Which is the worst Nu Who episode, and why is it the worst?

Here's the kind of question you won't get on GB very often, but which episode is worst, and what makes it particularly objectionable to you? I post this not just to bash Nu Who (tho it is good to have a daily ration of it) but it's useful to find what kind of entertainment and storytelling is most appealing by identifying what's (to that person) worst.

I vote for "Day Of The Doctor", personally, and the reason is that it disobeys virtually all the rules of drama (look at how the Zygon threat completely disappears, for example). Like "The Five Doctors" it could have just been a celebratory one-off quest, but instead it saw the particularly blatant trend of shoehorning classic elements accelerate to ridiculous proportions (as out of place as The Macra were in Gridlock). The show's self-importance (particularly over things which had worked in the past and the then-current shoerunners had nothing to do with) completely got out of hand from hereon in...

Twice Upon a Time.

For the sheer catastrophic and irreversible damage it did to the show's integrity, lore and main protagonist.

The End of Time comes in at a very close second place. It might not have done as much damage to the show as Twice Upon a Time, but from a pure writing perspective this is easily the single worst episode in Doctor Who history. I already made a thread that absolutely tore this episode to pieces.

Death in Heaven. 

Depressing piece of television. I felt so numb and empty after it had finished. I'm not sure if it was Missy, the Brig salute moment, the shitty opening titles gag, the visual look that made me feel physically ill or the fact that everything felt just so weak and underwhelming but it ended up being the worst Doctor Who experience for me by a mile. I don't even remember being as offended when I watched Fear Her back in 2006. I remember it being pants but I recognised it as being a cheap filler episode and nothing more. Death in Heaven tries to act all important and deep but it's just hollow.

Which thread is the one where you review The End Of Time, Dead Man Rising?

I remember my reaction on watching Death In Heaven was one of utter disbelief at each successive scene being worse than the last (the Doctor becoming president, the cybermen being camped up, the Danny Pink cyber scenes, the plot holes around CyberBrig turning up in the exact right place). It was so bad that as annoyed as it made me I couldn't comprehend it fully either. So stuff like Last Of The Time Lords or the opening Dalek two-parter in s9 actually tends to get ranked lower by me, oddly because at least I understood those stories and could give honest reactions to them there and then.

The quality of Death in Heaven doesn't surprise me. Nuwho finales are always pretty poor. The only one that came close to being great in my opinion was Parting of the Ways. The ending is bollocks and the stuff on Earth is incredibly dull but I do quite enjoy 9 and Lynda together. Chris is so much better in his few scenes with Jo Joyner than anything he's in with Billie. I'm actually getting excited thinking about how watchable series 2 would have been if Eccleston had carried on with Lynda as his companion. 


Shame it never happened. Doctor Who went downhill the moment Tennant said "Barcelona"

Sorry, I've gone way off topic. At least Joel Schumacher apologised for Batman & Robin. I doubt Rachel Talalay will do the same for Death in Heaven.

A Good Man goes to War or the Wedding of River Song, you wanna know why? Just watch them, they are a fucking mess; so is Hell Bent.

I'm completely with CommanderMaxill here.

Dark Water/ Death in Heaven is without doubt the worst ever episode of Doctor Who. I lose respect for someone as a fan (not a person overall of course.) If they say they don't hate it. Sorry but it really is that bad.

I've posted this before, but I'll run through the reasons why it should be the absolute worst in everyone's opinion.

(Think of this as being the sequel to Genkimonk's post on the original Hive about why Journey's End was shit. PS Genkimonk, Journeys End might have its problems but its like fucking Inferno compared to this abomination.)

1/ The disgusting butchering of the Masters character:

To start with it should anger anyone who is a Who fan that the show is pandering to one particular audience (feminists) just because they slandered the producer and the show and even its audience as sexists, racists etc to the point where it is willing to crowbar an actress into the role of such a major character and rewrite his entire history in the process.

