Doctor Who: 10 Most Underrated Episodes Of The Revived Series

10. New Earth

Ah, if you're a Doctor Who fanatic who also just so happens to be a devoted Tenth Doctor and Rose 'shipper' (and current statistics suggest there's at least 1 in every 3), this one will scream all sorts of nostalgia. Not only did it kick off Series 2, which is widely regarded - albeit mostly by those aforementioned 10/Rose shippers - to be the best series of Doctor Who ever bar none thank you very much, it was also the first screen outing to feature the One True Pairing in action throughout as David Tennant had spent the majority of the previous episode, The Christmas Invasion, confined to a bed. Mr Lazy. As such, there's plenty at work throughout New Earth to warm the cockles of your Whovian heart(s). When our time travelling heroes are summoned to the New New York hospital by the formidable Cassandra O'Brien.”17 (last seen - being ripped apart, no less - at The End of the World in Series 1), it isn't long before they're thrown into a clinical escapade which was always destined to throw the cat amongst the pigeons. Quite literally in this case, too, as the Catkind - don't be fooled by their name - are secretly infecting cloned humans with every disease known to man in order to create an efficient plethora of treatments for illnesses that shouldn€™t have been discovered for at least another thousand years. It all escalates rather quickly after that. It's largely unclear why this episode is as underrated as it is. It features great new villains, in the form of the sinister Sisters of Plenitude, a story which presents an interesting moral compass and the welcome return of the Face of Boe who still isn't ready to reveal his greatest secret (just skip ahead to Series 3's Gridlock if you're that desperate to find out what it is). Perhaps this episode doesn't quite receive the attention it deserves because it's production was somewhat doomed. It famously went over budget and extreme weather conditions delayed filming which meant the cast and crew had to schedule scenes to be shot again at a later date. As a result, if you look closely (though sometimes you don't even have to do that), Billie Piper's hair randomly changes lengths at various points throughout the episode and it ended up being so long, owing to the fact that the actress was wearing hair extensions, that she had to tie it up for reshoots of the last scene. Russell T Davies has also admitted that he wrote the script as an opportunity for the show's leading stars to be funny so if you don't think they are, the whole episode is pretty pointless indeed. It was worth a try.