The Christmas episodes have become a annual even since the show returned in 2005. And there are 2….3? Great episodes of them
First is A Christmas Carol, a sci fi spin on Charles Dickens’ classic story (which is, sort of sci fi in itself with the time traveling with the ghosts and Scrooge)
(And let’s not forget a earlier episode that took place on Christmas, with Dickens, and ghosts, although it did not air on Christmas: The Unquiet Dead.)
Another favorite Christmas episode is The Husbands of River Song.
This one was a lot of fun, Madcap-y, slapstick-y, with some dark overtones, and an introduction to a new character (Nardole).
One of the best scenes is below, when River doesn’t know that she is with the Doctor (she knew all the previous incarnations of the Doctor, except the current one). So the Doctor sort of plays along with it, but constantly drops hints. Which brings about the below:
I ma not one for romantic movies or romance novels, but even I was kind of hoping they would kiss at the end. It was so sweet!
And the other great Christmas episode was the 2016 Return of Doctor Mysterio (this followed exactly a year of no Who. that was a difficult year, in more ways than one). If you have seen the 1979 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, the setting and certain scenes will look very familiar. While I am not really into the current super hero movies, I loved the 1979 Superman movie when I was a kid. So seeing this was a pure delight.
Below is shortly after we meet young Grant, who loves comic books
And the ending was a call back to Husbands of River Song and 12’s short speech about things ending was very touching.
A couple weeks after this episode aired, Peter Capaldi announced that the following series would be his last. And a bunch of us cried over that, and referred back to this speech.
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Cybermen Story
This is another really difficult one. There’s 26 years of Classic Who, and 13 (and counting!) of New Who. So yes, there’s going to be another tie! Several ties! Each one in a shape of a bow. Because ‘bow ties are cool!”
“Hate is always foolish, and love is always wise”
“Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up, never give in.”
“We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”
The Doctor: “But I don’t exist in your world!”
Brigade Leader: “Then you won’t feel the bullets when we shoot you.”
“Chap with wings there, five rounds, rapid!”
“Splendid chaps. All of them”
Watch Mojo UK put together a pretty good top ten earlier this year that bring out a lot of really good ones, and a couple I hadn’t thought of:
And here’s one that a fan put together.
There is the one by Steven Moffat about the Doctor:
“Heroes are important. Heroes tell us who we want to be but when they made this particular hero they didn’t give him a gun, they gave him a screwdriver to fix things. They didn’t give him a tank or a warship or an X-Wing, they gave him a call box from which you can call for help and they didn’t give him a superpower or a heat-ray, they gave him an extra heart. And that’s extraordinary. There will never come a time when we don’t need a hero like the Doctor.”
And there is the one that means a lot to me because it’s what got me hooked onto the show:
“But that’s not right!” – Said by Susan Foreman from the first episode, An Unearthly Child as she’s reading a book on the French Revolution. Which got my imagination going and it hasn’t stopped since.
Next on Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Christmas Episode
Like with my Favorite Actor answer, I’ll go with naming someone who doesn’t have a major role on the show. But maybe a reoccurring role?
Penelope Wilton played the wonderful (and not dead yet) character Harriet Jones. Russell T. Davies, showrunner and head writer for Doctor Who at the time, created the character for
Wilton herself, and she was very committed to Harriet.
What I love is how she is willing to take charge out of necessity, and not out of hunger for power. And to not agree with the Doctor with how to handle a planetary emergency. And even though she didn’t agree with him, she didn’t hold a grudge when he said something that ending up removing her from office. And she was more than willing to organize a way to contact him if they needed help. I felt the Doctor treated Harriet unfairly at the end of The Christmas Invasion.
And I always had a theory that Harriet didn’t die in Stolen Earth. We hear the Daleks shooting and her screaming, but that’s done off camera. We never see her body. And my long held theory was confirmed last year by Davies, who wrote (among others) a poem in Now We Are Six Hundred about what happened after the Daleks attacked.
Then Penelope Wilton went to do some little show called… what was that? Downton… something or other.
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Quote
I answered this question earlier on Day 3, so I’ll give a different answer for this one.
A whole bunch come to mind, but the one I keep “but this one was totally awesome!”, and that is City of Death. It has the 4th Doctor, Romana II arriving in Paris, France in 1979. They encounter Inspector Duggan and soon after, the very suspicious Count and Countess Scarlioni.
