Ok here we go, what was initially thought to be the last of the individual Doctor bracket tournaments, but now not. It’s no secret that I find Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor to be the best of the bunch. From his beginnings as a rather grumpy and pragmatic old man, unsure where he stood with his new lease on life, to remembering that he’s just an idiot with a box and the hero that saves people, and then to old professor, he was phenomenal from start to finish. Possibly the most (considering the TV run) layered, nuanced, and intricately written Doctor with such a defined character arc not seen before or since. This era of Doctor Who saw the show shift more into strong character drama in addition to the Doctor Who formula, I think the most mature the TV run ever is, I say better for it. His three-season tenure in my opinion is the most consistently good this show has been in the revival, since Cartmel, or even since Hinchcliffe. And yeah, yeah, I know we have a few detractors in the crowd cringing at every word I’m saying here, but let’s set our differences aside and have a bracket tournament to celebrate what we all do like about this era, see what ends up being the best episode. Hell, maybe the result will be a surprise.
Since the vote ended up being business as usual for this tournament, that’s what we’ll do, same seeding, same following of my definition of a story as well, and all of that. As with other modern series tournaments where I assume most people have seen these, we’ll do 2 matches a day (except today, since there are three play-in matches before the first round, we’ll do all of them), all one-day polls, so remember to get your votes in. Let’s get this show on the road.
I’ll echo many of the sentiments you expressed. In terms of the revival, Twelve is my Doctor, and sits right alongside Four and Three in my top echelon of Doctors all-time (Two hangs out there from time to time when he isn’t visiting Eleven, Ten, and Seven on the tier below).
As for the vote, I laughed when I saw that I’d chosen to side with the unanimous winner (at the time of my voting) in all three matches.
My favorite Doctor. Play in 1 and 2 (pyramid and knock knock) were easy choices … Bit more difficult on the third went with forest I don’t like either story much but Capaldi with kids is actually great even if the story is and the random sister runaway subsubplot is dumb. But his interactions with them win the vote
Maybe not every word… but its a bit like praising a pretty good painting by your kid as the next Mona Lisa
For me Capaldi is so damn close to being the perfect Doctor (especially after S8) and has like three flaws. But MAN are they massive flaws that really bring him down to my bottom half.
Wait I haven’t seen season 10 yet I can’t vote this round-
Welp give me a week and I’ll be good
However, I am agreeing with you mostly because 12 is slowly becoming one of my favs. He’s made me cry multiple times and I just love how he’s written, and I need more of him so bad he’s so great. He and 11 might share my third spot of fav doctors cause he’s just so damn good. Aaaa
Going to vote for the obvious ones and also Sleep No More. Sleep No More might not be entirely good, from a quote-unquote “objective” standpoint, but I think it holds up pretty well until the ending, I find it generally interesting, and it’s one of the many Mark Gatiss episodes that are eternally underrated (which is all of them, really).
Meanwhile Knock, Knock is not really “bad”, but I find it incredibly underwhelming. You have David Suchet, and that’s all you do?
I would usually rank them fairly similarly I think, neither bad nor good, and Knock, Knock is probably the better of the two, but in my heart, and especially in the context of this tournament where Sleep No More is going to lose by a landslide, the Morpheus[1] pods have my vote.
in my mind I remembered them being called Morbius, not Morpheus. Which makes no sense! But brains gotta brain, I suppuse ↩︎
and the random sister runaway subsubplot is dumb. But his interactions with them win the vote
