Moffat's Who RANKED (84-71)

Let the record state: I tried to think of a way to preface this series without making reference to how ‘divisive’ Moffat’s run of Doctor Who has been. God knows I loathe talking about it, but if you ever take a wander onto a youtube comment page or casually reference the show in any real-life conversation, you’ll probably find someone who isn’t a fan of Moffat’s time as showrunner. In fact, given the odds, you probably are that person. I desperately tried to figure out a way not to reference this because, as longtime readers (Hi Mum) are probably aware: I love Moffat’s tenure on the show. I think over the last eight years the show has delivered some of the best and most daring episodes that Doctor Who has ever seen and whilst it hasn’t exactly been consistent (when has Doctor Who ever been consistent?) the show has been all the richer for it. I’m hoping that time will be kinder to Series 5-10 and that as people come back to give it another go, they’ll find it just as joyous as I have.

For the time being, I tend to stay away from the conversation at large and just talk to my brother about it instead, who, thank God, loves Moffat’s run too. In fact, last week whilst we were sitting around we casually batted out a ranking of every Moffat-era episode of the show. To be clear: that’s not just episodes written by Moffat, but all 84 episodes that he has overseen as showrunner. And we did it in about half an hour so you know we were thorough.

I could say that we did this in order to help illuminate how great I think the show has been and I hope it does, but given the invisibility of this site that hardly feels particularly honest. The truth is I’m doing this for me, because it’s been a weird old year and writing about Doctor Who makes me happy.

So, in celebration of Moffat’s era of Doctor Who, let’s start with the worst episodes!

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Wait, hang on.

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84. Cold Blood

Written by: Chris Chibnall

What better way to start a ranking of Doctor Who episodes than by dumping on a story written by Doctor Who’s next showrunner?!

*sigh*

Cold Blood is the resolution to Series 5’s Silurian two-parter, which occupies the role within Series 5 as the ‘let’s bring back a classic monster’ episode that Russell T. Davies made a fixture of the show (a staple that would be largely jettisoned as the show went on and Moffat decided to rely less and less on the structure Davies put in place, albeit to admittedly mixed results). In that sense it’s something of a success – the Silurian redesign remains divisive but is interesting enough to endure throughout Matt Smith’s era in more experimental ways. Where it sinks is, depressingly, everywhere else.

Out of the two episodes, Cold Blood represents the meatier half in terms of thematics and content, but then doesn't offer life to any of it. Debates occur only to be utterly unexplorative and (most damningly) unresolved. The stakes that are here can be heard practically creaking into place (Alaya’s statement that one of the humans will kill her is a hilariously transparent bit of cliffhangering) and ultimately, not a single second of it can even remotely register on the same level as Rory’s erasure from the universe – the one scene that has, essentially, nothing to do with the rest of the episode and feels like it was written by an entirely different writer.

Other episodes might register higher on the groan-o-meter, but none of them elicit such utter nothingness from the audience on the same level that Cold Blood manages to. It’s one thing for Doctor Who to be bad, but what it should never be is lifeless.

83. Night Terrors

Written by Mark Gatiss

So I’ve written about Gatiss before on this website and how his style is both fairly identifiable yet utterly undefined at the same time. I ultimately think Gatiss’ goals with Doctor Who come down to a fairly simple point, which is that he desperately wants to capture the feeling of Who and the way he remembers being energised by the show when he was younger. Which is hard to turn your nose up at.

Where the problems start to arise is when this desire becomes purely single-minded; case in point: Night Terrors, whose pursuit of Who-esque horror is ultimately way too aggressive for its own good. You can tell Gatiss really wanted to make ‘the scary episode’ of Series 6 here, but beyond the surface level creepiness of the dolls, Night Terrors never convincingly sells us on anything else – by which I essentially mean that the episode never really sells us on George. Ignoring the fact that the actor seems to have been given the blanket direction ‘look as though you’re constantly bracing yourself for a vaccination’, George is an empty vessel of a character – a MacGuffin more than a person whose true nature both deadens the narrative flow like a ton of bricks and only serves to place a further wall between the audience and him, which, given the episode is supposed to be an ode to terrified kids, isn’t really the best idea.

