Thursday, March 18, 2010

My Top 50 Doctor Who Stories Part 5

Halfway point now.

26: Ghost Light (7th Doctor)

One of the big themes with the 7th Doctor was that he was a manipulative so and so and he certainly had no problem in being a little underhanded when getting Ace to face up to things. Like bringing her to Perivale to the house she burned a hundred years before she did it and doing battle with Light. Oh and doesn't Sophie Aldred look gorgeous in this one?

27: Utopia/The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords (10th Doctor)

The first time the Master surfaces in the new series and it's a hit and miss affair. On one hand, both Derek Jacobi (briefly) and John Simm are delightful in the role and play off David Tennant brilliant (oh the slash, people) but we could've done without the excess use of flashbacks and the Doctor being old and a crappy woodland creature for the majority of the third act. Still the emotional moments between Doctor/Master outweight that stuff.

28: Robot (4th Doctor)

In a lot of ways, this is a perfect story for a Doctor to open with. It's fairly light weight and uncomplicated (bunch of Think Tank using a robot for nefarious purposes) but nicely gets audiences used to a new Doctor and we got another companion with the brilliant Harry Sullivan. Plus, it's hard not to love Tom Baker upon his debut here.

29: Remembrance Of The Daleks (7th Doctor)

An odd story but a goodie, though Davros seemed bloody shoehorned in at the end of the fourth episode of it. He should've appeared earlier. I liked the Daleks in this one, the various past references, Ace's disgust to some of the bigotry overtones in the story and of course, seeing her beating the shit out of a Dalek with a baseball bat never fails to amuse.

30: The Movie (8th Doctor)

As far as I'm concerned, this movie gets too much of a bad wrap. Paul McGann is brilliant as the Doctor, even Eric Roberts gets better as the Master when watching it, Grace is a good companion, the central plot is fine and some of the cheesy moments are no worse than some of the stuff we've seen in the new series.

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