If you could only watch five NuWho stories for the rest of your life?

This is gonna be a toughie....

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
Midnight
Amy's Choice
Vincent and the Doctor
The Girl Who Waited


Honourable mentions: Dalek, Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways, Gridlock, Human Nature/Family of Blood, Planet of the Ood, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, The Eleventh Hour, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, The Doctor's Wife, The God Complex, The Crimson Horror, Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline, Heaven Sent, Smile, Oxygen, Extremis and World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls.

Some ones with Mad Kazza in.

Blink
The Eleventh Hour
The Time of Angels
Amy’s Choice
The Girl Who Waited

1. Blink
2. Midnight
3. Fires of Pompei
4. The God Complex
5. The Waters of Mars

Blink.
Impossible Planet / Satan's Pit
Silence in the Library and the next one.
The Girl in the Fireplace
Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon.

Capaldi is my favourite nuwho doctor but I have found it difficult to include any of his stories.

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways
Smith and Jones
The Shakespeare Code
Blink
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

Dalek
Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Rings of Akhaten
Name of the Doctor

'If you could' = a choice and not an obligation to watch any of them.

If it was some kind of legal requirement I'd get someone else to pick 5 random stories from the NuWho abyss.

Then I'd leave them to collect dust.

Blink, Dalek, Mummy On The Orient Express, Sleep No More, Utopia (if the final Simm scene could be erased - if not then the double-header with the wax people).

Utopia
The Waters Of Mars
The Eleventh Hour
Heaven Sent
The Pilot...

...but I'd really rather not.

I honesty think I'm done with all New Who at this point. The entire enterprise is toxic.

iank wrote:I honesty think I'm done with all New Who at this point. The entire enterprise is toxic.

Even Smithy and Mad Kazza?

I fear so. The whole thing is tainted.

Blink is the only episode I could ever consent to watch again. It’s rather telling that the only episode I’d watch is a Doctor light one. I dare say it would be better if it was totally detached from the franchise. The Weeping Angels are literally the only good thing from NuWho and they themselves have not been spared it’s toxic touch.

All other episodes that came to mind, I realised were tainted as iank said, such as Dalek and The Empty Child. I cannot watch The Beast Below/Satan Pit anymore as it’s all a massive slap in the face to classic who and it’s cosmic beings, made worse by the fact it’s ripping off The Daemons and The Pyramids of Mars.

Dalek
Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways
Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel
Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The Girl Who Waited

Ah yes, The Girl Who Waited. A good choice, Ludders, probably my favourite Matt Smith story.

If I was answering this a couple of months ago, Time of the Angels and Amy's Choice would've been in there. But I watched them recently and I was rather underwhelmed.

Indeed, some don't stand up to too many repeated viewings. Some, like The Lazarus Experiment, oddly seem to improve (at least for me).

Nonetheless who'd have thought picking just 5 good Nu Whos would be hard? So many to choose from!

Mott1 wrote:Indeed, some don't stand up to too many repeated viewings. Some, like The Lazarus Experiment, oddly seem to improve (at least for me).

Nonetheless who'd have thought picking just 5 good Nu Whos would be hard? So many to choose from!

I couldn't really give a shit about NuWho to be honest. I'd probably never watch the ones I've chosen even.

Rose
End of the World
The Unquiet Dead
Aliens of London/ World War Three
Dalek
The Long Game
Father’s Day
The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances
Boom Town
Bad Wolf/ The Parting of the Ways
The Christmas Invasion
New Earth
Tooth and Claw
School Reunion
The Girl in the Fireplace
Rise of the Cybermen/ The Age of Steel
The Idiot’s Lantern
The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit
Love and Monsters
Fear Her
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
The Runaway Bride
Smith and Jones
The Shakespeare Code
Gridlock
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The Lazarus Experiment
42
Human Nature/Family of Blood
Blink
Utopia
The Sound of Drums
Last of the Time Lords
Voyage of the Damned
Partners in Crime
The Fires of Pompeii
Planet of the Ood
The Sontaran Stratagem/ The Poison Sky
The Doctor’s Daughter
The Unicorn and the Wasp
Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead
Midnight
Turn Left
The Stolen Earth/ Journey’s End
The Next Doctor
Planet of the Dead
The Waters of Mars
The End of Time

More than five but whaddaya gonna do?

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I’d even go back and re-watch my own selected stories again with much temptation too soon. I’ve been unable to finish re-watching a NuWho episode all the way through for ages, especially those from RTD’s era and the mid-late Moffat era; they just tend to either fill me with frustration and contempt (mainly the post series 6 Moffat era, and parts of series 5 and 6 themselves) or give me headaches due to the freneticism and populism surrounding them (mainly RTD’s era). I can accept particular episodes as being well-realised or written (the exception as opposed to the rule), but I’d still rather take the majority of TruWho over them.

There’s a certain timelessness, wonder and atmosphere to much of TruWho that NuWho rarely successfully encapsulates even during its finest hours- as I mentioned on another thread, NuWho is very conservative by design (adhering to the same soap opera conventions and narrative structure every year, constricting itself to a firm and tired formula, and rarely daring to turn to more intriguing influences), and thus rarely achieves the same uniqueness and audacity I often associate with the Classic series.

One of the (many) issues that separate Nu Who from Classic Who is the 'modern BBC' feel, which permeates a fair few of their programs these days and destroys immersion. The flashing up of the logo after the program has started, the feeling that the cast have been hand-selected from a small, metropolitan and diversity-obsessed pool, the way that you're not able to lose yourself in a far-flung planet and atmosphere as the majority of the stories are wrapped up 3/4 of an hour or so after you've started them. Even the aliens/locals get played for laughs by the Doctor, with Tennant's Doctor mimicking their speech patterns in a silly way or Rose giggling around them, even the Royal Family.

I think there's a lack of respect in Nu Who which highlights the way things have changed - respect from the protagonists and respect for the programs' institutions which it then buggers up. Mrs Browns Boys is another example, flaunting the conventions which once made their comedies great rather than just 'there'.