Throughout all of Doctor Who old and new there is one episode that stands out as almost iredeemavly bad...Voyage of the Damned.
I loved the RTD era for the most part but here he got it badly badly wrong and following on from the Jesus- esque deification of the character at the end of Last of the Timelords it actually felt like he was losing sight of what makes the character and the show so brilliant. Empty hollow bombast with little heart and soul , pointless stunt casting, cringe inducing and utterly flat romance, identikit and insultingly simplistic villains. The whole thing felt crass and in bad taste. Reducing the Doctor to running around in a shallow retread of the Poseidon Adventure and coming across like a laughably wet approximation of John Mclane/ James Bond was a disgrace and for probably the only time since the show returned it felt nothing like Doctor Who. Just a piss poor attempt to do a flashy blockbuster without any of the expensive action and special effects to make you forget how paper thin the plot was.
Doctor Who had never been so bad and thankfully hadn't been since. And S4 was a brilliant come back to this garbage.
1 - The Chase. Never been able to watch it all the way through.
2 - The Krotons. Silly beyond words. It would have been The Space Pirates but that is one missing adventure I don't mind missing.
3 - Got to be one of the unnecessarily long 6 parters. I'll go with Colony In Space for its yawn-inducing drawn out political allegories.
4 - Some golden stories to start with but went out with a whimper. Let's go with something too long and crap - The Armageddon Factor
5 - Getting easier to choose now. The Five Doctors. Plonking *everyone* into a storyline doesn't enhance anything, it just diminshes.
6 - So many to choose from. Plot holes, pass-poor production, half-baked scripts, not to mention the costumes. Eenie meenie minie Timewarp
7 - Again, a glut of gloop but this time I have a clear 'winner' - Paradise Towers. Worst Dr. Who ever.
8 - The TV Movie. OK, so it's a default choice but let's take nothing away from it - it deserves to be in this list.
9 - Ahh, much better. Not a bad story to chose but my least favourite is Boom Town.
10 - Again a tricky choice but only because the quality is -generally- so high. Fear Her
11 - We're still living in rewarding times fans. However, The Beast Below was a load of plop.
Throughout all of Doctor Who old and new there is one episode that stands out as almost iredeemavly bad...Voyage of the Damned.
I loved the RTD era for the most part but here he got it badly badly wrong and following on from the Jesus- esque deification of the character at the end of Last of the Timelords it actually felt like he was losing sight of what makes the character and the show so brilliant. Empty hollow bombast with little heart and soul , pointless stunt casting, cringe inducing and utterly flat romance, identikit and insultingly simplistic villains. The whole thing felt crass and in bad taste. Reducing the Doctor to running around in a shallow retread of the Poseidon Adventure and coming across like a laughably wet approximation of John Mclane/ James Bond was a disgrace and for probably the only time since the show returned it felt nothing like Doctor Who. Just a piss poor attempt to do a flashy blockbuster without any of the expensive action and special effects to make you forget how paper thin the plot was.
Doctor Who had never been so bad and thankfully hadn't been since. And S4 was a brilliant come back to this garbage.
I remmeber looking forward to Voyage Of the Damned with high expectations that Christmas, especially as it had Kylie in it, and to be fair she did put in a really good performance.
However, that was overshadowed by what I considered to be a lacklustre story. I just couldn't get into it at all and it didn't help that it was to some extent a poor man's remake of The Robots Of Death.
Max was just a copy of Plantagenet in the Excavation Machine from Frontios and the whole story took a good 20 minutes before anything exciting really happened. Even then, it wasn't that exciting.
By far the worst of all the Xmas Specials. It certainly suffered from overhype and it's right up there in my five least favourite New Who stories.
It was more like a parody than a real episode. I feel bad for the kid who created the Abzorbaloff, they wasted his character in a beyond-dire episode.
I don't. The dozy little pillock actually came up with a character intended for a prime time drama and called it the 'Abzorbaloff'. He deserves all the ridicule he gets. As does whoever thought up the stupid stunt of getting a kid to design a Doctor Who monster in the first place.
I remmeber looking forward to Voyage Of the Damned with high expectations that Christmas, especially as it had Kylie in it, and to be fair she did put in a really good performance.
However, that was overshadowed by what I considered to be a lacklustre story. I just couldn't get into it at all and it didn't help that it was to some extent a poor man's remake of The Robots Of Death.
Max was just a copy of Plantagenet in the Excavation Machine from Frontios and the whole story took a good 20 minutes before anything exciting really happened. Even then, it wasn't that exciting.