People were angry when the show pandered to another offence merchant, Mary Whitehouse in the 70s and 80s, and even she never imposed her will on it to that extent. Yet all of these same people who slagged off Mary Whitehouse, and still hate Graham Williams for making it lighter to get round complaints it was too violent actually praise Missy? Its utter hypocrisy.

Added to that from even just a creative process Missy is a terrible, terrible, terrible character. She'd be shit even if she wasn't the Master.

Gomez is a good actress, (as seen in s10) but her performance is far too over the top. In fact its bloody awful. She changes accents for no reason, she just repeats the horny stalker routine from Green Wing. She also over does her Scots accent to the point where it is really grating and annoying, with the DON'T BE SAD I'LL MISS HER TAE" or "GO GET THE GOOD GUYS BACK" or "YOU SAVED ME" all being absolutely appallingly delivered . PS I am Scottish and even I thought her voice was annoying as fuck! Talalay should have told her to reign it in, but from the sounds of things she encouraged it.

Also Missy is all over the place in terms of motivation and characterisation. One minute she is throwing the Doctor out of a plane, then the next it turns out her entire plan hinges on him being alive?

Also she undermines the Doctor too which makes her a shit antagonist. The whole point of a villain is that they are meant to show how strong the hero is, but with Missy? She literally murders the Doctors friends and he responds by snogging her! Hooray for our plucky hero! You murder his friends, he'll give you a big sloppy kiss.

Now fair enough people sometimes do the villain who is the heroes friend routine like Magneto.

The thing is Magneto isn't just a psychopathic bastard. He actually does have a cause, he has done some good things, and he never just kills people for fun. Missy however is a monster, who kills innocent people and enjoys it. She has 0 redeeming features whatsoever, yet for some reason the Doctor still wants to be her friend? Its ridiculous.

Finally she isn't even dangerous or smart. Lets see Missy's main plan is to hand over an army of Cybermen to the Doctor. Why would the Master be stupid enough to think that the Doctor would want an army of Cybermen (many of whom are made up of the corpses and converted minds of his friends like Jamie, Victoria, Vicki, Katarina, the Brig.)

Also she doesn't have a fail safe either, so all the Doctor has to do is literally say "nah sorry I don't want them" Hardly the most challenging villain he has ever faced is she? Plus its not like she does anything else that's even remotely cunning or scary. Even her murder of Osgood doesn't show how smart she is. Missy is only able to kill Osgood because she suddenly gains teleporting powers, and the guards do nothing.

Even if she wasn't the Master she would still be one of the worst villains in the shows history, but the fact that they connected her to Roger Delgado's villain is utterly unforgivable. It not only made past stories with the character a joke (either he was a repressed homosexual who couldn't accept he wanted to fuck Tom Baker, or his sexuality changed when he regenerated which means it always could have done. Apparently Roger Delgado could have morphed into Caroline Munro and wanted to shag Tom Baker.) It also salted the earth for future writers to do anything with the character.

2/ Cyber Brig: Need I say anymore?

Its a horrible end for the character. He is a rotting corpse trapped in a cold, unfeeling suit, just left to float through the universe forever. Its very telling that Mofftwat said wouldn't undo Rose's happy ending to bring Billie Piper back for the 50th so he made Billie the Moment, but he was perfectly happy to leave the Brig floating through space.

The Fitzroy Tavern cucks only care about themselves and their own shitty characters. Anything before 1989 can get to fuck.


3/ Its story is stupid and contradicts itself:

Okay lets see to start with the 3W's nature changes from scene to scene.

First of all its made out to be a public place that's advertised, then its a top secret facility. Apparently only the people who run it know about the secret that the dead still feel pain. They even ask the Doctor and Miss Smug Pants if they want to know, so its obviously a secret.

Then however in practically the next sentence Professor Chang says the 3W institute was set up after the knowledge of the dead being aware was made public.

Then after that its revealed that its a secret base again as its stored beneath ST Pauls with only UNIT being aware of it. Then however when on the plane, the Doctor says that it was a public base again, as Missy came up with the dead are aware of pain thing to get the super rich to fund the 3W institute so their bodies could rest in peace safely.

