Overrated Stories

Cross-Media Discussions
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Just for reference…

Doctor Who Magazine’s top ten list from 2023 in full:

  1. Heaven Sent
  2. World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls
  3. Genesis of the Daleks
  4. The Caves of Androzani
  5. The Day of the Doctor
  6. Blink
  7. Human Nature / Family of Blood
  8. City of Death
  9. Remembrance of the Daleks
  10. Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead
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Yeah my list would be a bit different…

Actually only three stories from that list would appear in mine: Day of the Doctor, Heaven Sent and the Caves of Androzani.

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Oh City of Death! Yeah that’s wayyyy overrated

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Heaven Sent is overrated!

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  • The Spectre of Lanyon Moor - the first part is fine, but then it gets steadily more boring as the audio goes on. I don’t know why this is consistently ranked amongst the best of DW BF audios.
  • Rogue
  • The entirety of the Doctor of War
  • The Purity series with Hebe
  • Vincent and the Doctor
    Etc
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Genesis comes to mind, although I wouldn’t call it overrated. More like… rated. It is a solid 4 star story but is far from the be-all end-all of the show.

Now, The Daleks, on the other hand… egh. Drags on far too long.

Earthshock is only memorable because of Adric, the rest of the actual story is just one forgettable haze.

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This’ll get me a few enemies! Heaven Sent is my choice (from modern times at least).

Peter Capaldi is a terrific actor, but his solo work in this story is just … more than a little boring. And I love slow-burning stories. The novel atmosphere loses its charm pretty quickly, and the bit where the Doctor smashes through rock for … was it a million years or something? Ludicrous. Overblown and ludicrous.

Kudos for trying something different, but apart from the limited appeal of the setting, I honestly can’t see what all the fuss is about.

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A bit over two billion, but who is counting :wink:

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Thank you! I mean, I love a few liberties taken with time in a time-travel show, but this is a bit much! :smiley:

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For me it’s Blink. It doesn’t hold up to rewatch for me, and there are a few things I just don’t like about it. It’s not a bad episode, but it’s not as good as people act like it is.

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I like most of that list, and love some of them, but The Day of the Doctor stands out to me as being super overrated there. Like, it’s fine. It’s an okay anniversary. But it’s nowhere near top 10 material for me!

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Agree with a lot of the choices in this thread and especially this selection. To add, a lot s2 in general I think is overrated, tho that’s also probably do with me thinking 10 and rose are overrated to the point where I just can’t watch any episode with them in it without constantly rolling my eyes.

As for non TV stories, Jubilee and Zagreus rly didn’t live up to the hype I saw around them tbh

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Spare Parts and City of Death are the big ones for me.

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I love Rob Shearman (The Holy Terror is the first Big Finish audio, I remember, that completely absorbed me), but I found both Jubilee and Scherzo to be very overrated. The solo Dalek scenes in the former story are great, but all else is a bit silly and unsubstantial. The reason why Rochester and his wife are the way they are is a real cop-out. Scherzo is an experiment, but not an entertaining one. Not a good start to the Divergent Universe.

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As you’ve mentioned Shearman: I find that Dalek is vastly overrated - Jubilee is a better variation of that story by far, (plus the novelisation of Dalek dragged on and on and on with irrelevant backstory for inconsequential characters).

I really don’t get the love for The Holy Terror either. Scherzo on the other hand I utterly love unreservedly :slightly_smiling_face:

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It’s wonderful that we all have differing views on these stories. Every one is someone’s favourite (with an exception or two). It seems Big Finish are doing something right!

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Can’t agree about The Holy Terror - but I’ll throw The Natural History of Fear in here as another hugely overrated audio.

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Thanks for giving me a second chance to say that Scherzo is an 8/10 and nowhere near the masterpiece others say it is (in my opinion of course). Incredible audio design and horror marred by a characterisation of 8 that I really really don’t like, even with the context of Zagreus helping me understand where it came from.

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I love Dalek and Shearman but the Target novelisation did nothing for me for the reasons you said!

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The Star Beast (tv episode)

Began as a generic but really enjoyable story that would’ve ended up a solid 7 or maybe even 8/10

But the ending blasted it all the way back to 2/10. It’s genuinely the worst episode of the entire show I’ve ever seen.

I’m not a fan of the 60th anniversary specials - they didn’t feel like that. They felt like Tennant/Tate anniversary specials.

The Star Beast is the worst one out of the three, because it undoes the very finale RTD was trying to celebrate in the most laziest way possible.
The way Donna says “Just let it go” as if it is as easy as pulling the door instead of pushing it when you can’t open it. It just felt disrespectful - “Uh, yeah, we made that very emotionally heavy finale, but yeah, we did it for the lulz”

Also, the way Rose comments on a fact that the Doctor doesn’t understand anything only because he is a man isn’t just disrespectful, it is just downright insulting.
I’m a heterosexual white man, and my favourite show of all time basically called me stupid. RTD, I believe this is the opposite of what tolerance is intended to be.
But congratulations, now it is the best episode of all time according to Twitter.

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