The best of Doctor Who...

[fajrdrako]

The Daily Telegraph posted a list of the ten best stories of Doctor Who. Since I haven't seen eight of the stories they list, I can't really comment on most of it. The two I have seen fully deserved any accolades they get.

My choices:

10. 'Gridlock' by Russell T Davies (great science fiction, great costuming and make up and sets and concepts, and such a well-structured, integrated story)
9. 'Time Crash' by Steven Moffat (funny)
8. 'The Doctor's Daughter' by Stephen Greenhorn (much cuteness, both personal and humanistic)
7. 'The Shakespeare Code' by Gareth Roberts (because of Shakespeare)
6. 'Army of Ghosts/Doomsday' by Russell T. Davies (quirky and romantic)
5. 'Midnight' by Russell T Davies (gripping)
4. 'Boom Town' by Russell T Davies (brilliant)
3. 'Dalek' by Robert Shearman (heartbreaking)
2. 'Blink' by Steven Moffat (scary)
1. 'The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances' by Steven Moffat (brilliant, tense, and everyone lives. Not to mention our introduction to Captain Jack Harkness.)

A few notes on my choices:

• 'Human Nature/The Family of Blood' by Paul Cornell was a very powerful story with some utterly magnificent scenes - I loved the end. But in the end, my pleasure quotient is what motivated my choices, and I was uncomfortable with Martha's awful position in this story, and quite distressed by John Smith, the Doctor who was not the Doctor. Which made, for me, the scenes where he has transformed back into the Doctor very powerful and moving indeed. I admire this story, but in many ways I didn't enjoy it as much as many lesser stories.
  
  
• 'Time Crash' maybe doesn't count, as it isn't a full story, but it's funny and clever enough to warrant mention. If I have to replace that with a real episode, I'd say 'School Reunion' by Toby Whithouse, not such a great episode in itself, but it rises above its own material because of the good performances by Anthony Stewart Head and Elisabeth Sladen.
  
  
• 'Boom Town' may seem an odd inclusion, especially so high on my list - I find fans don't talk about it much, maybe just because I came in so late to the fandom I didn't hear what they said. But I think the episode is totally brilliant: exploring all sorts of nuances of cultural expectations, conditioning, personal interplay, and official priorities of corporations and governments. And Slitheen are people too. My Dinner With Andre, alien-style. And then - simply relating to my personal preferences - it thrills me to see the Doctor, Rose, and especially Jack, so happy together. Even Mickey has a role - and contains my favourite of all his scenes.
  
  
• I hear a lot of criticism of Russell T Davies and his writing choices, but seeing how many of his episodes I listed here, I realize how much I really do love his work. I even love his scurrilous lies to us, the fiend.
  
  
• 'Blink' proves that the Doctor doesn't have to be onscreen a lot for me to love an episode. I loved 'Love and Monsters', too - it would be in my top twenty, maybe.
  
  
• 'The Shakespeare Code' has an iffy plot, but makes up for its less-than-impressive witches by good dialogue and great acting.

So what are your favourites?

Comments

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you mentioned Time Crash. I loved that little gem so much I cried.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too. It isn't just funny, it has wisdom in its madness. And it's sweet: the Doctor in dialogue with himself. Beautifully, beautifully played by both Moffat and Davison.

I love the way Steven Moffat writes about time. I don't know any other writer who sees the possibilities and contradictions of time travel so acutely: who plays with it in such different ways in 'Time Crash' and 'Blink' and 'The Girl in the Fireplace' and 'Silence in the Library'. The future influences the past.... It's almost like reading T.S. Eliot.

[karra.livejournal.com]

He certainly gets the science of time travel proper.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And sees such delicious possibilities.

[karra.livejournal.com]

1. 'The Wheel in Space', because Zoe and James McCrimmen were brilliant. And TARDIS stowaways...yes.

2. 'Destiny of the Daleks', which introduced the idea that a timelord can regenerate at will as well as choose their appearance. Also, the first appearance of Lalla Ward as Romana. (but NOT of Lalla Ward, as she was in the previous episode as Princess Astra)

3. 'The Five Doctors', mostly because it was very first episode I ever saw that didn't have Tom Baker.


4. 'The Twin Dilemna', which showed that not only can the Doctor be dark, he can also be near-psychotic as he nearly strangles Peri to death when she insults his new-regeneration's choice of outfit.

