Doctor Who: Every Doctor's WORST Episode

Doctor Who is one of the greatest science fiction shows ever conceived, the versatility of its premise proven by how long it's been on the air for. Simply put, bad shows don't tend to stick around for fifty-seven years.

With that said, it also has a reputation of being somewhat inconsistent. One week you might be served up the best that scripted television has to offer, set in an exciting new location with terrifying monsters and guest characters that stick in your mind long after the credits roll.

And then you might tune in next week to see an uninspired adventure set somewhere that you don't care about, showing people you can't remember the names of fighting against people in awful rubber costumes.

This is, of course, part of Doctor Who's charm. You never know quite what you're going to get from episode to episode, and there's an excitement in that.

But what adventures are the absolute bottom of the pile for each Doctor? Which low points simply aren't worth revisiting, even just to point and laugh at?

Let's see if your least favourite made into this list of "highlights".

One of the joys of watching classic Doctor Who is marveling at just how bad the production values are. From dodgy costumes to wobbling sets, it’s a wonder that the show made it past its first season let alone went on to become one of the longest-running television programmes of all time.

And there are few stories that better represent the shoddier aspects of the early years than the 1965 car crash The Web Planet. While the team behind it clearly had lofty ideas and wanted to explore big themes about the nature of good versus evil, it just ends up looking so awful.

The aliens of the week, the butterfly-like Menoptra and the giant ants known as Zarbi, are quite clearly actors in very bad outfits and while every planet in the First Doctor’s era looks like a set at one of the BBC’s studios, it’s like the set designers took a month off for this one.

Still, despite all this and the glacially paced story too, the first episode of The Web Planet still managed to achieve Doctor Who’s highest ever ratings of the '60s, 13.5 million viewers. Go figure.