Top Ten Worst Modern Doctor Who Episodes

Welcome to Harmonica's Wing. I am HarmonicaJay and I love Doctor Who. The series revolves around an alien by the name of The Doctor who travels through space and time in a spaceship which is stuck in the shape of a police box from the 1960's called The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) while fighting aliens and saving lives, usually alongside an attractive female Companion. What makes the series brilliant is that the series has lasted 50 years due to the show's creation of the concept of Regeneration. Whenever an actor is preparing to leave the show, the Doctor is wounded and changes bodies as well as personalities. The main law of Doctor Who is that while the actor and the look changes, the core of the Doctor stays the same: An adventurous alien that is odd in all the right ways with a strong moral center.

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Now, dear readers, if you are like me, chances are that you started watching Doctor Who with the Modern Series. While I love Doctor Who and many aspects of the modern series, there have been quite a few clunkers in its 10 season run. So for my first blog, I intend to list out what I consider to be the top ten worst episodes of Modern Doctor Who. Now there are going to be a few ground rules with this list.

1. Only one episode per series. The only way an entry could have two from the same series is if they were from a two-parter.
2. No episodes from the Classic series.

And with all that said and done, let's get into The Top Ten Worst Modern Doctor Who Episodes.

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10. Aliens of London and World War III from Series 1. 

I put this two-parter so low on the list for a couple reasons. The first is that it's not wholly terrible, but it isn't that good of an episode. The second is that it was very early in the Modern Series run, specifically Series One. The overall story is that the Ninth Doctor and his Companion Rose returns to modern day London on the day that an alien spaceship crashes into Big Ben. First Contact and the Doctor is excited. However, there may be something off about this whole thing. Spoilers: It involves farting aliens.

Written by then-showrunner Russell T. Davies, the two-parter contains many of Davies' strengths and flaws. For one thing, he is great at setting up emotional scenes and setting up a sense of scope for his stories, see the story arc for Series 4 for proof of that. However, he has problems with tone and basic logic. As stated before, the main feature of the aliens is that they let out farts when disguised as fat people. Yes, farting aliens that disguise themselves as fat people and this is supposed to be funny instead of juvenile. There is also the problem of the alien's plane to cause World War III by tricking the countries of the United Nations to launch their nukes to irradiate the planet so that they can sell the irradiated chunks on the Intergalactic Black Market for fuel. Now, the set up isn't bad. I mean, aliens faking an invasion in order to cause us to blow ourselves up? That's an interesting plan. However, the motive is what causes it to fall completely apart since I am pretty sure that that the entire planet down to its core wouldn't be irradiated.

Overall, while this isn't the worst episode of Modern Doctor Who, I still find the humor to be very juvenile and the overall plot to be quite stupid. It's not the worst episode, but it's definitely not the best that the show could be. It felt too big for a very silly plot that didn't know if it wanted to be a serious story or a farce.

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9. The Magician's Apprentice & The Witch's Familiar from Series 9. 

Of the entire run of Modern Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi's run is ultimately my least favorite. Through no fault of his own, Capaldi's Doctor, the Twelfth to be exact, was probably the least likable. I get that they were trying to go for a grumpy Doctor who doesn't suffer fools and is the kind of guy that feels he needs to be right, but it didn't make for a compelling protagonist for me. Combined with the emphasis on horror elements over science fiction adventure and story arcs that made my head spin, I consider the Twelfth Doctor run to be the worst that Doctor Who has been in a while. However, while I do find this two-parter to be bad and the worst the 9^th series got, I feel that it's more a case of ambition overriding quality than being absolutely awful.

The story is that Davros, the creator of the Daleks and one of the Doctor's greatest enemies, is dying and wants to see the Doctor one last time. Along for the ride is the latest incarnation of the Doctor's arch-nemesis, the Master (or Missy) played by Michelle Gomez and the Doctor's Companion Clara Oswald. Things happen, the last request turns out to be a trap, and we get character development from Davros that turns out to be bunk.

So I feel what makes this two-parter bad to me personally is the fact that we get this interesting premise, the Doctor seeing an old enemy in his last moments, which is undone because, surprise twist, Davros is still evil and is still doing his plotting. Combined with a needless retcon to Davros' backstory, and the addition of the stupidest gadget in Doctor Who history: The Sonic Sunglasses, this just feels... bad. People will more than likely disagree with me and I can understand why, but this story feels overall pointless since we never really see Davros again so this development is never further explored and the addition of Missy to the plot feels pointless since there are more ways the Doctor could have gotten to the Daleks without her. It's just pointless to me.

