#DoctorWhoLockdown - The Tennant Years

With David Tennant at the TARDIS controls, Doctor Who seemed unassailable, even critic proof. Every week, headline grabbing stories captured the hearts of the nation. I think it’s fair to say that Doctor Who had not been quite as big since the mid-60s and possibly never will be again. These were golden days to be a fan and we had to keep pinching ourselves as the viewing figures kept going up and up and up. Our show was, in short, a fabulous, remarkable tearaway success as it always should have been. Looking back from a distance, it’s easy to see that like most eras, the David Tennant years were as full of good and bad stories as any other period in the show’s history. But one thing is still certain. This programme knew what it wanted to be, where it was heading and how it would get there. Series were constructed with confidence, rigidity and skill, giving this old young franchise a robustness, a strength it would rarely have again. Steven Moffat tended to switch the goalposts with every series, taking us out of our comfort zones with every passing year. Russell T Davies’s four and a half series are of a similar tone, trajectory and hue but that’s no problem. Indeed, this version of Doctor Who is as fully-formed and complete as it's possible for an era to be. In terms of its public appeal, bravado of story-telling and relevance to all the family, 2005 – 2010 were the years of Doctor Who’s true greatness. Here are the Doctor Who Vews rankings, from least to most favourite. Enjoy!

36. THE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER

From its very conception, this story is wrong. The title says it all. It’s slutty, mass appeal fodder - because this isn’t the story of The Doctor’s Daughter. It’s the story of the Doctor finding himself very suddenly and without warning in the company of a girl who just happens to have been born using his DNA for sci-fi reasons. The promise of a dramatic father-daughter reunion is wasted. Imagine if it had had the balls to really go for it, to present an actual daughter, Susan’s mother perhaps, and see how that fractured history played out. Instead, we’re watching Freema Agyeman and her bubbling companion (whom she can – bizarrely – completely understand) arsing about in a pond. And then we’ve got possibly the most earnest and clunking line in the show’s history: “Make the foundation of this society a man who never would.” The charismatic and assured David Tennant almost manages to sell it but he’s on a hiding to nowhere because Jenny’s death isn’t felt. Because she absolutely isn’t The Doctor’s Daughter.

35. THE IDIOT’S LANTERN

The shape of this story is right, the beats well-paced. The imagery is beautiful. Some of the shots are artfully well composed: the faceless ones in the cage, the tete-a-tete between the Doctor and the Inspector, even Tennant running down some stairs. Sadly though, not much about it works. It feels like a story missing the finesse. It’s workmanlike and by the numbers: the spooky pre-titles sequence, the comedy TARDIS arrival, the climax beginning to build ten minutes before the episode finishes. It’s very difficult to care about the Doctor’s plight on the transmitter though because it’s not made clear what he’s doing up there until the resolution in which he reveals in a cheap gag that he’d “taped over” the Wire. Maureen Lipman wailing “Hungry!” is even more annoying than Kroagnon wailing “Hungry!” and Jamie Foreman’s Eddie Connolly delivers a shouty, one-note, blustery performance which should feel frightening and masculine, but which ends up deeply irritating instead. On paper, The Idiot’s Lantern should work. The 1953 coronation; something coming through the TV; the fight for Alexandra Palace – it has it all. That it doesn’t hit home feels like a massive missed opportunity.

34. PLANET OF THE DEAD

The camera creeps back from the depths of David Tennant’s HD eyeball. The music goes synthy on our asses and then we pull back to reveal the bus in the middle of the desert. It’s staggering and epic and strange and very definitely Doctor Who. The only problem is, once we’ve reached the world of San Helios, the story has played all its cards. There’s little to do here aside from enjoy the bantz between the Doctor and Lady C, played unambitiously by Michelle Ryan who should be far posher and more adoringly dismissive. When the adventure closes and the Doctor asserts that both he and Lady C were so good together, we’re left wondering, “Were they?” It’s all a bit tepid and lacks a motor, despite the oncoming stingray storm and a funny turn from Lee Evans. The problem is there’s no geography to a desert. The trip from the bus to the crashed spaceship is a nebulous journey with no obstacles to hinder our heroes, giving the show a languorous air. At an hour’s length, it feels a bit like being out in the sun too long.

33. THE RUNAWAY BRIDE

So the first half is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Screwball comedy with a car chase and gags about pockets. And then we reach the lair of the spider. And we stay there or in the TARDIS for what feels like forever. The Racnoss clearly can’t move, the vast set looks like it’s shot in more than two different locations and it’s all so bloody grey. What’s happened to Christmas? In fact, the Christmas stuff was all last year’s leftovers. The Santas and Christmas trees feel grafted into a script made for the middle of Series 2 (coincidentally!) and sully The Christmas Invasion somewhat. I remember wondering if we’d see these Santa guys every bloody year. Thankfully, that last scene outside Donna’s house is where we’ve been heading and it almost saves The Runaway Bride. Almost. 

