A while back I made a disparaging comment about recent Doctor Who episodes, and when I went back later and read those remarks again, I realized it might be a good idea to double-check what I said. However, in order to do that adequately, I realized it would also be a good idea to re-watch the entire Doctor Who 2005 series, from beginning to end. So that’s what I’ve been doing over the past few months. I’ve finished season 8, and only have one Christmas special to watch after this writing.
In an attempt to bestow a hopefully useful level of objectivity on this, I decided early on to use a special rating scale that I devised for my iTunes library over 10 years ago. You may be aware that iTunes has a built-in 5-star rating scale, but after using that for about a year I realized that five stars wasn’t enough. There were a number of five-star songs which were clearly better than the rest, as if they deserved an additional star. They “broke the rating system,” so to speak. I realized I could use the “grouping” column in iTunes to mark each one of them as a “6-star song,” and adapt my existing smart filters to act as if the extra “star” was just as real as a normal iTunes rating. Over the years this has worked surprisingly well, and, to date, my iTunes library contains a total of 130 songs with this improvised 6-star rating (out of a total of 3055 songs).
When I decided to re-evaluate all the 2005 series Doctor Who episodes, I decided a similar setup would be useful for that as well: The normal part of the scale would be a simple 5-point system, with the 5 point rating meaning “excellent.” The six-point rating would be reserved for episodes so outstanding that they “broke” the normal scale, but they would still act like any other number in terms of calculating averages. I could then come up with a score for each season, and for each Doctor.
So, without further ado, here are the season ratings:
season 1: 4.08
season 2: 3.77
season 3: 3.62
season 4: 3.77
season 5: 3.46
season 6: 3.23
season 7: 2.92
season 8: 2.36
The theoretical maximum average would be 6.00, however that would never happen in practice, since the six point rating is only used in exceptional circumstances. That means an average score above 4.00 is really very high.
Some additional remarks need to be made. First, I do not include ANY of the following in the seasonal averages: Christmas specials, David Tennant’s four farewell specials at the end of his tenure, and Matt Smith’s two series-anniversary specials at the end of his. None of those have any effect on the seasonal ratings, not even The Snowmen, which occurred midway through season 7. All of these specials do, however, affect the overall ratings for the four Doctors:
Eccleston: 4.08
Tennant: 3.66
Smith: 3.39
Capaldi: 2.67 (with one story to go)
I didn’t start out with the aim of having Eccleston come out on top. In fact, I went into this with a strong bias against the early seasons simply because I find Russell T. Davies’ histrionic production style to be so annoying. But, after the re-watch, I have to admit that the man is a very talented writer, and season 1 is overall the best of the eight so far. Eccleston is quite excellent as well—I sometimes wonder what might have been if he had stuck around for a second season. Then again, we would have been deprived of the David Tennant/Billie Piper interaction which proved so fruitful in season two.
I don’t think the four Doctor ratings are entirely fair to the actors. Capaldi, in particular, has only had one season so far, which happened to be the worst season in the history of the series. Smith’s last season was almost as bad—in fact, the second half of his last season featured the worst continuous run of episodes in the series’ history. Is it Capaldi or Smith’s fault that the series is currently plagued by mediocre (or worse) writing? Does the fact that Eccleston’s single season happened to coincide with some of the best stories in the history of the show mean that he was also “the best” of the four? My answer to that is “no” in both cases.
In fact, I rather like Peter Capaldi and am looking forward to what he comes up with in season 9, while keeping my fingers crossed that the writers will grow a brain or two between them. I also liked Christopher Eccleston quite a lot, but not to any degree more than the others. Overall, I think we have been incredibly lucky to have four such talents playing the role, and if the series appears to be falling flat of late, it’s due to the writers and to the completely ridiculous political climate that television is a part of nowadays. (That, however, is a whole other subject.)
Getting back to the original topic, the very best episodes, those that “broke the scale” and rated at 6 points, are:
The Parting of the Ways (113)
The Girl in the Fireplace (204)
Doomsday (213)
Blink (310)
The Time of the Doctor (special)
(Numbers in parentheses are episode numbers, where applicable.)