I must also bring up the matter of the Sonic Sunglasses and how this was done better in the Classic Era. During the story "The Visitation" the Fifth Doctor lost his Sonic Screwdriver for the remainder of the Classic Series. It was done because the showrunner, Jonathan Nathan Turner, was tired of the Screwdriver being the be-all-end-all solution for every scrape the Doctor got out of. I can guess that the sunglasses were meant to emulate that, but it completely missed the point of the loss of the Screwdriver. Plus, it's just plain stupid to see Capaldi have sunglasses that can pretty much do anything in the same way the Sonic Screwdriver can do.

Overall, The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar feel like pointless entries in the Doctor Who mythos. It has good ideas to it and fantastic acting from all four of the main characters, but it ultimately adds up to nothing.

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8. Victory of the Daleks from Series Five. 

Series Five is probably my favorite of the Modern Era. It is probably the strongest start for any first series for a new actor playing the Doctor, in this case, Matt Smith, and for a showrunner, Steven Moffat. It had a good story arc in the Pandorica and a good companion in Amy Pond. However, while I do love this season, Victory of the Daleks is definitely the worst one. The premise is that the 11^th Doctor and Amy Pond arrive in World War II-era London and meet up with Winston Churchill, played by Ian McNeice. Churchill unveils his special new weapon against the Nazis: Daleks, the evilest aliens that the Doctor has ever encountered in the entire 50 year run of Doctor Who, or as he calls them: Ironsides. Why are the Daleks pretending to serve the Allies? What is their big plan? What are they going to do when the Doctor finds out? I'll let you in on a hint: it's a very overly complicated plot that adds up to nothing in the long run.

Okay, so the Dalek's plan is to have the Doctor identify them as Daleks so that they can create a new pure race of Daleks using a device that contains "pure Dalek DNA". That would give birth to what has been called "The Power Ranger Daleks". Ultimately, while this was built up as the new status quo for the Daleks, it ended up leading to nothing in the grand scheme of Doctor Who.

The main problems with this story are twofold. The first is that this story is very reminiscent of one of the greatest Classic Era Doctor Who stories “Power of the Daleks”. In that story, which was also 2^nd Doctor Patrick Troughton's first story as the Doctor, the Daleks pretend to be servile to a human colony in order to rebuild themselves and wipe out the colony. It is a very well written story and I feel it was very poorly redone here. Matt Smith, who was still trying to find his Doctor, tries to pull off angry Doctor, but it doesn't really work here. The overall plan of the Daleks is overly complicated and adds up to nothing in the end. 

The second is the patriotic tone here. Now, I am aware that I am an American so I'm probably not in the right to talk about patriotism in television, but given what I have recently learned about Winston Churchill and some of the terrible things he did during his time as Prime Minister, the blatant hero worship he receives, to the point where the Doctor might as well have claimed that Churchill that stormed Berlin himself and punched Hitler in the face, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So, to summarize A premise that feels very derivative of a much better story with overly patriotic tones that feel unearned to a historical figure that has done some very bad things in the past that get ignored for the sake of maintaining a heroic image. Again, this may come off as throwing stones in glass houses, but I know of what I speak. Victory of the Daleks is easily the worst of season 5.

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7. The Angels take Manhattan from Series 7. 

Another 11^thDoctor story in a row, but definitely not the worst of his run. I will admit, dear reader, that it was hard to pick a singular bad episode from Series 7. Originally I was torn between Asylum of the Daleks for its needless erasing of the memory of the Daleks that adds up to nothing or The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe for its lack of real focus on the Doctor as the main character of his own show, but Angels Take Manhattan is the worst episode of the season for one particular reason: Weeping Angel Statue of Liberty.

The plot of The Angels Take Manhattan is that the Weeping Angels, the creations of showrunner Steven Moffat that helped him rise to fame, are a race of creatures that pretend to be statues when people look at them so they can transport unsuspecting victims, when they are either not looking at them or blink, to various time periods of the past so they can eat up all the years that person would have inhabited. They appeared twice before in the very fantastic episode Blink and the two-parter Flesh and Stone and Time of the Angels, both times they were utilized in very interesting ways. However, Angels Take Manhattan is just poorly executed and a terrible exit for two of my favorite Doctor Who Companions.

