Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning. I decided to write mini-reviews of the episodes; being lazy, I just grabbed the tables from the Wikipedia list of episodes, dropped it in a spreadsheet, added columns for my scores and comments, and now I just paste them back here. How’s that for low effort? It even allows you to click back to the episode summaries on Wikipedia with absolutely no effort on my part!
I’ll post them one season at a time. This one is for “Series 1” of the recent collection, released in 2005 and starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. Or, as long-time aficionados might think of it, Season 27 or so. I’ll confess right now, Eccleston was my favourite of the last three actors to play the Doctor, which places me in a minority.
The scores go thus:
- This is embarrassing. Go away.
- Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.
- Average for a Doctor Who episode.
- That was a good one!
- One of the best ever.
| No | Title | Score | Comments | Code | Episodes | Writer | Director | Original airdate |
| 157 | “Rose“ | 3 | OK plot, nice performances by the cast, good portrayal of the Doctor by Eccleston. | 1.1 | 1 episode | Russell T Davies | Keith Boak | 26 March 2005 |
| 158 | “The End of the World“ | 4 | Pleasantly sinister cast of characters, like Agatha Christie in space. | 1.2 | 1 episode | Russell T Davies | Euros Lyn | 2 April 2005 |
| 159 | “The Unquiet Dead“ | 3 | Not too smashing, but Simon Callow was nice as Charles Dickens, and it’s amusing to see Eva Myles in the role of Gwyneth when soon she will play Gwen in Torchwood. | 1.3 | 1 episode | Mark Gatiss | Euros Lyn | 9 April 2005 |
| 160 | “Aliens of London” “World War Three“ |
3/3 | First appearance of Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones; best thing in the show. Nice to see Noel Clarke as Mickey again, and his chemistry with Camille Corduri as Jackie Tyler. Too bad a lot of promising support characters were killed. | 1.4 1.5 |
2 episodes | Russell T Davies | Keith Boak | 16 April 2005 23 April 2005 |
| 161 | “Dalek“ | 4 | Solid performance of Eccleston as a more somber Doctor. | 1.6 | 1 episode | Robert Shearman | Joe Ahearne | 30 April 2005 |
| 162 | “The Long Game“ | 4 | Nicely creepy, and Simon Pegg as the chilling Editor. | 1.7 | 1 episode | Russell T Davies | Brian Grant | 7 May 2005 |
| 163 | “Father’s Day“ | 2 | Fairly unoriginal plot and remarkably stupid monsters, but nicely executed. Good performance of Shaun Dingwall as Pete Tyler. | 1.8 | 1 episode | Paul Cornell | Joe Ahearne | 14 May 2005 |
| 164 | “The Empty Child” “The Doctor Dances“ |
4/3 | Lots of foreshadowing and long-term plots; beautifully creepy “monsters”; good supporting cast. | 1.9 1.10 |
2 episodes | Steven Moffat | James Hawes | 21 May 2005 28 May 2005 |
| 165 | “Boom Town“ | 4 | Nice chemistry between Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Annette Badland as Margaret Slitheen. “Bad Wolf” theme finally picked up explicitly. | 1.11 | 1 episode | Russell T Davies | Joe Ahearne | 4 June 2005 |
| 166 | “Bad Wolf” “The Parting of the Ways“ |
4 | A return to Satellite 5, amusing parody of British shows, and the Bad Wolf theme is revisited. / Dalek overdose and everybody sacrificing themselves for everybody else. A classic model for Jeremy Tidwell’s hack for Apocalypse World, “Companions.” | 1.12 1.13 |
2 episodes | Russell T Davies | Joe Ahearne | 11 June 2005 18 June 2005 |
| 167 | “The Christmas Invasion“ | 1 | Awful writing. The Doctor is absent for most of the episode, then wins through single combat; Rose’s creative effort bombs completely; and Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton), the best PM ever knew, is demoted by the Doctor for making the tough call. | 2.X | Christmas special (60 mins) | Russell T Davies | James Hawes | 25 December 2005 |
The Reef 
I could not for the life of me understand why Harriet Jones got so creamed at the end of “Christmas Invasion” unless Peneope Wilton did something horrible like stab Russell Davies in the balls with a fork or something. The character was quite promising, was built up in the previous appearance, did well overall in the episode, and there was no call to write her out at the end like that. If it was just an attempt to show how “hard” the Doctor had gotten there were better ways to go about demonstrating that.
It occurred to me afterwards that I would have loved to see her campaign against Harold Saxon.