thing, and I miss it.
The only difference between his opinion & mine is that I hate "Love & Monsters" and "Fear Her." By far, they are the worst episodes the series has ever done. However, there are more than enough good episodes here to counterbalance it. While the ending of Rose's storyline in "Doomsday" is a bit angsty, it's earned angst. "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit" was the 1st time I really felt that the new series was doing a story that would have felt equally at home during the Tom Baker years. And then you have "School Reunion," cementing the fact that the new series is set in the same continuity as the old series.
4. Season 5. Don't get me wrong. I love Matt Smith. He's my favorite of the 3 modern Doctors by far. In fact, he's currently competing for my all-time 1st place against Patrick Troughton & Tom Baker. However, I think most of the episodes this season were very weak. While the character moments are brilliant, there's a certain blase approach to a lot of the perfunctory alien plots, particularly in the beginning in "The Eleventh Hour," "The Beast Below," & "Victory of the Daleks." However, when the show experiments with more emotionally driven stories like "Amy's Choice" or alternate story formulas like "The Lodger," it hits a home run. There just aren't nearly enough of those this year. Still, I'm very hopeful for Season 6. Give Matt Smith some better stories to work with and I fully expect his next year to shoot up to the top of this list.
5. Season 3. It's got 3 great episodes in it-- "Human Nature," "The Family of Blood," & "Blink." It's got a few average episodes-- "Smith & Jones," "The Shakespeare Code," "Utopia," "The Sound of Drums," and most of "Last of the Time Lords." However, most of the middle of the season, from "Gridlock" through "42," was mired in mediocrity. I wouldn't mind if some of those episodes were lost in a 1970s style purge (particularly if the celluloid sacrifice would allow us to resurrect some lost Troughton episodes). I wanted to like Martha, but she was such a dull, one-note character. She never got the chance to truly establish herself because she was lost in the shadow of Rose (which is a shame, because I think Martha is a lot cuter and Mickey is a lot better off).
Season 1: This drew me into the fold of Doctor Who. Looking back, this season feels a little conservative, as if the show as hesitant to stretch out it's wings -- but it captured the magic of Doctor Who.
I think hesitation is exactly the right word for what the writers were feeling at the time. Occasionally, they just went for it, like with "The End of the World." But mostly, I think they were afraid to really explore alien worlds; afraid that cynical 21st century audiences weaned on
24 &
The X-Files had lost a taste for campy, outlandish locales in their sci-fi.
My biggest complaint, outside of the three episodes already mentioned, is the utterly shameless transformation of the [10th] Doctor from a somewhat-lonely traveler into KING SHIT OF TIME MOUNTAIN. Parts of stories got entirely too self-indulgent with "oh, shit, the Doctor is awesome, let us all suck his dick," and it sometimes detracted from the overall storytelling quality.
Agreed. I think one of the reasons why I like Matt Smith so much is because the writers don't ask you to suck his dick. (Well, maybe a little bit at the end of "The Big Bang.") And even if you did suck Matt Smith's dick, I don't think he'd notice. And I love him for that.
Waters of Mars. a great set up, scary looking monsters, yet it all seems so pointless. 59 minutes spent setting up the Doctor Victorious so that Tennant can go bad for all of 30 seconds...then come to his senses.
Agreed. Hell, if RTD had any balls, he would have carried through dark Doctor for the rest of "The End of Time." Want to soften the blow of Tennant's departure? Take the character to such extremes that the audience is supposed to hate him at the end.