I think i just eliminated half the field with my vote
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Am I the only one who finds it weird that Hell Bent is usually considered a separate story from Heaven Sent - they are clearly the same story, the episode titles even mirror each other!
Really, it should be a three-parter with Face the Raven, but one step at a time, I suppose
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Yeah I was thinking that. Then again, there are people who think that Twice Upon a Time is the first episode of S11 
/hj
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I find the bottom quarter of episodes really hard to rank, it’s easy to say what I think are the best episodes, but deciding where I would rank the worst finals is much harder (except for The Episode That Must Not be Named /hj)
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Name the Episode That Must Not Be Named
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That was really difficult, especially since I’ve seen most of these exactly once
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I consider them to be two separate stories that lead into each other, and not because of a perceived quality difference like a lot of people do, I think they’re both brilliant, but mostly because of the huge change in setting between the two. For me, an X-parter has one continuing plot from one to the other, with reasonably similar settings between the episodes, kind of a vibe judgement there. 4.5 billion years in the confession dial, compared to Gallifrey and the end of the universe I see as different enough in setting to distinguish them as stories. Same reasoning for considering Utopia a separate story from the other two. Again, the end of the universe, compared to 21st century Earth is a big enough setting leap to separate the stories, where Martha spending a year between episodes is still closely enough related to not feel like such a leap.
If simply going from one into the other meant it was all the same X-parter, then An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, and Marco Polo are a 20-parter.
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I abstained from voting for the ones from series 6-13 because I haven’t seen those in years, but I still put “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”/“Empire of Death” as dead last because “Empire of Death” was 45 minutes of my life that I’m never getting back.
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I think the difference for me versus some of your other examples is that Heaven Sent and Hell Bent are very clearly about the same things - both episodes are about the Doctor and Clara’s relationship, how that relationship affects them both, his reaction to losing her, and really using that as a springboard to examine the role of the companion within the show. Yes, they take place in different locations, and Heaven Sent mostly features the Doctor alone, but the themes and core plot of both episodes synergise with each other so completely that it just doesn’t make sense to separate them, in my mind.
It definitely isn’t just a matter of going from one to another - as you say, the first few stories of season 1 are clearly separate, because they’re ultimately about different things and (taking a real-world perspective) they’re by different writers, so it makes sense to consider them separately. The series 3 finale is an interesting one - again, it makes sense to me to include Utopia, because the central themes of each part build into each other, but I don’t think they intertwine as completely as they do in the series 9 conclusion.
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And that’s not an unreasonable way to go about it. I was considering thematic elements with the other stuff too, part of the continuous story point. But I stand by HS and HB are different enough in feel, prompted largely by the setting shift, to not think of them as a two-parter, or a three-parter with Raven. I’d acknowledge them as a connected trilogy, but that’s not the same thing as three-parter.
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This is what I came up with! For me this was a lot easier than ranking the Doctors(which I couldn’t even finish).
As for where I fall on the Heaven Sent/Hell Bent debate, I think they are two separate stories. Each episode tells a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end, and while they are both thematically about 12 and Clara’s relationship, they present this in very different ways. I think it’s also important to look at it from a production standpoint, two-part episodes are made together, with little to no gap in filming and utilizes mostly the same cast and crew, where as something like Heaven Sent/Hell Bent, while both directed by Rachel Talalay, filmed completely separately with an almost completely new cast. This is also why I(and the BBC) don’t consider Utopia to be a part of the series 3 finale for example.
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Count me in!
/hj
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I did the runoff calculations manually, and can explain in detail how this works. Gotta leave work and go home first though.
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So the instant runoff method essentially works based on this flowchart:
Now, I think there is a slight difference in the algorithm the forum uses, and what I’m about to do won’t match perfectly, but the result will be the same, and is in essence what the voting thing is doing. So the first thing is to count up everyone’s No. 1 choices:
Then, since the total is 32, something needs more than 16 for the majority, nothing achieved this, so the last place items are eliminated (shown in red). In this case, they all have no votes, so there’s nothing to be distributed, the next round is a bit redundant:
So we go again, nothing achieved the majority number, so Army of Ghosts/Doomsday is eliminated, and Mahan’s vote moves to their second place choice, which was The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, and we add them up again:
Still, nothing broke into majority, so the two in last place are The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End and The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, including Mahan’s #2 vote. The next available vote for deltaandthebannermen, Tian, and timeywimeythespian was Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, and for BillFiler, sircarolyn, and Mahan it was World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, so each of those gain three votes:
With these new totals, World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls has now achieved enough votes to go over the majority threshold, and has therefore won the runoff vote.
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What could be better explained? I thought I summarized how it works pretty clearly.
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I’ll be honest, I just enjoy clicking the buttons to rank them. What happens after that, I have no idea, but that’s fine. 
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What I’m confused by is when the ‘rounds’ happen. If I vote now, how does it affect things if something has already been eliminated?
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The round is every time it does an elimination from the totals. Every new vote actually restarts the entire process and changes the result. You can think of every new vote as a selection of all of them with nothing eliminated.
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