5. "Terror of the Vervoids", which took the concept of the Doctor working with a companion he has not properly met and picked up yet a bit...differently than Silence in the Library did.

6. 'Time and the Rani'

7. 'Survival', the Doctor, the Master, Cheetah People and Ace.

8. 'Runaway Bride', especially for the end bits.

9. tie between 'Smith and Jones' and 'Last of the Time Lords', becaus Martha was brill in BOTH.

10. 'Midnight'

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I agree about 'Smith and Jones', which almost made my list - I'm not sure why it didn't, and it was my uncertainty about what exactly it is about it that I love that made me not so much hesitate to put it on the list, as to decide it was maybe #11 or #12. And 'Midnight' is on my list. The only other one you list that I've seen is 'Runaway Bride', which I didn't much like, though the Doctor was great in it, and I loved it every time Donna called him a Martian.

[karra.livejournal.com]

I would love to have seen and not been told why Donna changed her mind about traveling with the doctor.

Oh, you should totally see "Destiny of the Daleks", if just for the amazingness of a companion who totally throws the doctor off brain-course.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I hope to see 'Destiny of the Daleks' - I really do!

When I saw 'The Runaway Bride', I was glad Donna didn't want to go with the Doctor. When I saw series 4, I was delighted that she changed her mind.

[karra.livejournal.com]

Yes. I felt exactly the same way. He needed Donna to be ready for Martha, and she needed...whatever happened to her after to be ready for him.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I love it that his companions are such interesting people.

[nina-ds.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've been thinking about this a bit since seeing that list. My Old School experience is a bit iffy, but there are a couple that would make my list. The order is a bit rough, particularly around the middle, but...

10. War Games (Two-Era story) The story itself is a little bloated (10 episodes!), but the ending is breathtaking and heartbreaking - Doomsday has nothin' on this one.

9. Human Nature/Family of Blood by Paul Cornell. I don't know that it really works all that well for Ten and Martha specifically — it could almost be any Doctor/Companion combination, although having it be Martha puts particular stress on her — but the acting all around was extremely good, and it earned its emotional payoff, something that Cornell nails the way few other writers do.

8. Boom Town by RTD. For the dinner and the flirting and the sense of fun; truly happy on the surface, but dark underneath, tied together by the love and chemistry of the best Team TARDIS ever.

7. Turn Left by RTD. Because Donna is bloody awesome, and here's why.

6. Father's Day by Paul Cornell. Takes one SF cliché - excellently exemplified by Harlan Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever" from the original Star Trek - and makes it intimate and human and about how one ordinary man is the most important thing in the universe.

5. The Edge of Darkness (a One-Era story). The prototype for Midnight; lacking in the Lesley Sharp awesomeness, but a lyrical, metaphysical speech for the Doctor that was surely the inspiration for "the turning of the Earth."

4. The End of the World by RTD. I loved that it was about consequences - what is it like to run off with this magical stranger? It's the first time I've ever seen a show really deal with that question. Plus, Jabe. My favourite alien creation, ever, from concept to design to execution. Plus, it's really a very sexy episode while being rather innocent and sweet and a better Agatha Christie story than The Unicorn and the Wasp!

3. Dalek by Rob Shearman. Classic SF tropes - the zoo, the equivalence of hero and villain, but on another level altogether because of the acting. CE's performance makes the Daleks truly terrifying. That entire encounter scene is a masterclass.

2. Blink by Steven Moffat. This one doesn't scare me one bit, and I hate "timey-wimey" with a passion - but I loved the clockwork structure, which worked in this one in a way that GitF didn't, and Sally and Billy have the best chemistry since Nine and Rose.

1. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances by Steven Moffat. Practically perfect in every way - terrifying, poignant, melancholy, sexy, funny, exhilarating - and everybody lives! Red-bicycle-when-you-were-twelve! I am and always will be your mummy. What's not to love?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I love this exercise because I can consider it a way of learning which classic episodes I should be watching. When I find the time and the opportunity.

Disregarding the ones you list that I haven't seen, we agree on 1, 2, 3, and 8. Heartily, heartily agree about 'Boom Town'. I agree partially on your 9 - it's a brilliant episode and Cornell not only gets the emotional payoff, he paces and structures it all beautifully. But. My discomfort with John Smith prevents me from picking it. As a study in identity - and my personal feelings about a sense of identity - it's brilliant.