32. NEW EARTH

It’s an odd one to launch with, New Earth. Yes, it looks fantastic – the apple grass sequences looking out at the city and the panoramas from the hospital windows are gorgeous. But as the first adventure with the new Doctor and Rose, it’s peculiar. They both spend much of the episode with somebody else inhabiting their bodies and we don’t really get a feel for what this relationship will be like. In fact, the scenes in which we do see them together are a touch cloying. “We had chips,” says Rose almost sexually, and it lends a nostalgic element to the first trip to the Year 5 Billion which wasn’t there at the time. Something which was once dangerous and new is now comforting and twee. Much of the comedy isn’t particularly funny and the location and studio footage don’t fuse together as well as they might. (See the paper mill from Rose cutting to a very differently lit CG interior shot, to a small green corridor set. You don’t get the feeling we’re in the same place from shot to shot.) It’s worth the effort though because the last ten minutes are splendid. The Face of Boe gives his textbook enigmatic message before vanishing and then we have a suddenly very moving scene with Cassandra, who for the last time is told she is beautiful… tragically, by herself.

31. FEAR HER

It’s not nearly as detestable as fans make out. Indeed, I’d rather watch Fear Her than Matthew Graham bulkier, more insipid entry in Matt Smith’s era. It’s clearly the cheapie (There are no monsters, barely any CGI and few characters.) but Graham doesn’t write it that way. He writes a story in which the Doctor lights the Olympic torch in a stadium full of spectators. Watching David Tennant try to sell that is hard. He smiles gleefully at the absent crowd and because we can’t see them, there’s a vague feeling of embarrassment, of Doctor Who pulling off more than it can chew, and indeed of – wait for it – cheesiness. This ending is the ultimate in cheese. I can’t think of another Doctor Who episode I’d describe as cheesy. But here we’ve got “Not you too, Bob,” and the beacon of “hope and love.” The dialogue is so blunted, it simply can’t avoid feeling like cliché. But then again, there’s the absent father hiding in the cupboard, possibly the scariest idea that Doctor Who can hope to engage with. Here, Graham actually succeeds and the shadow at the top of the stairs is Fear Her’s stand-out moment. Perhaps, if the story had contented itself in Chloe’s house, as Night Terrors did in George’s, it might avoid trying to reach too high and be more kindly remembered too.

30. DALEKS IN MANHATTAN / EVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS

Poor Helen Raynor. She didn’t know what she was letting herself in for when she went online and found the hateful messages railing against her first two-part foray into the Who world. Sadly, the critics did have their points. The first half of this New York – Skarosian caper is the stuff of the very best Doctor Who. The scenes in the sewers are reminiscent of those in Revelation and the theatre setting of Weng-Chiang. This is as rich a setting as any for a Doctor Who story and despite the fact that (save a few plate shots) it’s painfully obvious that this wasn’t shot in NY, the American city runs through the veins of this script, from lowly actress Tallulah (“Three Ls and an H) to the heights of the Empire State Building via the straights and narrows of Central Park. Daleks in Manhattan has a profound sense of its own geography. In Evolution of the Daleks, however, things fall apart fairly quickly. Hugh Quarshie has a foot-in-mouth speech before he’s exterminated, followed by the Doctor’s insane suggestion that the Daleks kill him there on the spot. Why? Where’s the logic here? Then we cut to the Doctor again, who’s clearly had a long journey from Central Park back to the Empire State but is nevertheless still in a deadly rage, entering the scene screaming at the top of his voice. It makes the viewer want to stick their fingers in their ears and ask Tennant to politely dial it down a bit. By the time we get to lines of the class of “If you choose death and destruction then death and destruction will choose you,” you know we’re plumbing the depths. But I’d rather Doctor Who fail spectacularly like this, with a bit of flair and balls, than offer up something bland like Planet of the Dead. Everything about Daleks in Manhattan is big, even its glorious failings.

29. THE SHAKESPEARE CODE

I must say that it’s very telling of this era that a show as well put together as The Shakespeare Code is this low in the rankings. It says something about the considerably high standards of these four years and from now on, I can’t say there’s a bad show in this list. The Shakespeare Code looks sumptuous, completely convincing in its 1599 setting. Gareth Roberts’s script, like The Idiot’s Lantern, is well worked through, its twists and revelations coming at precisely the right times. There are two big problems though: the biggest is Dean Lennox Kelly (Shameless’s Kev) as Shakespeare himself. It’s a one-note line reading, ironically illustrating little understanding of text. He looks completely daft when possessed by Lilith, crumpling his face into a ridiculous gurn. The second problem is a more subtle one, but it’s in the setting itself. Yes, it looks gorgeous but it’s all a bit dark and brown and there’s not much chance for action, as Martha can certainly attest after struggling through the episode’s best scene in the bedroom. To say this was a standard RTD-era episode feels like it could be a compliment but episodes in this era are so rarely standard.

28. PARTNERS IN CRIME

As strangely desperate as he was to include a scene in which the Doctor and companion engage with a slow-moving window-cleaning lift, it makes for a relatively drab central set-piece, given that in previous openers, we’ve seen the London Eye light up, a hospital transported to the moon, and a trip to the Year 5 Billion. And that sums up why this story doesn’t light any fires. It feels like something we’ve seen before but done less well. As it happens, we haven’t really seen this before: the Doctor and Companion are actively looking for one another, rather than meeting for the first time; the aliens are cute and tiny and the mime in the middle is sublime. But for the fourth season of RTD’s time, we’re opening with yet another alien invasion story, meeting the companion’s family and promising better to come. It feels like it’s lacking the wonder and freshness that something like, say, The Eleventh Hour would bring the next time a series began.

