Which episode was worse?
Both widely critisized .

Im going to say 'forest in the night', quite possibly one of the worst who episodes I have ever seen ever put of all the stories in history .
The fact that moffat praises it always makes me worry for the future of the show.

I really enjoyed In The Forest of the Night, but seem to be in a minority. The only thing I didn't like was the resolution to the lost sister story...it was tonally off. As an episode though I found it quite enjoyable.

Love & Monsters wasn't that bad either. Had it not been for Peter Kay's character (no wonder he considers it the low point of his career!) it was a fairly decent premise. But watching a seven-foot bogey run around the London wastelands in a thong is never acceptable. Not even the wonderful but tragic scene from Jackie Tyler defending Rose and The Doctor can save this episode from its infamous spot as 'least liked'.

And yet, following episode Fear Her is in my opinion, even more offensive! It wasn't weird, or tonally off or unacceptable...it was just dull. If dull could be personified as an episode of Doctor Who, Fear Her is it. I can't even applaud the acting in it - it was just...DULL!

And in spite of all of these little details, I still feel that both The End of Time: Part One, and The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe are worse still - the worst episodes of Doctor Who I feel I've ever seen.

Forest of the Night had a charming concept but was appallingly executed, terribly paced and really lacked any sort of threat. It had some nice moments here and there (all of which are Capaldi scenes), but was on the whole was not a great episode for me.

That said, if held to it, I would still rather watch The Doctor talk about trees and comparing the TARDIS to a glass of coke to Elton mentioning his love life with a paving slab. Not to mention that the threat in that episode is irredeemably laughable.

They're both towards the bottom of the pile - but Love & Monsters is the lowest.

Oh yes The End Of Time is really quite awful. More signs to me of RTD completely losing the plot. Thank god it was his swansong.

Both episodes were great. Love & Monsters was the better I think.

I agree with most of what Abomination says, along with CD93's assessment of Forest.. I think it was a nice concept, but the events of the story just kind of happen, without anything really driving it. And the reasoning behind the appearance of the trees makes even less sense than the moon-egg.

I have to say, despite the problematic elements of Love and Monsters, the fact that they were trying to do something different - and most of it succeeded - will always give it points in my book.

Love and Monsters was Jackie Tyler's shining moment. Great episode.

Forest had the inenviable position of being sandwiched between 'Flatline' and 'Dark Water' - two of the best episodes of recent years. I thought it was a bland episode rather than being poor, but certainly it didn't help being between two such strong episodes.

In The Forest Of The Night quite easily.

Even Peter Kay couldn't ruin Love & Monsters for me.

Love and Monsters by a country mile, awful episode which I still hate. While not being up there with the really good episodes I though In the Forest of the Night was fine and I don't really understand the hate for it.

I actually liked Love & Monsters. It had some funny moments, and decent characters. I thought all of Jackies semi-inappropriate moves on the main guy were pretty funny.

Forest of the Night had some fun bits where 12 is interacting with the kids, and one good drama moment where he admits he's as much an Earthling as anyone else, but other than that it was just kind of boring.

Oh, has he really said that? Ouch!

Definitely forest in the night. Utterly unredeemable in every way. I honestly do not understand how that script even got to the point of being taken seriously as an option, let alone how it actually made it to screen. Love and monsters isn't great, and it was the worst episode at the time, but there have been far worse since.

In fact for me the worst episodes from worst to slightly less worse are:

1) forest of the night
2 ) the caretaker
3) night terrors
4)the doctor, the widow and the wardrobe
5)cold war
6)love and monsters

Oh, and one other thing, that line "The Human race will use it's ultimate super power; forgetting things" was one of the stupidest lines I've ever heard.

Oh I like a list, if I had to do mine

Really Dislike and can't watch again:

1) Last of the Timelords
2)Voyage of the Damned

Leave me feeling bored and slightly annoyed:

3)World War 3/Aliens of London
4) Dr,Widow and the Wardrobe
5)Love and Monsters
6) Planet of the Dead
7)Forest of the Night

He described it as his "biggest career regret", though he still speaks fondly of his time working with the show. It really was just an awful concept through and through - not his fault, or indeed the writers by that stage (although the episode was far from perfect elsewhere, the Absorbaloff was the wake-up call to the other problems that may no have been as noticeable otherwise)
http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/peter-k...ters-28196.htm


I think she was brilliant in it, the real highlight. And her confrontation with Elton is easily one of my favourite scenes of Series 2. It was genuine, heartfelt character development of who was essentially a recurring background character. Paving stone sex jokes and Absorbaloff aside, there was some real writing and acting gold in here.