Some great time traveling within the episode (always a plus in my book), a great almost-meet-historical-figure scene. The interesting invention by the scientist. And there is the great cameo by John Cleese and Eleanor Bron.
I’m afraid of saying anything more than that for any of you who might not have seen it. But it is highly recommended!
Back in 1993, I visited Paris, and of course while I was there I visited the Louvre. While being amazed by all the different types of artwork that was there (I think this is also where i saw Vincent Van Gogh’s work. Either way, that guy used really think paint strokes. Wow!) I went by the Mona Lisa. And the painting is smaller than you would expect it to be. My family and I walked from one side to another, noticing that her eyes always seem to be following us (one of those ingenious tricks that Leonardo played with?). And I would sometimes laugh to myself, wanting to ask the guide if there is anything written on the back of the painting? Didn’t get enough nerve to do that.
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Actress
All monsters are not villains, but all villains are monsters.
But my favorite villain is also a monster of sorts. And that would be the Master/Missy, the Doctor’s arch-nemesis. Or one of them anyway.
One reason why I like him/her is that he is a Time Lord like the Doctor, just works on the opposite side of the moral spectrum. When they were children, they used to be bet friends until he turned dark. And also he was originally inspired by Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories. Being a Sherlockian as long as a Whovian, I found that really interesting.
There are 3 versions of the Master that I really like. There’s the original Roger Delgado who played opposite Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor. He did a fantastic job setting up the basis of who the Master was and how he knew the Doctor. When Delgado tragically died, Pertwee said he didn’t want to be on the show anymore because of the close friendship he had with Delgado.
Then there is Anthony Ainley’s Master, who is the one I remember most. He played along side the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Doctor (well, including The Five Doctors, he also was with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd). Unlike the Doctors, his Master was similar to Delgado’s Master, but no less awesome.
Then there’s Missy, who was a mystery when she first was mentioned in The Bells of Saint John (“the woman in the shop”), then later we see her throughout Series 8 but not know who she is. Then at the end of Dark Water, she tells the Doctor who she is
Back in 2016, I met Michelle Gomez at MegaCon in Orlando. Stories I had heard about her were that she was lovely, charming, and a little bonkers. I can 100% confirm that! Outside of meeting a Doctor, she (and Catherine Tate) was the one I wanted to meet the most. So after waiting in line, it was finally my turn for the photo op with Michelle. It was my first photo op like this (I had met a handful of celebrities before and had pictures, but not like convention setups). I was so nervous and scared, but I kept telling myself “I can do this!”. So I meet Michelle and I think I blurted out a “hi”. She leads me to a X on the floor and we look at the camera, and I’m trying to remind myself to hold up my sonic. There as no discussion on how to pose or anything.
Click went the camera:
I exited the little photo space to picked up my picture, in a bit of a daze. The whole photo op was about ten seconds. I went to another little area to picked up the picture, looked at it….and just busted out laughing. I had absolutely no idea what she was doing for the picture, until I saw it. I remember a slight tug at my neck, but, really, had no idea.
So the next day of the Con, I went to her autograph table to have her sign it. And she sees me and then the picture and she and her assistant start laughing. I thanked her and told her how I had been a Doctor Who fan for 30 years (one of the main reasons why I went was to celebrate being a fan of not only Who but Sherlock Holmes, and things in general), and how The Master was my favorite villain and how Missy was my favorite. And she thanked me. I don’t remember anything after that.
She’s just totally fab 🙂 .
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Classic Episode
Least favorite Classic Who season is difficult, not because there are more than one, but I have finding any. There are a lot of episodes that I like within a season, a few are meh, and some it has been a long time since I’ve seen it so It wouldn’t be fair to say “I don’t like this season because of these 2, or 3, or 4 stories that I have not seen in years”.
And, of course, some stories are missing :'(. So I’m going to pass on my least favorite season.
However, I do have a least favorite New Who series, and that would be series 2. (I can almost feel the ire of 10/Rose shippers towards me right now)
Not to say I don’t like 10 (I love them all), these stories were some of my least likedin New Who, and most were in this series.
Stories from this series are (along with short notes about each):
The Christmas Invasion (only good when the Doctor wakes up, and that’s near the end)
New Earth (eh)
Tooth and Claw (seeing Queen Victoria was neat, but other than that, meh)
School Reunion(only really good episode. Sarah Jane!!! And K9!!!)
