Some more Doctor Who blogging. I promise I’ll be mercifully short.
Day 4: Favorite Villain
There were so many good ones from both the new and the old series: the Master, of course. The Valeyard, Tobias Vaughn, Davros, Fenric. And if we fold in monsters, you’ve got the Daleks, the Vashta Nerada, the Cybermen and the Weeping Angels. I would say that the old series was a little better at villains, per se, since it had more time for them to develop into full characters.
But I’ll go with something off the wall here: Sutekh. Sutekh was one of the few villains who I found frightening. The idea that a being so powerful could be unleashed and cause such immediate and awesome destruction was deeply disturbing. Sutekh was incredibly intelligent, vicious and brutal, threatening to torture the Doctor for centuries for destroying his ship. He’s the one villain that, had he gotten free, would have been unstoppable. Gabriel Woolf was so effective of the voice of evil that they brought him back to voice the Beast in the new series.
With the new series, I’ll go with Davros. But the Weeping Angels taken a close second.
Day 5: Favorite Aliens
I’d go with the Silurians but they’re not really aliens, are they? And you could go with the Doctor, but that’s not really the point. And I’m guessing this is different from the villains/monsters I listed above. This is supposed to be something friendly?
So if we’re going with friendly extraterrestrials who are not the Doctor, I’ll go with the Draconians. They only made one appearance but I found them fascinating. If we confine ourselves to the new series, I’ll go with the Ood.
Day 6: Favorite Special Episode
This mainly applies to the new series — The Five Doctors was the only special in the old one. I’m going to go with Christmas Carol which I found to be far less over-the-top than Russel T. Davies’ last few overwrought episodes. It could be watched by someone only vaguely familiar with Who, it played wonderfully on the original story and featured a great performance from Michael Gambon.
Day 7: Favorite Season
I’m going to go with Season 13 from the old series. It featured the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane, the best combination in Who history. And the episodes: Terror of the Zygons, Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion, Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom were excellent. This was back when Doctor Who was determined to scare the crap out of its viewers.
For the new series, I’d probably go with Season 6. You know it’s a good season when, arguably, the two best episodes weren’t written by Moffat.
Honorably mentions go to classic Seasons 8 (The Master and UNIT at their best), Season 14, Season 15 (which has some bad episodes but was special to me), Season 21 (except for The Twin Dilemma), Trial of Timelord and Season 25.
Day 8: Least Favorite Season.
For the old series? Season 24 was pretty bad apart from Dragonfire. For the new series, the four specials that ended Tennant’s tenure were pretty poor, especially the deeply unapproachable End of Time. Season 1 of the new series was probably the worst simply because the show was still finding itself and was a bit uneven. But really, there haven’t been too many bad series in Doctor Who’s history.