Top 10 Underrated Doctor Who Stories

Over the years, there have been almost 250 Doctor Who stories. Some are extremely popular, some are extremely unpopular and some are just ignored by most people. So, let's take a look at what I believe to be Doctor Who's most underrated!

#10. Shada

I suspect this fantastic Douglas Adams story about a lost Time Lord prison would have been just as popular as, say, City of Death had it not been cancelled. It's a brilliant story and has luckily been finished in more ways than one: a DVD release with linking narration by Tom Baker, an Eighth Doctor webcast and an extended audio version of the webcast. Shada is a great story and I highly recommend watching (or listening to) it in any of the three ways.

#9. Love & Monsters

The first of the Doctor-lite episodes, and the only one that everybody seems to hate. As I said in my review, I think it's an interesting story - FAR from brilliant, but it's very interesting to see what people who want to learn more about the Doctor get up to. I think LINDA was a great idea and I'd love to see the group again with new members, provided it didn't shut down after losing all it's members except Elton and, if you count paving stones, Ursula. The two major problems I have with Love & Monsters are, of course, the Abzorbaloff and the terrible joke at the end. I honestly enjoyed the first three quarters of the episode but the final quarter? Not so much.

#8. Boom Town

Another episode that gets a lot of hate. It's not amazing but it's got some classic scenes (It was a VERY icy patch and The Doctor and the Slitheen in the restaurant.) There's next to no farting in Boom Town (unlike the previous Slitheen episodes) which makes the Slitheen who stole Margaret Blaine's skin (Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen) seem much more menacing. Actually, I even felt sorry for her in the bathroom scene at the beginning!

#7. The Doctor's Daughter

I think the reason this generally gets overlooked is because Series 4 was generally of very high quality while this episode was just "okay". It was great to see Martha in the TARDIS again and it helps that The Doctor's daughter really is Peter Davison's daughter! The Hath are very likeable villains and the episode was an interesting idea overall.

#6. Meglos

Yeah, it's... About a... Talking cactus called Meglos. It's certainly not the best Tom Baker story but it's very underrated. It's alright and not as bad as everybody seems to think. Other than that, I don't have much to say about it.

#5. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Honestly, this is one of my all-time favourite stories and those with coulrophobia will probably be watching it from behind their sofas. I think the Psychic Circus was a fantastic idea and as bad as you may think it was, I really liked the Psychic Circus rap. It's full of wonderful characters such as Captain Cook, Mags (who really is an interesting specimen), Nord and the galaxy's biggest Psychic Circus fan - Whizz Kid. Stephen Wyatt did a brilliant job as did Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. Criminally underrated!

#4. Voyage of the Damned

As most of us know, Christmas specials are usually nothing amazing. Voyage of the Damned isn't either, but it's certainly better than most with lines like "I'm The Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 903 years old and I'm the man who's gonna save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?" and "Human beings worship the great god Santa. A creature with fearsome claws." As much as I love Donna, I would have liked to see Astrid, Mr. Copper or even both as the Series 4 companions. I certainly recommend giving it a watch, because my name is Max. Actually it's not but I had to say that!

#3. Attack of the Cybermen

Another one of my all-time favourites. Most people seem to hate it but I just can't figure out why. Lytton returns and is helping the Cryons this time, the Cybermen are brilliant, it's an extremely violent episode (which is not a bad thing at all) and it's got a fantastic ending with The Doctor realising just how badly he misjudged Lytton. Seriously Paula Moore, you did a great job with this.

#2. Doctor Who: The Movie

My big question about the 1996 TV Movie starring Paul McGann is what the hell am I supposed to call it? Doctor Who? The TV Movie? Just The Movie? The Enemy Within? Well, the Revisitations 1 DVD box set refers to it as Doctor Who: The Movie so that's what I'm going to call it. Alright, this is another story that everybody seems to hate and I don't blame them for it to be honest - Eric Roberts as The Master, The Doctor claiming to be half human, it was way too Americanized, etc. While it's probably the most flawed TV stories in the show's history, I did find it rather enjoyable, mainly due to the excellent Paul McGann. Oh, and it was good to see jelly babies again and it had some funny moments but a couple of good things don't guarantee a good story!

#1. The Sun Makers

One of my top ten stories of all time. It's extremely overlooked. It's written by my favourite writer (Robert Holmes), it's funny, it's clever... It's just brilliant. The Doctor finally starts to like K9, episode 3 has a great cliffhanger and the scenes with The Doctor in the Correction Centre with Bisham were just brilliant. Hade was a great character too. I don't think it's everyone's thing but I certainly enjoyed it.

