The 10 Most Memorable Moments in New Doctor Who

In the last post we looked at the 20 most memorable moments from classic Doctor Who. Now it's time for the new series. Keep in the mind the threefold criteria. In order to qualify as a top moment, the scenes or sequences (1) must be well done, well directed, and well acted; (2) must be well remembered, much talked about, and loved by fans; (3) tend to set a precedent, or build on other precedents, meaning they either have strong bearing on the series going forward, or interact dynamically with the past.

1. Rose & the Dalek. Dalek. 2005. The mirror image of the famous scene in Genesis of the Daleks, and as much an uncontested winner of the top slot. In place of a pacifist Doctor being urged to commit genocide by a frustrated Sarah, here a murderous Doctor has to be restrained by an empathetic Rose. It couldn't have been easy making this scene so convincing, but for the first (and undoubtedly last) time we are made to feel sympathy for a Dalek unable to cope with human emotions, yet without losing sight of its inherently lethal nature. Eccleston gets in his finest acting moment of the season, his helpless rage conveying how traumatized he is by the recent Time War. But it's Rose and the Dalek who own the moment, bonding strangely as the creature is affected by her DNA, yet ultimately driven to self-extermination. I went into this list thinking the top moment would surely be from Tennant's period, but no: this is it.

2. Human Doctor. The Family of Blood. 2007. The Doctor's decision to become human in order to hide from aliens was supposed to be an act of mercy, but ended up in horror falling on an English village, pain on people's souls. The moment of truth is of course towards the end, when "John Smith" can't bring himself to accept his Time Lord identity, not least because he's fallen in love with a woman. The scene is so believably heartbreaking: "I'm John Smith! That's all I want to be! With his life and his job!" Joan's turmoil is equally tragic, and she scores some emotional zingers when she finally loses "John" to the Doctor: "John Smith was braver than you. You chose to change. He chose to die." When at this point he desperately begs her to come time traveling with him, she replies in a steel tone: "Answer me this. If you hadn't decided to come to this time and place on a whim, would people have died here today?" His silence is deafening, and she dismisses him for good. Drama like this raised the bar in Doctor Who like never before.

3. Daleks vs. Cybermen. Doomsday. 2006. When I first saw the cliffhanger to Army of Ghosts I thought I was hallucinating. Daleks in a Cybermen story? But the fanwank works to astonishingly great effect without cheapening the plot. And let's face it, who in their heart of hearts hasn't wanted to see Daleks and Cybermen face off against each other? The fanatical xenophobes vs. the ruthlessly logical; and I confess I was cheering the Daleks all the way, them being the more badass of the two. As the Dalek retorts so arrogantly to the Cybermen, "This is not war, it is pest control! You are superior in one way only; you are better at dying!" Go Daleks! I doubt I'll ever again be cheering them on -- anymore than I'll be feeling sorry for one outside Dalek (see #1) -- but this apocalyptic spectacle goes down as the best Whogasm moment (as Mark Goodacre would put it) in the history of the show.

4. Blowing up Vesuvius. Fires of Pompeii. 2008. What a lousy hand to be dealt: to have to kill thousands of Pompeiians in order to save the world. The fact that the Doctor would be following history hardly makes it easier to be the one responsible, and his agony recalls the Fourth Doctor's dilemma with the wires on Skaro. But this time he accepts his responsibility -- it's a hugely powerful moment when he and Donna hold hands and pull the volcanic lever together, thinking they're destined to die like everyone else -- eradicating the threat of the Pyrovile while taking Pompeii as collateral. His rescue of the one family is key to the moment, of course, but I don't think it should be overstated; after all, Donna has to browbeat him into doing it. It's fascinating how much the Doctor's moral compass is subject to companion influence (as in #1), far more so than in the classic series. That's the the Last of the Time Lords for you: alone in the universe and less sure of himself.

5. The departure of Rose Tyler. Doomsday. 2006. I didn't want to use any episode more than once (see #3), but here it can't be avoided. Rose's farewell is so emotional it could make an Auton weep, and in my opinion she defines the first two seasons more than the Doctor himself. Story arcs involving the Tyler family were developed in deeply unexpected ways, especially in the parallel earth stories, and it's like losing a dynasty at the end. In this sense, Rose's departure is more momentous than Eccleston's regeneration (see #9). She's certainly the best companion of the new series, and I think the second best of all time after Sarah Jane Smith.