We have one in the first season, two in the second, one in the third, and then a long, long dry spell. With the exception of the 50th anniversary special, there have been none of these top-drawer episodes in seasons 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8.
The listing of 5-point episodes is a bit longer. Remember, these legitimately qualify as “excellent” or “outstanding”:
The Unquiet Dead (103)
Father’s Day (108)
The Empty Child (109)
The Doctor Dances (110)
Bad Wolf (112)
The Christmas Invasion (special)
School Reunion (203)
Army of Ghosts (212)
The Shakespeare Code (302)
Gridlock (303)
The Family of Blood (309)
The Fires of Pompeii (402)
Forest of the Dead (409)
Turn Left (411)
The Stolen Earth (412)
The Eleventh Hour (501)
Vincent and the Doctor (510)
A Christmas Carol (special)
The Impossible Astronaut (601)
The Doctor’s Wife (604)
The Angels Take Manhattan (705)
The Rings of Akhaten (707)
The Day of the Doctor (special)
Listen (804)
Tallying that up we get five in season 1, which is the best of any season. If you also include the one 6-point episode in season 1, that comes to six total, which is the best proportion of excellent episodes of any season by far. After that, we have two in season 2, three in season 3, four in season 4 (unfortunately, this pattern didn’t maintain itself), two in season 5, two in season 6, two in season 7 and one in season 8. Plus three in the specials.
I’m not going to separate out all the 4-point and 3-point episodes because there are just too many of them.
This next part should be fun: The list of BAD episodes. First, the worst of the worst, those receiving the ignominious 1-point rating. In the vernacular, this rating means “epic fail” or “steaming pile,” depending on your preference. There are (thankfully) not very many of these:
Fear Her (211)
The Lazarus Experiment (306)
Night Terrors (609)
Cold War (708)
Kill the Moon (807)
Dark Water (811)
Only five overall, but I see a definite clustering in the more recent seasons, with none at all in seasons 1, 4 and 5. More ominously, note that two of these turkeys fall in season 8, and fully 66% of them in seasons 6, 7 and 8. Yowch.
The 2-point episodes are unfortunately far more numerous, especially in more recent seasons. These are bad enough to merit punishment or derision, but fall short of utter failure:
Last of the Time Lords (313)
Journey’s End (413)
The End of Time, Part 1 (special)
Vampires of Venice (506)
Cold Blood (509)
The Lodger (511)
The Rebel Flesh (605)
The Almost People (606)
A Town Called Mercy (703)
Hide (709)
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (710)
The Crimson Horror (711)
Nightmare in Silver (712)
Into the Dalek (802)
Robot of Sherwood (803)
Time Heist (805)
In the Forest of the Night (810)
There is one more episode to re-watch, so this or the 1 point list may yet be revised.
Obviously there is an increasing quantity of crap episodes in the more recent seasons, compared to not a single bad episode in season 1, only one really stinky episode in season 2, two bad ones in season 3, only one in season 4, plus another in Tennant’s string of four farewell specials. Season 6, on the other hand, showed a marked uptick with three baddies, and then the shite really hit the fan in season 7 with six bad episodes. That’s as many bad episodes as there were great episodes in season 1. What’s really notable, though, is that five of the six are clustered in the second half of that split season, with no less than five crap episodes in a row. Wow. It’s a wonder I made it through that season at all. Luckily, The Name of the Doctor was a very good 4-point episode, otherwise I might have given up.
Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, season 8 turns out to be even worse! Six bad episodes again, but this time two of them are 1-pointers. They’re also spread around the season more evenly, leading to a more general impression of crappiness. There is no significant clumping of non-bad episodes in season 8 the way there was in the first half of season 7. So, I hope you will pardon my French, but seriously: WTF?