The Companions in question are Amy and Rory Pond. Both have been with the 11^th Doctor since the beginning of Matt Smith's run and were fan favorites due to the fact that they were a married couple that could work off each other and had strong personalities. Thus, brings me to my big problem with this: How they left. Spoiler warnings for those that still want to watch this episode.

See, the plan of the Angels is to transport people back in time and keep them locked up in a hotel until they die. This makes no sense since the point of the Angels is that they steal your old life and give you a new one in the past with you dying on the same day that you were sent back in time. There is no need to keep their victims held captive and there is definitely no need to have the Statue of Liberty, the most looked at Statue in the entire world, in full view of an ENTIRE CITY, to be a Weeping Angel. It feels like Steven Moffat wanted to do it “Cuz it's cool” with no one to tell him that it's just plain stupid. Combined with the unsatisfying ending for the Ponds, they are sent back in time where they eventually adopt a kid who meets up with Rory's dad... in a deleted scene that was never filmed.

So, for me, someone who started watching Doctor Who with these characters, this was a big insult. This episode was just plain stupid. However... what keeps it from being in the top five is the emotional impact this episode had. Despite it being really damn stupid, the episode is very well acted and made me cry at the end with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill turning in fantastic performances. It's a very emotionally strong episode that I both love and hate. However, quality wise, it's the worst. People will disagree, bringing up the two I mentioned, or the episode Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, but for me, this is the worst of Series 7.

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6. The Return of Doctor Mysterio from Series 10. 

Every Christmas Day, without fail, Doctor gives its viewers a Christmas Special. One that is meant to celebrate the Holidays by giving us an adventure in space and time. My personal favorite is Series 5's A Christmas Carol for its heartfelt story, a very clever adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Sadly, not all of the Christmas Specials have been big hits. Case in point: The Return of Doctor Mysterio. The story is that the Doctor accidentally turns a young kid named Grant into a superhero and years later Grant is played by Justin Chatwin and goes by the alias of The Ghost as a superhero. The Doctor, his new companion Nardole, and the Ghost must team up to fight against an alien invasion of alien brains that are able to take over human bodies. Sounds interesting, right? Well, that's where the episode falls apart for me.

I am sorry to those that enjoy this episode, but I found it to be very uninteresting and the superhero theme of the story to not mix well with the overall aesthetic of Doctor Who. Here is the thing: Doctor Who has managed to incorporate various genres into the franchise many times over due to the nature of Science Fiction. We had Westerns with A Town Called Mercy and the Classic Series episode The Gunfighters. We've had comedies, horror, historical science fiction, and even romance once or twice, but not once in the past 50 years have we had a superhero story. Thus, the two genres do not mix well and are at war with one another.

The problem with Return of Doctor Mysterio is that it doesn't really make the superhero character of The Ghost interesting beyond the basic conventions of superhero comics nor does it make him compelling as a character. In fact, that's the main problem with the supporting cast in general. They are just caricatures with no real depth to them. The Lois Lane stand-in doesn't have much to her other than being a reporter and her relationship with Grant/The Ghost felt like a pale imitation of the iconic Lois Lane/Superman dynamic without the years of character development. The story itself ends on a cliffhanger of the villain getting away that was not followed up on in Series 10 since the Ghost never made another appearance outside of this special.

What keeps this from making the top five though is that it does come from a place of earnest since Steven Moffat is a self-proclaimed fan of Superman and you can tell he wanted to make a story like the comics he read as a child. However, good intentions don't often lead to a good story so I have to place this as the worst episode of Series 10, for me personally. You can disagree, but I can safely say that the top five episodes on this list are the ones that I truly despise as the worst that the show can be.

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5. Voyage of the Damned from Series 4. 

As stated before, every year, Doctor Who would put on an hour-long Christmas Special for the families. While they have varied greatly in quality, I can firmly say that Voyage of the Damned is not only the worst Christmas Special in my mind but also one of the worst Doctor Who episodes of all time.

The story follows directly from the finale of Series 3 where the Doctor's Companion, Martha Jones, has just left and the Doctor is all alone. However, somehow, the bow of a giant cruise liner with the name “Titanic” on it manages to smash through the wall of the TARDIS. The Doctor boards it to find that it's actually a spaceship built to look like the Titanic with all its alien inhabitants wearing period attire. He also meets a nice young maid named Astrid, played by Kylie Minogue. However, disaster strikes the Titanic (Shocking, I know) and the Doctor must save the survivors as well as find out why anyone would want to sabotage the Titanic.