6. The Doctor's Easter Egg & the Weeping Angels. Blink. 2007. The highlight of everyone's favorite story is the DVD easter egg, as the Doctor uses a copy of the transcript Lawrence is writing to have a conversation across time with Sally Sparrow. It's brilliantly scripted, and segues into the frightening attack of the Weeping Angels. "Don't turn away, and don't blink," warns the Doctor, the only defense being to freeze the angels into stone by continually looking at them. By far the most original creatures of the new series, and endlessly discussed for the quantum background. "You die in the past," explains the Doctor, "and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had, all your stolen moments. They're creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy. Angels who kill you nicely."

7. Professor Yana's identity. Utopia. 2007. The revelation of Professor Yana as the Master is another one of those Whogasm moments (like #3), and it's a shame it had to go to waste with Derek Jacobi's regeneration into John Simm. Jacobi was a brilliant Master for those ten minutes, while Simm gave us a gurning comic book villain for two whole episodes. There's nothing wrong with different personas (that's what Time Lord regneration is all about), but Simm's just wasn't right for the Master. In any case, we can savor the moment of Yana's dawning realization of who he is, and his viscious murder of his assistant as he hisses, "I...AM...THE MASTER!" Jacobi's Master was up to the level of Roger Delgado's in the Pertwee era, and you can't do any better than that.

8. Satan. The Satan Pit. 2006. Since Tom Baker, every Doctor Who period has had at least one "ultimate" villain. Philip Hinchcliffe gave us Sutekh (by far the most memorable and close to invincible), Graham Williams got in the Fendahl before throwing the Black Guardian at us, and John Nathan-Turner started with the Great Vampire and ended with Fenric. Russell Davies settled for nothing less than Satan himself, and while the Beast doesn't eclipse Sutekh, it comes pretty damn close. The voice is the same (played after all these years by Gabriel Woolf), oozing venom. There are two parts to the dramatic terror: (1) Toby's possession sequences, which have to be the most frightening ever shown on the BBC; (2) the Doctor freefalling blindly into the black pit, and confronting the Beast at the bottom. We finally got the devil in Doctor Who, and it was worth the wait.

9. The ninth regeneration. The Parting of the Ways. 2005. Christopher Eccleston's departure after a single season worked out splendidly for a couple reasons. For one, he wasn't the best representation of the Doctor, a gurning manic-depressive, and remarkably ineffectual, though he's admittedly grown on me over time. He took his minimalist character about as far as it could go. But in leaving the series so quickly, he gave newcomers an opportunity to see some Gallifreyan lore in action. And what a regeneration -- more flashy than any from the classic period, if lacking some of the soul -- leaving us with David Tennant licking over his teeth in bemused wonder. I knew right there and then that he was going to be "the" Doctor of the new series.

10. The return of Sarah Jane Smith. School Reunion. 2006. No way can I omit Sarah from this list. Her reaction to the TARDIS and meeting the Doctor is so well scripted and acted, that I remember watching it the first time and thinking, "Wow, we really are in a new golden age of Doctor Who." Alongside this scene, in which she makes plain that she resents the Doctor for never coming back for her, I would include the jealous bitch-fight with Rose, as they hurl laundry lists at each other of the creatures they've fought against with the Doctor. Sarah is more than just a returning companion to please old fans; she's used very effectively to put Rose's relationship to the Doctor into perspective, and to call into the question the way the Time Lord eventually discards his companions.

Honorable mentions. Each of the following seven were considered for the top ten but ultimately couldn't compete with the ones I chose. Listed in no particular order other than by season. (1) Pete Tyler's sacrifice (his final moments with Rose) in Father's Day, (2) the Dalek God (the Daleks find religion) in The Parting of the Ways, (3) the Doctor's duel with the Sycorax king (and his regenerating hand) in The Christmas Invasion, (4) Madame de Pompadour (both the 18th-century original's romance with the Doctor and the 51st-century spaceship fueled by body parts) in The Girl and the Fireplace, (5) Mickey's sacrifice (his decision to stay behind in the parallel world and farewell to Rose) in The Age of Steel, (6) the death of the Master (the Doctor begging him to regenerate) in Last of the Time Lords, (7) possessed Doctor (assaulted by an hysterical mob) in Midnight.