27. PLANET OF THE OOD

This one was butchered by the editing. The Doctor and Donna arrive, do nothing, and become the Ood’s new Gods with hymns sung about them. It’s a bit much for a story which feels relatively small and self-contained. Planet of the Ood is all action and despite the giant one, very little brain. None of the characters are sympathetic. We’re not gunning for anyone. Things happen just because. “He has become Ood form,” intones Silas Carson’s Sigma casually, as if he’s talking about something as innocuous as hair loss. There are bonus points however for Tim McInnerny’s bizarre turn as Halpen. He chews his most hokey lines: “We’re gonna blow it up,” he gleefully leers. “Enjoy your Ood,” he demands, making the sentence feel as if it’s been badly Google-translated. Best is his casual-not casual call for “drink” which gets funnier with each exhortation. Daft, bull-headed but fun, Planet of the Ood is probably best enjoyed with a beer. It’s so silly that when it drops the slave trade message, it actually sits so badly that it starts to feel a little bit stupid too.

26. THE NEXT DOCTOR

After Voyage of the Damned, The Next Doctor was going to feel small. Despite a giant Cyberking striding its way through history, for a Christmas Special there is something cheap about The Next Doctor. The Cyber Wraths don’t work. There’s a lot of talk in town houses and the Torchwood set gets redressed. Perhaps the reason why The Next Doctor doesn’t really work is in the title. In the Court of the Cyber King was a title suggested by RTD and perhaps it would have given a stronger clue as to where this tale’s heart really lies. It’s not with Jackson Lake; it’s with Mercy Hartigan. Neither are allowed the time to truly grow. Once the mystery of Lake’s identity is revealed, David Morrissey is all but surplus to requirements. Maybe, for once, Russell puts publicity over narrative and ends up with a special that doesn’t really know who it’s about. The Cybermen in the graveyard, though: now there’s a scene that has Classic Who written straight through it.

25. THE FIRES OF POMPEII

Like The Shakespeare Code, this is extremely solid but unspectacular. It’s Companion’s First Trip into History 101. There’s a stellar cast: Peter Capaldi achingly charismatic at the story’s conclusion; Phil Davies vicious and snarling. There’s that metaphorically fiery scene in which Lucius drops his prophecies and that literally fiery shot later when the Doctor and Donna can do nothing but run away from the erupting Vesuvius. Here, the show really comes to life. But for the most part, The Fires of Pompeii feels disappointingly underpowered. The sense of doom you might expect from such a tale isn’t there. It’s all quite leisurely and static until those final few minutes. And Catherine Tate’s acting – whatever her biggest fans would have you believe – is over-mannered and showy. Her teary scenes in the TARDIS feel like a cynical excuse to show that this actor turned comedienne can indeed act. It’s a problem that would later be more cloying in her shouty scene at the close of Turn Left. Again, like The Shakespeare Code, there's not anything particularly wrong with The Fires of Pompeii. It just needs to use the time bomb that is Vesuvius to propel things along a little more rapidly.

24. 42

Chris Chibnall’s debut Who script perhaps typifies what we have come to expect of this future showrunner: solid but dependable. 42 isn’t going to set the world burning but it’s narrative of a ship drawn ever closer to the sun is a pleasing divergence of 42 minutes. It motors along, there’s a very creepy villain and as McDonnell expresses her love for Korvin in her last few moments of life, it's unexpectedly moving. From a production perspective though, it’s purposefully building on the “tough” early space travel of The Impossible Planet, even down to the red lighting and spacesuits. It all brings to mind the earlier story which was something of a masterpiece and 42 resolutely isn’t; it’s a pub quiz in space. And while we all love standing around a pub quiz machine, shouting at the screen, we struggle to remember a thing about it when it’s all done. That might be an unkind simile; David Tennant is astonishing here and the shots of him hanging from the spaceship airlock are dangerous and brutal-looking. Still, they’re not enough to distract from the fact that this feels like it’s all been done better before. Even the plot’s just Planet of Evil.

23. THE STOLEN EARTH / JOURNEY’S END

The first episode is a stunner. If you don’t punch the air every few minutes, I don’t know what you’ve been watching. Seeing Torchwood, Sarah Jane and UNIT come together to fight the Daleks feels like the perfect Doctor Who party and all our heroes are here to share it with us. Even Davros, the fellow we love to hate arrives, complete with a new metal hand. The thrill of visiting the hitherto only mentioned Shadow Proclamation is itself one of the many giddy thrills of The Stolen Earth. When Harriet Jones arrives, you know that this really does not get any better. Until K9 shows up next week that is. David Tennant’s last season finale though falls at the second hurdle. The Doctor is imprisoned by Davros for a stupefyingly long time, the Doctor-Donna feels like a cheat that doesn’t work and allows Rose her happy ending, sullying that perfect conclusion in Doomsday. The replay on the beach brings to mind the earlier, better farewell. Our regulars flying the TARDIS would be a triumphant moment, but appallingly Freema Agyeman turns to camera and squees, letting us know she’s loving it all a bit too much. Everything starts to feel a touch cloying. Even Donna’s ending here would go on to prove hyperbolic. Why didn’t the Doctor mention the safeguard he’d left her with? After an opening episode that builds to a dramatic and unbeatable cliff-hanger, we’re left with a second half which descends into so much disappointing nonsense.