So, let me outline what the main problem with Voyage of the Damned: Confusion. Confusion of what it wants to be, confusion of tone, and confusion of what the Hell is happening. This special feels like Russell T. Davies took the idea for a disaster movie in space and half-heartedly attached it to a Christmas Special because aside from a few token mentions of Christmas, this could take place on Arbor Day and you would still have the same damn effect. To put this in perspective, without spoiling it, Series 5's A Christmas Carol made use of the setting of Christmas as a key part of the plot. Christmas wasn't just an afterthought, it was what helped drive the main goal of the Doctor. Here, Christmas doesn't really matter at all because the main focus is on the Disaster Movie plot which is a straight-up ripoff... of the Poseidon Adventure.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg with this garbage because not only does it not know if it wants to be a Christmas Special or not, but it doesn't know if it wants to be serious or not. Many times, we will see very sad death scenes of characters or background characters and just as many times after and before, we will see scenes of "Comedy" or Cringe Comedy as I call them. Let me give an example. On the ship, there is a tour guide who claims to have extensive knowledge of Earth and its customs, but as is the cliché for aliens, his knowledge is completely wrong. He says things like the people of England go to war with "the people of Turkey and eat the Turkey people". This is supposed to be a comedy and all it leads to is the revelation that he learned it all from this bunk teaching service. There are also two passengers on the ship that are fat and that is all there is to their characters. The only insight we get into their relationship is that they are fat and that they like food. Oh, and they both die horrible deaths. In fact, the husband dies from what I like to call a "shock death". This is a death done to make the audience go "WHOA" and nothing else. Then, we see the guy's wife commit onscreen suicide to stop one of the robotic enemies that work for the main villain so she can join her husband in death. And the hell of it is? That death didn't need to happen! She had no need to jump to her death to kill the robot. So we get an onscreen suicide... IN A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL. A Christmas Special that is being watched by families around the world. By both kids and adults. I am just saying. This special is confused. But that's not all.

Aside from Astrid, none of the supporting cast have distinct personalities or actual character growth. All we really get from the characters are “Stuck-Up-Rich-Jerk”, “Token Alien”, “Dumb Tour Guide” and “Fat Couple”. Three of them die and that's about it. The only bit of character we get from any of this guys is from Token Alien who is a cyborg, which, for some reason, is frowned upon in Space Society and we don't know why. No explanation as to why Cyborgs are reviled to the point where they don't have equal rights. No reason we learn as to why Token Alien had to hide it. We get no clue. And the Hell of it is? It is part of the villain's motivation for causing all of the crap the characters are going through!

And then, there's the Robo Christmas Angels that serve as Henchmen for the main bad guy. I am convinced that the only reason they were designed like this by the show-makers was so that we could get a scene where the Doctor is carried up by two of them into the “heavens” so that he can save the day in the end. I... will skip over this being kind of offensive to people of the Christian persuasion and just say that it is really damn stupid.

Voyage of the Damned is a BAD episode. Not just a bad Christmas Special, but also just a plain bad episode. Its plot is very confused on what it wants to be. Its characters have none. Its tone is all over the place in terms of consistency and it's just not that fun. A Christmas Special should liven the hearts of those that watch it. It should make you happy that you watched it. It should fill your hearts with joy and a spirit of the season. This does none of those things. The only good thing to come out of this, besides Series 4 being the best of the Russell T. Davies Era, was the fantastic episode "Turn Left" which examines the idea of "What if the Doctor hadn't stopped the ship from crashing into the Earth?". It's a very dark and very serious episode that I highly recommend watching. This, however? Avoid at all costs.

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4. Kill the Moon from Series 8. 

Kill the Moon is the one where it is revealed that the moon, I repeat, the MOON, is an egg. I would stop there, but I need to continue with this and part of me really doesn't want to. So, I have talked before about Peter Capaldi's Doctor being a mixed bag for me, but Series 8 was the one where I was definitely in the "I don't like him" camp. The problem with Series 8, in general, is a lack of understanding of where they wanted to take the Doctor. Throughout the season, we see the Doctor constantly ask the question "Am I a good man", playing up the lack of knowledge that the Doctor has in his own character. The problem with this is that the people who should have a knowledge of what the Doctor is are the SHOWRUNNERS. The people that MADE the Twelfth Doctor. As such, the Doctor was portrayed many times as unlikable and not someone we would really want to root for. Peter Capaldi was a great actor, but even he couldn't help the mixed bag that was Series 8. But I must talk about the plot.