I too love 'The End of the World'. I should continue on, and do my top 20.

'Turn Left' may end up on my top 10 list - I considered it, but I feel it's tied in with both 'The Stolen Earth' and 'Journey's End' and I want to see how it all sorts out before I judge it.

Red-bicycle-when-you-were-twelve!

Iconic line! Such a great visual, says so much about her character - and his.

[nina-ds.livejournal.com]

Uh, Edge of Destruction - not Darkness! Brain not entirely in gear.

I never really got into the "classic" era (ie, Three, Four, Five - although probably come closer with Three), but I've seen some of the One and Two era stuff and just love it - it's closer to The Outer Limits, the original version, which is a show that I absolutely adore. One of my top 10 TV episodes of all time is The Man Who Never Was Born, with a very young and very beautiful Martin Landau and Shirley Knight, it's such a glorious fairy tale; and I thought the werewolf story of Tooth and Claw was an "homage" (okay, possibly rip-off) of The Bellero Shield by way of The Galaxy Being. /tangent

The only thing about HN/FOB that bothered was the very end, the "punishment" sequence. I liked it dramatically, but not in terms of characterization.

With Turn Left, I thought it stood up well enough on its own, sort of like Boom Town, but I thought about Fires of Pompeii, too, simply because I had to have a good Donna episode on my list!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to find and watch the early-era Doctor Who. Some time.

I liked the ending of HN/FOB just fine - it was when the Doctor was John Smith that I had trouble with it. I'm not sure why, but I found that distressing: a nightmare things, people not being who they are.

Yes, "Turn Left" had so very much to recommend it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should look at the One and Two era. Haven't had a chance, yet.

I liked the end of HN/FOB with the 'punishment' - though I didn't entirely understand it - why, specifically, was the Doctor so angry at that point? I liked HN/FOB very much as a story - thought it was interesting and well-written, but it squicked me to see the Doctor as a human (or as that particular version of a human) and I didn't like Joan. So it's a stroy I like, objectively, but it's problematic. I loved Martha in it - so heroic and faithful.

I did love "Turn Left".

[gillo]

Of the classic era,

City of Death

has to be my favourite - Leonardo da Vinci! John Cleese! Douglas Adams writing/script editing! And I just love Tom Baker.

Of the more recent stuff, most of the Moffat stuff wins -

Blink

and

The Empty Child

particularly. I loved the Shakespeare episode because, well, Shakespeare - and a lot of it was filmed locally to me in Warwick and Coventry, so it was fun spotting locations. And the John Simm stuff because he's such a wonderful actor as well as being pretty. And most of the last few weeks have had me on the edge of my seat. Not quite behind the sofa yet, but I've made sure there's room there for tonight, just in case.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Leonardo da Vinci! John Cleese! Douglas Adams writing/script editing! And I just love Tom Baker.

Sounds like fun. Did John Cleese play Leonardo?

most of the Moffat stuff wins - Blink and The Empty Child particularly

Yes. They are just so very good. Top-notch television.

As for the edge of the seat the last few weeks - yes, it's amazing. I don't know how they did it, but I've been loving every minute - when I'm not too scared to think about it.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

I thought the saddest comment in that Daily Telegraph article was re The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve (William Hartnell, 1966): "Tragically only the soundtrack survives, because the BBC wiped the tape."

How COULD they? Especially a show with Lymond overtones (and which actually sounds excellent in its own right).

Everyone else's Top Tens sound great to me...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes: it seems incredible to me, but the BBC valued the show so little that they reused the tape they used for it and didn't keep copies. It wasn't even an accident. There are several Doctor Who stories that are just completely lost.

Don't you wish you had a TARDIS to go back and retrieve these shows? So easy to copy things now.

Makes you reflect how long ago the 1960s actually were, technoligically speaking, which makes me feel old.

[laurab1.livejournal.com]

The BBC and ITV both incinerated tapes of all sorts of programmes, just to make space in the libraries, from the mid-sixties to the early seventies. It's just tragic, yes :(

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

They had no sense of history! Of continuity! Of the love people had for their material!

Sigh.

I know hindsight skews the perspective, but you think they'd have valued their own material enough to save it.

It's sort of like those lost manuscripts by Shakespeare. [g] If only.