Is Doctor Who a Trial-and-Error show?

I've recently been having a discussion with one of my friends, and they were wondering after all these years, if Doctor Who was truly a great show. I counter argued that Doctor Who is fundamentally a trial-and-error show ever since regeneration was a thing and styles changing. I argue that it is always going to be a trial-and-error show and some eras are always going to be better than others. Some people argue that only Doctors 1-7/8 are worthwhile, some people argue that Doctors 1-4 are only worthwhile. So what I wanted to ask was if you could still say if Doctor Who can still be a fantastic show, knowing that it's trial-and-error?

I think that's the case with any really long running show, especially one that undergoes cast and management changes. It's inevitably going to take time for new management to really get their feet under the desk.

Yeah I think for me as a fan, there's always been the frustrating and slow, painful realization that Doctor Who as a whole wasn't really a great show, strictly speaking... it was more a great show *in potencia* only.

A few times in its history it lived up to its potential to be great television. Evil of the Daleks, Inferno, Genesis of the Daleks, The Deadly Assassin, Talons, City of Death, Enlightenment, Revelation of the Daleks.

For the most part though it's been a very patchy show, where even its most consistent eras have been prone to dodgy logic, old cliches and patronising stereotypes.

Ironically, I think where the show fell into trouble in the 1980's was when it had been around so long that writers had grown up with an idea of the show. Especially when they came under the officious influence of superfans like Ian Levine who was trying to determine how the show gets to the fans' folk idea of its greatness once again. Overlooking that you can't reinvent the wheel, and by trying to make Doctor Who one thing, you can actually calcify and petrify its potential completely.

It is true that the fact it has been through various production teams is what has sometimes made its content erratic. Unfortunately in the 80's, it was under the kind of makers who had it in mind to keep trying to 'fix' the show their own conflicting ways until it was truly broken.

As a Trekkie on the side, I've always looked at it like this. I can sometimes prefer Star Trek simply for being the franchise that always works and has let me down the least of the two.... but sometimes Doctor Who can offer a wealth of sweeter, life-affirming imaginative riches that can't be found in Trek or any other franchise.

Can I say Doctor Who is a great show? No.

I can possibly say it was for a few brief periods in its lifespan. Season 7, The Hinchcliffe era, and the Key to Time season. Broadly I suppose you could say from Evil of the Daleks to City of Death. After that, sadly it started to get bad in whole new ways. I have difficulty calling it a 'great' show in the 80's when it was actively producing the kind of nadirs that even most *bad* shows couldn't even achieve. Beyond that it probably only ever lived up to its potential in the Big Finish audios.

The New Series has always been slightly frustrating because we all hoped, I think, that we would get a show that finally fully lived up to its potential in new ways.

I think I've realized that it wasn't Classic Who's standards that the new show kept falling short of, but its own. It would do a story like The Unquiet Dead and Dalek, only to follow it up with the farting around in Aliens of London.

That the new series wasn't so much ''trial and error' so much as 'placebo and regurgitations of trash popular culture'. It was no longer 'trial and error' because RTD didn't think the mainstream audience were even capable of coping with anything too risky, clever or challenging for them. It gives up on trial and error, and plays frustratingly, insultingly safe.

No question that it can still be great show whilst being trial and error. Although I'd hesitate to define the show as being entirely trial and error.
Obviously there's a certain amount of that when a show is new especially, and when a long running show is re-inventing itself under new production teams, you get more of it.
But I actually think that Dr Who has gone through more periods of stability where the production teams have found something that works, than not.
I think the periodic shake ups have been for the show overall, because it stops it from getting too formulaic for too long, and thus getting stale.
Most of us have particular eras that we like more than others, and when it hits on a formula you like, then it's tempting to say 'If it stayed like that it would've been consistently great', but when you look at many TV series, (apart from soaps which are just the televisual equivalent of two women gossiping over the fence all their lives) their shelf life would never last for 26 years. Even many great TV shows have gone on past their sell by date and finished up, stale, boring and repetitious by the end. Much as my personal affections for DW begin to wane around 1978, I still feel that on the whole, it managed to avoid becoming boring. As we all know, DW had a lot of enemies by the end, and there things that hindered the show, even crippled it to the point where they could justify taking it off the air. Much as I feel that some of the creative decisions contributed to its demise, the biggest contribututary factor was its enemies within the BBC. The biggest shame of all is that it was taken off just as it was getting back on its feet. The more I watch S26, the more I feel this. I think if the Mcoy era had hit the ground running with S25 straight away, maybe things would've been different.
Anyway, that's entirely speculative, and I've gone off the point somewhat, but suffice to say that even though DW wasn't consistently great, I still objectively feel that it was a great show overall. Not despite the trial and error factor, but because of it.