For this one, I’ll use as my favorite Doctor/Companion team-up
Classic Who: 7th Doctor and Ace
From Classic Who, I love 7th Doctor and Ace. These two were awesome together, and I wish we got to see more of their tv adventures (although there are loads of Big Finish audios with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred reprising their roles).
New Who: 10th Doctor and Donna
As I mentioned in my earlier Favorite Female Companion, I love 10 and Donna. A lot. They are a hoot to watch, but can be beautifully serious when needed.
Next on Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Least Favorite Episode
PS – Yeah, this one is a bit short. Not feeling well today, but wanted to get in today’s entry. Maybe I might write up more about these guys later on. I’ll now go back and watch Fires of Pompeii (again!! 😀 ) to cheer me up.
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
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
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 a tie. Again. If I was doing this 4 years ago, there would have been only one.
Series 4
The 10th Doctor and Donna Noble are my favorite Doctor-Companion matchup in New Who and when ever they are together, it’s just wonderful. Put them in a good story, and that’s even better!
I remember when it was announced that Catherine Tate was going to return, and most fans weren’t that excited because most were “meh” about the Runaway Bride (“Pockets!”). I don’t remember having much of a feeling either way. But then the series started and with everyone getting more familiar with Donna, a large number of us fell in love with her. I like Runaway more after series 4 ended. But uuugh, that ending. Heartbreaking sad :'(.
Favorite episodes were The Fires of Pompeii, and The Unicorn And The Wasp.
Also up high are The Doctor’s Daughter and Silence in the Library/Forrest of the Dead, Turn Left, and the Christmas episode that year: The Next Doctor (I kept guessing the whole time if that other guy was really the Doctor or not). The rest are quite enjoyable (don’t care for Midnight all that much, though many people love it. Maybe because Donna wasn’t in it?).
I am looking forward to the steelbook of this series (already have 1-3, 9 and 10!)
Series 9
When I saw the trailer for series 9, I was not impressed. And then I heard that it would be mostly 2 parters, one of those stories being an “under siege” story. All which I hadn’t really cared for much in the past. So I had low expectations going in.
Then the opening scene happened,
And the boy tells the Doctor his name.
My jaw dropped and said “Nooo waaayy!”, and I was hooked. And later he comes out wearing Ray Bans, playing electric guitar (the Doctor Who theme, btw), on a rolling tank, to a crowd of people (did I mention this is happening during the Middle Ages?)
And Missy was fantastic! Clara and Missy forced to work together was wonderfully wicked. And I loved the second part, “The Witch’s Familiar”
Then “Under The Lake” started. This was the “under siege” story. And I feel in love with this one as well. IT was also nice to see a woman being in charge who also had to be deaf. And don’t even think about messing with her or her crew. And the cards scene shown below is adorable (I need cards like that!)
And Before the Flood started with the below scene and I was having a blast.
Which was immediately followed by the theme song, a special rock version with Peter Capaldi, the Doctor himself, playing the guitar.
There was actual time travel in this episode! Not only traveling back to the same spot many many years earlier, but then later traveling back again and seeing themselves and the Doctor having to tell the others not to be seen by their otherselves. I loved that!
The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived were a disappointment, Didn’t totally buy into the way the reason was given for why 12 chose the face of Caecilius from the Fires of Pompeii story. And Ashildr wasn’t as strong as I was hoping. Good scene of her and the Doctor talking in her library/study. So much potential in this 2 parter, but fell flat for me.
The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion were very good. More Osgood is always good!. And that speech at the end! *GASP* So powerful.
Sleep No More gets an A for trying something new with it’s storytelling Falls kind of flat, but I liked what they were trying to do with it. But every single time I wipe my eyes, I think of this (CURSE YOU GATISS!!)
Face The Raven drives me batty with how much it doesn’t make sense – in a bad way. Loads of fans love it but I tried watching it again a couple month ago to see if time would change my mind, and I disliked it even more the second time than the first. One thing it had that I did like was similarities to a certain John Green book, Paper Towns, but in this episode it’s trap streets rather than paper towns. By coincidence(?), for the Doctor Who The Fan Show where they discussed this episode, one of the guests was Rosianna Halse Rojas who was/is John’s assistant. And I loved her Q&A 🙂 NERDFIGHTERS!) Well, the other thing I liked was the Doctor’s velvet coat. And the line “You’ll find it is a very small universe when I’m angry with you” was very, very good.
https://youtu.be/bV03ZTT_hyc
Heaven’s Sent was amazing with it’s successful different storytelling angle, much stronger than Sleep No ore. Wonderfully directed by Rachel Talalay.
