Doctor Who: 15 Most Disastrous Stories Of All-Time

11. The Beast Below

'The Eleventh Hour' delivered honourably as an opening to Series 5, but I have always been of the belief that you can often tell the quality of a series from its second episode. Moffat himself has said 'The Beast Below' was a tough script to love, and upon airing it didn't bode well for this new era. The plot itself was bland and by the numbers at best. The dilemma and revelations presented come entirely through exposition, which gets very tiresome. You can see in the script Moffat's efforts to make things interesting, but it just makes the script less coherent. It makes the Doctor's reaction at the climax border on melodrama as he claims he'll have to change his name due to his actions. It is also the first instance of a villain, the Smilers, that looks good but ultimately does nothing. Something that has happened frequently since. But also the episode came at a time running up to a UK general election, so some of the linking themes about voting and other political parallels, felt like a very dull message being thrust upon us. Viewers of the Star Wars Prequels with know, politics, do not make sci fi interesting, if anything, they do the opposite.