Also why was Missy snatching minds of people from the future? What could she do with them, since they hadn't even been born yet?

And why give people the choice to remove their emotions? Surely most people would do what Danny and The Brig did and just choose not to? The Cybermen's old process was far more efficient.

4/ Osgood's Death:

Okay hands up I am in love with Ingrid Oliver so I am never going to want to see her die, but its still a really poorly written scene.

I mean hey I fancy Lucy Lawless A LOT too and she has died a lot more often and a lot more painfully than Ingrid Oliver in Xena and Ash vs Evil Dead. With Ingrid its a quick zap, Lucy has been dragged through shit, mud and over rocks by horses and then nailed to a cross, but that never bothered me because at least it wasn't stupid!

To start with, The Doctor and Kate are actually watching Missy and Osgood on a giant tv that covers the entire wall in their room, yet not once when Missy THREATENS to kill Osgood and COUNTS down to killing Osgood do they do anything. I mean seriously what were they doing, playing chess?

Also why do the guards not react when she A/ shows that she got free from the handcuffs and puts fucking lipstick on B/ suddenly appears behind Osgood C/ shoots the guard standing next to him!

They remind me of the Eric Idle guard in The Holy Grail who is telling John Cleese that he is not allowed to enter the room while he is stabbing the other guard.

Also again how did Missy teleport handcuffs into Osgood's pocket and how did she teleport beside her?

Also Osgood's death served NO purpose in the story. It made the Doctor look like a gigantic pussy. His reaction to having seen a young twenty something be butchered, and watching her killer standing over her burnt remains GLOATING about it, is just to say "you didn't have to do that".

Compare that to Colin holding back having to shoot the Master and the Rani when Luke is turned into a tree, or Tom spitting back at Sutekh. Possibly the Doctors biggest cuck moment in New Who alongside getting emasculated by the Doctor Donna, and hoping for an all female future.

Also clearly I wasn't the only one who liked Osgood. Other people did, and so Moffat brought her back the next year. In fact she has become a far bigger character since. So what the fuck was the point of killing her off then if Moffat knew he wanted to use the character? It was just yet another example of somebody dying and coming back, undermining the drama of the whole show.

I remember Moffat once said in defence of bringing characters back that he was going to be damned if Doctor Who was going to end up a miserable, dreary, violent show like every other sci fi show. Okay fine Moffat, but you can't say that and then stick in long, drawn out, nasty, psychopathic killings too! If you don't want it to be miserable, then don't kill people like Osgood off in the first place. Stop trying to have your cake and eat it too.

This of course leads onto my next point.

5/ Its tone is all over the place:

This episode has some really nasty moments like Osgood and Chang's death, and it also has some IMO inappropriate ideas for Doctor Who a family show, like the dead being made aware of pain mixed in with the stupidest, campiest nonsense I have ever seen.

Hmm lets see the villain is a misogynistic guy that used to beat up women, who has been turned into a woman against his will and suddenly finds his archfoe more attractive than ever before, dresses up like a horny Disney character, oh and it ends with Santa showing up.

6/ Too much focus on Clara and Danny:

Oh dear god has there ever been a more tedious couple? Leaving aside the fact that they have 0 chemistry, 0 development, Clara comes across as a total bitch.

She tries to murder/suicide the Doctor by either burning him alive, or starving him to death. And worse Moff seemingly tries to make out that its a good thing that he stays loyal to someone who tried to kill him over someone else!

7/ Misuse of the Cybermen:

Okay that's hardly anything new, but seriously. The Cybermen here are not only the SERVANTS of Missy, but what the fuck do they actually do?

I mean seriously who do they kill, what is their plan, what memorable scenes are there with them? They grab a guy out of a plane and that's it. The rest of the time they clomp about a graveyard.

8/ Wasted Guest Stars:

Obviously there is lovely Ingrid who is in it for all of two minutes, and Sanjeev Bhaskar who is a good comedy actor and is in it for all of two minutes. Also even Michelle Gomez.