That George doesn’t work not only hurts the episode – it makes it borderline annoying, as things just happen with no logical or emotional baseline to grapple on to. Is getting annoyed by an episode better or worse than being unmoved by it? I don’t know. It’s one place away from the bottom of the list so it can’t matter that much.

82. Knock Knock

Written by Mike Bartlett

Wow, Doctor Who doesn’t seem to jam with haunted house stories much apparently. Which is weird, because you’d think that such a precisely supernatural premise would make for a pretty natural fit in the Whoniverse. Instead, we have Night Terrors and now Knock Knock, which rises above the former purely through the power of David Suchet and emotions. The Landlord isn’t exactly the powerhouse character you’d hope for with a name and actor like that, but his end of episode reveal that transforms him into a terrified overly-doting son remains easily the most effective and memorable part of the episode.

But good God is the road getting there rough. With the exception of a character half-devoured by a wall, Knock Knock just can’t seem to muster any inventiveness out of it’s horror-oriented goals and so we’re treated to thirty minutes of characters that do or don’t like Little Mix getting occasionally eaten by cockroaches until the characters open a door that leads to a twist ending.

What really rankles is that this is the first episode where the horror of Bill’s journey becomes not just more visceral, but more home-bound as well and yet the episode barely stops to pay anything but lip-service to that. Considering one of Moffat’s strengths as a showrunner was finding the moments around the episodes to acknowledge the character’s emotional continuity (think the ending of Kill the Moon or pretty much every episode of Series 5), it makes me curious as to why Bill isn’t freaking the fuck out by the time the Next Time Trailer rolls around. I dunno; maybe once you’ve seen a giant eel in the Thames, you’ve seen everything.

81. Sleep No More

Written by Mark Gatiss

Inevitably one of the lesser aspects of writing/reading about the worst of a particular show or film, is that it’s ultimately not that interesting. I mean, it is for me on the level of dismantling a film’s structure or characters to figure out where the spanner in the works lies, but realistically it might not be interesting for you as I spiral ever more into narrative diagnosis mode. I’m extra-wary of attempting this with Sleep No More – an ambitious, admirable episode that still remains as the only true dud of Series 9. I’m not sure how to really hate an episode that’s this unafraid to take risks, even if it thinks it’s far clever than it really is. I do know how to skip it, though.

80. The Hungry Earth

Written by Chris Chibnall

And so we’re back here again. I considered lumping The Hungry Blood and Cold Earth together given how gelatinous the two are, but I don’t think that gives The Hungry Earth enough credit, given it at least feels like it’s trying to be interesting. The Welsh tourist board must love this one, anyhow, as it finally gives them an episode of television that definitively proves how a tiny desolate Welsh village is more interesting than the sprawling lizard world that lies miles beneath it. I can actually remember parts of this episode, which immediately ranks it higher than Cold Blood. I even like some of those bits, too. But then I also like episodes that go somewhere, so its climb up the list ends here.

79. In the Forest of the Night

Written by Frank Cotterell Boyce

“In the Forest of the Shite” is my brother’s sole contribution to these write-ups. I think that’s a bit harsh as ‘Forest’ isn’t so much a badly written episode of Doctor Who, as much as it is a desperately low-stakes one. Well, except for the part where the Doctor tells a bunch of kids to “leave the trees alone” which is a bit on the nose. And the bit at the end where the kid’s sister suddenly magically appears in a bush for no reason at all and smiles into the camera in a way scholars have described as ‘distressing’. Actually, this one might be a bit naff after all.