22. HUMAN NATURE / THE FAMILY OF BLOOD

OK, I realise the lowly position of Human Nature will sends shivers up some spines but hear me out. I love the first half. It looks gorgeous, Harry Lloyd is spectacular, David Tennant and Jessica Hynes are an utterly adorable pair of sweethearts, the scene with the piano and the baby is completely charming and the cliff-hanger an old-school dilemma-based affair. There’s even a waltz. Human Nature can do no wrong for me. But The Family of Blood drops the ball. As beauteous as the first half is, the second becomes saccharine. Tennant – praised widely for his performance as John Smith – turns on the tears too early and you quickly want him to go away and cry somewhere else. The scene which ends the episode offers up the image of a poppy to stir the heartstrings, but it’s a symbol and a symbol in itself can’t move. It feels like a cheap trick. “Let’s present a poppy to get people emoting.” We don’t know what Tim went through during the war so we can’t share the sympathy of his plight. The Family of Blood reaches for metaphor. It wants to be the story of what everyone went through during the First World War, and it ends up being about no one. What’s more, it’s so desperate for us to be on its side, it resorts to sledgehammer tactics, scene after scene telling us to feel. If anything, it makes me want to turn off the telly.

21. SMITH AND JONES

The great cleverness of Smith and Jones is that it wears its cleverness lightly. It’s a companion introduction story which literally travels to the moon and back, adds in a nice little time travel trick and introduces an army of rhino-headed policemen and a blood-sucking pensioner. A lesser writer would surely have driven the audience away in cartloads but here, everything feels disarmingly right. The humour sits skilfully alongside the action and the heart. Martha’s family are introduced with supreme skill and we leave them, as Martha does, at loggerheads. We know what she’s running from and we know she understands the dangers of what’s to come. Sadly, those dangers will ultimately lead straight back to her family. In hindsight, it’s sad to see Martha, so optimistic and unaware of what’s to befall her and her loved ones. Smith and Jones is the start of a great adventure, succinctly, cleverly and rousingly told.

20. ARMY OF GHOSTS / DOOMSDAY

Doomsday was the finale to end all finales. Cybermen Vs Daleks! Mickey, Jackie, Pete and Rose. In hindsight, this was always the way RTD’s narrative was headed, with Rose regaining her family. It’s only obvious when we get to the end that all the pieces were there, cleverly shaped and positioned, all leading here. What we couldn’t foresee, however, was that to get her family back, Rose would lose the Doctor. It’s heart-rendingly tragic and Doomsday is a fast-paced, exciting, set-piece-after-set-piece episode. The only problem is, we now know she didn’t lose the Doctor, Journey’s End lessening the impact of Doomsday, making it not the ending, but a middle chapter. It was better as an ending. In fact, it was astonishingly powerful – a moment still talked about by the public. Army of Ghosts, however, feels like a chunky, often drab, trailer for the finale. It’s slow, the gags aren’t funny, Yvonne is irritating. It only kicks into gear when Mickey turns up and we get the sudden feeling that this is leading somewhere big. This is perhaps a rare example of when the second episode of a finale far outstrips the first. Aside from the obvious exception of The Parting of the Ways, it’s usually vice versa. Doomsday is a definitive ending to the Rose Tyler story and should probably have stayed that way.

19. TURN LEFT

If there is an oddball tale to be had in the RTD years, it’s Turn Left. I’m not sure it quite makes sense. Why does Rose appear in this dream version of reality? What’s the Bad Wolf thing all about? In fact, Rose’s return is fairly fudged throughout. Once she’s run down that street gleefully in The Stolen Earth, that’s pretty much her job done. But RTD’s vision of Doctor Who is rarely about sense and more about feeling. Turn Left is a disquieting story. It throws up junctures which disturb. The death of Martha as reported on the news is hard-hitting. The mushroom cloud erupting from London is a terrifying image. Most frightening of all though, is Wilfred Mott’s salute to those being taken to the labour camps, quickly followed by Sylvia’s bitter, tired stare at the camera. This is upsetting Doctor Who, showcasing the very worst of humanity – as dark as it gets. 

18. THE CHRISTMAS INVASION

Was ever a Doctor’s debut story greeted with such rapture? We’d just had the comeback season, met by everyone, everyone with profound joy. It could do no wrong. And then, Chris Eccleston quit. But strangely, it didn’t seem to matter. Because here was an actor who truly got RTD’s dialogue, who could speak its rhythms, who was genuinely funny. Here, in another of Russell’s masterstrokes, the new Doctor only gets fifteen minutes at the end of the hour to save the day and David Tennant is magnificently charming. He rattles through his soliloquising with abandon, sometimes casual, sometimes out and out funny (“I DON’T KNOW!”), sometimes steely. He goes through it all. It’s a superb piece of writing and of playing. Tennant would go on to have more disappointing moments but none here. He excels. After his short stint, we don’t even miss Eccleston. Plus, we have killer Santas, shattering Gherkins, a swordfight, mass suicide from the Tower of London and a Lion King reference. The Christmas Invasion is a joy. If Series One was Doctor Who saying “Coming into land!” this was Doctor Who saying “We’re here!”

