Favorite episode

[Ronnie Rowlands]

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

You are forgiven because of The Daleks.

Eh? Forgiven for what, exactly?

[Alexus]

Being wrong.

[Josef Kenny]

WRONG!

[Danny Stewart]

Originally Posted by Alexus

Ah, an episode I enjoyed slightly on Youtube is your favourite, beating out the entire new series and all the really good old series episodes.

How depressing.

You're damn right it beats out the new series, and I shudder to think what your definition of a "really good old series episode" includes.

Originally Posted by Ronnie Rowlands

Eh? Forgiven for what, exactly?

Naming a Russell T Davies script as your all-time favorite episode of Doctor Who. Except actually, now that I think about it, even naming The Daleks doesn't excuse you from that.

[Alexus]

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

You're damn right it beats out the new series, and I shudder to think what your definition of a "really good old series episode" includes.

In no particular order, City of Death, Genesis of the Daleks, Spearhead from Space, that sort of thing.

[Megan]

Originally Posted by Alexus

In no particular order, City of Death, Genesis of the Daleks, Spearhead from Space, that sort of thing.

Whoa. Danny can't get mad at you for those. He handpicked Spearhead from Space and Genesis of the Daleks in his effort to expose me to the old series. I think you're safe...for now.

They were both awesome, btw. Good picks!

[MickJo]

Inferno followed by The Ark in Space, Caves of Androzani and Rememberence of the Daleks

[Ronnie Rowlands]

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

Naming a Russell T Davies script as your all-time favorite episode of Doctor Who. Except actually, now that I think about it, even naming The Daleks doesn't excuse you from that.

I see. Sometimes I wonder how I even live with myself.

[Alexus]

I don't know why you're continuing with this, Ronald. You know it's pointless.

Just end it, Friend.

End it now.

[Jamie Minty]

Old: Genesis Of The Daleks, Its either that, 5 Doctors or Carnival of Monsters (all I have seen )

New: Tough but probably Utopia

[Danny Stewart]

Originally Posted by Jamie Minty

Old: Genesis Of The Daleks, Its either that, 5 Doctors or Carnival of Monsters (all I have seen )

New: Tough but probably Utopia

People don't read.

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

The point is to group the old series and new series together and pick one favorite out of everything. Separate favorites for the old and new series kind of kills that.

[BritCanuck]

The thing with "Doctor Who" is that you can never pick just one favorite episode. Despite the varying quality of writing that prevails even today, every episode had its moment.
It’s just one of those shows where you could go on for hours about what you liked (or didn’t like) about every episode you’ve seen.

Case in point: "Genesis of the Daleks".

Great intro for Davros, and in another timeline, they would have ended the Davros storyline there, and not carried it on to the point where each subsequent Dalek episode in the Classic Series became "The Davros Show" With Special Guests The Daleks (though Julian Bleach was great in "Journey’s End").

The whole morality issue ("Do I have the right?") was perhaps the story’s defining moment, and was touched upon in subsequent Dalek episodes.

Drawback: Davros’ experimental clam would probably have some of us wishing for a return appearance by the Adipose.

Now that’s just one classic episode. If you want, I could tell you why I thought "Delta and the Bannermen" was my favorite Season 24 episode…

Ian Stewart: You know, if you were to take Journey's End back in time and show it to the people who created the show back in 1963, I think they would just stop.

More likely, they would figure out a way to have the Doctor or his companions push Daleks around just for fun, or vice versa ("Evil of the Daleks", part five cliffhanger).
"Trains…trains…trains…"

http://doctorwho.time-and-space.co.uk/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=152&pos=1693
"Journey's End" screencap courtesy of the "Doctor Who: Time and Space" website.
May make voters who scored "Journey’s End" with a negative number feel nauseous.
Viewer discretion is advised.

[Jamie Minty]

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

People don't read.

Lol sorry, I just read a comment from the first page and followed suite.

Utopia

[Danny Stewart]

Originally Posted by BritCanuck

Drawback: Davros’ experimental clam would probably have some of us wishing for a return appearance by the Adipose.

Um, no. Just because it looked cheesy doesn't make it horrendously flawed on a conceptual level.

Originally Posted by BritCanuck

If you want, I could tell you why I thought “Delta and the Bannermen” was my favorite Season 24 episode…

Sure, go ahead.

[Ross Hendrie]

Genesis of the Daleks. That is all.

[BritCanuck]

Originally Posted by BritCanuck

If you want, I could tell you why I thought "Delta and the Bannermen" was my favorite Season 24 episode…

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

Sure, go ahead.

At Danny's request, here is Brit Canuck's review of "Delta and the Bannermen".

Disclaimer: bear in mind that I labeled this as my favorite Season 24 story, not the best Season 24 story.

Well, okay. Upfront, this was part of Season 24 of the Classic Series, widely regarded as the worst season in terms of quality, not to mention the season with the most British TV celebrities shamelessly guest starring (wacky comedian Ken Dodd had a glorified cameo in the first episode of this one). And the whole idea of running around a holiday camp in South Wales dodging alien mercenaries and bounty hunters will sound to some even more laughable than much of the plot of "Partners in Crime".

