1. Everybody Bends The Rules
In what is Malcolm Tucker's most defining scene--astonishingly free of profanity--he makes the uncomfortable point to the members of the inquiry board that no one can rise as high as they--and he--did without bending a few rules. There was no entirely ethical way for any of them to have reached as high a point in the British government as they had, he declares, and they had no right to judge him for doing the same. They had all bent the rules; he was just the only one not pretending that he hadn't. Now,
Doctor Who is best when it treats the Doctor (no matter which incarnation) as a character with individual quirks rather than merely as a platform for heroics. "Bending the rules" really sums up the character as a whole, but the show must take care to portray the darker repercussions of some of the bending. Given what the viewers know of the Doctor's history, he must exist in shades of gray. No one can lark about the universe and change the fates of countless cultures (before unceremoniously larking away again) without consequences. He doesn't have to be a villain, but even the Doctor cannot always be a hero.