She is a good actress, and though her performance is terrible her through her own fault, at the same time she was never going to be good because she is a woman and the Master is a MAN.

It would be like casting say Jack Nicholson as Catwoman and Michelle Pfiefer as the Joker. Both great actors who would have been terrible in those roles for the same reason. Hence why Burton unlike Mofftwat cast them in the right roles.

9/ The Am I A Good Man Speech:

Need I say more? The lead character not only tells us he is a moron, but also gives us a cheesy power of love speech about Danny and Clara.





10/ Sloppy bits of direction from Rachel "hire me or else you're a sexist" Talalalalalalalalay.

Hmm lets see, TARDIS materialises in the middle of a crowded street and no one even notices, Danny stopping by to get Clara's coat, Talalalalay forgetting the big screen that covers half of the room the Doctor and Kate are in that shows Missy killing Osgood (which the Doctor and Kate are facing.) The UNIT soldiers not reacting when Missy appears beside Ogood, and his partner is shot, and the Cybermen mincing out of the tanks like the fucking gay regiment in Monty Python.

Also this shot of Missy flying down looks terrible too.



Added to that a lot of its defenders are cunts like Paul Cornell who said anyone who didn't like Missy is exactly the type of person who would turn on their family member for changing gender.

The worst episode in over 50 years of DW without question.

Other than those points though it wasn't all that bad!

For a long time it was Journeys End to me, and while Moffat did his absolute best to top it throughout his era he only managed it with his final bowel movement, Twice Upon a Time. The ultimate desecration of the classic series by the New Who Cunt Brigade.

Where do some of you get the fortitude to analyse this crap?

I can barely subject myself to the pain of one viewing, let alone go back and comb through it for the most abject snippets.

Burrunjor is clearly a huge masochist for punishment, as evidenced by that massive skyscraper of text he just churned out obsessively picking apart even the most minute of details.

DeadManRising wrote:Burrunjor is clearly a huge masochist for punishment, as evidenced by that massive skyscraper of text he just churned out obsessively picking apart even the most minute of details.

Yeah, I get the feeling he secretly likes watching feminist cringe and NuWho and/or combinations of both.

It's not hard to imagine him hiring a dominatrix dressed as Big Red to tie him up in front of a monitor playing Death in Heaven, while she mockingly screams 'Patriarchy' in time to the electrical impulses surging through his nipple and bellend clamps.

I've only seen Dark Water/Death in Heaven twice. When it was first on and 6 months later to see if it was as bad.

As for watching it again, I'd rather have sex with Henrietta from Evil Dead 2.



Than sit through Dark Water/Death in Heaven again.

Love & Monsters.

I can't really name many episodes from NuWho, they all blend together into a massive shit stew of moments some of which are listed above. As such none of them stand out to me but Love & Monsters will forever be burned into my memory. Not only is it a terrible episode in its own right, it's a 45 minute excercise that demonstrates everything wrong with NuWho.

1. The Doctor
Even though the episode only features the Doctor for a few minutes, it highlights how his her character has become the cartoonishly kid-friendly spastic aimlessy running around like a headless chicken, talking nonsense but the words are said so fast it's almost as if they're actively trying to hide the fact that they can't be bothered to write decent dialogue.

2. Fanservice
Members here have been quick to call out shameless fanservice in the past and this episode is a good example with the monster, literally created by a child. Much like how Moffat tried to cast his net out wide and trying to appeal to new fans, old fans and SJW boogeymen while pleasing none of them, Abzorbalotofjizz goes to show how NuWho will do anything to add fanservice no matter how terrible it is.

3. Tone
You have Scooby-Doo corridors and a childish monster, then you have the body horror of people being absorbed alive to forever be stuck in one of the Hulk's walking, talking shits. Then you have the implication of a guy face-fucking a concrete slab. To say the episode and NuWho as a whole is tonally confused is an understatement. Within a single scene the show can change between cartoon logic, childish humour and pretty dark scenarios that could be unsettling if handled properly and the integrity of the story is always sacrificed because they have no real idea what the show wants to be, as I said in the last point, they keeping trying to gain broad appeal instead of focusing on one thing and doing it well, and instead of attracting a large, broad audience the ratings keep sinking.