So, the plot is that the Moon is actually an egg and it is close to hatching. If it does, then there could be big problems for the Earth due to the MOON BREAKING APART IN ORBIT! But... that's not really the big debate here because the episode decides that it wants to have what is essentially a debate on... abortion.

Okay, I am a man. I can never give birth. I will never be in the position of any woman who is unsure of whether or not they want to keep their soon to be born infant. I also do not want this article to be derailed by this fact about the episode nor see people yell at each other about it in the comments. However, I do think that it is a debate that requires more time and thought put into it than an hour-long episode of Doctor Who! I am not saying that politics shouldn't be in entertainment, that's just silly. Doctor Who has always had political messages and moments going as far back as the Classic Era. There was The Curse of Peladon which was an examination of the UK entering the European Union and the fears that many had about it changing their way of life. There was The Happiness Patrol which was, by the admission of the people who made it, a large jab at then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Politics have always been in Doctor Who. All I ask is that they are done well and without getting into too much detail, this episode does not handle the concept of Lunar Abortion well at all.

But let's table that for now because the idea that the Moon is an egg is just plain stupid. It is one of the biggest Jump-the-Shark moments in Doctor Who history. The idea of the Moon being an egg makes no sense since if the egg hatched or if the Moon was BLOWN UP, which the humans, in the beginning, were planning to do, there would be catastrophic damage done to the Earth. Both because of the crashing rocks from the Moon's destruction and from the TIDAL DAMAGE which the Moon's orbit helps regulate. I am not an astronomer, but even I KNOW that this is not how science works. It feels like the writers did not do any research on this episode and, as a critic of this episode said, "A lot of the mistakes were fixable with a simple Google search”. Yes, a Google Search. You can find scientific facts thanks to the most widely used Search Engine on the face of the planet. However, all of that is ignored for the sake of a very poorly done and not at all subtle “Pro-Choice Debate”.

As stated before, a debate like this needs more time and effort than a 45 minute episode of Doctor Who. It is such a divisive topic that people are talking about to this day, probably right at this moment, that it cannot be solved by an episode of Doctor Who, especially not one that ignores easily researched science like this does. Kill the Moon is bad. It has good performances by Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, but good performances cannot save an episode this egregiously bad. Angels Take Manhattan was dumb, but in a way that you could laugh at, like the Statue of Liberty being a Weeping Angel. This is just insultingly dumb. Avoid at all costs.

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3. Daleks in Manhattan & Evolution of the Daleks from Series 3. 

So, I have mentioned them in Victory of the Daleks, but I haven't really talked about the Daleks in detail. The Daleks are the worst enemies of the Doctor. An entire species that the Doctor can call his enemy. Born on the planet Skaro, in the wake of a devastating Nuclear Civil War, the Daleks are mutants in robotic shells that hate everything that isn't them. Think Nazis, but on a species-wide scale. The Daleks are pure hatred. They hate everything that is not them and think that everything that is not them should die just because. They are the most iconic aliens in all of Doctor Who and the most identifiable ones. Hell, one of the Modern Era's best episodes of all time is Series One's Dalek. Whenever the Daleks are onscreen, you can be sure that what you are about to see is a very memorable episode. Well, this two-parter is memorable in all the wrong ways.

So, the story is that the Tenth Doctor and his Companion Martha Jones arrive in Great Depression Era New York and discover that people are being kidnapped and they eventually find out that the Daleks are behind these disappearances and they have a very sinister goal. However, the goal and the story in general is very, very stupid.

So, the premise doesn't sound too bad. Daleks kidnapping people for a sinister purpose. Why is it bad? For a lot of reasons. So, it is revealed that the Daleks are turning people they've kidnapped into Pig Men to serve as henchmen while they work on their goal to rebuild the nearly wiped out Dalek Race using the bodies of people whose minds they have wiped out to create Human/Dalek Hybrids. In fact, one of the four Daleks of the Cult of Skaro (basically the Research and Development team of the Daleks) Dalek Sec fuses with a human to create one of the stupidest images in all of Doctor Who history: A Human/Dalek with a Dalek head of mini-tentacles while wearing a pinstripe suit. All this achieved after shoving a man up what could be considered his butt. So, this is dumb, but what makes it bad? Well, near the end, the Doctor agrees to help them.