Dishonorable mentions. I also feel compelled to point out three of the most painfully memorable moments of the new series, all from Journey's End, scenes so horrible I wish I could exorcise memory of them. (1) The TARDIS towing the Earth back to orbit, (2) Donna the Time Lord, and (3) the clone of the Doctor who lives happily ever after with Rose. Excuse me, please, but what the fuck was Russell Davies thinking when he wrote the season four finale?

Post-script. It's important to bear in mind that the most memorable moments aren't necessarily from the best stories (in the classic series, we saw that a few of them are actually from horribly bad stories), though there's usually significant correlation between the two. Check out my ratings of the 44 stories of the new series. The 10 most memorable moments come from stories #3, #4, #15, #9, #15, #1, #16, #2, #14, #17.

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The 20 Most Memorable Moments in Classic Doctor Who

Recently I came across a ranking of "The Top 10 Moments in Doctor Who History", by The Big Blue Box. They are judged to be as follows:

(1) The Doctor agonizing over whether or not to wipe out the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks, (2) the fourth regeneration in Logopolis, (3) the departure of Susan in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, (4) the departure of Sarah Jane Smith in The Hand of Fear, (5) the revelation of Professor Yana as the Master in Utopia, (6) the Doctor's exile to Earth in The War Games, (7) the TARDIS towing planet Earth back to orbit in Journey's End, (8) Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars, (9) the first inside view of the TARDIS in The Unearthly Child, and (10) the departure of Rose Tyler in Doomsday.

The author of the Big Blue Box used a threefold criteria. The scenes or sequences (1) must be well done, well directed, and well acted; (2) must be well remembered and loved by fans, standing the test of time; (3) tend to set a precedent, meaning that they have strong bearing on the series going forward. The inclusion of #7 is preposterous, since it fails all three. (Everything about Journey's End is memorable, to be sure, but in a bad way.) The others are good choices, but a third of them are companion departure scenes, which really isn't representative of famous moments across a 30-year period (26 classical seasons and 4 new ones). In other words, a top-10 list is just too short to do justice to "Doctor Who History", and it's also probably a mistake to mix classic scenes with new ones since they're hard to compare.

To remedy the Big Blue Box's shortcomings, I'm doing two lists: the top 20 moments of the classic series (below), and the top 10 of the new series (next post). All of the Big Blue Box's choices find a home somewhere on my lists except #3 and #7, and my top two choices for the classics are the same as his. I use the same threefold criteria. Note that half of the classic moments are from Tom Baker stories, which isn't surprising since that was the golden age.

The 20 Most Memorable Moments in Classic Doctor Who (1963-1989)

1. "Do I Have the Right?" Genesis of the Daleks. 1975. This question has taken on mythical status among Who fans. The Doctor's refusal to commit genocide on the Daleks is his most compelling character moment of all time, and the fact that most of us disagree with his logic doesn't diminish it at all. He compares going back in time to wipe out the Daleks to murdering innocent children who become evil adults, and then points out that many future enemies will become allies on account of the Dalek menace. That's never persuaded me. As critics have pointed out, Daleks are homicidal xenophobes completely devoid of compassion and thus more like a virus than innocent children, and so the Doctor's argument is basically the same as one who refuses to prevent an outbreak of the Spanish Flu on grounds that people will bond more closely as a result. But then we're human, aren't we? A Time Lord sees things differently, especially when history would be changed so dramatically. Of course, the Doctor would gradually lose his pacifist stance toward the Daleks; by his seventh incarnation (see #4) he's turned 180 degrees.

2. The fourth regeneration. Logopolis. 1981. All regenerations are landmark moments, but the fourth encapsulates a golden age and just floors me every time I watch it. Tom Baker accommodated more change in the show's vision than any other Doctor, under Philip Hinchcliffe (three seasons of gothic horror), Graham Williams (three more of light comedy), and then John Nathan-Turner (the last and most talked about season, which reined in the comedy and grounded the stories more firmly in science). Baker's regeneration was seen by millions when it first aired, and I'll never forget the way his final whisper brought tears to my eyes: "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for". It may not have been as flashy as later regenerations, but definitely the most moving.

