10 Most Overrated Doctor Who Episodes

Just putting on our riot gear before we start this one.

Rose (the episode, not the companion) isn’t very good. Yes, we know, Series One seems to be immune from criticism, but frankly, its opener is one of those episodes that's difficult to watch without second-hand embarrassment. It’s hard to justify this as a starting point over The Eleventh Hour.

Ok, the good bits. The introduction of the Doctor? Chef’s kiss. The whole ‘mystery man’ angle with Clive’s conspiracy theories? Love it. The ‘that’s who I am’ speech? A contender for Eccleston’s best moment. But the rest? Oh boy.

It’s hard to decide what’s worse: the burping bin with its truly awful CGI, or Rose not realising there’s something deeply, deeply wrong with her boyfriend when he’s stuttering about pizza with a deranged expression and swerving his car across the road.

There’s a lot of talk about there being a grittier, darker tone for a modern audience in Series One, and that’s certainly delivered on throughout the series. But we’re baffled to this day that with such a strong vision for what he wanted the show to be in 2005, RTD launched with one of the most juvenile episodes he’s penned. There was an awful lot riding on the first few stories and frankly, without The End of the World swooping in the following week, we wouldn’t have got anything juicy until Dalek, around halfway through the series.

From which point, on the plus side, the episodes are consistently fantastic. Swings and roundabouts, and all that.