There was also children’s TV personality Bonnie Langford ("Saturday Starship") to contend with, but to be fair, a) her successor was also a children’s TV personality who lucked out and got better scripts than Langford, and b) everyone pointed and laughed when Catherine Tate’s return at the beginning of this past season was announced, and she quickly proved most of them wrong, so let’s give Bonnie the benefit of the doubt for now.

Here’s what I thought "Delta and the Bannermen" did have in its favor.

1) A strong, capable supporting heroine.
Delta, the Chimeron Queen, played by acclaimed (and also doomed-"Krull"-villainess-turned-goodie) actress Belinda Mayne, most of her race wiped out, baby daughter with an astronomical growth rate and a singing voice louder than an opera singer in tow, being chased around the galaxy by Don Henderson, with Sylvester McCoy coming to her rescue. Argubly a dramatic plot going there. Seems like a damsel in distress, but able to hold her own in a couple of battle scenes. Characters like that are few and far between on the New Series, and their survival rate is usually kind of low, too.

2) A fairly good supporting character who was actually, genuinely considered as a new Companion.
Rachel (aka. Ray), the girl with the motor scooter and the satchel full of every conceivable tool ever known to mankind (even a Dinky Allen Key, if I remember correctly), played by then-future "Emmerdale" actress and later home shopping channel personality Sara Griffiths. (Never saw "Emmerdale", but wasn’t Sara’s character romantically linked to a character played by Frazer "Jamie" Hines?) Ray was just a supporting character, but spent a good amount of time with the Doctor throughout the story and developed a small but passable rapport. With her bag of tools and his bottomless pockets, they would probably have made a good pair together in the TARDIS, had Bonnie made up her mind a little quicker.

3) Don Henderson.
The Bannermen leader Gavrok made a pretty good villain, not one of the usual bwah-ha-ha-ha types, but ruthless (vaporizing his own hired bounty hunter instead of paying him) and cunning (always one step behind our heroes), but interesting in many respects, from his willingness to join his troop of hapless extras on the front line, to his fondness for raw meat. (Plus, he’s the one who finally gets rid of Ken Dodd’s character, making him a hero to many critics.)

You’ll also find some similarities to an average RTD story here, including a silly love story involving two different species (Delta + Billy = Doctor + Rose), a gratiously high body count (including an entire busload of wacky space tourists), and an almost total lack of sense, sensibility and logic. It’s a shame RTD isn’t remaking this, really – could he do better or worse than original scribe Malcolm Kohll?

And before I forget, there’s that infamous cameo by music man Keff McCulloch as that doo-wop backup singer.

Overall, "Delta and the Bannermen" is light years away from being the best episode of "Doctor Who" – in fact, it’s more likely one of the downright silliest episodes. But throughout it all, there’s a sense of relatively upbeat fun, and perhaps a little nostalgia for those who have actually spent a week at a holiday camp on a high school trip, as I once did. Coming in the middle of Season 24 as it did, "Delta and the Bannermen" is still unexpectedly full of fun.

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

Just because (the clam in "Genesis of the Daleks") looked cheesy doesn't make it horrendously flawed on a conceptual level ("Partners in Crime").

I love the way you think sometimes.

[Danny Stewart]

BC, I love ya and all, but could you please stop writing posts with such horrendous formatting? [FONT] and [SIZE] tags around every paragraph, and having most of your post show up in Times New Roman instead of Trebuchet MS is really disorienting and makes your posts very unpleasant to read.

[BritCanuck]

Originally Posted by Danny Stewart

BC, I love ya and all, but could you please stop writing posts with such horrendous formatting? [FONT] and [SIZE] tags around every paragraph, and having most of your post show up in Times New Roman instead of Trebuchet MS is really disorienting and makes your posts very unpleasant to read.

Sorry about that. The entire review was copied and pasted from a Word document. I'll see if I can switch it over to Trebuchet MS.

[Danny Stewart]

Originally Posted by BritCanuck

Sorry about that. The entire review was copied and pasted from a Word document. I'll see if I can switch it over to Trebuchet MS.

I was more hoping for the removal of the extraneous tags altogether, but I'll take what I can get.

EDIT: I've gone ahead and cleaned up your post for you, removing all the extraneous formatting and cleaning up a bunch of crap Word left behind (like smart quotes... *shudder*). Might I suggest that in future, if you decide a post warrants writing outside the browser, that you use a plain text editor such as Notepad instead of something like Word which leaves horrendously slaughtered formatting all over the place?

[James P.]

Old series: Timelash & The Invasion
New Series: Dalek & The Unquiet Dead

Kill me for Timelash but I actually like it. It has a cool premise and the Borad was executed in an exquisite manner. If this had been done in Eccleston's era just think of the SFX improvements. But I wouldn't have the androids changed however, they hit gold there, too.