3. Sutekh. Pyramids of Mars. 1975. The ultimate Doctor Who villain. Devoted not to conquering others but eradicating all life everywhere. Two scenes famously convey this. One is the confrontation with Sutekh, where the Doctor is excruciatingly tortured as the god explains that what is evil to most people -- complete nihilism -- is in fact pure and good. Gabriel Woolf's voice (the same playing the voice of Satan in the new series) is immeasurably frightening, venomous, and much the way one would expect evil incarnate to sound. The second scene is the TARDIS trip to a devastated 1980, the world as Sutekh would leave it, a lifeless planet circling a dead sun. A poleaxed Sarah listens to the Doctor explain time fluxes and how the future can be shaped (over her protest that she's from 1980) until she's finally convinced they must go back and stop Sutekh in the past which has sort of become their present (since, in the new-series lingo, they've become "part of events"). Davros may be the most famous villain in the show's history, but Sutekh goes down as the most dangerous -- and damn near invincible.

4. Destroying Skaro. Remembrance of the Daleks. 1988. The Seventh Doctor comes a long way from his fourth self. Far from being squeamish about wiping out a race of xenophobic killers (see #1), he now decides that the destruction of an entire solar system is worth an attempt to cripple the Daleks. He engineers this by goading a completely insane and gibbering Davros to use the Hand of Omega. The result is the obliteration of Skaro, which not only kills many Daleks but an entire ecosystem -- and whoever else is living on the planet at the time! Two decades after this first aired, the raging debates continue. For myself, I don't have as much problem with the Doctor's moral compass here as I did in Genesis, where he was clearly hiding behind a hyper-pacifism to avoid accepting responsibility for necessary actions. At the same time, indiscriminately obliterating a solar system is a bit extreme. I'm not surprised the Ninth Doctor didn't have the balls to go through with a similar threat in The Parting of the Ways; the Seventh couldn't have slept too well after a stunt like this. But it says something about how legendary a scene is that (like #1) it continues to be a source of such endearing controversy.

5. Exiled to Earth. The War Games. 1969. Some people forget that Time Lords were unheard of until the Second Doctor's last story. When his race was finally revealed, fans supposed that his home planet was ripe for exploring, but that wasn't to be for a long time. Instead the Doctor got exiled to Earth (the Third Doctor's inheritance) for breaking laws of time, while companions Jaime and Zoe were rewarded with a memory wipe so that all their adventures with the Doctor in effect never happened. It's a tragic ending to a Herculean 10-episode story involving soldiers abducted from different historical periods and forced to fight in simulated environments. The Doctor's sentencing set a landmark precedent for the stormy relationship with his people, and there's no question it belongs in the top five.

6. Inside the Matrix. The Deadly Assassion. 1976. The end of episode two and almost all of three are ultra-famous for being set in a virtual reality (long before Keanu Reeves, thank you) in which the Doctor and Chancellor Goth engage in a drawn out battle across surreal wastelands and lethal jungles. There's almost no dialogue, just a brutally intense half hour as the Doctor struggles to survive. The cliffhanger of the Doctor's head being held under water by Goth called forth the expected outrage from Mary Whitehouse (but then what didn't in the Hinchcliffe era?). This story was critically panned back in the '70s for daring to break with so much formula, but of course it's long since become a cherished classic. The matrix scenes in particular are among the most intense memories of Doctor Who that have stayed with me since childhood, and I'd take them over the Matrix films any day.

7. Parallel UNIT. Inferno. 1970. There's not much memorable about the Pertwee era (mostly just invasion of earth stories), but the parallel earth story is a major exception, showing the Doctor trapped in a fascist version of Britain, held captive and tormented by sinister versions of his friends at UNIT. The Brigadier -- or Brigade Leader, in this alternate reality -- steals the show as a sadistic bully, and Liz Shaw's counterpart is pretty grim too. Most importantly, the parallel setting allows us to see what happens when the Doctor isn't able to save the day and the entire world burns under lava. The doom of alternate Earth offers perhaps the most relentless and dramatic sequences in the history of the show, as everyone knows they're about to die and no one can do anything about it, and the Brigade Leader tries cowardly to escape away to the Doctor's version of earth. I'm still in awe of these moments after so many years.