By far the worst of all the Xmas Specials. It certainly suffered from overhype and it's right up there in my five least favourite New Who stories.
Even drunk on brandy and stuffed with turkey I couldn't find much to enjoy first time around. Which is unusual for me. Even episodes I've come to dislike haven't left me so cold on the first viewing. But oh dear. I hated this. It just seemed like a lazy concept ( titanic! In space!) that had nothing beyond that. And I love a lot of the films it was referencing but this felt less like a homage, more a cheesy low rent rip off. And the Doctor was all wrong. I had no problem with the fact Ten was often a good deal.more 'romantic hero' than those who had gone before him, in fact I found it quite refreshing .but here it went way way too far.
I wasn't terribly offended by Voyage of the Damned. I've only watched it once and will probably never watch it again, but there's worse.
For me, The Runaway Bride is the worst episode of C21 DW. It's the only DW that I have never watched to the end. I really don't know how that story ends, and I don't care.
Catherine Tate gave such a broad, comic performance, I couldn't bear it. She was totally different when she returned to the show a year later, but in TRB they succeeded in what they intended: a Catherine Tate Show / Doctor Who crossover.
Add to that, the giant spider monster. The monster looked great, but did naff all. It just stood there and shouted "Rah! I'll get you, Time Lord! All of my little baby flesh eating spiders will come and eat you, just you wait and see! Yes they will! Any minute now they'll be here! Then you'll be sorry, Time Lord! Yes! Just you wait and see! I'll stand here and shout for a bit, just to keep you occupied! Yes I will! No, I won't come over to you cos I'm too big to move! I'll just stand here and shout!"
And then the Tenth Doctor cried. I began to hate the Tenth Doctor when he shed that tear.
My brother and his girlfriend came round for Christmas Night. I told them that they'd be left out on the doorstep if they came during DW because I wouldn't be leaving the telly. As it is, they did arrive during DW, and I happily let them in, turned the telly off and got the vodka out.
For me the Series 4 finale went too fast for me. Only doctor who story in New Who that I struggle to watch. I've only watched it once so may change my mind
Other than that there is no episode that i wouldn't watch again!
Focusing on NewWho: End of Time, easily and by a mile. Not only a bad episode but that worst of all possible episdes: A bad episode with potential.
It could have been fantastic. The Master! The return of the Time Lords! 10 Regenerating! WILF!!! What we got was a massive, horrible, kick-in-the-balls-with-steal-toecaps disappointing mess. Two things that REALLY stand out though are the Doctor surviving a fall that should have liquified him and the regeneration...
Words cannot express how angry I was at that scene all the way from Wilf getting locked in the booth onwards. Sentimental, manipulative dribble that confirmed the alternative character interpretation of 10 as a whiny little git was bang on the money. So bad it actually made the years of stories that came before it worse as a result. Huge plot holes (Wilf, being the very essence of awesome, would simply have hit a random button to trigger the radiation and saved the Doctor rather than just pleading with him not to do it), the WORST regeneration ever (yes, above Baker -> McCoy) and never bleedin' well ended. Only saving grace was Smith / Moffat bringing the fun back in the last minute or so.
It was more like a parody than a real episode. I feel bad for the kid who created the Abzorbaloff, they wasted his character in a beyond-dire episode.
As I've said so many times in L&M defence (and been boringly shouted down every time), it's generally a case of people just not getting it. I think everyone would be in agreement that the Abzorbaloff is NOT the greatest, most menacing monster in the history of the show. But it doesn't have to be. L&M is not in any way a monster - invading - Earth type story - it's so much more than that, and so much more subtle - RTD did an amazing job of having a very subtle and intriguing story hidden within a very UNsubtle story - genius. Using the Abzorbaloff to criticise L&M is like criticising Vincent and the Doctor using that story's monster - both monsters are really not what each story is about.
Really does give me a massive dose of superiority when I hear all these criticisms of L&M, I feel I'm one of the few lucky people that got what RTD was actually writing a story about.
The scripts are comfortably in the higher echelons of Doctor who stories and though it lost something in production (Classic Who often did) still ranks as one of the top few stories of the 80s / JNT era in my opinion.
My vote for 'most unfollowable' story in the Doctor Who canon would be for '42'. This modern obsession with a fast pace can really turn out some turds. On 3 attempts I have not been able to establish any interest in this story. It just runs past me like a load of kids shouting in the street.
