ItsDoctor Whos60thanniversarymonth, which calls for two things: celebration, and admin.
Fittingly, heres an administrative celebration of the BBC show, featuring every season/series thats aired so far.
Theres good stuff everywhere inDoctor Who.
Vengeance on Varos pokes gently at the relationship betweenDoctor Who, horror and its own viewers.
Among the positives are the introduction of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah-Jane Smith and alien race the Sontarans.
Finally Planet of the Spiders is a thematically strong finale, but weighed down by bloated indulgence.
Can You Hear Me?
is solid enough, and together with Orphan 55 builds towards the departure of Tosin Cole as companion Ryan.
However…
Gallifreys second destruction is a less potent echo of its first.
An entire planet is now a lifeless husk, including over two billion children.
Its a depressing, cynical gambit thats unsuited to Jodie Whittakers most joyful of Doctors.
Paradise Towers a sort of panto J.G.
Ballard points the way forward.
Its scrappy, cartoonish andsurprisingly influentialfor such a maligned season.
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is elevated by Matt Smith.
The other writers in Series 11 all produce stories that are memorable (in the case of Kerblam!
Here we can see how his approach could produce something indistinguishable from magic.
Unfortunately though, Arc of Infinity is pish.
The Kings Demons is adequate but an unexceptional closer after the planned Dalek story fell through.
The middle of Season 20 is a definite improvement on the previous series though.
Its main clunker, Terminus, is at least a bold swing and miss.
The focus is more on Matt Smiths increasingly ruthless Doctor.
The Doctor also changed quickly here.
However, watching/listening back to it now, the formulaic nature is an issue.
The Sea Devils is a serving of action-Pertwee with good character work.
Here, then, we reach a point where the show could plateau.
It needs to take swings to expand what it can do, balancing that against well-made familiarity.
That balancing act will be key going forward.
Season Six (Second Doctor, 1968 1969)
Season Sixs shadow looms large on laterDoctor Who.
Season Three (First Doctor, 1965 1966)
We gota sustained run of storieswhere the Doctor loses.
Its a self-inflicted heartbreak from this all-consuming relationship, and Roses mum Jackie Tyler bears the heavy load.
The Master and Doctors relationship establishes that attempted murder is their version of texting.
Troughton balances the ridiculousness and melodrama with a sense of seriousness and purpose.
As with Season 13, the quality baseline is good, but the collision of ideas is more confident.
The Masque of the Mandragora is visually and conceptually ambitious, a well-researched non-celebrity take on the pseudo-historical genre.
Series Eight (Twelfth Doctor, 2014)
A patchy first half followed by an incredible second.
Viewed as standalone stories, though, this is a strong series.
The Rescue uses the already-present cliche of a man-in-a-rubber-monster-suit to its advantage.
The Time Meddler almost casually drops another TARDIS and Time Lord into the mix.
The Crusades finds fresh ground by dabbling with Shakespearean meter and tropes.
At this point it seems like the possibilities forDoctor Whoare endless.
The new production team commits to intense horror.
The last time the show did this was in 1971s Terror of the Autons, written by Robert Holmes.
By sheer coincidence, hes the new script editor.
While The Android Invasion sticks out as a pulpy throwback, theres a real consistency throughout.
Body Horror is a huge influence.
Tom Baker and Lis Sladen provide a contrast.
Then, for a real sense of tonal dissonance, we haveDoctor WhodoingInfinity Warten years early.
The Stolen Earth moves incredibly fast, taking the show stratospheric.
Journeys End finds itself backed into a corner.
And yet we have the Doctors absolute confidence in Martha during Last of the Time Lords.
Theres thematic overlap with Series Two, and the Doctor is an even messier hero.
The accompanying stories outside of the rote Dalek story build up to an electric finale.
It results in the season feeling less impressive than it actually is.
This is followed by David Fishers charming Stones of Blood and Androids of Tara.
Its more abstract than inthe Pertwee era, butDoctor Whois dabbling in the real world again.
Theres no clever plan here, just trying to avert death for as long as possible.
The Angels two-parter is both wondrous in places and jarring in others.
Amys Choice is anotherunderrated storywhile The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood is largely forgettable.
The Lodger is clearly Gareth Roberts best script.
A strong group of stories overall.
Moffat tells the story in and around the individual episodes with the finale as the punchline.
This places a lot of weight on the finale in terms of how well the series works.
It isnt merely the action and scale, but the number of ideas in these stories that impresses.
Season 26 (Seventh Doctor, 1989)
As with Series One, this functions as a whole.
Ghostlight is so witty and fun that understanding it isnt strictly necessary.
Its superb, but possibly not on first viewing.
Sylvester McCoys Doctor makes Ace confront her fears in this series.
This idea is explored in spin-off stories, but resolves itself in Season 26.
Survival wasnt written as the final story, and this is precisely why it works as one.
Which, I concede, can be frustrating.
And indeed every showrunner since 2005 has done so, to some extent.
Moffats version of looking inward isnt simply Karn you dig it?
but to ask bigger questions, with Heaven Sent/Hell Bent a more laser-focussed Good Man Goes to War.
Here the Doctor makes amends before settling down with River.
The character grows and learns.
They cant do that if you only play the hits.
The series functions as one single story, the final episode of a then-unseen war.
Its written as if this might be the only series Russell T. Davies would get to make.
They all ask interesting questions of the series and the title character.
Theyre not the stories people drift towards from this series but they all contribute significantly to its overall payoff.
It also only really feels serious in contrast to the camper tones if not content that followed.
Any awkwardness around this works in the context of someone putting on a front.
Doctor Who returns to BBC One on November 25.
