Doctor Who: 10 Underrated Stories In New Who

These episodes deserve way more love. Do you agree?

By Simon Franklin /

New Who has been back on our screens for almost20 years now and since its revival it has given us some fantastic, and not so fantastic, stories. Thankfully the great outweigh the bad, but what about those stories that fall somewhere in the middle ground and tend to be forgotten?

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With a new series arriving in the near future, it only feels right to look back at some of the adventures in the last 12 seasons that have explored some interesting ideas and tried something new. We've seen a lot of crazy things. Some didn't work out but some others did. There are so many episodes to pick from and a fair few seem to have their own perception filter around them that let them slip under the radar.

After all, they can't all live up to the dizzying success of the more popular episodes, and some have gotten overshadowed by the success of episodes like Blink and Heaven Sent. There are a lot of episodes that deserve a lot more love. If your favourites aren't here, don't panic, it's almost guaranteed there will be a follow up to this list.

10. The Timeless Children

It depends on who you ask as to whether The Timeless Children is one of the most underrated New Who stories or not. Some say it's one of the greatest, but others might call it one of the worst. To say it was divisive would be an understatement.

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On the surface, it was the thrilling climax of one of the best Cyberman stories we’ve had in recent years. The fam faced off against the metal menace at their most terrifying for a long time. Meanwhile the Doctor went up against their old nemesis, the Master, who obviously had more dastardly plans up his sleeve.

Underneath all of this though, was a story that would change Doctor Who forever. The Timeless Children managed to put the Who back into Doctor Who by leaving us baffled and shocked by the revelations that we learned.

Yes, it understandably created a schism in the fandom. It was always going to upset some fans, but in reality, while it changed everything, it also changed nothing. Everything we knew about Hartnell through to Whittaker still stands. We experienced all of those stories as the Doctor did, simply not knowing about what happened previously. If anything, we have the excitement of learning about more pre-Hartnell and post- Whittaker.

It's going to be exciting to see where this leads in the future, and can’t wait to see what Chris Chibnall will pull out of the bag next!

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