I didn't think 42 would work - real time sci fi is not generally the best - but it did, thanks to some wonderful acting and direction and the fact that it looked so beautiful.
As I've said so many times in L&M defence (and been boringly shouted down every time), it's generally a case of people just not getting it. I think everyone would be in agreement that the Abzorbaloff is NOT the greatest, most menacing monster in the history of the show. But it doesn't have to be. L&M is not in any way a monster - invading - Earth type story - it's so much more than that, and so much more subtle - RTD did an amazing job of having a very subtle and intriguing story hidden within a very UNsubtle story - genius. Using the Abzorbaloff to criticise L&M is like criticising Vincent and the Doctor using that story's monster - both monsters are really not what each story is about.
Really does give me a massive dose of superiority when I hear all these criticisms of L&M, I feel I'm one of the few lucky people that got what RTD was actually writing a story about.
Don't get too smug. I think most people "got" it. We just thought it was sh*t.
Nothing smug about that post. Pretty on the money if you ask me. If you cannot get anything at all out of Love and Monsters then yep, you are missing something. It is one of the best things RTD has written and showed his strengths as a writer far better than the overblown finales.
As I've said so many times in L&M defence (and been boringly shouted down every time), it's generally a case of people just not getting it. I think everyone would be in agreement that the Abzorbaloff is NOT the greatest, most menacing monster in the history of the show. But it doesn't have to be. L&M is not in any way a monster - invading - Earth type story - it's so much more than that, and so much more subtle - RTD did an amazing job of having a very subtle and intriguing story hidden within a very UNsubtle story - genius. Using the Abzorbaloff to criticise L&M is like criticising Vincent and the Doctor using that story's monster - both monsters are really not what each story is about.
Really does give me a massive dose of superiority when I hear all these criticisms of L&M, I feel I'm one of the few lucky people that got what RTD was actually writing a story about.
I don't think Love and Monsters compares well with Vincent and the Doctor. Yes, both have crap monsters, but Vincent had that wonderful portrayal by Tony Curran. That single scene in the gallery at the end, with Vincent absolutely transported with joy, and then finding it ultimately made no difference to his fate, made it great. In spite of Marc Warren and Shirley Henderson giving fine performances in Love and Monsters, they didn't have material of the same quality to work with. And that awful bit with Rose ranting at a man about to be killed for upsetting her mum. Horrible, just horrible.
Nothing smug about that post. Pretty on the money if you ask me. If you cannot get anything at all out of Love and Monsters then yep, you are missing something. It is one of the best things RTD has written and showed his strengths as a writer far better than the overblown finales.
I have no problem with you saying it's one of the best things RTD ever wrote. It may well be the best, for all I know.
I used to believe that 'The Happiness Patrol' was as bad as Doctor Who could ever get. Then we endured 'Love and Monsters' which was not only the worst DW episode ever (sinking far far deeper than THP) but possibly one of the worst pieces of television drama ever broadcast.
I used to believe that 'The Happiness Patrol' was as bad as Doctor Who could ever get. Then we endured 'Love and Monsters' which was not only the worst DW episode ever (sinking far far deeper than THP) but possibly one of the worst pieces of television drama ever broadcast.
As a piece of drama, it was slightly less believable than Dimensions in Time.
Really does give me a massive dose of superiority when I hear all these criticisms of L&M, I feel I'm one of the few lucky people that got what RTD was actually writing a story about.
Emperor's clothes.
For me the worst of the new are: L&M, Fear Her & Lazarus. In that order.
Nothing smug about that post. Pretty on the money if you ask me. If you cannot get anything at all out of Love and Monsters then yep, you are missing something. It is one of the best things RTD has written and showed his strengths as a writer far better than the overblown finales.
seems we're in the minority, but that's fine. It still astounds me though, but hey, each to their own. I can understand people not liking it as much as other stories, etc, but the hate-filled venom this attracts really is quite staggering.
Awwww, I quite like 'Remembrance' (tho', admittedly, it looked terribly dated the last time I saw it).
Agree that the other two you mention are examples of Who at its far-from-best...
Regards,
Cypher
I like it too. I think most of the McCoy era looks very dated, but mostly down to the visual quality having been shot on video.
For me the worst is Delta and the Bannermen. I have watched it several times but just can't get past the fact it looks like some fanmade story shot on a camcorder. Add to that the terrible costumes. I mean you have this baby puppet monster born, then it turns into a green baby in a green romper suit made to resemble skin. WTF?
