I loathed it when I watched it, I have no desire to ever watch it again.

I personally really like Vincent and the Doctor, in spite of the fact that I agree that not much seems to actually happen for long stretches. I think though it's one of those episodes where I'm glad not much seems to happen, it was for me somewhat the point and a decent reflection of the character it was basically studying. It ends up being one of those episodes that I think either resonates with you or it doesn't... you either 'get' the fascination or you don't. Rather than a direct commentary on its quality it's just whether or not it's the kind of episode you enjoy...for some it is and for others it's not. I couldn't have an episode like it very often, once a series would be more than enough. But all the same I like it very much for what it was.

Couldn't stand it at the time, haven't watched it since. I'm really not a fan of that whole Gaiman / Pratchett axis, it leaves me cold.

I didn't mind this episode too much although it does, for me, demonstrate how insular some of the writing became post-RTD. I'm not sure viewers more generally got as much of a kick out of this episode as Doctor Who fans.

And I couldn't get over the fact that to facilitate the story, poor old Idris was (essentially) murdered in the pre-credits sequence and her death didn't seem to factor at all afterwards.

I am with you 100% on this one. I was so annoyed by this episode I was shouting at the TV while it was on. Then I discovered it was considered a classic. I really, truely have no comprehension of why that is.

Groundhog Day only worse. I suffered through it once and will never, ever watch it again.

Blimey, there's two of us now!

Indeed there is

I agree entirely with the BiB. I've enjoyed the majority of both RTD's and Moffat's times as showrunner, and both have distinct issues with the writing I'm not fond of too. One issue with Moffat's is how insular it can indeed feel at times (other times effort seems to be made to appeal to the mainstream but it's always a more conscious effort). At the same time though I felt The Doctor's Wife was one that just about worked...for me anyway.

I was so glad to hear Neil Gaiman was writing an episode and thought it was a real coup. After Richard Curtis had written for Series 5 as well I felt it was great to get at least one renowned writer a year with a very distinct style to them. I then was disappointed to hear that the rumours of a 'Tardis as a person' story were true and felt it was a dull, uninspired concept that wasted a good writer. But then when I watched it, whilst it's far from perfect, I personally enjoyed it a lot and felt they got the casting and the direction more or less spot on. It exceeded my expectations by far, which doesn't always happen - I felt the idea of a shoehorned in incarnation of the Doctor and a multi-Doc story for the anniversary was uninspired for a show that can go anywhere and anywhen and it failed to live up to my expectations in any way, shape or form.

What would have made The Doctor's Wife better for me would have been a stronger companion - as I didn't care much for Amy or Rory I was just waiting for their scenes to pass so we could see more of the Doctor and Idris. A shame as Karen Gillan was really giving it her all in the sixth series.

Neil Gaiman often has a very particular sort of style, which is dark and creepy as well as romanticised and sentimental at the same time. Personally I think it's a style that works well for Doctor Who.

The Doctor's Wife very much reminds of a Batman graphic novel he did some years back called "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" Both were written as a sort of love letter to their respective series and added a sort of game-changing twist that helped explore a core part of that universe. Very insular, of course, but very entertaining for the intended audience.

Another vote for Heaven Sent as one of the direst, dreariest episodes ever, anywhere. Redeemed by Hell Bent, which I loved.

Back to season 5 it was the other way round; The Pandorica Opens was amazingly good - I was so looking forward to the sequel and (groan) it was the ridiculous The Big Bang. What a total let down.

I also didn't like Flatliners, though others seemed to find it brilliant. I thought it was, well, flat.

I quite liked the Forest one. I don't really know why. And I liked Danny Pink. Maybe I'm just odd.

Loved The Doctor's Wife. One of my all time favourites. I was very disappointed with Gaiman's Cyberman attempt, though.

Heaven Sent is a classic and In the Forest of the Night is forgettable and average at best. I therefore decree that you are indeed odd as my opinion is better than yours. Who's a wimp now, eh!

Damn, saw your edit about The Doctor's Wife and 'Nightmare in Silver' and agreed with you. Ummm.....you're only odd if I disagree with you're opinion. When I agree you remarkably suddenly become astute and relatively normal.

Good thing for you you changed your mind in mid post. My claws are sharp since I've been frequenting the Politics forum.

I wholeheartedly agree with you.

The setup in The Pandorica Opens was so good, but The Big Bang was such a let down. It was like waiting years and years for a sequel and then watching Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Another one for me is The Caves of Androzani. Everybody else seems to think that it is a masterpiece, but I just can't agree. It is good, but it is not great. I like The End of Time much better.

I am always puzzled about The Caves of Androzani. Apart from the fact it is a regeneration story, its one of Davison's least memorable stories for me. I watched it again a few years ago and it took me weeks because I kept losing interest half-way through episodes and having to come back to it.