Good points about Love And Monsters, Adam Ant. For me, as a Buffy fan (yes, even of episodes such as the notorious Beer Bad) L&M is a good example of RTD's attempt to emulate Whedon's quirky, self-aware and postmodern style, and of it completely going wrong. Something like School Reunion worked a lot better in my opinion, although I still think Whedon's approach isn't compatible with Dr Who. It's questionable whether it even works with sci-fi the way it did with fantasy as Firefly wasn't a big success and the film was pretty forgettable, tho Dollhouse looks interesting.

I agree with Mr Happy about Hell Bent : another attempt to surround a 'groundbreaking' scene with a plot, which with its trashing of the timelords seemed to piss off as many RTD fans as Tru Who fans, and as for Clara/Me getting their own TARDIS - the whole time Miss Smugpants was in it she seemed to treat the TARDIS as if she were in a car showroom and taken it on a few test runs before buying one outright.

Fear Her seemed to revel in its own naffness - with Huw Edwards somehow being a worse actor (at playing himself!) than the kid. But the one that really left me with my jaw on the floor was The Girl Who Died, misappropriating the title of one of Moffat's few successes as showrunner and throwing Benny Hill music, the Doctor taking the piss out of his loyal (Viking) army for having beards and all sorts of other random shit into the first part of a two-parter which may as well not even have been broadcast, for all the sense it made. "He speaks baby", indeed...

Another strong contender for worst story ever made is Hellbent.

Leaving aside all of th feminist gaff, I can't believe that was how they brought back Gallifrey after 10 years.

I know some people who cheered bringing Gallifrey back, but I thought saving it, bringing it back, and showing the Time War was completely stupid. The Time War and destruction of Gallifrey was one of the few brilliant moves RTD made it brought the mystery back to DW for old and new fans alike. But Moffat had to redo/undo everything RTD did so we lost out.

I guess the worst episode for me was the first one where they confirmed MISSY IS THE MASTER HA HA HA HA GET OVER IT BIGOTS.

That was the breakup in my relationship with "if you pretend hard enough you can believe this is still Doctor Who".

As for an individual episode, I really hated all of Capaldi. Don't like him, his "acting" or the episodes. Special dishonourable mention for the history is a whitewash episode. Up to then I had watched up to 5 minutes of a recent ep, that one I was out and gone permanently as of that line.

And if al-BBC seriously thinks there aren't millions of licence payers feeling the same way I do they're tripping balls. Just because government-media gleichschaltung bullies people into silence doesn't mean they agree with the government or its odious propaganda organs.

Where is your avatar from? When I do a reverse image search, all I get is a link back to this forum and James Cameron's Avatar, which didn't seem right.

TheTimeTraveller wrote:I guess the worst episode for me was the first one where they confirmed MISSY IS THE MASTER HA HA HA HA GET OVER IT BIGOTS.

That was the breakup in my relationship with "if you pretend hard enough you can believe this is still Doctor Who".

Yes, I actually turned it off at that point and didn't even bother with the next episode, nor did I watch series 9 on transmission as a result. I eventually relented, only to regret it when I then got hit with the castrated Doctor and the character assassinated First Doctor.
Yeah, fuck you, I'm out.

shan164 wrote:Where is your avatar from? When I do a reverse image search, all I get is a link back to this forum and James Cameron's Avatar, which didn't seem right.

Nicola Bryant as Lana the psi mutant from Star Trek Continues episodes 10 & 11, "To Boldly Go, Parts 1 and 2".

Still smoking hot. And she uses her own accent in it which is also nice to hear.

I am sort of glad she's flown the Big Finish coop after they didn't bother to use her for their version of the last Sixth Doctor adventure or in recent monthly range Sixth Doctor stories.

She also turns up in season one of Mindhunter as a member of the psychiatric evaluation panel for one of the serial killers so she is still working, just.