Worst of the news series for me has to be all the Christmas and 2009 specials (or not-so-specials as I like to call them), with the exception of The Waters of Mars. But even that I have no urge to watch again. The worst is Voyage of the Damned, but they all pretty much stink, including A Christmas Carol.
Comments
You've got a filthy mind and they were clearly happy just to kiss each other and share company.
I loved the RTD era for the most part but here he got it badly badly wrong and following on from the Jesus- esque deification of the character at the end of Last of the Timelords it actually felt like he was losing sight of what makes the character and the show so brilliant. Empty hollow bombast with little heart and soul , pointless stunt casting, cringe inducing and utterly flat romance, identikit and insultingly simplistic villains. The whole thing felt crass and in bad taste. Reducing the Doctor to running around in a shallow retread of the Poseidon Adventure and coming across like a laughably wet approximation of John Mclane/ James Bond was a disgrace and for probably the only time since the show returned it felt nothing like Doctor Who. Just a piss poor attempt to do a flashy blockbuster without any of the expensive action and special effects to make you forget how paper thin the plot was.
Doctor Who had never been so bad and thankfully hadn't been since. And S4 was a brilliant come back to this garbage.
1 - The Chase. Never been able to watch it all the way through.
2 - The Krotons. Silly beyond words. It would have been The Space Pirates but that is one missing adventure I don't mind missing.
3 - Got to be one of the unnecessarily long 6 parters. I'll go with Colony In Space for its yawn-inducing drawn out political allegories.
4 - Some golden stories to start with but went out with a whimper. Let's go with something too long and crap - The Armageddon Factor
5 - Getting easier to choose now. The Five Doctors. Plonking *everyone* into a storyline doesn't enhance anything, it just diminshes.
6 - So many to choose from. Plot holes, pass-poor production, half-baked scripts, not to mention the costumes. Eenie meenie minie Timewarp
7 - Again, a glut of gloop but this time I have a clear 'winner' - Paradise Towers. Worst Dr. Who ever.
8 - The TV Movie. OK, so it's a default choice but let's take nothing away from it - it deserves to be in this list.
9 - Ahh, much better. Not a bad story to chose but my least favourite is Boom Town.
10 - Again a tricky choice but only because the quality is -generally- so high. Fear Her
11 - We're still living in rewarding times fans. However, The Beast Below was a load of plop.
I remmeber looking forward to Voyage Of the Damned with high expectations that Christmas, especially as it had Kylie in it, and to be fair she did put in a really good performance.
However, that was overshadowed by what I considered to be a lacklustre story. I just couldn't get into it at all and it didn't help that it was to some extent a poor man's remake of The Robots Of Death.
Max was just a copy of Plantagenet in the Excavation Machine from Frontios and the whole story took a good 20 minutes before anything exciting really happened. Even then, it wasn't that exciting.
By far the worst of all the Xmas Specials. It certainly suffered from overhype and it's right up there in my five least favourite New Who stories.
There's no such story.
Even drunk on brandy and stuffed with turkey I couldn't find much to enjoy first time around. Which is unusual for me. Even episodes I've come to dislike haven't left me so cold on the first viewing. But oh dear. I hated this. It just seemed like a lazy concept ( titanic! In space!) that had nothing beyond that. And I love a lot of the films it was referencing but this felt less like a homage, more a cheesy low rent rip off. And the Doctor was all wrong. I had no problem with the fact Ten was often a good deal.more 'romantic hero' than those who had gone before him, in fact I found it quite refreshing .but here it went way way too far.
Oh dear. How embarrasssing. Can I just say that for me they all merge into one big messy puddle of poop.
I'm not going to look one up. They're mainly as bad as each other.
Yes, I know how it looks but I have suffered watching them all and nothing sticks out as good so I'll go with 'all' as my final answer.
You either meant Mindwarp - episodes 5-8 of Trial Of A Timelord or Timelash.
Both 6th Doctor stories and your initial description could have applied to either of them!!
For me, The Runaway Bride is the worst episode of C21 DW. It's the only DW that I have never watched to the end. I really don't know how that story ends, and I don't care.
Catherine Tate gave such a broad, comic performance, I couldn't bear it. She was totally different when she returned to the show a year later, but in TRB they succeeded in what they intended: a Catherine Tate Show / Doctor Who crossover.