The Girl in the Fireplace (almost always bothers me when the Doctor gets romantic with other characters. And where is the French accent?!?)
Rise of the Cybermen (this and the next episode is a two-parter and meh stories. Wasn’t crazy about this version of the Cybermen either.)
The Age of Steel (example of why I had a bad taste in my mouth about 2 parters)
The Idiot’s Lantern (meh)
The Impossible Planet (this and the next one made a 2 parter again. Story just was meh. One reason why I was not impressed with “under siege” stories)
The Satan Pit (another reason why 2 part stories were losing my interest)
Love & Monsters (not too bad, I like it more than most fans. Some interesting ideas they were testing out. But that ending is ewww! TMI !!)
Fear Her (meh)
Army of Ghosts (another beginning of a 2 parter. One great scene was the Daleks and Cybermen facing off. And dissing each other. Other than that…)
Doomsday (and yet another reason why 2 parters just didn’t do it for me. And Rose’s departure has lost it’s effect. Also she’s still alive at the end when she said she was dead? Being in a parallel universe is not the same as being actually dead.)
The cool thing that came out of season 2 were David’s vlogs where he would carry around a video camera and film what it’s like starting on Doctor Who. My favorite “episode” is below:
There he is, watching Doctor Who with family like when he was a kid, except now he’s watching himself as the Doctor. And his parents were adorable. Glad that they lived long enough to see their son play as his childhood hero.
If you want to see more of those video diaries, here’s a playlist:
Always like to end things on a high note, because it’s really difficult to stay in a bad mood when talking about Doctor Who, even the things with it that I’m not crazy about :).
Next on Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Monster/Villain
The enemy of the Doctor who helped save Doctor Who: the Daleks. Probably the most famous enemy that the Doctor has. And they were there from almost day1, While not my favorite enemy (I feel they are used waaay tooo much), they are cool and intimidating, and loud. Also cool to draw.
Again, a tie!
Classic Who
Genesis of the Daleks is my first pick. The story that introduced Davros. And in Tom Baker’s first season as the 4th Doctor., only his 4th story.
My other favorite Classic Who story is Remembrance of the Daleks. Aired during season 25. I think that they should have made this the 25th anniversary episode instead of Silver Nemesis, but the BBC knew better (*clears throat* ahem). It takes place in and around Coal Hill school in November 1963, right after the First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara had left. And we see the junkyard again (albeit the door to the junkyard is not right, but that’s me being nit-picky)
And one of my favorite little bits. Made me freak when I first watched it. Weird Real World/In Universe type of things.
https://youtu.be/heaneTFht6s
Sadly, due to weird copyright issues, this one (along with just a few other Classic Who Dalek stories) is not on BritBox.
New Who
Got to be Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar. One of the reasons why I loved series 9.
Side Note
And a special acknowledgement for the Peter Cushing’s films as Dr. Who from the 1960s. Only two were made, and both had the Daleks. I have not seen these since I was a young fan, and have been meaning to re-watch them. After 30 years, it will be like watching it for the first time.
Next on Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Least Favorite Season/Series
For this, I’ll list the spinoffs for Doctor Who. And I’m going to just pick from the TV based spin offs, not the Big Finish (mainly because I have not listened to very many).
There is K9 and Company, Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures. The one I liked the most was/is the Sarah Jane Adventures. Torchwood had very adult stories set in the Doctor Who universe with Captain Jack and his crew at the Torchwood Institute. Doctor Who is aimed at both kids and adults. SJA was aimed at the young crowd. Still smart and fun, just a young demographic. Premise is she and a group of teens investigate and face aliens tying to take over.
Starring the lovely and much loved (and missed) Elizabeth Sladen in her most famous role she had during the 1970s with Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor and Tom Baker’s 4th. She came back to Doctor Who in the Series 2 episode “School Reunion”. There was such a love for her, that she got her own show (again…She did have K9 and Company in the 1980s).
Fun episodes to watch if you don’t know where to start are the two that have the Doctor in it. One is The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (series 3, episode 5&6) with the 10th Doctor. Below is the ending of that story (no spoilers). From what I read, this was filmed after David Tennant’s last Doctor Who episode. And he’s wearing a nice version of his blue suit (the brown one got ruined in his last Who story)
And the other is Death of the Doctor (series 4, episode 5&6) with the 11th Doctor. One of the cool things about this was it also brought back Jo Grant( played by the spunky Katy Manning, who was Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor companion/assistant. It was fun to see two companions who had been with the same Doctor at different times, now working together to save the (new) Doctor. I love Jo’s reaction to seeing the Doctor appear because she had never seen him regenerate from or to another person.