78. Victory of the Daleks

Written by Mark Gatiss

“WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEA?” Thus ends the sole great moment of Gatiss’ Dalek reboot. I’m not even fussed by the Power Ranger Paradigm Daleks; probably because I’ve seen them in real life and those fuckers are huge. I’m more fussed by just how shockingly weightless everything is. The Daleks are back, WW2 London almost gets obliterated and yet I feel like I just watched a Saturday morning cartoon. Which is fine on paper, but Gatiss doesn’t exactly handle it gracefully. Apparently during the read-through, when they got to the scene where the spitfire attacks the Dalek ship in space, Moffat said to the group “Now THIS is television!” and I honestly think that response is his worst contribution to the entire show.

77. The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

Written by Steven Moffat

Speaking of Moffat dropping a deuce, we’ve finally reached his first entry on the list. To be fair, if you’re worst entry contains the energy and imagination that powers the opening fifteen minutes of this episode, then you’re clearly not doing too bad. It’s just a shame the episode goes off the bleeding rails as soon as the kids enter the forest. It’s bad enough that this is the only Moffat episode that I’d consider to be boring, but really sealing the deal on the naffness of TDTWATW is the clunky ‘Motherhood’ themes that permeate the whole episode. It’s a theme that goes back to Moffat’s very first episode on the show: ‘The Empty Child’, but whereas there it was an emotionally effective resolution to a nightmare scenario, here it’s…well it’s different I’ll give it that. The extension of femininity being strength through motherhood has good intentions, but ultimately can’t help like it’s reducing women down to the ability to create life, which is extremely dodgy no matter which angle you approach it from. There’s also the detail of Madge marrying her husband because he wouldn’t leave her alone, which…hoo boy.

76. Kill the Moon

Written by Peter Harness

I don’t care about the scientific inaccuracies. I really don’t. At best they’re unimportant (something about how bacteria wouldn’t be stable at that size, or whatever) and at worst they’re hilarious (the new egg appearing within seconds of the creature hatching almost feels like a comedy beat), so who cares? The abortion theme is uncomfortable as it takes Doctor Who uncomfortably far away from a pro-choice standpoint (which would surely be the best answer for a show that prides itself on its progressiveness) and honestly it just gets worse the more you parse it out. But really, the episode doesn’t work mostly because it just isn't entertaining. You’d have thought Nightmare in Silver would’ve taught the show not to invite kids along, but here’s Courtney anyway adding utterly nothing to the proceedings. All the creepy atmosphere is vacuumed out the window as soon as the shockingly unengaging spider-bacteria shows up, but ultimately Doctor Who tends to be at its most uninteresting when it turns moral dilemmas into an ethics lesson as characters rattle off the various arguments to one another like they’re reciting a textbook. Oh look, I’ve described the last twenty minutes of this episode. Great.

That last scene is excellent, though, and an example of how I think Series 8 has some really strong emotional connective tissue running throughout it. We’ve never really seen Doctor Who pull this sort of confrontation before and even though the preceding forty minutes are thunderingly uneven, it still lands with a punch.

75. The Rebel Flesh

Written by Matthew Graham

Earlier I joked (half) that Moffat endorsing the spitfire space scene was his worst contribution to the show. I would like to retract that, if the jury will allow it, because it turns out the actual worst contribution Moffat ever gave Doctor Who, was allowing Matthew Graham to come back and waste all of our time for two whole episodes of snooze-worthy guff. Graham, for those who don’t know, wrote the staggeringly unpopular ‘Fear Her’ from Series 2 – an episode where I can’t quite pinpoint what exactly makes it bad, but I’m definitely know that it is. For some reason, it was decided that giving this guy a two-parter would be a good idea and…well…huh?

I mean, it’s definitely not as bad as Fear Her, but it is twice as long and it still can’t get the wheels spinning fast enough for me or anyone else to care about what’s going on. I said with Kill the Moon that Doctor Who is at its most uninteresting when it becomes a textbook and The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People is a 90 minute Doctor Who equivalent of a powerpoint presentation. Literally the only thing that makes The Almost People better than The Rebel Flesh is…

74. The Almost People

Written by Matthew Graham

…the cliffhanger, which doesn’t even connect to the events of the episode! It could have come a week later at the end of a different story and still have made sense. Actually, tell a lie, I quite like it when Jennifer turns into a monster from Dead Space, because it’s kind of hilarious. Apart from that, these episodes blend together like dirt in the rain.