Lastly, here are all of the episode ratings. Please keep in mind that a rating of 3 is perfectly respectable, covering the range from “average” to “good”:
Season 1 4.08
101 Rose 3
102 The End of the World 4
103 The Unquiet Dead 5
104 Aliens of London 3
105 World War Three 3
106 Dalek 3
107 The Long Game 3
108 Father's Day 5
109 The Empty Child 5
110 The Doctor Dances 5
111 Boom Town 3
112 Bad Wolf 5
113 The Parting of the Ways 6
The Christmas Invasion 5
Season 2 3.77
201 New Earth 3
202 Tooth and Claw 3
203 School Reunion 5
204 The Girl in the Fireplace 6
205 Rise of the Cybermen 3
206 The Age of Steel 4
207 The Idiot's Lantern 3
208 The Impossible Planet 3
209 The Satan Pit 3
210 Love & Monsters 4
211 Fear Her 1
212 Army of Ghosts 5
213 Doomsday 6
The Runaway Bride 3
Season 3 3.62
301 Smith and Jones 3
302 The Shakespeare Code 5
303 Gridlock 5
304 Daleks in Manhatten 3
305 Evolution of the Daleks 3
306 The Lazarus Experiment 1
307 42 3
308 Human Nature 4
309 The Family of Blood 5
310 Blink 6
311 Utopia 4
312 The Sound of Drums 3
313 Last of the Time Lords 2
Voyage of the Damned 3
Season 4 3.77
401 Partners in Crime 4
402 The Fires of Pompeii 5
403 Planet of the Ood 3
404 The Sontaran Strategem 3
405 The Poison Sky 3
406 The Doctor's Daughter 3
407 The Unicorn and the Wasp 3
408 Silence in the Library 4
409 Forest of the Dead 5
410 Midnight 4
411 Turn Left 5
412 The Stolen Earth 5
413 Journey's End 2
The Next Doctor 4
Planet of the Dead 3
The Waters of Mars 3
The End of Time, Part 1 2
The End of Time, Part 2 4
Season 5 3.46
501 The Eleventh Hour 5
502 The Beast Below 4
503 Victory of the Daleks 3
504 The Time of Angels 4
505 Flesh and Stone 4
506 Vampires of Venice 2
507 Amy's Choice 3
508 The Hungry Earth 3
509 Cold Blood 2
510 Vincent and the Doctor 5
511 The Lodger 2
512 The Pandorica Opens 4
513 The Big Bang 4
A Christmas Carol 5
Season 6 3.23
601 The Impossible Astronaut 5
602 Day of the Moon 4
603 The Curse of the Black Spot 4
604 The Doctor's Wife 5
605 The Rebel Flesh 2
606 The Almost People 2
607 A Good Man Goes to War 3
608 Let's Kill Hitler 3
609 Night Terrors 1
610 The Girl Who Waited 4
611 The God Complex 3
612 Closing Time 3
613 The Wedding of River Song 3
The Doctor, The Widow & The Wardrobe 4
Season 7 2.92
701 Asylum of the Daleks 3
702 Dinosaurs on a Spaceship 4
703 A Town Called Mercy 2
704 The Power of Three 3
705 The Angels Take Manhattan 5
The Snowmen 4
706 The Bells of Saint John 3
707 The Rings of Akhaten 5
708 Cold War 1
709 Hide 2
710 Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS 2
711 The Crimson Horror 2
712 Nightmare in Silver 2
713 The Name of the Doctor 4
The Day of the Doctor 5
The Time of the Doctor 6
Season 8 2.67
801 Deep Breath 4
802 Into the Dalek 2
803 Robot of Sherwood 2
804 Listen 5
805 Time Heist 2
806 The Caretaker 3
807 Kill the Moon 1
808 Mummy on the Orient Express 3
809 Flatline 3
810 In the Forest of the Night 2
811 Dark Water 1
812 Death in Heaven 4
Last Christmas ?
It’s a total surprise (to me) that this happened. She was only 63 years old, and had been battling cancer for a while, apparently.
I know I’ve been critical of Russell Davies in the past, but at a time like this, I am not surprised at all that he knows exactly what to say (audio clip and brief article). He was always good at the emotional stuff.