My answer to the question of this thread would be name of the doctor.

It seems to be considered a good episode by many but I think it is dire.

The only interesting thing about Clara at all in series 7 was the mystery of the multiple Clara's, yet in name of the doctor we find out that the resolution to this previously intriguing mystery is actually one of the most irritating, nonsensical explanations that I've ever seen in the show, which not only falls apart if you think about it for a few seconds but also was the first, and probably worst time that Moffat tried to forcibly make consider Clara important (as opposed to the tradtional idea of actually making her likeable and letting us feel she is important naturally, by merit of personality), by actually showing a scenario in which, the doctor never actually did anything on his own from the time he left Gallifrey, right up until the end of series 7, but was somehow always helped by a Clara fragment who he never actually saw or interacted with (except for twice in his entire life).

Add to that, it being a tedious tease of an episode - e.g tease the doctors name, and even name the episode after that tease, when we know we'll never hear it, foreshadow the doctors death, by showing us a grave which had every indication that he died as 11, with the same console room and timestream that only went up to doctor 11 (which wasn't even a grave, because for the supposedly smart 'you didn't think there would be a body' line, we've seen the doctor/master die before(turn left, last of the time lords as some examples), and there is always a body and never a life force thing that name of the doctor showed) that again we knew wouldn't actually happen.

Plus things like how did Vastra still remember Strax when changes to the timeline meant he no longer remembered her?. How can a bit of data from a library computer (river data ghost) leave said computer to send itself across time and space at will?. How exactly can you 'die at every point in your timeline'? (you can only die once, and even if dying at every point in your timeline was possible, any smart villain would save the hassle and have just killed him once when he was the first doctor and automatically erase everything else that was to come after).

Also got to give a mention to how much it was completely and utterly stressed that on entering said timeline, it would be impossible to leave, and that as such doing so, was sacrificing your life, yet after both Clara and the doctor do so, the episode ends with them stuck in the timestream, with no way out (with Moffats writing seemingly hoping the appearance of John Hurt, and the words 'John hurt as the doctor' would make us forget all about their predicament, when actually it just seemed like he forgot about it), and we are never given an explanation in any episode, as to how they did what was said to be the impossible, and Yet in the real world, after stressing in the episode how impossible it was, Moffat and some Moffat fans believe the explanation 'they just walked out' is supposedly is some way sufficient' and that anyone who doesn't understand how an explanation that was completely contrary to everything said in the episode can be true must somehow be stupid.


As one small positive, I'll admit that like most others, I found the pre credits sequence fun, but after that the rest of the episode is an irritating mess that seems like it was written by some who has no concept of how time travel works (just based on the content of this particular episode), and who's only aim was some heavy handed attempt to try and force people into feeling something for Clara with plot rather than putting anything into her personality.

This one episode has has all of the things I dislike about Moffat's writing in one episode (when he does them, which is not all the time) - firstly the 'written for fans only' attitude to a story -e.g (the title sequence wouldn't be much of anything to non fans, nor would the first doctor/Clara scene, and the inclusion of 'the great intelligence' seemed to only be to thrill Classic who fans (I didn't find it particularly interesting). Then the weird and often nonsensical use of time travel he sometimes does, and mostly, not following through with a story because starting a new one is more interesting - e.g no resolution to the exiting of time stream because setting up teasing the next story having John Hurt as the doctor was suddenly more interesting.


The only saving grace is that, as far as i am concerned (and based on the evidence given this seems the most logical explanation), the events of time of the doctor completely wiped all the ridiculous events of Name of the doctor from the timeline and as such they never now happened, which pleases me, and also makes the episode 'name of the doctor' even more worthless in the grand scheme of the ongoing story.

I want your entire post on a poster.

This was an episode I was thinking of when I said in another post that Moffat's era sometimes had stories that liked to try and cater to the mainstream, but it was never as effortless as it was under RTD. Not to provoke a showrunner debate, but I do feel RTD could deliver that fan-service/mainstream balance far better.

The War Doctor premise is the heart of the problem here for me. Granted his main role is in The Day of the Doctor and I would continue to dislike the idea of the War Doctor there as well (not a reflection of John Hurt at all). As a concept it just doesn't make the first bit of sense. The Doctor's great secret is a hidden regeneration? Okay, a decent idea...so that hidden regeneration must be hidden because he knows or did things that you've kept from us, right? Oh, nope, he committed the genocidal acts of the Time War that we already knew about. The fact is that everyone we meet in this episode knows The Doctor can change his face, and all of them also know what he did in the Time War. So why is his biggest secret the face he had at that time? To Clara or anyone else, they would just presume it was either his Eighth or his Ninth face that did it. Considering how much the show did and continues to insist that it's a different face but the same man beneath it all (and the anniversary episode itself even went to testify the same) it makes no sense whatsoever that The Doctor would have kept a secret face when he's so upfront about what he did. It was a poor way of working in a star name into the show.