Let me repeat myself: The Doctor agrees to help his worst enemies fuse their DNA with the bodies of people they have mindwiped, essentially murdering them, to rebuild the Dalek race. The Doctor is making himself an accessory to MURDER. Now, the Doctor has been portrayed out of character many times before, but there was usually a point to it. There was usually a method to the madness, but here the Doctor just decides to help because he believes Dalek Sec about the Daleks needing to change. The Doctor is not stupid. He is a genius, but him agreeing to help Space Nazis, especially when he should have expected a betrayal from them, is so far over the line of character consistency that the line is a dot in the distance. And that's not even getting into how the Daleks plan to do this.

So, the Daleks plan to fuse Dalek DNA with the Human bodies by using the Empire State Building to conduct Gamma Radiation into their machines. Now, Gamma Radiation is... Well, it's Radiation. As defined by Wikipedia, "radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium." Now, note the words "Waves" and "Particles". It is also barely visible to the naked human eye. We can see many things, but we cannot see radiation. So, this two-parter decides that radiation is pretty much the same thing as lightning. Yes. Lightning. The show even calls it lightning. Radiation is not lightning. It does not look like lightning. It doesn't have the same effect as lightning. It is not lightning. And the Doctor even says "I got in the way of the lightning strike". He calls it lightning. This is what GOOGLE is good for when you want to check your scientific facts, people! Oh, and that was how the Doctor thwarted the plans of the Daleks that betray him and Dalek Sec. By getting in the way of the "Gamma radiation" or "Lightning" so that "Time Lord DNA got all mixed up" so that the new Human Hybrids are now Time Lord Human Hybrids. This is one of the dumbest bits of scientific bastardization and I haven't even gotten into the OTHER reasons why this two-parter sucks.

So, a joke between me and a friend from the UK is that this episode's portrayal of New Yorkers by British Actors doing terrible New York accents was revenge for Dick Van Dyke's laughable accent as Bert the Chimney Sweep from Mary Poppins. However, while Bert was overall likable and fun, and the accent goofy in a fun way, the acting from the supporting cast in this episode is just awful. If you want an example of why, look up the character of Tallulah, a vaudevillian showgirl with an accent that can peel long dried paint off the walls. It is so bad that if it could be weaponized, its use would be labeled a war crime! Plus, she's not that compelling a character. All she does is stand around trying to be... I don't know, sassy? Funny? A strong woman who wants to save her man who was turned into a pig-man? A living instrument of audio torture? I don't know.

The problems I have outlined with the science and the Dalek's plan are mostly in the second part, Evolution of the Daleks. The problems with the supporting cast are only PART of the problems with the first episode, Daleks in Manhattan. Daleks in Manhattan suffers a lot of the same problems as Voyage of the Damned in terms of tone. It doesn't know if it wants to have scenes of drama with the Daleks or Tallulah discovering her disappeared fiance Lazlo being partially transformed into a pig-man or be funny and quirky with a Vaudevillian musical number that comes right the fuck out of nowhere and is so egregiously awful that I found myself muting the sound while watching it. And I'm a guy that likes musicals. While I have heard of defenses for this episode, all I can say is that if you want to make a good story, you need to fully commit to what that story wants to be. Be a comedy or a drama. There are such things as Dramadies, but they have to be done well to make you really care about what is happening and to be able to balance the tone, like shows like Psych were able to do.

Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks are bad on their own, but as a two-parter, their problems come together to make one of the worst Doctor Who stories of all time. It's frustrating in how the first part badly tries to be a dramedy with bad accents, a bad story, and a musical number that comes right the fuck out of nowhere and could have been cut with no problem while the second part gives us a huge bit of character assassination for the Doctor while, to paraphrase the great Nash Bozard, presenting "science so bad that if L. Ron Hubbard were still alive, he'd be mad that he hadn't thought of it first".

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2. The Wedding of River Song from Series 6. 

So, Matt Smith is my favorite Modern Doctor. Even during the bad times of his run, Matt Smith gave his all and gave so much wonderful personality to his role as the 11^thDoctor. However, the main fault of the Steven Moffat Era is sadly Steven Moffat himself and his overreaching ambitions with story arcs. I will be getting into spoilers for this due to the fact that this is the finale of a series long story arc.

