That doesn’t mean it should take a break. The BBC should hire a showrunner with fresh ideas.

She needs some Colin Baker style rehabilitation.

The ever present push pull of the Moffat era. It’s too dark or too fairy tale esque. It’s either a seething pit of misogyny or it’s become ‘Clara Who’ (female character becoming too important).

Right, because you watch television primarily to be entertained and challenged, not bludgeoned over the head (this is why I don’t like certain Black Mirror episodes).

Generalizing here, it seems the Capaldi era was poorly received in the UK, much better in the US. This going off of personal anecdotes. I think it’s the best 3 season run in the history of the show.

In the Forest of the Night is pretty bad dramatically, I still don’t think it’s bottom of the barrel Who. Timelash, Evolution of the Daleks, The Twin Dilemma, etc. But Kerblam! is the worst episode in the modern era, by far.

Yes. Though the Battle of Rassilon’s Corn Chips comes close.

Yeah, I’m fine with it too; it’s more an indictment of the era around it than it is of the episode, which I think is fine.

It would be improved as an episode of an ITV drama about the Indian partition without the aliens. Whereas the best aspect of, say, Midnight, is that it’s a wonderful deconstruction of RTD’s version of the show.

True. The first TARDIS crew was pretty well defined and interesting.

Right. And something like The Curse of the Black Spot has an 87. I agree Capaldi never quite caught on with UK audiences, but I take AI scores with a grain of salt.

Without Clara you wouldn’t get S9 in the same way.

I wouldn’t push too hard against you on that. I love the Davies era and would definitely count 1 and 4 in the top tier of Doctor Who seasons. They are certainly better than the majority of the classic series. I just think 8 and 9 are a bit more consistent than 1 and more thematically ambitious than S4. 1 is probably…

S3 also had a lot of bumpy serialization and more forgettable episodes than the previous two.

I think they found some basic competence in some areas. Still lacking in most.

The 9th season is as good as the show has ever been, definitely. And I find S8 tremendously underrated. Only 1 subpar episode in S9 with Sleep No More.

Extremis was a cracker! I just pretend that it’s a standalone, Blink style. I’m sure he dealt with the invasion off screen.

You can, and those episodes are often interminable pacing-wise.

She’ll have to be saved by Big Finish in 30 years, the Colin Baker way.

I think Whithouse’s approach is too conservative. His episodes are all the exact same, and his most recent script (The Lie of the Land) was a bloody disaster. He’s even more cautious than Chibnall, despite him definitely being the better writer overall. I definitely don’t think Chibnall has ever written an episode of W…