10 Most Underrated Doctor Who Episodes

All that stuff about Doctor Who not being serious?

Forget it.

Boom Town has some of the best-written dialogue in the show's history. If you didn't know it was about aliens, this stuff could've come straight from the highest-quality watershed drama.

The Doctor, Rose, Mickey, and Captain Jack have to deal with the surviving Slitheen from earlier in the series. "Margaret Blaine" is attempting to destroy Cardiff, but this episode becomes about way more than a plot to blow up Wales.

Margaret reveals that she will be executed if she is returned to her home planet. This leads to a fascinating exploration of the rights and wrongs of the Doctor's heroic antics: would he go as far as to condemn someone to death in the name of the greater good?

The apex of the drama is the fantastic dinner scene between Christopher Eccleston and Annette Badland. Both actors are at the top of their game, as they go back and forth and ponder her redemption, with the Doctor cutting to the heart of the matter with a single brilliantly-written line:

"You're pleading for mercy out of a dead woman's lips."

Round of applause for Mr. Davies.

Boom Town has very little boom and quite a lot of talking, which is likely why it isn't often thought of alongside the more whizz-bang popular episodes in the modern Who pantheon. But go back and watch it and you'll realise how good it really is.