Doctor Who: EVERY Modern Series Ranked Worst To Best

We'll say it: Series 8 is the most underrated run in modern Who. Many struggled with it the first time, because it was such a departure from what we'd come to expect. But removed from those expectations, it's a cracker.

Series 8 is dark. Real dark. The Doctor is now an abrasive anti-hero, and the series arc, rather than focusing on a big alien mystery, questions the very nature of our protagonist. Capaldi’s performance is incredible, and he and Jenna Coleman get some of the best Doctor-companion material ever written, testing that decades-old dynamic like never before. Series 8 explores the toxicity and co-dependency of that relationship, and what happens when it’s pushed so far it snaps.

Sure, there are some duds in there (hello The Caretaker and In The Forest Of The Night) but Capaldi and Coleman carry this series so hard that even at its worst, it’s highly enjoyable.

You’ve got Deep Breath, Into The Dalek, Listen, and Time Heist, all of which are excellent. Add to that Jamie Mathieson’s back-to-back belters Mummy On The Orient Express and Flatline, and you’ve got one hell of a run.

That’s without mentioning possibly Doctor Who’s darkest story of all time, Dark Water/Death In Heaven (you know, the one where people live through their own cremations, and Danny Pink is reunited with a child he accidentally shot dead – yeah, that one), which introduces an incarnation of the Master played exceptionally by Michelle Gomez.

It's the most thematically and emotionally mature the show has dared to go, and a real standout series.