As of the time of this blog post: if you have Amazon Prime, they have the whole show available for members (in the United States that is. Not sure if it works the same outside the US :/ ). You can also buy the show as well :).
Next in the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Dalek Story
It’s time to grab the tissues, because in this installment of the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, we have the Saddest Moment. Or Moments since I’m so good at having ties. There’s a couple different types of answers I’ll give for this. One is the Real World answer. And three others would be within the show itself.
Real World
December 6, 1989, was when the last part of Survival aired. It would be the last episode of (what is now called) Classic Who since Michael Grade and others at the BBC cancelled it. And there were no new tv stories until 1996 with the single TV movie. And then not again until 2005 with the successful reboot. While there were the books, comics, official magazine, not having Doctor Who on TV was very sad for us old time fans.
Within the Doctor Who Universe
There are several sad moments, both from Classic and New Who. The saddest Classic moment to me is the death of Adric, as he sacrifices himself to save Earth in the story Earthshock. Companions deaths rarely happened in Classic Who, so this was a shock (sorry, bad pun) to me as a young fan.
New Who has three that top it for me.
While not a death, the wiping of Donna’s memories of her adventures with the Doctor in Journey’s End was breathtakingly sad. Even though he did it to save her due to the meta-crisis, it still…. just…couldn’t he have wiped out just enough for her to be safe but not everything? Ugh. They did address this a couple times during Capaldi’s era.
The other New Who saddest moment is the death of Amy and Rory in Angels Take Manhattan. Or rather the time adjusted death of them due to the Weeping Angel. I saw this with a large group of fans and we were all balling our eyes out.
The below video takes place shortly after the above scenes (kind of shortly after? Time travel messes with ya). Arthur Darvill who played Rory, did a voiceover for his letter to Rory’s dad. Interesting to point out that P.S. is written by the new showrunner, Chris Chibnall. It was released by teh BBC 3 years after the episode, and nicely concludes the story. Shame they didn’t shoot it!
…. Oh, yeah, The Doctor Falls. Just the whole freaking episode. I was still so emotionally worn out after that episode that when Twice upon a Time aired, it didn’t affect me near as much when he actually regenerated.
Next on the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge- Favorite Spinoff
I’ll give a different answer than my answer to what my favorite story arc is because both of those were from the Classic era and both lasted the whole season.
And this one is fairly easy, especially since this season was recently released for the first time on Blu Ray earlier this year. That would be season 12, Tom Baker’s first season as the Doctor.
I hope to one day write a review for this recent boxset, because…really… all the extras…it is amazing! Maybe that had an impact of this being my favorite season? Maybe I might change my mind in a year or three. But this is a really good one!
Anyway, this season’s stories are:
Robot (4 parts)
The Ark in Space (4 parts)
The Sontaran Experiment (2 parts)
Genesis of the Daleks (6 parts)
Revenge of the Cybermen (4 parts)
It has three of the great enemies of the Doctor. And in Robot, the only alien in it is the Doctor (I always find those type of stories interesting). Genesis of the Daleks is reason enough alone to say this is the best season, but all the other stories are great too!
Next in the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Saddest Moment
I answered this question earlier 
There are 3 versions of the Master that I really like. There’s the original Roger Delgado who played opposite Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor. He did a fantastic job setting up the basis of who the Master was and how he knew the Doctor. When Delgado tragically died, Pertwee said he didn’t want to be on the show anymore because of the close friendship he had with Delgado.
remember most. He played along side the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Doctor (well, including The Five Doctors, he also was with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd). Unlike the Doctors, his Master was similar to Delgado’s Master, but no less awesome.
Starring the lovely and much loved (and missed) Elizabeth Sladen in her most famous role she had during the 1970s with Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor and Tom Baker’s 4th. She came back to Doctor Who in the Series 2 episode “School Reunion”. There was such a love for her, that she got her own show (again…She did have 
was it also brought back Jo Grant( played by the spunky 
amazing! Maybe that had an impact of this being my favorite season? Maybe I might change my mind in a year or three. But this is a really good one!