A sad autumn career phase for someone who should have been Great Britain's Sophia Loren.

Nicola Bryant is Doctor Who's equivalent of Caroline Munro.

Thanks for the reply. I just had the idea of using Bing's image search and at least I got more of an answer even if it was Gates McFadden (which I was just going to ask as it's actually kind of close ...).

iank wrote:

TheTimeTraveller wrote:I guess the worst episode for me was the first one where they confirmed MISSY IS THE MASTER HA HA HA HA GET OVER IT BIGOTS.

That was the breakup in my relationship with "if you pretend hard enough you can believe this is still Doctor Who".

Yes, I actually turned it off at that point and didn't even bother with the next episode, nor did I watch series 9 on transmission as a result. I eventually relented, only to regret it when I then got hit with the castrated Doctor and the character assassinated First Doctor.
Yeah, fuck you, I'm out.

Missy was the single worst thing ever to happen to Doctor Who.

I've always said that if you defend Missy, then you are not a real Doctor Who fan and I stand by that.

How can you be? What you think its okay to completely wreck a character who has been in it for 40 years to pander to an agenda? You think that its okay to toss out a characters 40 year motivation and characterisation just like that? And similarly you like seeing the Doctor be undermined as a hero to the point where he snogs people that have just murdered the children of his oldest and dearest friends.

Also everything that people slated Eric Roberts and John Simm for applies to Missy to an even worse extent.

People say Roberts was too camp? REALLY! But they praise Missy as channelling Delgado?

Its enough to make you sick quite frankly and it reminds me of that episode from Frasier, Doctor Mary.

Here Frasier gets a black woman to sit in for Roz who is off on holiday. Mary is sassy and bolshy and interrupts Frasier, and he can't stand it. She ends up being put on the show permanently and the only reason Frasier doesn't say anything to her is because she is black.

Normally whenever Roz a white woman interrupts he tells her to shut up and that its his show, but simply because Mary is black she gets a free pass.

See here.



That's all classic era fans who say they like Missy are. If she were a guy like Eric Roberts and John Simm they'd ridicule her for being the campiest, stupidest, most laughable version of the villain of all time. However because she is a woman, then they praise her, because they are terrified of being seen as bigots which is ridiculous.

Of course all of Frasiers weasly attempts to get round this just result in his show being taken over further until its no longer his show, its just Doctor Mary and some other sassy black woman speaking over him all the time.



That's what New Who is now. These guys said Missy was great, giving the illusion she was popular (even though the viewers were crashing and burning) and so the idiots at the top carried on with it, until we got a female Doctor, history is a whitewash etc and now DW is completely unrecognizable just like Frasiers show. Its pathetic in both cases.

https://unaffiliatedcritic.com/2017/12/doctor-who-worst-moffat-era/

This is an interesting, pretty well-written article about the Moffat era's worst stories, from someone who seems to be optimistic about the Jodie Doctor, the poor deluded fool. Some of it I disagree with (the episode at number 2), some of it I agree with (the episode at number 1, which I feel will also meet with approval from some others on here). But where on earth is Kill The Moon!?

Mott1 wrote:https://unaffiliatedcritic.com/2017/12/doctor-who-worst-moffat-era/

This is an interesting, pretty well-written article about the Moffat era's worst stories, from someone who seems to be optimistic about the Jodie Doctor, the poor deluded fool. Some of it I disagree with (the episode at number 2), some of it I agree with (the episode at number 1, which I feel will also meet with approval from some others on here). But where on earth is Kill The Moon!?

Sorry he made some good points, but I checked out his review of Death in Heaven and he said this.

Michelle Gomez is a brilliant Master—let us hope we have not seen the last of her incarnation—

Destroyed his credibility as a Doctor Who fan with that, and then there is this.

. (Though I'd be opposed to casting another young, white male actor in the role, it occurred to me several times during this story what a good Doctor Chris Addison might make...)

Chris Addison would be a good Doctor! Is he out of his fucking mind!