Beyond that the episode just feels largely half-hearted. When Series 1 brought the Daleks back it made them known as something formidable. Series 2 did the same for the Cybermen, Series 3 the same for The Master and Series 4 the same for Davros. Series 7 takes the route of bigging up another threat from the past, and regardless of whether or not the Great Intelligence was ever in the same league as the rest it is just poorly served. Richard E Grant does his best, but we get two and a bit episodes with the villain and it really doesn't ever amount to anything remarkable.

The whole thing tries to chuck in River, and the Paternoster's too for the sake of bigging up the scale. But it doesn't have remotely the same impact as the union of characters you see in Series 3 or Series 4. They're just not sufficiently interesting enough (River would be, but the episode takes the risk of post-Library River and it doesn't really pay off).

Add in the uninteresting companion (I love Clara but it took a while), the cheap death being undone with Jenny, the ridiculously high stakes that just aren't convincing, the budget-feel of setting the 'big finish' on the TARDIS set, and again the pacing issues of a one-part story and it's just not satisfying.

It feels mostly hollow. And yet Series 6's congested finale I think was a whole lot worse.

Agree completely and to add on The Doctor's secret.

Why was he hiding this secret before the time war, it was properly brought up in the 7th Doctor's era. So i don't buy that is the reason for his big secret.

I think this is quite difficult for me, mostly because most of the episodes of Who that I actively dislike are generally considered stinkers anyway, or at the very least aren't universally loved: Love and Monsters, Fear Her, Doctor Widow Wardrobe, anything written by Mark Gatiss that isn't The Unquiet Dead, In The Forest of the Night.

But I am going to go with The Crimson Horror, because I do think that this is the only Gatiss episode that doesn't get anywhere near as much flak as the others, but it's in my bottom three Gatiss episodes, as it's (IMHO) complete and utter tripe, a mockery of everything that I love about Doctor Who.

The other one has I think been already mentioned: Journey's End. Accepting that The End of Time is divisive, Journey's End is often taken as RTD's tour de force, but for me the scope, scale and number of fan service characters only serve to cover over what is a really poor episode of Who. Yes you can get a massive kick out of watching Jack, Martha, Donna, Rose all on screen together but there's very little substantive underneath it. The basic idea of the Doctor being shown his greatest shame would be good except it doesn't really go anywhere and moreover we know it won't, we know that he's going to get a new companion because that's the nature of the show. The metacrisis is truly awful and then we get a series of copout character endings. Overall, it's just a bit of a mess. But for me, it's biggest problem is that rather than, as I prefer, focusing on giving the current companion a proper send off (which for all their flaws, Doomsday, Last of the Time Lords, The Angels Take Manhattan and Hell Bent all do brilliantly), Donna is just kinda overshadowed by the pointless and irritating return of Rose (which is really my main problem with the whole story).

Thanks. It felt good to fully articulate all the reasons why that episode is so terrible.

It started off in my head as a few lines, but I have so many strong feelings about the episode and all it's bad points that I didn't even realise the size of the post I was going to write until it all came pouring out.


I agree with everything here, apart from your last line about the series 6 finale being worse. For me, the series 6 finale, whilst admittedly a bit of a mess with a lot of it's own problems and things that don't quite make sense, it has some fun parts, along the way, and I can still watch it with moderate enjoyment. I view The Wedding of River Song the same way as some of the Gatiss episodes - by far not the first episode i'd ever pick to watch given the choice, but at the same time ok-ish.

Name of the doctor, though is just completely and utterly irredeemable for me, for the many points I mentioned and the points you added too.

I could probably write another huge post on the idea of the 'secret war doctor' alone, but I think you've covered most of what I would have said anyway.

This feels like a topic that's been done a hundred times before so I'm not going to give detailed answers. I'll just throw a few examples out:

Unregarded episodes I really like:

Biggest one has to be 'An Unearthly Child' episodes 2 - 4. I genuinely find it difficult to understand why people don't regard them. I can only surmise it's because they are not in the now established Doctor Who formula. In their own right I think they're very compelling: very well written and atmospherically directed. Perhaps they are just a little too high concept for most people.