73. The Curse of the Black Spot

Written by Stephen Thompson

Like a lot of fans, I’m still fascinated by the gaping continuity error that happens halfway through TCOTBS where a pirate utterly vanishes having been previously established as a source of tension for the characters. I think the idea in the edit room is that people would assume he’d been killed so they could cut him out for time, but it’s still one of the more shockingly obvious errors I’ve seen in a TV show or film.

That’s not really important – it’s just usually the first thing I think of when I come back to this episode; the second thing being “oh yeah, this exists.” Doctor Who is a show that consists largely of filler. The trick is making that filler so good that it becomes essential. TCOTBS is not essential in any way. For one it comes across as shockingly cheap, which isn’t exactly unique in Doctor Who’s history but is made worse when the episode does nothing interesting or exciting with what they’ve got. It did give us the “Just point me to the atom accelerator” line, which me and my brother now use as a meme to describe doing something when you really have no fucking idea what you’re doing, so thanks for that TCOTBS.

72. Closing Time

Written by Gareth Roberts

A year or so ago, we could have started this entry with a line about Gareth Roberts being the ‘sitcom writer’ for Doctor Who; they guy who specialises in more domestic episodes that focus harder on jokes than grittiness. Now we can’t really do that without adding on a bit about him making fun of the LGBTQ community and being exiled from the show. Yay.

So Gareth Roberts is actually a bit of a prick and Closing Time is probably his worst episode outside of Planet of the Dead. This is still probably the most likeable James Corden will ever be in anything and the episode zings with more energy than pretty much everything we’ve listed so far, but Christ almighty is there nothing else to say. It’s not even that the deus-ex ‘blew them up with love’ ending is hackneyed, or that the bad dad storyline is unnecessary and uninspired, but there’s virtually no memorable gag to the entire episode. It’s mostly fun texture which isn’t awful but we’ve entered back into ‘hard to talk about the episode without it sounding boring’ territory again and I’m very eager to leave.

71. The Beast Below

Written by Steven Moffat

There’s not many people I think who will fight you on the premise that The Beast Below is one of Moffat’s lesser episodes – even Moffat himself thinks so. But there’s something to be said for the ambition of the episode that succeeds in a way where other admirable projects like Sleep No More don’t. It’s still caught in the unforgiving gap between being too overstuffed for one episode yet not stuffed enough for a two-parter, but there’s something intriguing about the grand design of The Beast Below and the things it wants to talk about that makes it ultimately worthwhile. Most of that comes down to how the episode treats Amy. Whereas Bill was gently lowered into the Doctor’s world with some Eels in the Thames and murderous emojis, Amy’s first trip in the TARDIS is quick to place her into a scenario that is demanding of more emotional complexity. A hidden state and mind-wipe terminals expose not just her flawed humanity (like everyone else aboard the ship, she elects to forget the horrors she is presented with) but also her ability to recognise patterns of emotional responses that others wouldn’t think to notice. Amy remains one of the more fascinating companions in the shows history – her arrested development providing a continual counterpoint to most of her actions throughout Series 5. But in The Beast Below we see the goodness Amy brings to the Doctor’s world and whilst it’s virtually a given that a companion’s first trip will show us this kind of thing, few have done so with as much uncertainty as this one.

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So, as I mentioned earlier with Sleep No More, it's not particularly fun to talk about these episodes of the show. There'd be a sort of twisted joy in tearing the episodes down, perhaps, but I'm not really interested in that so the only alternative is to waffle for a while and then move on. Mercifully, we're finished now with what I think are the worst of the worse (save for Beast Below which isn't as bad as its reputation suggests) and hopefully some more interesting ones will be coming along. I'll get around to them at some point...ish.

#DoctorWho #stevenmoffat #markgatiss