Thought Love and Monsters was an interesting experiment, really. Shirley Henderson, Mark Warren and Camille made it. But sadly, it just fell apart for me in the last third. In the Forest of the Night I've not rewatched. Didn't think it was really bad, just pretty forgettable.

Not any other C21 stories I couldn't rewatch that spring to mind, but am in no hurry to watch The End of Time or Planet of the Dead again.

Even better than that, it was a heartfelt development of a character who was essentially comic relief. There had always been running jokes about Jackie being man-mad, this really make you examine the heartbreak lying behind it.

Forest in the night was bad for only 3 reasons. Danny pink. The stupid sister that appeared after everyone else had appeared. And where did all the trees go.

Love and monsters was bad for about 257 things.

List them. And no fair rounding them up.

Neither are great, but I'd still rank Fear Her below both.

I don't really understand the hate for Forest in the Night. It was reasonably innocuous to my mind. Much of last series was innocuous to me.

In contrast, Love and Monsters was great until the Abzorbaloff appeared.

And Fear Her was saved from being awful by Billie Piper. The main family annoyed me beyond belief.

Yes fear her waa like doctor who from the 1980 no budget but even worse no script.

It's funny when you hear Steven Moffat bang on about how you need to know what you are doing when you write for who; that you need to be experienced, and yet think you could do miles better than what you were seeing. Forest is that episode in a nutshell.

This episode was pants. A superb idea, executed terribly. Trees being everywhere should have caused chaos across the globe. Accidents, terror, the works. There was enough scope here for a 2 parter. It could have really showed the worst of humanity, and what it will do when it panics. What did we get? A bunch of kids walking through a forest.

But the ultimate unforgivable part of the episode was the fact the trees all vanish at the end, leaving no trace and no consequence at all, making the whole thing pointless. Wrapped up in a neat and tiny bow, like it didn't matter at all. Truly terrible.

Love and monsters is another example of a good idea excuted terribly. I'm not in a rush to watch either episode again, but at least l&m try to address the issues it raises (good issues as well). Night does nothing; it simply cannot be bothered. So l&m is the better for me. But they are both terrible.

As bad as In The Forest Of The Night was, I never for one moment thought it was anywhere near the sheer awfulness of Love and Monsters, the worst episode of Doctor Who ever, and then some. In fact, it was possibly one of the worst things I've ever watched on television - albeit "watched" as in "peeked at through my fingers in abject horror". (Apart from Hollyoaks, of course, but that surely goes without saying).

It was indeed, as its defenders point out, an attempt to do something different, but that in itself isn't much of a defence when the end result was utterly embarrassing to watch. Worst bit? Ooh, now there's a challenge. "Comedy" pre-credits Scooby Doo style chase? Peter Kay's, let's be generous, rather outré portrayal of the Absorbaloff? The Absorbaloff itself, the rather clear result of a Blue Peter 'Design a Monster' competition? The - more "comedy"! hooray! - bits where the characters were shown to be walking away from the building, strangely oblivious to the loud screams coming from inside? Said characters forming a band to play ELO songs? The cheeky reference to oral sex with a strangely unbothered woman trapped in a paving stone? Bear in mind that, despite owning the series 2 box set, I've only ever seen Love and Monsters once; these are images that have haunted me since that one solitary viewing. A real shame, especially since it came in what remains my favourite series of 2005+ Doctor Who (an absolute cracker of a series - and btw, despite not really considering it a particularly great episode, I still don't get the hate for Fear Her. Terrible Olympic flame resolution notwithstanding, it really wasn't as bad as received opinion would have it).

There have actually been far, far worse New Who episodes than In The Forest Of The Night - Partners in Crime, most of the Christmas specials except the last one, the whole of series 6 - but none of them have yet been able to match the absolute bloody horrible car crash that was Love and Monsters.

I hated any time RTD used the "everyone in the world" trope. The End of Time was awful and Miracle Day deserves a dishonorable mention, but Last of the Time Lords was truly the most cringe-inducingly mawkish example.