Glad you appreciate it

No-one else has ever referenced it as far as I can remember.

"Tom Tit?" "Yes, Tom tit".

Can't believe that i never noticed it. Very clever name

I quite liked the episode & its concept. For me, the worst ever episode on the aforementioned list is love & monsters. I was looking forward to it as peter kay was in it, but it was a huge let down.

I don't know why The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe isn't running away with this poll. I consider it the worst atrocity to ever grace my screen and I have seen Manos: The Hands of Fate at least a dozen times.

Even the episode name is terrible.

I liked that one. Title was based on the Narnia story and just right for a christmas special.
Kids were ok Madge was a bit bosy but not too much.

Only bad bit was not knowing about Regs injured friend Anderson in the plane. Did they get him to a hospital or did he slowly bleed to death ignored while everything else was going on ?.

I vote Fear Her,Love and Monsters and Night Terrors as my 3 worst episodes.

I can't understand why sleep no more is not rampantly running away with it.

That episode was SO bad I actually spent the next couple of days wondering if I should give Doctor Who a break for a few years until a new team is in place. Surprised its doing better than Fear Her, but then its all subjective.

I suppose the The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe is a bit too Disney-twee for some tastes. It is in that direction, but I still enjoyed it as a Christmas episode.

Have you seen The Husbands of River Song yet, Theo?

is this poll actually going to end anytime soon? Its been up for a month already. If people wanted to vote they've had their chance. Seems rather an unnecessary amount of time to confirm perhaps the least surprising news in Doctor History ie Fear Her and Love and Monsters arent very popular. Stop the press!

As much as I disliked the episode, I did find it heartwarming in some respects and it's a nice reminder how Christmas is about family. Unlike Fear Her and Love and Monsters, it does have a redeeming aspect in that. It's an episode I cah appreciate despite disliking it.

Fear Her and Love and Monsters were everything that made Doctor Who such a joke in 1987, but with a less enjoyable Doctor for me and a companion only nearly as poor. It's a shame for L&M because some of the concept was actually quite interesting, yet the execution, and the monster, were horrendous.

While I agree the result is hardly a surprise, there are forum members still contributing in a positive way to the discussion around the poll even though much has been said before, in marked contrast to your post.

Why the beef, salad?

BIB: I quite agree. The most interesting thing about it was the telling of the story from an unusual point of view

Because polls usually have a finite life span and this one seems to be dragging on inexorably. It also would have been a better discussion if it had been framed more openly instead of the OP cherry picking a few episodes they deem the worse and then opening a vote. Its irksome. This poll is pointless because as I previously pointed out it isnt answering the question Worst Episode rather Worst Episode ever as According to the OP which is an answer to a question no one was asking. Theres the beef,

Also theres no 'Turn Left' option.

Anything with Danny Pink in it was the worst for me.

Marc Warren was in Love and Monsters so that makes it bearable for me. It's a shame that a great actor like Marc wasn't given some better material.

I agree with a lot of your post. Though TDTWATW wasn't a brilliant episode, I don't think it's that bad. I agree the family aspect was made it a more interesting episode but I also like it as it was free of the arc that had been a bit a mess during Series 6. It was also a what you would expect of a Xmas Episode and having a story that is overly dramatic can be a bit of a downer on Xmas Day.

In EastEnders you expect it but an episode like Doomsday, Journey's End and other exit episodes, would that really work on Xmas Day? I think keeping it lighthearted is what a Xmas Day episode should be. I think though not perfect the episode captured the Xmas Magic perfectly.

I agree about L&M, it was a bold step to have such an episode but it's execution really was terrible, which was exactly happened with a lot of 80's stories.

Even ignoring the fact they pissed away 47 years of Who history to sell more toys (the new daleks were there purely to raise money for worldwide. They do not look like the Raymond Cusick designs) it is not a good episode. The putting Daleks in unusual situations idea has been done a million times before by Big Finish, and done better. Attempts at being emotional just came over as trite- Pond going on about Paisley didn't connect at all, it felt like the scene where Martha Jones cries over the dead fish. Only worse. Also I don't want to come over all Christopher H. Bidmead but those Spitfires were nonsense, even by modern Who standards.