Would I have ever become a Doctor Who fan if the very first story I ever watched hadn’t had her as the companion? It was The Seeds of Doom, one of the earlier Tom Baker episodes, wherein some suspicious pods are found in Antarctica, and one of them somehow develops into a giant, killer plant monster. Classic stuff, including the squeaky styrofoam peanuts used as fake “snow” in the Antarctica scenes. I distinctly recall being impressed with how cute and interesting Sarah Jane was. She was certainly a factor in getting me to tune in to my next story. This was back in the days when the stories were appearing every weekend on Wisconsin Public Television. They would edit the four to six episodes of each story into one, luxurious, movie-length program, which was wonderful. The four-episode ones were of ideal length, typically running 90 minutes. The six-episode ones tended to get a bit long, typically around 2 hours and 15 minutes. With no commercials, of course. The best was when they would have Doctor Who marathons, airing several stories in one afternoon. These could stretch for eight hours or more (including pledge breaks). Those were the days. :)
Of course, I ended up seeing many more stories, with many more companions, but Sarah was, at some level, always my favorite. So much so that when my 10th grade English class was tasked with breaking into teams where each team would create a short film, I decided that I was going to do my own Doctor Who story, and of course, Sarah Jane Smith would be the companion. The whole endeavor ended up being a comedy of errors, with two or possibly three of my female classmates playing the role (ever try to schedule high school girls who aren’t really invested in something? It’s a challenge, LOL), but in the end, the effort was enough of a success that the teacher used it in succeeding years as an example. I suppose he might have been using it as an example of how several major things can go wrong without actually destroying the overall project…but still. ;)
Someone posted some still shots from the Planet of Evil story on Usenet, of Elisabeth and co-star Tom Baker. I’m going to repost a couple of them here, in commemoration. I’m pretty sure the second one is an outtake:
Click on the pics for full-size view. They’re wallpaper sized, 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio.
He’ll be missed, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t count him as my favorite Doctor of all time, but he’s been pretty good in the role. I get annoyed when he talks so fast sometimes. Other than that, he’s been very cool.
He has some appearances left yet, so we’ll all have time to get used to this idea of him leaving. They’re doing another Christmas special, and then the four special episodes in lieu of a regular season next year.
Russell Davies has promised that Tennant’s final appearances will be “spectacular”, “spectacular” (yes, he said it twice) and “enormous”. Actually, that kind of scares me. I admit I haven’t been too happy with some of what Davies has come up with in recent seasons. His thing is maximization of drama, and hang all other considerations. So, for instance, we end up with that travesty double episode season-ender back in 2007, where the Doctor was shrunk down into a living voodoo doll and all sorts of other ridiculous things happened.
That whole story was just awful, although it did manage to avoid my main beef with what has happened over the past several seasons: Historically, Doctor Who has always kept the teeming masses of Earth sheltered from the direct impact of alien plots and machinations. The Daleks may plan to destroy the earth, for instance, but we never find out about it. This allows us happy fans the delusion that the Doctor is actually out there somewhere, we just don’t know about it because he, and the UNIT people, have been doing such a good job of keeping things out of the public awareness. However, in Russell Davies’ Doctor Who, that is no longer true. In some instances, the general public has become aware of what’s actually been going on. This, sadly, relegates Doctor Who into the less desireable category of “actual fiction.” Any fantasies of us being companions someday, of perhaps running happily towards the TARDIS like Rose Tyler, are forever gone.
Don’t get me wrong: None of us are actually dumb enough to have believed that the Doctor was really real. But there can sometimes be a slight gray area between pure fantasy and reality, where one can temporarily, for one’s own amusement, imagine what might happen if the fantasy wasn’t really a fantasy. One can feel, just for a little while, what it might be like if it was all really happening. This is possible because the tale has respected the boundaries of our own day-to-day realities. We can allow our own reality and the story to meld, just a little bit.
This melding, this little side-trip we take into the fantasy world, it may not even be a conscious thing. But it definitely adds a certain element, giving the fantasy a little extra zing of excitement. That element is now gone from Doctor Who, forever. It was the Slitheen who started it, by the way. You and I, all of us, we know full well that there have never been Slitheen smashing into Big Ben. This puts a permanent wall between our world and the world where the Doctor lives.*
But I digress. David Tennant is leaving, after next year. I wonder who they’ll come up with to replace him? Whoever it is, I find myself hoping the choice isn’t made until after Davies leaves the picture.