Honourable Mentions:
The Gunfighters
The Krotons 
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
The Creature from the Pit
Resurrection of the Daleks
The Mark of the Rani
Dragonfire
Aliens of London / World War Three
42
The Lodger 

This is all just my opinion so feel free to disagree... I'd love to know which stories you consider to be the most underrated!

Lost William Hartnell Interview Rediscovered!

The BBFC's classifications have revealed that the upcoming DVD release of The Tenth Planet will, thanks to Richard Bignell, feature something just as exciting as the animated episode four: a previously lost 1967 interview with William Hartnell himself with both video and audio!

Remember, the DVD will be released on 18th November and is definitely worth pre-ordering!

Source: Doctor Who News

Classic Doctor Who TV Hour-ish: Pyramids of Mars, or Does Everyone Think Egyptian Gods Were Ancient Aliens?

"Your evil is my good. I am Sutekh the Destroyer. Where I tread
I leave nothing but dust & darkness. I find that good."

     While the Doctor is waxing morose over his current involvement with UNIT, something forces the TARDIS out of its flight path & causes Sarah Jane to witness a jackal-faced apparition in the console room. Following its energy source, the Doctor & Sarah Jane find themselves in 1911 England at a former priory occupying the spot where UNIT HQ will one day reside. There they discover that Professor Marcus Scarman, while on an expedition in Egypt, accidentally stumbled upon the imprisoning tomb of Sutekh the Destroyer, the last of an ancient & incredibly powerful alien race known as the "Osirians", better known to humans as the ancient Egyptian gods. A crazed super-being who shunned his brother Horus' view that all species can co-exist together because he feared that one day his own apparent superiority might be challenged, Sutekh became the destroyer of all forms of life across the universes. His entombment by the Eye of Horus took the strength of 740 Osirians, including his own brother, and now all that stands between his evil machinations & long-sought-after freedom is The Doctor & Sarah Jane.
     The third serial of series 13, broadcast in four weekly parts between October 25th & November 15th 1975, Pyramids of Mars is commonly held up as one of the best classic era stories & it's easy to see why with its rather excellent production quality, steady pace of a solid adventure story & a truly chilling villain. In a 2010 io9 article, the cliffhanger in episode 3 was rated among the greatest Doctor Who cliffhangers of all time (new series included).
    Its increasingly more interesting to see earlier regenerations of the Doctor come up against villains who have strong genocidal tendencies considering what actions lie in the Doctor's own future. Its add a new depth to the NuWho series, especially the Steven Moffat era's central focus on the Doctor facing the consequences of the choices he has made in his lives. In The Dark Knight, we hear the statement "Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Watching thru classic Who is watching the Doctor constantly & progressively more easily break the rules of time put in place by his own people, knowing that the day will come when the Doctor will cross the line far too easily with shocking results.
      I loved Pyramids of Mars, and not just in that casual way one tends to love any aspect of a larger adoration. Sutekh the Destroyer was a deliciously evil one-off TV villain (he appeared later in a couple Magic Bullet Productions audio dramas) of the sort that the new series desperately needs to bring back into circulation, although a return of Sutekh himself seems unlikely. It would be, however, one epic confrontation.

Featured Villain: Sisters Of Plenitude

The Sisters of Plenitude were a sisterhood of humanoid cats who appeared in New Earth. One of the Sisters (Novice Hame) also appeared in Gridlock.

The sisterhood did terrible things like... Help the sick... But at least one group of them got the cures for just about every disease through the means of infecting human clones with every known disease in the world for research reasons. They were later arrested by the NNYPD for this. The Sisters worshiped a goddess called Santori but next to nothing is known about her.

In Gridlock (set thirty years after New Earth), it was revealed that a virus called Bliss had killed the New Earth Senate along with the majority of the planet's population in seven minutes flat. Fortunately, Novice Hame (who had changed her ways) was saved by the Face of Boe's smoke. She succeeded in helping the Face of Boe seal off the undercity in order to save those who were on the motorway and the streets.

Featured Scene:

Doctor Who: The Light At The End - Limited Edition Vinyl Release

Big Finish and the Doctor Who Facebook page have revealed a cover for a limited edition vinyl release of the 50th anniversary audio The Light at the End starring Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann.

