Worst New Who season opener

Some truly awful stories here (though I do rather like the openers of series 5 and 6), but which is the absolute worst?

No contest.

It's gotta be Magician's Apprentice/Witch's Familiar.

I fucking hated that story so much. The Doctor going into yet *another* self-imposed medieval recluse. The pointless tank scene that drags like mud. The cheap shock tactics and fake-outs. The utter impotence of the Daleks. The pointless retconning of Davros' childhood and his creation of the Daleks allowing them to understand mercy, thereby ruining Genesis of the Daleks and everything that made the Daleks what they are. The downright nasty, pointless and sadistic way Capaldi's taken for a mug by Missy and nearly goaded into killing Clara whilst she's helpless to be heard by him.

Seriously, it makes New Earth look like The Godfather by comparison.

Tanmann wrote:No contest.

It's gotta be Magician's Apprentice/Witch's Familiar.

I fucking hated that story so much. The Doctor going into yet *another* self-imposed medieval recluse. The pointless tank scene that drags like mud. The cheap shock tactics and fake-outs. The utter impotence of the Daleks. The pointless retconning of Davros' childhood and his creation of the Daleks allowing them to understand mercy, thereby ruining Genesis of the Daleks and everything that made the Daleks what they are. The downright nasty, pointless and sadistic way Capaldi's taken for a mug by Missy and nearly goaded into killing Clara whilst she's helpless to be heard by him.

Seriously, it makes New Earth look like The Godfather by comparison.

I’d also argue that it makes Partners in Crime look like a fucking Dostoyevsky novel.

I completely agree- it is a truly shite piece of work that only exists to piss all over Genesis Of The Daleks and the entire legacy of the Daleks themselves. The only thing I’m unsure of is whether it exceeds Death In Heaven in terms of awfulness.

Bernard Marx wrote:The only thing I’m unsure of is whether it exceeds Death In Heaven in terms of awfulness.

Oh boy...

Certainly at the time it felt like nothing could be worse than Death in Heaven, and there's no way Moffat could ever pull off at least something that *shocking* again.

But it certainly felt afterwards like The Witch's Familiar had achieved the impossible.

Magician' Apprentice / Witch's Familiar.

Partners in Crime.

Urgh, Partners in Crime is truly dire. I started to lose interest in Doctor Who shortly after that. The stuff I was watching on Nickelodeon at the time was more intelligent and engaging than that crap.

It is profoundly shit on so many levels- it’s crass, moronic and celebratory of mediocrity. All things Doctor Who should never be.

New Earth.

I was a massive bell-end cheerleader apologist for the RTD era at the time, but even then I had standards.

Asylum of the Daleks. Complete fucking shite from start to finish. If that is supposed to be the scariest Dalek story, then it massively failed. New Earth is pretty bad as well.

As much as I resent voting for anything not written by Chibnall, it's got to be The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar, for reasons already outlined by Tanmann.

I enjoy the 5/6/8/10 openers, but the rest suck. I'm going for New Earth since it was my first real moment of "This is fucking shit" with New Who, only to be utterly flabbergasted by all the zombies proclaiming it a comedy masterpiece on Outpost Dickheads.

I voted for the Capaldi dalek double-parter dud. On a par with Death In Heaven, frankly.