Doctor Who: Ranking All 13 Doctors From Worst To Best

4. The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)

Doctor who daleks in manhattan david tennant
BBC

If Christopher Eccleston successfully shepherded in the modern era of Doctor Who, then David Tennant took it to the stars. Literally. Still an insanely popular Doctor almost a decade after his regeneration, the Tenth Doctor's cocky charm and devilish good looks helped bring a lot more younger viewers onboard with the show, which helped turn Doctor Who into the global juggernaut it is today.

Carrying on the more human, down-to-earth take on the Doctor that Eccleston delivered, but turning it up to eleven (or should that be ten?), Tennant struck such a chord with audiences because of how bubbly, youthful and likable he was. Largely due to his relationship with Rose, he's been dubbed an emotional, "boyfriend" Doctor, displaying extremely strong feels - be they affection, compassion, or fury - regularly.

For that reason alone, Ten is arguably the most relatable Doctor of all time, but this also means that he lacks the alienness the Doctor really should have. He's almost too human. On the plus side, Tennant is such a pleasure to watch that this is an easy niggle to overlook, and with some all-time great Doctor Who stories (Blink, Midnight, The Waters Of Mars), it's no surprise that the Tenth Doctor is always near the top of lists like these.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!