17. THE LAZARUS EXPERIMENT

Massively underrated, The Lazarus Experiment is the perfect example of how to do a monster story. It’s got a robust, powerful structure: we start and end in Martha’s living room, visit a black tie event, and climax in the belfry of Southwark Cathedral. The monster itself is grotesque and terrifying. The action never stops. It’s like The Brain of Morbius meets Earthshock. Even an exploding science lab is just another tiny obstacle in the defeat of Lazarus, as the Doctor races onward to the next peril. The elephant in the room is, of course, the miscast Mark Gatiss. He’s excellent elsewhere in Doctor Who (and indeed, all over television) but here, he’s written as the handsome young buck who Tish falls for very quickly after being repulsed by his elder form. But Gatiss isn’t a young buck. He’s not even particularly attractive in the traditional way. He needs to be Hugh Grant but instead we get Nicholas Lyndhurst. However, he plays it for all it’s worth, in a performance worthy of the Doctor Who villain stalwarts – your Philip Madocs or Tony Beckleys. I love his mannered delivery of, “One lifetime’s been too short for me to do everything I’d like. How much more would I get done with two, or three, or four?” He makes four seem like the magic number. Three – yeah, unimpressive. But four lifetimes? Well, now there’s something! It’s an insane, arch, committed and brave endeavour. And I’d much rather have this than a bland, handsome straight-out-of-drama-school stag. I love The Lazarus Experiment. If Doctor Who is about monsters, then I can’t understand why fans can’t seem to engage with this dark, extremely well-shot story of perverting nature.

16. THE UNICORN AND THE WASP

Gareth Roberts’s best entry in the Russell T Davies era. The Unicorn and the Wasp is that rare thing in Doctor Who – a murder mystery which actually functions as a murder mystery. That should be its ticket to the upper echelons of stories in itself but Roberts’s script is far more than that: genuinely funny, subversive, bold and surprising. It looks gorgeous, the cast are terrific. It excels in almost every department, that it’s success is almost invisible. This is a production that works. That means we can’t be drawn out of its reality. We can’t start thinking about effects or sets or costumes because we’re too busy being wheeled through this zippy, fun, bounding script. Look at the interrogation scenes for evidence of sheer writerly skill: each one splices into the next seamlessly, revealing something about the suspects in canny, economy and the flashbacks to what Christopher Benjamin was up to are unexpectedly hilarious. “I was in me study,” he says plummily. Twice. That’s enough for any Doctor Who story to be delightful.

15. THE END OF TIME

Overlong, plotless, at times rambling and utterly indulgent, this is the full-fat, chocolatey desert after an already enormous meal. And it feels good! Packed full of glorious moments (the best famously between Bernard Cribbins and a world-weary, affected David Tennant in his best performance), The End of Time lives up to its tone meeting description: The Best. The era’s best director, alongside the best actors, the best designers, the best prosthetics and the best sound and music. This feels like a culmination. For a time, I thought Journey’s End would probably have made for David Tennant’s strongest finale (everyone back, the Daleks, Davros, a regeneration, Rose) but here, we have the apotheosis of all the thematic resonances of the RTD years, meeting at last, the Time Lords! John Simm’s Master returns (and Simm is utterly, magnificently wild) making him the definitive villain of the Tennant era and that final curtain call for all the great, great characters we’ve met over the last four years is well and truly earned. It feels like The End of Time itself, Russell underlining his time on the show in a huge, majestic flourish. As we approach the Matt Smith and Steven Moffat oligarchy, all our thoughts of yesterday are put back in the box for the last time. They’re finished with. It was grand and epic and we loved it. And here is the ultimate goodbye.

14. SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY / FOREST OF THE DEAD

If there were ever a story to signal what was coming, it’s Silence in the Library: River Song, timey-wimey, over-elaborate plotting, child-centred story-telling, the Doctor in Love, sentient computers and real chills. This is bottled Moffat. And of course, it’s fantastic. Stealing from The Ark in Space, Moffat allows his library to be the star of the show for twenty minutes. Then the guest cast – or should that be shadow-fodder – arrive, the faceless spacesuits frightening as they step through the smoke. Colin Salmon’s Dr Moon is sinister, his advice to Chloe enough to send any child screaming to bed. His visitations to Donna are foreboding and unpleasant. “And then you forgot,” he smiles and Donna’s memory is invisibly wiped. Forest of the Dead feels like Moffat unleashed. This style of mind-f**k story-telling would of course become normal, but here in the middle of the RTD years, it’s more arresting than usual. Catherine Tate delivers her best performance. I feel I’ve been a little unfair on Tate throughout this article. I feel like the moments when she is seemingly universally praised (The Fires of Pompeii, Turn Left) she is actually just a bit shouty and teary, making little sense of the lines. That moment in Turn Left when she cries, “But I can’t die!” goes through me. However, here, when she loses her children, Tate’s screams are coruscating and real. This is her at her best. She is so good and makes Forest of the Dead even better than its already refined cleverness would attest. Magnificent.