I realize this probably makes me sound like some bitter old ming mong and maybe I am one but that episode made me angry, and it got worse the second time.

I'm not even looking at the poll. As you say, it's fundamentally flawed. I too prefer to contribute to threads that aren't hopelessly skewed. It's the discussion that's holding some interest.

No Turn Left, you say? That's one of my favourites, as I said in the thread about favourite episodes. It also topped the poll. Each to their own.

Nopers. Since I don't have cable, I have to wait for Doctor Who to be released on Blu-Ray before I can watch it. Thus, I haven't seen Series 9 or the Christmas Episode as of yet. (I do have Netflix and I sometimes wait for it to show up on there which is what I wish that I had done for Series 8).

I mostly really like this story - though I feel the concept was worth a two parter. I enjoyed the Doctor's horror at discovering Daleks at the heart of Great Britain's war effort and his inability to convince anyone of the danger. Plus the creepiness of the Daleks offering nice cups of tea. A whole part one could have been filled with that.

They did get the Spitfires into space rather too quickly. There wasn't enough time in the story for retro-fitting the advanced technology. but what's not to like about "Spitfires in Space?!".

And the resolution for Bracewell was rather too much "love conquers all", but I liked the new praradigm Daleks.

Overall, a good story, for me.

I don't understand why the dalek two parter was here it was fun and the daleks were terrifying again, but some of these episodes look like filler episodes not to be taken seriously. I think a seperate thread should be made but with arc themed episodes only. I found all of these ok and can watch again and again on watch except for sleep no more. But I already knew which would probably have a high no. of votes even before going on the thread.

Re Sleep No More, one thing I've never understood is why Elaine Tan, playing Nagata, plays her with a Geordie accent. At first I thought she must be from the North East but she was born in London. Anyone know the answer ?

Maybe she lived in Newcastle for a while? Honestly don't know

Last of the Timelords and Death in Heaven aren't on here but voted for third worst Love & Monsters.

I think a fair bit of the hate comes from disappointment after intense hype. I'd say that there was more hype around the show that Christmas than there had ever been before. But the show was never going to be able to live up to expectations and so some of the dislike comes from there.

Equally though, and this is where I share the viewpoint of many others, it's hated because I think it's an extremely poor story. I recall cringing at the Master-conversion-cliffhanger at the end of Part One, as one of those moments when the show felt like an absolute embarassment. There's no way John Simm larking about in a dress should be anywhere near the vicinity of the first non-flashback scene set on Gallifrey since the show had come back!

And that's where much of the issue lies for me - the story was trying to be both this huge, serious and compelling, fan-pleasing finale whilst also being overly mainstream to accommodate the additional Christmas viewership. In addition to that it was 135 minutes long - longer than many Hollywood features, but for most of its runtime never being anywhere near as good as one. It was an overblown mess of half-baked ideas stitched together from one set piece to the next. Part Two was slightly better, but ultimately the damage had already been done by Part One, which ranks as my second-to-last favourite episode of the show - better than only The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.


Usually I automatically accept that many people enjoy things I don't, but I can't lie - I genuinely thought it was going to get a lot more votes than it has done! I guess taste really is subjective!


I generally enjoy Disney-twee...even when Doctor Who has been inclined to take that slightly more fantastical direction. But even now with years having passed since, this episode still feels really weird to me - it doesn't feel like Doctor Who. It feels like Matt Smith, in costume but not in character, in something else.


I personally didn't mind the Spitfires in space scene. I felt it looked brilliant on-screen, and was rather cool. That opinion admittedly soured with time, and by Series 6 when the Eleventh Doctor was saying "look how cool this stuff is!" I realised much of the coolness was being used as a substitute for more substantial things. It didn't rescue an otherwise average story.


In retrospect I agree entirely. At the time though, people were criticising the show heavily for both its over-usage of the Daleks, and the fact that the Daleks were getting an annual two-part story. Prior to broadcast, Victory of the Daleks was a welcome sigh of relief for many - a standalone Dalek story, the first since Series 1.