8. The departure of Sarah Jane Smith. The Hand of Fear. 1976. Like regenerations, departures of companions are always memorable, but Sarah's is quite special. Not only is she the favorite companion of many viewers, she seems to have been the Doctor's favorite too. As critic Paul Clarke once put it: "There's a real feel in this scene that these are two best friends who aren't going to see each other again, or at least not for a long time, and that they both find it enormously painful to part company. Tom Baker gets a remarkable amount of emotion into the Doctor's line 'Oh, Sarah... don't you forget me.'" Although Rose's departure in the new series is obviously the most emotional, Sarah's remains the most poignant, and perfectly played by Baker and Sladen. Who would have dreamed that Sarah would return decades later and reunite with the Doctor in his tenth incarnation?

9. The "Great Healer". Revelation of the Daleks. 1985. Here's Davros at his most cunning and sadistic, presiding over a mortuary planet as "The Great Healer", hailed as a savior for providing starving planets with a synthetic protein, which in actuality is human leftovers from the breeding of his new Imperial Dalek army. His confrontation with the Doctor is priceless, as he justifies two things as if they were purely practical solutions, but with an undercurrent of sadistic glee: (1) making Daleks out of the planet's citizens, since as people of power and ambition they would realize they are better off as the master race than left to rot, and (2) feeding other planets on the protein from their own dead -- keeping the masses ignorant of what they're really eating, of course, for fear of "consumer resistance". But even before this is more general sadistic behavior, as he watches over the mortuary via dozens of cameras, yelling orders, manipulating people, setting them against each other, having them exterminated, bellowing insane laughter... "The Great Healer" is Davros at his most morbid, and his greatest character moment since Genesis.

10. The "homo sapiens" speech. The Ark in Space. 1975. This famous speech comes in Tom Baker's first impressive story, as he surveys a cryogenic chamber filled with frozen survivors of a society thousands of years in the future. "Homo sapiens! What an inventive, invincible species. It's only been a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenseless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable... indomitable." The monologue is fascinating in light of what follows, as we learn that these people are fascist elites, questioning Sarah's value, ready to kill the Doctor and Harry as outside inferiors. Yet the Doctor sides with them anyway against the insect Wirrn, who have clearly been wronged by humanity in the past. As the Doctor later says, "It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favorite species". Another one of those compelling character moments that makes the Time Lord hard to pin down.

11. Trying to kill Peri. The Twin Dilemma. 1984. One of the worst Doctor Who stories of all time contains one of the most thrilling scenes, as a newly regenerated Sixth Doctor tries to strangle his own TARDIS companion. This caused a mighty uproar when first seen, but Colin Baker has been way too unfairly maligned. He got only two good stories (Vengeance on Varos and Revelation of the Daleks), was saddled with the worst companion ever (Peri Brown), and the BBC changed the show's time slot so that ratings suffered. But Baker's acting was just fine, and I love what he brought to his Doctor: an anti-hero full of bombastic arrogance, violence, and dark impulses; the complete opposite of Peter Davison's youthful innocent figure. Every Doctor coped with regeneration differently. The third lay in a coma, the fourth became hypomanic, the fifth suffered split personality... and the sixth, best of all, went homicidal.

12. Doctor Sherlock, Professor Lightfoot, & Henry Gordon Jago. The Talons of Weng-Chiang. 1977. From the best Doctor Who story of all time come the most memorable guest characters, and indeed the Doctor himself who assumes the role and appearance of a Sherlock Holmes figure in Victorian London. Think of scenes like the Doctor up in the theater box, telling a squatting terrified Jago (played brilliantly by Christopher Benjamin) that he really doesn't have the place surrounded with "his police" because he knows he can rely on Jago alone to help him. Or when Leela shows Lightfoot how to "properly" eat a turkey sans silverware. Or when the Doctor strides into the police station, making rude demands and assuming control of Chang's interrogation. Or when Jago and Lightfoot take it on themselves to rescue the Doctor, only to fall immediately into the clutches of Magnus Greel. Character moments have never been so priceless as in Talons.