13. MIDNIGHT

It’s all a bit grey-looking. That’s the worst I can say about this terrific Wednesday Play in which a group of bus passengers end up at loggerheads, to the point where they’re ready to kill one another. Russell’s script creeps up on the viewer as the tension inside the shuttle mounts. Wisely, the characters are not all cardboard cut-out contrasts. They all feel “normal” with humanity in common and then we discover - in their time of greatest stress - who the cowards are, who can be trusted, what humanity can do. Tennant is blisteringly good. Midnight to David Tennant is what Mummy is to Peter Capaldi – they at the heart of things, driving the narrative and then in Tennant’s bold statement that they should listen to him “because I’m clever,” we realise he’s gone too far. He’s exposed his arrogance in desperation and now, he’s going to pay the price. Even the Doctor isn’t immune to the devastating effects of this haunting tale of the unknown.

12. BLINK

I must be the only fan in the world who didn’t greet Blink with ecstatic lofty praise. Frankly, I’d already seen it (minus weeping angels) in the 2006 Doctor Who Storybook, in which Steven Moffat recounted the tale of Sally Sparrow and the message under the wallpaper. I felt like I was being handed second-hand goods. But with the benefit of hindsight, Blink’s greatness is obvious. Like Moffat himself would assert though, “The Doctor isn’t even in it.” To my childish mind, too, the angels are hardly used. Doctor Who without the Doctor and the monsters can’t really constitute the best of the show. Where I want the thrill of the “Don’t blink, the angels are here” scenes, I’m getting a chat in the backroom of a DVD shop. This is trite criticism, however. Because Blink never stops entertaining. The gags are great, Sally and Larry are the cutest couple, the music’s terrific, “the same rain” scene is deeply sad. There are so many wonderful moments in Blink, it feels increasingly foolish to criticise it. But then, it doesn’t feel quite like Doctor Who in the same way that any of the other stories in Series Three do because the monsters and the Doctor don’t show up until the end. Never mind. Blink might not be typical Doctor Who, but it is brilliant Doctor Who.  

11. THE GIRL IN THE FIREPLACE

Perhaps we’re so familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Steven Moffat’s writing now that The Girl in the Fireplace is in danger of being a little forgotten, over-written in fact. But this is a beautiful, small tale of a love across time. Like its clockwork droids, the narrative cogs at work in The Girl in the Fireplace are intricate, delicate and immaculately positioned. Look at how Moffat cleverly introduces the horse which will star in the episode’s climax – Arthur is a gag so we don’t realise his significance because we’re too busy laughing. (He played the same trick with the nanogenes the year before – introduced to show off how so much more “up-tech” Captain Jack was.) The Doctor falling so quickly for Reinette and then thoughtlessly abandoning his friends might seem out of character but actually if we trace this Tenth Doctor across all these stories, he is capable of supreme selfishness. (Look at the way he treats Mickey.) There are scares as well as kisses: the scene of child Reinette in the middle of her bed as the thing beneath it stirs is jumpy and affecting. The logic of the droids is frightening in itself. “We do not require your feet,” is as chilling a statement as they come. It takes one to be extremely unromantic not to be unmoved by the story of the Doctor and Reinette’s romance though, and the words of her dying letter are deeply moving as Sofia Myles narrates from beyond the grave. Perhaps this is the only love story the Doctor can have, his lover on the fast path, himself ever on the long one. 

10. THE SONTARAN STRATAGEM / THE POISON SKY

There are four multi-part stories in the Top Ten here. Each one could be its own Doctor Who movie. In fact, call me a Philistine, but I’d love to see these stories, cliff-hangers edited out on a big screen. They’d make for such a fabulous film franchise. But that’s the thrill of Doctor Who in a nutshell. Every week, we are gifted with something better than a movie, something for the small screen which holds its greatness lightly. Television is always seen as the lesser cousin of the movies, but the four feature-length tales on offer here, illustrate that movies have a long way to go before they even begin to match our brilliant little programme. This is the best Sontaran story by a country mile. They have a reason to invade, a strong military plan and they’re cruel, troll-like aggressors. UNIT are back and as strong as they always were, although it would have been perfect had we seen the Brig again, one last time in the parent show. Even the titles typify the best of the show. This is bread and butter Who at its absolute best. The action sequences in the second half are relentless, the Doctor’s first meeting with Rattigan is sizzling, there’s a cheer-eliciting non-explosion and the cliff-hanger is fantastic. So sure of itself is The Poison Sky that when it introduces the Valiant, it knows how high we’re going to punch the air. 

9. LOVE & MONSTERS

Reviled by many, Love & Monsters is the story of us all. Perhaps it’s too close to the bone for some fans. Perhaps it just looks like a comedy and some fans still don’t like Doctor Who comedy, turned off instantly by the Scooby Doo chase sequence at the beginning. But it’s typical of a story which breaks its own form over and over again. Is this a presentation from Marc Warren or not? The scenes with the Abzorbaloff and the Doctor and Rose are clearly happening in the now and are not framed in the same way as the rest of the story. There are time jump cuts which work as a coming soon trailer: the first mention of Ursula is followed by a terrifying shot of Shirley Henderson screaming. Victor is introduced with Peter Kay exclaiming, “You stupid man!” Half way through, we’re unexpectedly into the story of poor Jackie Tyler which has vivid heart and surprising bite. Love& Monsters is so many things, a heady hodgepodge of styles and emotions. It’s lovely and sad and clever and scary. But my favourite oddball moment is that very funny cut to Elton John. 