Add to that, the giant spider monster. The monster looked great, but did naff all. It just stood there and shouted "Rah! I'll get you, Time Lord! All of my little baby flesh eating spiders will come and eat you, just you wait and see! Yes they will! Any minute now they'll be here! Then you'll be sorry, Time Lord! Yes! Just you wait and see! I'll stand here and shout for a bit, just to keep you occupied! Yes I will! No, I won't come over to you cos I'm too big to move! I'll just stand here and shout!"
And then the Tenth Doctor cried. I began to hate the Tenth Doctor when he shed that tear.
My brother and his girlfriend came round for Christmas Night. I told them that they'd be left out on the doorstep if they came during DW because I wouldn't be leaving the telly. As it is, they did arrive during DW, and I happily let them in, turned the telly off and got the vodka out.
I am appaled at the lack of good taste on display, here.
I loved the sixth Doctor's era. Even Time Lash.
Other than that there is no episode that i wouldn't watch again!
It could have been fantastic. The Master! The return of the Time Lords! 10 Regenerating! WILF!!! What we got was a massive, horrible, kick-in-the-balls-with-steal-toecaps disappointing mess. Two things that REALLY stand out though are the Doctor surviving a fall that should have liquified him and the regeneration...
Words cannot express how angry I was at that scene all the way from Wilf getting locked in the booth onwards. Sentimental, manipulative dribble that confirmed the alternative character interpretation of 10 as a whiny little git was bang on the money. So bad it actually made the years of stories that came before it worse as a result. Huge plot holes (Wilf, being the very essence of awesome, would simply have hit a random button to trigger the radiation and saved the Doctor rather than just pleading with him not to do it), the WORST regeneration ever (yes, above Baker -> McCoy) and never bleedin' well ended. Only saving grace was Smith / Moffat bringing the fun back in the last minute or so.
Worst ever...Meglos / pretty much the entire mcCoy era (apart from Curse of fenric, Battlefield and the Dalek one, which ever "R" that one was)
Ep 1 of TimeLash was great, with huge potential. Ep 2 stunk like a fishmarket in high summer
As I've said so many times in L&M defence (and been boringly shouted down every time), it's generally a case of people just not getting it. I think everyone would be in agreement that the Abzorbaloff is NOT the greatest, most menacing monster in the history of the show. But it doesn't have to be. L&M is not in any way a monster - invading - Earth type story - it's so much more than that, and so much more subtle - RTD did an amazing job of having a very subtle and intriguing story hidden within a very UNsubtle story - genius. Using the Abzorbaloff to criticise L&M is like criticising Vincent and the Doctor using that story's monster - both monsters are really not what each story is about.
Really does give me a massive dose of superiority when I hear all these criticisms of L&M, I feel I'm one of the few lucky people that got what RTD was actually writing a story about.
I didn't think 42 would work - real time sci fi is not generally the best - but it did, thanks to some wonderful acting and direction and the fact that it looked so beautiful.
Don't get too smug. I think most people "got" it. We just thought it was sh*t.
I don't think Love and Monsters compares well with Vincent and the Doctor. Yes, both have crap monsters, but Vincent had that wonderful portrayal by Tony Curran. That single scene in the gallery at the end, with Vincent absolutely transported with joy, and then finding it ultimately made no difference to his fate, made it great. In spite of Marc Warren and Shirley Henderson giving fine performances in Love and Monsters, they didn't have material of the same quality to work with. And that awful bit with Rose ranting at a man about to be killed for upsetting her mum. Horrible, just horrible.
I have no problem with you saying it's one of the best things RTD ever wrote. It may well be the best, for all I know.
It's still ludicrous drivel, though.:)
As a piece of drama, it was slightly less believable than Dimensions in Time.
Emperor's clothes.
For me the worst of the new are: L&M, Fear Her & Lazarus. In that order.
seems we're in the minority, but that's fine. It still astounds me though, but hey, each to their own. I can understand people not liking it as much as other stories, etc, but the hate-filled venom this attracts really is quite staggering.
I like it too. I think most of the McCoy era looks very dated, but mostly down to the visual quality having been shot on video.
For me the worst is Delta and the Bannermen. I have watched it several times but just can't get past the fact it looks like some fanmade story shot on a camcorder. Add to that the terrible costumes. I mean you have this baby puppet monster born, then it turns into a green baby in a green romper suit made to resemble skin. WTF?
Worst of the news series for me has to be all the Christmas and 2009 specials (or not-so-specials as I like to call them), with the exception of The Waters of Mars. But even that I have no urge to watch again. The worst is Voyage of the Damned, but they all pretty much stink, including A Christmas Carol.