13. The fifth regeneration. The Caves of Androzani. 1984. Many believe that Peter Davison got the best regeneration of all time, but while I agree it's the most dramatic it doesn't have the soul or dignity of Tom Baker's (#2). Davison had the luxury of going out as strong as possible, in what is universally hailed as the best story from his period, and his regeneration is the culmination of all that suspense and adrenaline rush. Best of all is the fact that the new (Sixth) Doctor gets in some beautiful lines at the end, when Peri asks, "What's going on?" The cold reply: "Change, my dear. And it would seem not a moment too soon." Poor Peri would get quite a change indeed when this arrogant incarnation went berserk and tried to kill her (#11).

14. The other side of the mirror. Warriors' Gate. 1981. "Do nothing. It is done." That's Biroc's wisdom for you, but few understand it. The Tharils exist in alternate timelines and are thus able to make choices which essentially take care of themselves, and this makes the Doctor amusingly unnecessary. Unable to solve any crisis or liberate the Tharils from slavery (Biroc does that himself), he spends most of the story just chasing after Biroc, until he ends up on other side of the mirror-gateway -- in the same banquet hall he just left, but in the past when the Tharils were kings and contemptuously enslaved humans. Just as we think this is where the Doctor will put something to right -- telling Biroc that the way forward is not to restore his race to a time when they practiced the very evil they're now trying to escape -- we eventually learn that Biroc is already repentant but undeterred from the path he's chosen. Which is exactly the point. The Doctor does absolutely "nothing" to make a difference in this story, for he can't. Interrupting the table-talk comes the smashing cliffhanger everyone loves: the Gundan robots suddenly burst into the hall with axes raised, and the Tharils scatter while the Doctor remains seated; an axe thuds into the table right in front of him, time shifts with an immense rushing sound, and he finds himself in the present surrounded by Rorvick's hostile crew: "Well Doctor, this is a surprise!" It all adds up to what I consider the most transcendent moment of the classic era.

15. First inside view of the TARDIS. An Unearthly Child. 1963. In terms of precedent, this scene from the very first Doctor Who story trumps everything else: the reaction of new companions to the TARDIS. Ian and Barbara marvel, as will all future companions, how the box can be bigger on the inside, and I always get a chortle out of the Doctor's rude retort that they don't deserve an explanation. (I wish David Tennant had done that more in the new series.) I should note that I was sorely tempted to supplant this scene with the one from Robots of Death, where the Doctor holds a small box in front of Leela and tells her that it looks bigger than a larger box that's further away. "If you could keep the larger box that distance away and have it here at the same time, it would fit inside the smaller one." Leela: "That's silly." The Doctor: "That's transdimensional engineering." But Tom Baker is getting enough play on this list.

16. The Krynoid. The Seeds of Doom. 1976. Professor Keeler's transformation into a galactic weed is so disturbing that parents complained about it, let alone Mary Whitehouse. To me the Krynoid remains the most horrific Doctor Who creature in terms of appearance, especially in the interim period as the host is being taken over. Even as a veteran horror fan I find the moment of captivity hideous -- Keeler strapped in bed, gangrenous and disgusting, pitifully begging for help, going ravenously hungry at the sight of meat, until he finally bursts his restraints and goes on a killing rampage across the Chase estate, now a tentacled mass growing to the size of a mansion. Harrison Chase himself can't go unmentioned here, the millionaire and botanist who wants plants to take over the world. His zealous fascination with Keeler/the Krynoid quickly becomes worship as he declares war on the entire animal kingdom. Yes, the Krynoid can give one nightmares, and not just children.

17. Adric's sacrifice. Earthshock. 1982. Killing off a TARDIS companion took balls (Russell Davies should have taken a lesson from this in Journey's End), and Adric's suicide mission is very effective: breaking the Cybermen's control of the space freighter, causing it to spiral back in time, saving the earth and ensuring humanity's future. While one might cynically argue that Adric was killed off precisely because he annoyed so many fans, I feel differently, and find it fascinating that the new series did something similar with the irritating character of Mickey Smith -- and again in a Cybermen story. Up until The Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel I hated Mickey far more than I ever did Adric, but Mickey's decision to depart and remain behind in the parallel world was so moving that it justified his existence. Adric's sacrifice is also moving, and the silent end credits to Earthshock are a respectful homage to this youth who may not have been played by the greatest actor, but had his moments just the same.