8. RISE OF THE CYBERMEN / THE AGE OF STEEL

Another movie here, the cliff-hanger a moment of jeopardy meaning that the two episodes could be cut seamlessly together. This is Doctor Who and the Cybermen on the Big Screen, closer than ever before. All its constituent parts are formed from the very DNA of Doctor Who: the walk down the tunnels, the Cybermen coming to life around our heroes, the smashing through the windows, the showdown with the Controller. More than that though, what runs through these two episodes are the hearts of Rose and Mickey, the young people most affected by travel into this uncanny parallel world. Stand-out scenes include Rose’s chat with her alt-mother on the bench, Mickey’s visit to his Grandmother and the Doctor’s inflamed decision as to who to follow. “You don’t know anything about me, do you?” says Mickey, cutting straight to the Doctor’s selfishness. The Doctor has avoided Mickey, taken the piss out of him, and now, he’s being called out on it by the lovely, patient mechanic. Character drives this story, but by the time we’ve got to the zeppelin - the Doctor, Rose and Pete climbing desperately away from the oncoming Cyber Controller – this is as breath-taking as Doctor Who has ever been. Forget car chases, shoot-outs and explosions, this tale is told vertically. We go from the tunnels beneath the power station, to the factory floor, to the roof, to the skies. The geography of action has never worked quite so well in Doctor Who as it does here.

7. THE WATERS OF MARS

This is the darkest David Tennant’s Doctor ever gets and it’s nail-biting viewing. When he cries, “We’re fighting time itself and I’m gonna win!” it’s delivered with such frightening ferocity that as terrifying as the Flood monsters are, there’s even more fear posed by this Time lord Victorious. The Waters of Mars is doom-laden from the get-go, despite starting with a very funny feedline into the titles. We know that the guest cast are destined to die and we spend the duration of the episode waiting for that to happen. From the first unsettling, out-of-focus transformation, we know things are going to go wrong and as the colonists of Bowie Base One start to fall like dominoes, Murray Gold’s oppressive, unusually subtle score rolls onwards – death after death punctuated by eerie, ethereal music. This is the sort of story that can only be told at a very certain point in a Doctor’s tenure. Perhaps even, this is the only time that The Waters of Mars could be told. RTD sees the opportunity to plough headlong into the hubris of the Time Lord, and alongside Phil Ford does so at full speed, unrestrained, leading almost fatalistically into the horrors of regeneration to come…

6. SCHOOL REUNION

Perhaps the only issue with School Reunion and indeed, the following Sarah Jane Adventures is that the eponymous heroine’s relationship with the Doctor was never quite as intense and romantic as is made out here. True, the heart of Doctor Who was never quite laid bare in the classic series, emotions hinted at rather than explored. It’s also possible that Sarah’s love for the Doctor has grown in his absence. Whatever the case, her reunion with the Time Lord makes for tremendous television. It begins light and summery, as the series miraculously managed yearly in the mid-00s. The Krillitanes are frightening creatures, moving rapidly through the school corridors anachronistically. The meeting by the pool sizzles with testosterone, Anthony Head stepping in to the fold to show David Tennant how to do nothing with bravado. It’s all quite exciting and jolly. And then K9 dies. In a shattering, unexpected twist, the Doctor heralds the “good dog” before it trundles pathetically off to its death. And that’s when we think School Reunion has suddenly dug its teeth in. But then the Doctor has to say goodbye properly to Sarah and by this time, it’s under our skin. Just when you think you’ve got no tears left to shed, it’s revealed that K9 has been rebuilt! Just when you were so happy that K9 was killed (sad is happy for deep people), you’re even happier that he wasn’t. This is a tale of strong emotions, some contradictory, but all incredibly strong.

5. UTOPIA / THE SOUND OF DRUMS / LAST OF THE TIME LORDS

This is Russell T Davies’s Doctor Who in long-form. In a way, it encompasses everything he would do with the show: its focus on family, its outward relevance to the modern viewer (making the Master Prime Minister indeed!) and showcasing the very best and very worst of the human race. We go to the extreme end of creation, and in a neat paradox (machine) are pulled straight back to the here and now. The ending of Utopia is as edge-of-the-seat as Doctor Who gets. Indeed, I watched this at university and for 15 minutes, I really was on the edge of my seat. Derek Jacobi excels as both Yana and the Master and it’s lovely that he’s getting to showcase his sarcastic, snarling manifestation with Big Finish currently. The realisation that this demon of Time Lords is waking up is as exciting as television gets. The Sound of Drums starts running and powers on through manically (frighteningly killing the cabinet members, blowing up Martha’s flat and making our heroes Britain’s most wanted – this is hitherto undiscovered territory for the programme) ending with the most disturbing cliff-hanger in all of Doctor Who, a situation impossible to imagine a way out of and a desiccated Doctor forced to look on as the Earth burns. Last of the Time Lords was always going to feel like a comedown but it’s another very different chapter in this tale of two Gods playing in their garden. When the tiny Doctor emerges from his shrivelled clothing, it’s heart-stopping. The Scissor Sisters dance is disturbing and nightmarish. It feels right that after the outright turmoil of the year that never was, Martha’s ending is the most mature exit a companion in the new series has ever enjoyed.