And while many loved Face the Raven, it seems like just as many hate Hell Bent. And I love it. The repeating throughout the series of the Doctor’s “duty of care” of Clara (well, all of his companions, really) is very moving. And this story was also directed by Rachel Talalay.
I’ll end this here. One day, I might do a more analysis of the episodes from both series, but these are my major ones 🙂
Next in the Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge – Favorite Theme Song
Rolling right along with the Doctor Who challenges, we have the hardest question. Hundreds of stories. Only one winner. (“There must be only one” – Highlander voice).
This. This is really difficult. I could choose one story from each Doctor. Or one from Classic Who and another from New Who.
Hmmmm…. I might do the latter.
Yes, yes, I think I might…
Classic Who (1963-1989)
Just picking one story from the classic era is hard enough. Seven Doctors. Dozens of companions. Still hundreds of stories.
An Unearthly Child
Have to give it to the one that started everything. The first part, not so much the caveman story that followed. Just An Unearthly Child. What introduces the world to the companions everyday life, their curiosity about one of their students. The Doctor, who is not very social. And his ship that his granddaughter nick-named the TARDIS – Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.
I have seen this a number of times, and never have gotten tired of it. I love how things have remained, like the console (well, the things on the console and how it looks change over time but the basic purpose has remained). Commenting on how the TARDIS is alive. The sound of the TARDIS taking off.
https://youtu.be/aXBmQz2r2M8
https://youtu.be/hRsfKK34SFY
New Who (2005-Present)
Not nearly as many stories, but still a difficult pick.
Day of the Doctor
But it goes to The Day of the Doctor, the 50th anniversary episode bonanza. Multi-Doctor story featuring the 11th, 10th, and a “new” Doctor – the War Doctor. Had classic bickering of the Doctors yet also finding a way to work together because they knew what was at stake.
Plus a big cameo towards the end, so big it caught me totally by surprise that I tweeted all in caps after I caught my breath. And when I saw it in the theaters a couple days later, everyone in the theater went crazy (and some of us had already seen by then and we were still excited by it). But I won’t say who it is for any new fans who haven’t seen it yet. Spoilers 😉
Well, there was another very brief cameo, which everyone also was very excited about and cheered loudly in the theater. I even had a screen-capture of his eyes on the top of my blog before his episodes even aired because I had a feeling I would like him.
Of, course, there are many, many, episodes/stories that I love,And maybe I’ll write about my “Top Ten episodes”, or something. But this will have to do for now 🙂
There are a large amount of female companions. Ones I really like are Barbara Wright, Sarah Jane Smith, and River Song.
Well, River comes in a close second place. Really hard to decide. But I keep coming back to the companion who was with the Doctor when we first met River. The temp from Chiswick, the one and only: Donna Noble.
I loved Donna so much. Lots of sass and not afraid to straighten the Doctor out if he needed. And no romantic ties either. They were just best friends. And the ongoing joke when people would assume that they were married, and the Doctor and Donna would say “Oh, no, we’re not married”
DoctorDonna forever!
I would have added a picture of Catherine Tate and me because she came to Orlando for MegaCon this year, but I wasn’t able this year because of financial constraints. I was really bummed that I missed her.
Recommended episodes:
Fires of Pompeii
The Unicorn and the Wasp
Added Bonus:
Came across this music playlist of songs for 10 and Donna. I’ll list them below as well.
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 
But it goes to The Day of the Doctor, the 50th anniversary episode bonanza. Multi-Doctor story featuring the 11th, 10th, and a “new” Doctor – the War Doctor. Had classic bickering of the Doctors yet also finding a way to work together because they knew what was at stake.
I loved Donna so much. Lots of sass and not afraid to straighten the Doctor out if he needed. And no romantic ties either. They were just best friends. And the ongoing joke when people would assume that they were married, and the Doctor and Donna would say “Oh, no, we’re not married”