The other issue that’s going to have to be dealt with sooner or later is the question of the Doctor’s 12 regenrations. He’s only got three left. (Yes, three, not two. William Hartnell’s Doctor was not regenerated, which makes Patrick Troughton’s second Doctor the first regeneration, and so on. That means Tennant’s Doctor is the 9th regeneration, leaving three more. This is confirmed in “The Five Doctors”, where Peter Davison’s Doctor identifies himself as the fourth regeneration.) Three may seem like plenty, but it’s really not. How are they going to get around this? Does it matter that the Time Lords are no longer in existence? Does the elimination of Gallifrey from the Universe somehow negate the limit on regenerations? Furthermore, didn’t David Tennant’s Doctor already regenerate back into himself or something like that, back at the end of the last season? I admit, I can’t remember all the absurd details of that little farce. But if he did, then maybe that really does leave us with two, which makes the question even more urgent. So, would someone at BBC Wales please start paying attention to this problem? Thanks. :)
————-
*Honestly, there were some pretty big gaps in my viewings of the original series, so perhaps I am wrong about all of this. But for me, at least, that incursion by the Slitheen right near the beginning of Davies’ tenure as producer of the show, that was where the line was crossed.
At some point, the Powers That Be at Stargate Productions are going to be casting their new Stargate spinoff, Stargate: Universe. It’s been said by Sci Fi channel president Dave Howe that the hope is for the cast to be more “fresh faced.” I assume he means “fresh faced” in comparison to the casts of the previous two shows, which feature all sorts of dull, middle-aged people, several of them bald. I suppose we can’t have that if we’re wanting to appeal to 20-year-olds, can we? (sarcasm alert!)
Actually, accusing the Atlantis cast of not being appealing to a younger audience is kind of ridiculous. Take a look at the leads, and what do you see? A whole mess of very cool people, and with the possible exception of Robert Picardo, not one of them appears to be middle aged. David Hewlett and Joe Flanigan are both slightly over forty, but I never would have guessed that if I hadn’t looked it up. (I’m 40 myself, and I would love to be in as good a shape as Joe Flanigan!!) Jason Momoa, on the other hand, isn’t even thirty yet, and Jewel Staite is even younger than him.
Furthermore, why do media industry types insist on believing that the characters on a show have to be the same age as the audience? Who the hell came up with that, anyway? I know identification with a character is a big appeal, but it’s not necessary for the character to be the same age as the viewer in order for that to happen.
Example: The leading actors of the original Star Trek series were all older than the standard which the Stargate folks seem to be shooting for, and yet the show really took off in popularity in the 1970’s, with an audience that was mostly college students and younger at that time. DeForest Kelly was in his late forties when he first started playing Dr. Leonard McCoy, and I never once had any coolness issues with him. I was only nine years old when I became an avid Star Trek fan—do you suppose that’s youthful enough? Likewise, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were both closer to 40 than they were to 30, and I practically worshipped both of their characters. James Doohan was actually the same age as DeForrest Kelly. There weren’t any women in the lead roles of that show, but for primary supporting roles, Nichelle Nichols was one year younger than Shatner and Nimoy. All of them were mid-30’s or older when the show began.
To take a more extreme example, in the most recent season of Doctor Who, the coolest supporting character of the whole season is probably Wilfred Mott (played by Bernard Cribbins), more commonly known as Donna’s grandfather. He’s just a fun character, and it’s hard to imagine him not appealing to pretty much any age group. I’m not sure how old he is, but as the grandfather of a woman in her 30’s, that must mean he’s in his 70’s at least, right?
A counter-example: How did people react to Wesley Crusher when Star Trek: The Next Generation started? I remember wishing he would die, frankly. :) That character was sort of a blight on the show, although he did get better in later seasons, thanks to better writing and Wil Wheaton’s acting talent. My reaction to early Wesley was pretty typical, though. I was 18 or 19 when that show was first broadcast.
So, who says you need to have youngish characters to appeal to a youngish audience, and who says that if you do, it’s even going to work?