4. GRIDLOCK

The last and greatest of the “New Earth Trilogy.” This time, there’s no Cassandra, and we’re into the city itself, making New Earth’s seeming resistance to go and find the bigger story less irritating. Again though, Russell T Davies contents himself with a tale set in a few cars and an empty hall. Because he knows that focussing on the characters is always wiser the further away from Old Earth we get. These characters really live. Ardal O’Hanlon’s Brannigan is a joy, his infectious lilt bringing that cat mask to unpretentious life. Novice Hame, atoning for her sins, looking after the dying Boe, comes into her own as she explains the scourge of Bliss to the Doctor. We can’t quite believe a thing like this could have happened to such a thriving city, but perhaps it is even more relevant in these troubling times. Best of all though, this isn’t a tragedy. This is how the survivors come together to rebuild. It’s a tale of how, in times of crisis, humanity sings hymns, holds hands and sits inside waiting for things to get better. It’s a tale of hope. How completely wonderful.

3. VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED

Why Voyage of the Damned is so vilified, I do not understand. It is fundamentally brilliant Doctor Who. The Heavenly Host are flying Voc Robots in a crashing Titanic. What’s not to love? There’s a talking red conker, Buckingham Palace in jeopardy, a cast of terrific characters, a song: it’s perhaps the ultimate, most fun and audacious Doctor Who Christmas Special. (Although A Christmas Carol is probably the best by a whisker, it’s got a different set of priorities.) Here, we have a Doctor Who movie in one episode. It’s without Daleks, Cybermen, The Master or a regeneration. It just wants to tell its own grand disaster story. I must also point out Mark Costigan's incredibly funny turn as Max Capricorn. He is deliciously knowing. Mr Copper goes skipping off into the snow, it’s only the most cynical heart that can’t have enjoyed every last morsel of this feast of an adventure. It’s such a joy and the spoilsports must be all the more miserable for not seeing it for the great celebration that it is. Doctor Who - at the height of its powers - Christmas 2007.

2. TOOTH AND CLAW

When I was a child, wolves scared me the most. They were in every fairytale, every picture book, but I’d never seen one. Where exactly were these wolves? For a time, I was convinced there was one in my bedroom that would come creeping out at night. Tooth and Claw is the best werewolf story I could ever have imagined. It’s thrillingly well directed by Euros Lyn, shot in dark ebonies and mahogany, shafts of blue light casting shadows across the panelled walls of Torchwood House. From the moment the horrific transformation in the cage occurs, the action never ceases, deaths are savage and repulsive and the tension unbearable. Every aspect of the plot set up wondrously in the first fifteen minutes is paid off in the last fifteen: the Koh I Noor, the faulty telescope, the dishonourable husband. The cast are amazing too: David Riddell, Pauline Collins and Ian Hanmore put in thrilling performances. I watched this as an adult human being. I was still frightened by this folkish country yarn of wolves pinching boys from their sleep. It’s hauntingly good.

1. THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET / THE SATAN PIT

Here’s what I think’s the best: a top story I am surprised is so underrated. Actually I don’t suppose people dislike it. It’s often found to be quite high on fan polls. But why isn’t it at the very top? It’s the story of Doctor Who Vs The Devil, for goodness’s sake! Like Voyage of the Damned it reeks of good Doctor Who. There are sequences in ventilation ducts, people die horribly, men are possessed, and the Doctor has a face-off with the biggest Big Bad there’s ever been. Just before broadcast, the BBC website put out a “Fear Forecast” – a commentary write-up from a family who had watched the upcoming episode with their children and allocated a score out of five to indicate how scary the story would be. This one got 5+. It’s easy to see why. I don’t think the modern era has put out a story so deliberately and relentlessly frightening in its history. From the graffiti the Doctor and Rose come across in the first few minutes, underscored by Murray Gold’s sloping chords to the mighty cliff-hanger, the camera rising sinisterly from the darkness as the music tells us “He’s free!” Murray Gold is just another star of this thrill ride of a show. Just listen to those strangely moving strings as Toby Zed stands on the planet’s surface, demonic and smiling. The final sequence on the rocket feels dangerous and when Zed re-emerges, red-eyed and enraged, he’s simply too close to Rose for her to be in any way safe. By the time he’s breathing fire, we’re already well and truly behind the sofa, watching this nightmare unbelievably play out. I could go on for hours. Danny Webb’s Jefferson gets some terrific scenes; the Devil informing the crew of their most innate fears by intercom is extremely disturbing (“The little boy who lied”). Poor Scooti’s scene by Door 40. The Doctor offers up “the stuff of legend” as a suitable epithet to describe Rose and himself. This is what The Satan Pit is. Truly: the stuff of legend. The sort of tale that cements Doctor Who's reputation as cultural icon.

JH