Doctor Who: Ranking All 13 Doctors From Worst To Best

8. The Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston)

Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston Dalek Close
BBC

When he brought Doctor Who back in 2005, head writer Russell T Davies had to modernise both the overall tone of the show, as well as the lead character.

To that end, Christopher Eccleston was an incredibly pally, fun, cool Doctor - an effect his leather jacket helped him achieve - the sort of guy you could imagine having a few pints with down the pub.

From his beaming smile to his frequent wisecracks, he was an absolute pleasure to watch, but due to him suffering from the fallout of the great Time War, he also carried a bubbling hot anger under the surface, which reared its head when he came face-to-face with his oldest foe, the Daleks. It was easy to imagine the Ninth Doctor as that mate you've known for a few years, but he was also an extremely daunting figure when the circumstances called for it.

The success of the 2005 revival was never a sure thing, but it was thanks to Eccleston's more realistic, down-to-earth take on the Doctor (combined with some great writing and music) that it reached as wide an audience as it did.

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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!