On Thursday, March 26, the new Doctor Who series hit it’s 10 anniversary. I know it all ties together with the old, but it is pretty impressive that not only were they able to bring Doctor Who back from the dead, they were able to turn it into a worldwide phenomenon. It is huge today, and not just in the niche culture, it is spreading throughout mainstream culture as well.
Since the year makes the 10th anniversary of the re-boot, I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the favorite episodes of each Doctor so far. I also thought it would be fun to get your input as well. I opened this up last week to my Facebook followers. I asked them to let me know their favorite episode for each of the new Doctor-9-12. It was pretty interesting to see the results. Let me break them down by individual Doctor and his results.
The 9th Doctor
This one was almost unanimous. By far the favorite episode was “The Empty Child,” which didn’t surprise me all that much. That is my personal favorite from this season as well. I am assuming most people meant both “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances,” as they are just two parts of the same story. There was only one other vote for a different episode. That episode was “The Parting of the Ways.” I think there were a couple of things that contribute to this result. I think the two biggest factors is the fact the 9’s time was so short and the series was still new so everyone was getting their feet wet. Whatever the reason, Empty Child is an overwhelming favorite from 9’s time.
The 10th Doctor
it was the exact opposite for 10. There were quite a few episodes mentioned, and none of them had a huge number of votes. Surprisingly, “Blink” was not the number 1. Instead, it was “The Girl in the Fireplace,” by 1 vote. There were a total of 8 episodes mentioned for 10, as wells as quite a few people saying they couldn’t pick one. Interesting the difference between our shortest tenured Doctor and our longest.
The 11th Doctor
There were only a couple of repeats for number 11 in the voting. One was “Vincent and the Doctor,” a personal favorite, and the other was “Christmas Carol,” the rest was a wide variety, but almost all of them were feel good episodes. Apparently, 11 was our feel good Doctor. Which just seems to fit with his goofy, yet lovable personality. He was always looking for a happy ending, it seemed like, and more often than not, his episodes ended that way.
The 12th Doctor
We had quite a variety for our newest Doctor, which I found surprising, just because there were only 12 or so episodes to choose from, yet 5 were mentioned. That’s pretty interesting. 3 had multiple votes, including “Robot of Sherwood,” “Death in Heaven,” and our frontrunner, “Flatline.” I was surprised that Robot and Heaven had multiple votes, since I didn’t care for either one the first time around. It will be interesting for me to see what i think when I watch them again.
“The Day of the Doctor” also got some mentions, but I didn’t count it with any one Doctor since there were 3 Doctors in it, primarily (13 all together). This was a great special, and I still felt like I wanted to revisit it with the rest of the episodes mentioned by the readers.
So what happens next? Well, starting next week, I will begin reviewing each of these episodes as I revisit them, meaning I will watch them again. i think it will be a fun way to pass the time between now and when new Doctor Who episodes will be starting again. I will let everyone know which ones I will be reviewing each week so you can follow along at home, if you’d like. I think it will be loads of fun. The first one we will be revisiting will be “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.” That review should be published next Wednesday.
Please let me know as we go if there are any favorites you want added to the list, and I will be sure to add them.