So here’s my casting suggestion for one of the male leads on the new Stargate: Universe program: Adam Baldwin!
He’d be an excellent choice. For one thing, he’s got a bit of history in the Stargate universe already, having played Col. Dave Dixon, the leader of SG-13 in the double episode “Heros.” He’s in his mid 40’s, which is probably older than what they’re thinking of, but on the other hand, he’s younger than the parents of the target demographic, by roughly a decade, which means he could easily play a mature, leader-type role without conveying an uncool level of parentalness. Casting him would also create an opportunity to set up some inter-team conflict between him and another, younger male lead. Baldwin is also funny. Not just a little funny either—he’s a lot funny. Just watch his previous appearance on SG-1, or his 14-episode stint on Firefly if you don’t believe me.
One slight problem is that he appears to already be cast in another series. Oh well. I still think I’m right about this.
What can I say–I didn’t intend to be gone this long, but on the other hand, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to come back. Some things went pretty wrong a few months ago, and only recently am I starting to feel the creative juices flow again.
My plan to analyze the entire Stargate: SG-1 series is on indefinite hold. In fact, that project may have proven to be too ambitious. It seemed like a great idea, but SG-1 is a HUGE series, and as I got into the process of writing about the episodes in the first season, I found myself not wanting to spend time writing when I could just go ahead and watch the next one. This is commonly known as “lack of self discipline.” I also found myself wanting to delve into more and more detail about each episode, so what started as a general summary of the series was evolving into a full-fledged episode guide, for a series with over 200 episodes. Yikes. So I got farther and farther behind. I even started watching season two, thinking I could get caught up any old time. That was wrong. Before I knew it, I was hopelessly behind. This was also about the time that the new seasons of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who were getting into full swing, and the prospect of trying to keep up with both of those shows, plus get caught up on my SG-1 project, it was just too much. So I tabled this whole idea for a while.
In my absence, I ended up skipping the entire fourth season of Doctor Who, which is unfortunate, because there’s a lot that could be said about it. There’s also Battlestar Galactica‘s fourth season. Wow. And that was only half a season. Of course I can always come back to these later. Regarding Galactica, I’ll just say for now that I think the revisioned series is turning out to be the finest program in the history of television. I’m not really qualified to say that, mind you, since there are way too many shows I haven’t seen. But if there’s a show out there that’s as good as this one, I’d sure love to see it. (Ok, one more thing–is it just me, or was there a marked upward jump in the quality of this already-excellent show at the point when Jane Espenson came onboard?)
Today I started work on an article pertaining to Stargate: Atlantis, particularly some of the developments in the new season. The article is going well, although it still needs some polishing up. That should be ready for publication sometime very soon, maybe even tonight.
I am also going to be broadening the focus of this blog a bit. My initial idea was to limit myself to “Television Sci Fi” programming. However, I have to admit, there are some movies I’d like to mention on here from time to time as well. There’s also the question of that “science fiction” parameter, which I wondered out loud about when I first started this blog. There’s some very imaginative work out there that is well worth talking about, but which doesn’t exactly fit into the proper realm of “science fiction” at all. The new theatrical release Hellboy 2 is one example. But there are others, even farther afield than that. Take David Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Drive, for instance. In no way could this movie be considered science fiction (unless you have developed an entirely new take on it, in which case, feel free to tell me about it), but it’s certainly imaginative. And I do like that word, “imaginative.” So. “Imaginative fiction” it is. Seems like a good topic for discussion, no? However, the emphasis will still be on science fiction, since that’s really where my heart lies.
Finally, I want to close by posting something which really helped to motivate me to get back on track with this. This is an interview with Wil Wheaton, done at ComicCon. It’s quite interesting. Wheaton is an interesting guy, and he says a thing or two here which I really appreciate, in particular some advice he offers towards the end of the interview, intended for aspiring internet writers. It occurs to me that his advice applies to people with other creative inclinations too. That means me, since I’m also struggling with various photography and music projects, in addition to writing. Anyway, here is the whole thing. Enjoy!
Four Things and a Lizard 