The story arc of Series 6 is the mystery of the Death of the Doctor. Not his regeneration, but his actual death. In the first episode of Series 6, the 11^th Doctor's future self is killed in front of his companions Amy and Rory and their soon to be revealed future daughter River Song, a.k.a. Melody Pond, a.k.a. the true main focus of this story arc. Then the Doctor's present-self arrives and then a whole arc begins as we try to figure out who wants the Doctor dead and why. The series finale, the Wedding of River Song, is the conclusion to this arc and it ends on a very unsatisfying and insulting note.

It is revealed that River Song is the mysterious killer of the Doctor as well as his future wife. When River refuses to kill the Doctor, thus disrupting the fixed point in time that is to be his death, time and space go all higgelty piggelty, fusing multiple time periods together into one big mess. And that's just the setting. The story is much worse.

So, what ultimately kills this story arc is the fact that this story isn't about the Doctor, but River Song. It isn't the Doctor that is ultimately responsible for fixing everything back to normal, but River. It isn't the Doctor that accidentally causes this, but River. In the end, it's all about River. Now, River Song has become one of the most divisive characters in Doctor Who history. When she was first introduced in the very good Silence in the Library Two-Parter in Series 4, she was an interesting character. Someone from the Doctor's future that knew him, but he didn't know her or what she meant to him. At the end of the story, she sacrificed herself to save him and the day and it was a very well done moment. However, the problem with her is that Steven Moffat couldn't let her rest. When he was made showrunner, she was obviously one of the first things to be brought back and while I thought she was fun at first, my first exposure to her was in the Series 5 Weeping Angels two-parter, she began to grate on me since she devolved from an interesting character into an always right, always invincible Mary Sue that was more important than the Doctor himself. The writing for her became annoying and nearly every Doctor Who fan became tired of her.

However, while that's one part of the reason why this is a bad episode, I have to address the haphazard way they handled the Doctor's Death. Spoilers for those who want to watch it are following.

It is revealed that the Doctor used a previously establish android that can shapeshift to fake his death. Yes, the fixed point in time that was established as unchangeable has been changed. An entire season of looking forward to how the Doctor would face his own mortality was flushed down the toilet. What makes this even more frustrating is that at the beginning of the episode, the Doctor learns a bit of sad news that convinces him to face his end. It is revealed in-universe that Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the Doctor's oldest friends from way back in Jon Pertwee's time as the 3^rd Doctor, had died. This was done as a tribute to the Brigadier's actor, Nicholas Courtney, who had died earlier the same year, as well as a sign to the Doctor that death does eventually come to us all and no matter how much we want to avoid it, we will eventually have to accept it. The Doctor faking his death feels like a big middle finger to the sorrow we all felt at the recognition of the in-canon death of the Brigadier, one of the most beloved Companions in all of Doctor Who history, right alongside Sarah Jane Smith, whose actress, Elizabeth Sladen, didn't even get a tribute in the show and she had died soon after Nicholas Courtney.

And in the end, with a very well done beginning, a very confusing middle that you would really have to see to believe, and a very, very insulting ending to this episode, all it amounts to is teasing for Series 7's story arc which was disappointing in its own way. Watch for the significance of the ongoing story arc for Steven Moffat's run but as a stand-alone episode? Avoid at all costs.

Original Image from By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40005370

1. Fear Her from Series 2. 

Writer Matthew Graham defended the quality of this episode by stating that while he was sorry that the adult viewers didn't like it, the episode wasn't made for them. That says everything to me about why Fear Her is the lowest of the low when it comes to Modern Doctor Who Episodes. Fear Her is the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality. It is boring. The characters are imbeciles, including the Doctor, the story is garbage pandering fluff, and the way this talks down to the audience by assuming that just because a lot of young viewers liked it, that automatically makes it good.

The story takes place in the future of England, around the 2012 Olympics, with the Doctor and his Companion Rose arriving on a street in England where a young girl is possessed by an alien plant thingy and captures other people in her drawings while also being possessed by terrible acting. That is the plot. Now, let's go over why this episode is awful.

First off, I have to talk about the response Matthew Graham made. It is pandering and insulting to children. Whenever a writer or a critic makes the excuse that something being bad is fine because it was originally intended for children, I get angry because that makes a big assumption about children, what parents think their kids could enjoy, and the idea that you don't have to try when writing for children.

