a departure from the marathon over this weekend - the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. Tomorrow I bring you my top twenty stories of all time, today though let's head to the other end of the spectrum - the ten worst Doctor Who tales of all! Do you agree? Are you shocked? What do you think?
10. The Invasion of Time
A lot of stories vied for this position. Timelash. Fear Her.
The Satan Pit. The Keeper of Traken and The Leisure Hive were all chances. But
I can only fit ten stories in here, and number ten is season 15’s ‘The Invasion
of Time’. My least favourite Tom Baker series
- equal least, with season 18, this story destroys Gallifrey as an idea
well before the Time War. The Vardens are as rubbish an enemy as they ever
used. The Sontarans look like idiots. But not as much as the Time Lords. The
choice of a mental hospital to be the TARDIS interior was a shocking call.
Cheap, nasty, bad. The perfect way to start the top ten worst Doctor Who
stories of all time!
9. The Chase
Six episode plot line – the Daleks chase the Doctor and his
companions. That’s it. Whole plan. Milk the Daleks for all their worth
production team. You know you want to. Pure, uninteresting silliness. A
ridiculous robot double for the Doctor. Saving grace – nice ending for Ian and
Barbara, and Peter Purves of course. Dreadful jungle planet with a studio
floor.
8. Daleks in Manhatten/Evolution of the Daleks
DREADFUL American accents. Dreadful acting by Diagarus.
Stupid plot, the Daleks have converted humans to Daleks before, why do they
want to create Dalek-humans now? That walk and talk. Hardly invincible like the
casing the Daleks wear. Pig men? WHY? WHY? Helen Raynor, you SUCK.
7. Delta and the Bannermen
What a pointless waste of three episodes this was. Running
around to Keff ‘I’ve got a drum machine on my synth’ McKulloch. That’s all it
is. Green babies, green men. Eat the baby food, become a Chimeron! Awful acting
from the woman playing Delta. Everyone in the bus dies. In a story which is
supposed to be just fun. It’s ok, gloss over that. Looks cheap and nasty. McCoy
horribly awkward in scenes with Ray. Makes light of death. Gavrock sitting
there eating raw meat. No understanding of who the Chimerons, the Bannermen are
(apart from incompetent). It’s actually a story about genocide, but it’s light
and fluffy too. So much to dislike.
6. Arc of Infinity
Mind-bogglingly stupid rubbish from Johnny Byrne, who wrote
three stories and the BEST was ‘Warriors of the Deep’. Omega is lame. The Time
Lords are lame. We’re in Amsterdam for no reason – should have had the ghost of
Anne Frank, that would have been an interesting story. It’s so very 80s. Ian
Collier does not look like Peter Davison. The ending is – The Doctor chases
Omega around Amsterdam for a bit and shoots him. Gallifrey got worse with every
story as the show progressed.
5. Victory of the Daleks
For being the biggest disappointment the new series has
dished up. Plot starts brilliantly – what are the Daleks up to? Only the Doctor
knows they are evil. No-one believes him. Then 30 minutes of utter shite from
the pen of Mr Gatiss. Cheap looking interior for the Dalek space ship and
dreadful looking new Daleks. The Doctor holds the Daleks at bay with a jam
biscuit. Yet they destroyed Gallifrey? Give me a break. Tension built in first
12 minutes, destroyed in less than 12 second. This is crap.
4. Time and the Rani
A quarry instead of a jungle. Writers and script editor at
logger-heads. Awful costumes. Awful monsters. Incomprehensible convoluted plot.
Pip and Jane Baker dialogue with no help from Eric Saward. Equals total shite.
3. The Twin Dilemma
It’s cheap. It’s needlessly violent. The Doctor attacks his
companion violently which should never have been conceived of. The police
uniforms are the cheapest look they could possibly conceive. The monster is
STUPID, looks ridiculous, should never have been attempted. The plot involves
firing a planet into a sun to shoot thousands of eggs into the universe. Why
does Mestor, who seems to have a cavalcade of powers, need a couple of boy
geniuses who cannot act to calculate how to blow up a sun? Why couldn’t Azmael
see it would happen? Why does Hugo’s gun look light a lighter-gun for a gas
stove? So many whys.
2. Silver Nemesis
A three-episode runaround which is mind-bogglingly stupid,
stealing most of the plot from the far superior ‘Rembrance of the Daleks’. We
have Nazis in there for no good reason, a stupid old crone running around
saying she knows the Doctor’s secrets, Cybermen at their most impotent ever,
dreadful music by Keff McCulloch, it looks cheap as chips, the CSO is dreadful
on the Cyber-ship, there’s no meat to the plot at all and it’s only saving
grace is the couple of moments of comedy which are quite funny – the scene in
the limo and the lamas. Dreadful rot.
1. Time-flight
Time-flight is without a doubt the antithesis of what makes
a bad story in Doctor Who. It’s plot is extremely convoluted, the ultimate sign
in my mind of a bad Doctor Who tale, it makes little sense and alienates the
viewer very quickly after episode one which is ok. The Master is needlessly in
disguise, but not only that, it’s about the worst disguise I have ever seen.
The sets are shoddy and small, the Concorde is represented for the most part by
a single wheel. They definitely ran out of money for this story. The Master’s
brilliant plan to get to the hidden power behind the wall is to kidnap Concorde
passengers to bash the wall down. It’s as close to unwatchable as any Doctor
Who. I give you the ultimate in bad Doctor Who – ‘Time Flight’.