18. Chess with Fenric. The Curse of Fenric. 1989. From a story so loved it was made into a feature-length film, comes a showdown between the Doctor and a Norse god in, of all things, a game of chess. Seventeen centuries before Fenric had failed the Doctor's challenge and now demands another try, with the end game set up exactly as before. The Doctor had assured him that with a single move he could win, but it turns out the winning move is preposterously illegal: the white and black pawns join forces. The literal chess game, of course, mirrors the metaphorical one going on in the story, as Fenric has been manipulating British and Soviet pawns to break his chains so he can bring about the Norse apocalypse. But this time he figures out the solution to the Doctor's riddle, which prompts the last-ditch psychic duel in which the Doctor has to put Ace through emotional hell. I love this manipulative Seventh Doctor, who is not only destructive (see #4) but cheats and abuses his friends to defeat enemies.

19. The third regeneration. Planet of the Spiders. 1974. As much I hate the Pertwee period for recycling the same earthbound story over and over again, there's no denying Jon Pertwee was a wonderful Doctor -- in my view the fourth best after Tom Baker, David Tennant, and Sylvester McCoy. He was a rather traditional hero and James Bondish, so I'm surprised I warm to him at all, but he sure had charisma. All the stories in his last season were lousy, but he went out movingly with Sarah by his side. After five seasons, he would be missed... though not for long with Tom Baker taking over.

20. The Key to Time. The Armageddon Factor. 1979. The Key to Time epic spanned an entire season, arguably the first major attempt to involve story arcs in Doctor Who. They weren't the strongest stories, but two scenes in the final one deserve a spot here. The first is when the Doctor uses the key to stop time in a localized field, thus preventing a battleship from destroying an enemy planet. But only temporarily, because the sixth segment of the key is a make-shift piece fabricated by the Doctor, which ups the tension dramatically as the search for the real sixth piece continues. The second is the confrontation with the Black Guardian through the TARDIS window, as the Doctor decides the Key is too much power for anyone, and so scatters the key fragments across the universe -- after having gone through so much trouble (a season's worth of stories) to obtain them -- which sends the Black Guardian into a towering fury. This set the precedent for the Doctor's use of the Randomizer when traveling so as to avoid being hounded by the Black Guardian (who would nonetheless come back to haunt in the Davison period). The Key to Time ended up being a waste of time, but it sure was fun getting there.

In the next post, I'll list my 10 choices for the new series.

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The Dishonest Scrap Meme

Doug Chaplin has tagged me in a meme apparently started by James McGrath. The rules?

"You post five things about yourself. Four are untrue. One is true. All are so outlandish, implausible or ridiculous that no one would be inclined to believe that any of them are true. And despite the pleas from your readers, you never divulge which is true and which are fabrications. You then tag five other people (four seriously and one person you are pretty sure would never participate)."

Here goes:

(1) I'm a scaly creature who needs to bask in sunlight in order to pass as a human being, but too much sunlight poisons me.
(2) I had lunch with Anthony Hopkins and ordered liver with fava beans to celebrate.
(3) I know who NT Wrong is and sent him a Valentine six months ago.
(4) I've engaged in threesomes, rape role-playing, and fisting.
(5) I decided to invert the meme and tell four things true and one thing false.

And sorry, but I can't bring myself to tag anyone for this beastie. But knock yourself out if you wish!

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The Ineffectual Ninth Doctor

I'm watching the four seasons of New Doctor Who (for what must be collectively my third time), and find myself appreciating the Ninth Doctor more than before. Frankly I'd never been wild about Eccleston's performance. His gurning still makes me want to rip his face off, and his acting often comes across forced and stilted. His minimalist wardrobe mirrors a hollow soul, at least until we probe more deeply. He never really seemed like a fair representation of our Time Lord hero (even if he gets plenty of good stories), though now I'm seeing that a lot of awkwardness behind the character is much to the point, and in a good way.

Eccleston's Doctor is of course the most damaged of all the incarnations, an immediate product of the Time War. He's prone to depression and fits of rage, juxtaposed with manic goofiness. He's astonishingly judgmental (like anyone who has serious faults), as we see in his treatment of TARDIS companions like Rose and Adam. Only the Sixth Doctor (played by Colin Baker) surpasses the Ninth in terms of arrogance and violent tendencies. But most noteworthy is his ineffectuality, which I'm finding increasingly compelling... and vastly amusing. The Ninth Doctor saves the day only 30% of the time (in contrast to the 90-99% of all other incarnations), almost wearing his incompetence like a badge of honor. This is the Last of the Time Lords as we might well expect, isolated and alone in the universe, unsure how to fit in, paralyzed by indecision, weighed down by the colossal failure of his people -- and himself -- unable or afraid to rise to the occasion.