Children are not inherently stupid. They are different. They are kids that see the world differently than adults and thus when writing for them, you have to truly know your audience. For example, my sister, upon seeing a reboot of Strawberry Shortcake when looking through Netflix to find a show for her 6-year-old daughter, decided that she would be better off watching something else. That same niece was also fascinated by the game Journey, which has a very minimal narrative with no dialogue or explanation as to what exactly you're doing. Kids are not stupid twerps that eat up anything you give them. They are kids.

Okay, now that rant is over and it is time to get to the real meat of this crap sandwich. This plot is boring. Seriously, it is just a bunch of people standing around and talking while a bad child actress draws crap while talking to herself. DOCTOR WHO: ADVENTURES IN SPACE AND TIME! Seriously, I have derided the previous 9 episodes for various reasons, but they at least had stuff HAPPEN in them. They at least had things occur and with good to passable acting. Fear Her has none of that. When an episode is not only bad but boring, that is when I draw the fucking line. That is when I say "Okay, I am done with this."

The supporting characters themselves are not much better. We have a guy from the City Council who won't stop bragging about the great job he did fixing a pothole and bringing up how he's from City Council and how this equipment he has is from the City Council. We have a little old lady whose only characteristic is that she's an old lady. And we have the mother of Chloe Webber, the little girl, whose brain-dead stupidity nearly cost the Doctor his victory over the space monster. It also doesn't help that David Tennant is clearly not giving his all as the Doctor in this episode, as evidenced by the scene where he's investigating the disappearance of one of the missing kids, and when a man asks "What's your game" he stutters out various board games. To be fair to David, it was his first Series as the Doctor and the writing for Series 2 overall wasn't very good, so it's fair to say that no one could make a line that involved "Snakes and Ladders" any good.

Now let's move on to Chloe Webber, the “Her” of “Fear Her”. I normally don't like to pick on child actors, but given that the actress Abisola Agbaje is about 12 years older than she was in this episode (Hard to remember that kids don't stay kids, ain't it?), I feel it's fair to critique her performance. Abisola gives a performance that is a key factor as to why the rule of “Don't work with kids” is a very valid one. She tries to give a performance that is scary, especially when she tries the “Scary Voice” but it is just laughably awful. I must also bring up the fact that a girl that can capture you with drawings or make a scribble monster come to life that will attack people isn't really scary. It's... kinda lame. It doesn't make me afraid of the monster. It makes me think about how little imagination went into this episode.

And I must bring up the Olympics setting because, believe it or not, this is a big plot point of this episode. So, the Doctor discovers that the only way to destroy the space parasite that has taken over Chloe Webber is to take its pod and through it into the Olympic Torch. And after the guy who carried the Torch is incapacitated, the Doctor carries the Olympic Torch. This... is one of the most facepalming moments in Doctor Who history. Right up there with the Angels carrying the 10^th Doctor in Voyage of the Damned, this is stupid. It doesn't help given that the announcer is going on and on about how the Torch is inspiration and love and peace and all that nonsense. Blatantly outlining what we are supposed to feel instead of letting the moment speak for itself. It is emotional manipulation at it's purest and I hate it.

When I was making this list, I was considering putting Love & Monsters, from the same Series as this, due to the fact that everyone considers it to be the worst episode of Doctor Who. However, while it is certainly terrible and deserving of the title, not only did I want to try something different, but I find that Love & Monsters works best as an examination of what not to do when making a Doctor-Lite episode of Doctor Who. Fear Her doesn't even have THAT redeeming quality. Instead, all it gives us is boredom and rage. I despise the fact that I cannot even be entertained by bad writing. When you cannot even give me a chuckle at how bad you're being, you have failed in writing. When you defend your crap by saying it was for kids, you have failed as a writer. And when you make an episode because you want to have a bridge between this and the "Dark Series finale" you have failed entirely. Fear Her, to me, is the worst episode of Doctor Who. It offers nothing to the viewer and instead takes away our time, our patience, and our ability to stay awake. Avoid, and I do mean Avoid, at all costs.

Thank you for reading this article. What do you think? Do you have any entries for the worst of Modern Doctor Who? Let me know in the comments section. I hope you enjoy your time here on Harmonica's Wing and I hope to entertain you in the future.