Big Finish's sypnosis:

"November 23rd 1963 proves to be a significant day in the lives of all eight Doctors…
It's the day that Bob Dovie's life is ripped apart…
It's also a day that sets in motion a catastrophic chain of events which forces the first eight incarnations of the Doctor to fight for their very existence. As a mysterious, insidious chaos unfolds within the TARDIS, the barriers of time break apart…
From suburban England through war-torn alien landscapes and into a deadly, artificial dimension, all these Doctors and their companions must struggle against the power of an unfathomable, alien technology.
From the very beginning, it is clear that the Master is somehow involved. By the end, for the Doctors, there may only be darkness."

The vinyl release is a 4-disc set in deluxe premium packaging which includes a stunning array of professional photos of the cast.

Features:
Discs 1, 2 and 3 – The Light at the End
Disc 4 – The Making of The Light at the End (approx 40-minute documentary exclusive to this release)
All discs on heavy 180g vinyl
Limited and numbered to 500
Includes an exclusive 30cm x 30cm lenticular image.
Four-way gatefold sleeve
Rigid slipcase

This audio will be released in November.

Pre-order the limited edition vinyl release here for £99.99.
Pre-order the limited collector's edition release here for £25 download or £40 CD.
Pre-order the standard edition release here for £12.99 download or £14.99 CD.

Featured Villain: Cybermen

The Cybermen are some of Doctor Who's most iconic villains. They first appeared in the First Doctor's final story - The Tenth Planet and they have since appeared in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Wheel in Space, The Invasion, Revenge of the Cybermen, Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Attack of the Cybermen, Silver Nemesis, Rise of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts, Doomsday, The Next Doctor, The Pandorica Opens, A Good Man Goes to War, Closing Time, Nightmare in Silver, the Torchwood episode Cyberwoman and multiple appearances in books, audios, etc. Basically, they've appeared a lot and are fan-favourite villains.

They are humanoids and before they were upgraded, they were actual humans (or atleast very similar to humans). There have been two types of Cybermen - Mondasian Cybermen which are upgraded humans (or humanoids) that originated on the planet Mondas and Cybus Cybermen made by John Lumic on a parallel Earth (although there may be a third type as we don't know which type the Cybermen that appeared in Series 6 and 7 were).

They sometimes use rodent-like cyborgs called Cybermats as guards, plague carriers or energy thieves. These have appeared in The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Wheel in Space, Revenge of the Cybermen and Closing Time. Something called a Cybermite which is basically an upgraded Cybermat appeared in Nightmare in Silver.

They have have no emotions and they view them as a weakness. They turn humans into Cybermen with a process called Cyber conversion (referred to simply as "upgrading" by the Cybus Cybermen.)

Featured Scene:

Classic Era Doctor Who TV Hour-ish: Planet Of Evil, or The Strange Case of the Doctor & Mr Antiman

The Fourth Doctor & Sarah Jane on Zeta Minor.

     The Doctor & Sarah Jane, emerging from the time vortex 30,000 years too late on their way to London from Loch Ness (the scene for the previous serial, The Terror of the Zygons, also the last serial to feature the eponymous aliens, set to appear in the upcoming 50th anniversary), answer a distress call that take them to the planet Zeta Minor, the planet farthest out in the known universe.
     There they encounter a creature of pure energy that has attacked a Morestran geological expedition attempting to remove samples from a pit serving as a link to the creature's own universe, a universe comprised entirely of antimatter. The TARDIS duo also find themselves at odds with a Morestran military crew that arrived at the same time to investigate the distress call, as well as fighting the only survivor of the expedition, a Professor Sorenson, who becomes infected by the antimatter & morphs into a deformed monster that can drain the life from others.
     This Fourth Doctor serial, the second of the 13th series, was deliberately conceived as a Doctor Who-brew of Forbidden Planet and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. It was originally broadcast in four 25-minute weekly parts between September 27th & October 18th, 1975.
     I'd rate Planet of Evil as a 7 out of 10, based on a completely arbitrary & utterly meaningless scale & criteria, 88% (another random) of which I forgot milliseconds before I made it up. It elegantly exhibits the "Three E's": Engaging. Exciting. And Egads, Cheap SFX!! I love the Red Outline Creatures that end up wandering the ship & the Jetsons-like roundness of the Morestran's blue & white military uniforms. Tom Baker & Elisabeth Sladen are both in solid form & its not-so-surprisingly obvious why their era is often considered the epitome of the classic series & most probably Doctor Who as a whole. In other words, speaking with no authority in or even knowledge of what to call the particular area of study required to mathematically make such a claim, there's a pretty good chance Planet of Evil is more satisfying than what you're watching now. Unless you're watching Game of Thrones. In that case, you should go ahead & finish whatever season you're on first. Trust me. Then Planet of Evil, then eight other random serials.