It's worth going through the seven stories where he has to rely on someone else to put things to right. In Rose he bumbles around with the Nestene Consciousness until Rose pulls off an acrobatic rescue. In The Unquiet Dead he stands by hopelessly expecting to die, as Charles Dickens figures out how to liberate the possessed corpses (contrast with season three's Shakespeare Code, where Shakespeare saves the day only by doing as the Doctor instructs), and then as Gwyneth sacrifices herself to destroy the gaseous creatures. In Dalek, it's ironically the Dalek itself which is the hero, ordering Rose to command it to exterminate itself, as an enraged Doctor looks on, barely able to stifle his murderous impulses. In The Long Game, Cathica saves the day as the Doctor and Rose are interrogated as captives. In Father's Day, Pete Tyler saves the world by sacrificing himself after the Doctor is obliterated by a Reaper. In Boom Town the TARDIS saves everyone, by surprise and completely without the Doctor's engineering. Finally, in Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways, Rose rescues the Earth from Dalek-extermination, when the Doctor admits he doesn't have the balls to follow through with his own plan. Only in the other three stories -- The End of the World, Aliens of London/World War III, and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances -- do we get a proactive Ninth Doctor who saves people, either directly or by proxy.

Now again, this isn't a complaint. As I'm warming to more and more, the ineffectuality of the Ninth Doctor is precisely what makes him such an interesting character. Because he's a suffering loner, he loses not only his moral compass (witness especially Dalek), but his ability to act heroically. And that's precisely the rut which the Tenth Doctor climbs out of in seasons 2-4. Tennant's Doctor becomes the most domesticated of the incarnations, bonding with humanity more than ever before, and back on track with his usual heroics. With hindsight and repeated viewings, I see that the single-season Eccleston sets the stage wonderfully for a triple-season Tennant.

For reference purposes, here are the stories from the four seasons showing who "saves the day" in each. Eccleston's Doctor has a 30% success story (3 out of 10), while Tennant's has 90% (29 out of 32). Naturally, the stories in which the Doctor is the ultimate hero can involve the proactive help of others too. (Martha in Family of Blood and Last of the Time Lords are big examples of this.)

The Ninth Doctor (30%)

Rose -- Rose
The End of the World -- The Doctor
The Unquiet Dead -- Charles Dickens & Gwyneth
Aliens of London/World War III -- The Doctor (through Mickey)
Dalek -- Rose & The Dalek
The Long Game -- Cathica
Father's Day -- Pete Tyler
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances -- The Doctor
Boom Town -- The TARDIS
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways -- Rose

The Tenth Doctor (90%)

The Christmas Invasion - The Doctor
New Earth -- The Doctor
Tooth and Claw -- The Doctor
School Reunion -- The Doctor
The Girl in the Fireplace -- The Doctor
The Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel -- The Doctor (through Mickey)
The Idiot's Lantern -- The Doctor
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit -- The Doctor
Love and Monsters -- The Doctor
Fear Her -- Rose
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday -- The Doctor

The Runaway Bride -- The Doctor
Smith and Jones -- The Doctor
The Shakespeare Code -- The Doctor (through Shakespeare)
Gridlock -- The Doctor
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks -- The Doctor
The Lazarus Experiment -- The Doctor
42 -- The Doctor (through Martha)
Human Nature/Family of Blood -- The Doctor
Blink -- The Doctor
Utopia/The Sound Drums/Last of the Time Lords -- The Doctor

The Voyage of the Damned -- The Doctor
Partners in Crime -- The Doctor
The Fires of Pompeii -- The Doctor
Planet of the Ood -- The Doctor
The Sontaran Stratagem/Poison Sky -- The Doctor
The Doctor's Daughter -- The Doctor
The Unicorn and the Wasp -- The Doctor
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead -- The Doctor
Midnight -- Hostess (unnamed)
Turn Left -- Donna
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End -- The Doctor

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