Speaking of missed title opportunities — I will never in a million years understand why, having written a Christmas special in which the Eleventh Doctor regenerates after facing off against the Silence, Steven Moffat chose to call it the horrendously bland "The Time of the Doctor" over "Silent Night" or even "Twelfth…

Boy meets girl, girl has goat legs, and on the back…. just a whole bunch of wheat.

Yeah, The Five Doctors — which postdates Sarah Jane's departure from Four's TARDIS and features her being cool around Five and his current companions — makes it really hard to accept her characterization in this episode of complaining that Four abandoned her / being jealous of Rose.

11 is interesting because he seemed much more asexual and aromantic at the start of his run than by he did by the end — and you could even make the argument that he only changes in this area due to his interactions with River Song. And that's fascinating (as their relationship always is), because their relationship…

That's possible! But Mickey does say he got a spaceship on his "first go," which suggests this adventure is happening just after the last one we saw.

That at least sort of builds from what we see of her at the end of season 4 with the Osterhagen Key.

Fringe?

Thanks! Amusingly enough, Sheppard Jr and Sheppard Sr played younger and older versions of the same role on Doctor Who.

Classic Doctor Who also had a substantial queer following, due largely to that exact fact that the main character didn't seem to show an interest in romancing his female friends or guest stars.

Mark Sheppard's role on Doctor Who (season 6) is pretty memorable, and I've heard he was on Star Trek at some point. I don't watch those, though — can a Trek fan weigh in here?

True.

As I understand it, people see it as racist precisely because it was nonsensical — those two characters had never been shown having any sort of romantic inclination towards each other, so the only logic behind the pairing comes off as, "Well, they're both black, so…" I don't think RTD meant it to come across that way,…

Martha's dad and his girlfriend can be added to that list, and I'm sure there are others too. There were definitely a lot of interracial relationships on RTD's Doctor Who! So while I do see the argument that putting the two black companions together was racist, it's also sort of nice to show that black people don't…

The Snowmen is an interesting one for this discussion, because Richard E. Grant is used so well and Sir Ian McKellen… isn't. He'd be another nomination for biggest waste, I would say.

John Hurt and Derek Jacobi would be my two nominations for best use of a guest actor, yeah.

Oh, it's a really good episode! It just doesn't really meet my own definition of a standalone one. I see that designation as being an episode that you could go back and watch without remembering what was going on in the larger plot, or even show to someone new, and have it still be amazing. I feel like Turn Left is…

Martha is dating Tom Milligan (the guy who helped her in the year that never was at the end of DW season 3) during her brief stint on Torchwood season 2, and she's engaged to him by the time of the Sontaran two-parter in DW season 4. There's a later reference to her being on her honeymoon, though her husband isn't…

Hmm. She's always struck me as resentful that the Doctor invited him aboard in School Reunion, but then perfectly friendly with him in TGitF. Your mileage may vary, of course! But I know people have asked Moffat about that, with his answer being that he hadn't seen a final version of the School Reunion script when he…

I'd take Turn Left off the list, just because it's so dependent on the episodes that have come before it. The alternate timeline doesn't mean so much on its own, abstracted from what the normal timeline looks like.

I wouldn't call it repetition per se — more like Moffat thought that it would be an interesting theme to explore in a single episode, but that it would work even better for a companion's story arc. So once he was in charge of the show, he decided to try to do the idea more justice than he was able to in 42 minutes.