Dinosaurs on A Spaceship - funny, 'romp' type episode with a compelling kick at the end, that (and this is massive for me) DOESN'T COP OUT like nearly every other Doctor Who episode. The Doctor is put into the position of having to make a moral decision and he makes it - no ambiguity, no deus ex machina to get him out of it, no moralizing from the writer. Just a dilemma presented and a choice made by the character. Now THAT'S character writing. That's 'grown-up drama' to use Moffat's phrase erroneously used to describe 'Kill the Moon'. I still hate the banal title though :P

Popular episodes I don't like:

Biggest one: Day of the Doctor, definitely. No big deal but I found it so underwhelming. That's fine ultimately, I think writing that episode was something of an impossible task, but I can't imagine myself wanting to sit through it again. I found John Hurt uninteresting in the role, I didn't think any of the Time War stuff made much sense or really lived up to my imagination of a Time War (again, probably impossible to do in the confines of an episode of Doctor Who), the Zygons looked rubbish and I just generally don't like multiple Doctor episodes.

Which adds the Five doctors and the Three Doctors to this list too. The 'old' Doctors just never get portrayed consistently with their eras, especially Patrick Troughton. There's rarely any logic at all in their interactions. I dislike how they're usually treated as being different people, rather than the same man from different points in time. Add in a plot that is beyond rubbish in the case of the Five Doctors.

Pretty much all RTD season finales. I just dislike the style of them. I dislike the spectacle over logic sensibility. I like a little more subtlety in melodrama. Just a taste issue.

All Peter Harkness episodes: this goes back to what I said for Dinosaurs... above. His episodes are the opposite of what I praise there: Pompous, preaching, contrived moral dilemmas with improbable and fortuitous resolutions to protect the moral purity of the heroes. Just horrible hack work. It sounds a little petty but I think his name on any new episodes is one of the few factors that could compel me to probably give them a miss. Watching his episodes reminds me of when I used to read comics and there would be a storyline of Superman or somesuch fighting a cosmic war and never taking a single life. BS. That's not drama, it's child's play. Such guff has no correlation with the real world and so has no correspondance with real lives, nothing that anyone can learn anything from, other than the sentiment 'wouldn't it be nice if we had a God-like writer making sure everything can turn out nicely if only we're virtuous'. I prefer 'drama as a mirror of the real world'.

sorry but I really didn't like the two parter that intro's captn Jack ( chris ecc was the Doc )... gas masks and all that.. one ep was called Dr Dances, can't remem the other and can't be bothered looking it up. It just didn't do anything for me am afraid

I am not sure if Listen counts. On the one hand it was quite divisive but on the other it was certainly the sort of episode that seemed to bring out the aficionado in the sense that those who didn't like it were branded as inattentive thickos who could not appreciate a modern classic.

Heaven Sent was along the same lines although to be fair by the end of that the point was fairly clear and it was that 'Thanatos rules OK'. Not very nice at all really.

This is the crux of it. I've heard from people who were incredibly moved by it, particularly those with bi-polar disorder who saw a lot of authenticity in the portrayal. You can't fake that kind of personal connection and it speaks for itself. Reviewing something is a subjective activity for sure, and especially when the subject matter is so highly emotive.

It's not a personal favourite of mine but as I said, it's reaction speaks for itself. It is a very high quality episode. I suspect it's touched more people in a profound way than the vast majority of Doctor Who episodes. Sometimes you have to just defer judgement and give acknowledgement to something that objectively is a very fine piece of work.

Having said it's not one of my personal favourites by the way, I by no means find it 'boring' or unenjoyable. Yes, it's largely character based, not action based, but that's not a negative. Why does every Doctor Who episode have to be explosions and action and 'peril'? That gets very repetitive very quickly. I personally find action filled episodes extremely boring. Again, it's subjective. I believe things should be reviewed or judged on the basis of what they are and how well they accomplish their ambitions, not on the basis of what one would have preferred it to be. One can't legitimately criticize a character episode for not being action driven or vice versa, or a humorous episode for not being serious enough, only for how well they realize that intent.

To me, Vincent & the doctor speaks for itself. It doesn't need critical legitimization or affirmation.

I think I did say in my previous post on this episode that I thought the material surrounding depression etc was sensitively handed, it's a subject quite close to me and it's good Doctor Who highlighted the impact and effects it can have on people.

For some reason, though, the episode as a whole just didn't seem to work for me. I agree the show shouldn't always be about bangs and flashes etc. I also like some of the slower paced episodes. I rewatched Father's Day the other night and I still love that episode, and isn't that fast paced.

I thought at the time the episode was very symptomatic of Series 5, being very dull and slow paced. In some ways I still do, but unlike some of the other episodes of this series that have grown on me a bit, this hasn't at all.

As I also said, I also acknowledge that scene at the end was quite powerful and I know it produced quite a strong and emotive reaction on initial transmission. So in some ways, I do agree with you, I acknowledge the episode has some merit and has impact-it's just that it I'm not a fan of it and probably never will be.