The First Five Decades

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is upon us, and it's a good one for anyone who likes numbers. Thousands of fans have scored every story from 1 to 10, and all these have been averaged and totted up to find people's favourite - favourite story ever, favourite Doctor, favourite season, you name it. And there's even the prospect of comparing the results to the last time the poll was done, five years ago! (with a whole load of new stories since)

You can find out more about the issue, with a wonderful fold out cover, here. But I thought, since I entered myself, a short summary of what I voted for as my favourites. I rarely sit down and work out my favourite Doctor or story (there's 241 of them) - and my tastes are no doubt only controversial for how average they are - but it's a good game of numbers. (And maybe I've boosted the Slitheen ones up the chart ever so slightly!)

10s went to: (deep breath) The Tomb of the Cybermen, Inferno, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom, The Deadly Assassin, The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, City of Death, Earthshock, The Caves of Androzani, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways, The Girl in the Fireplace, Army of Ghosts / Doomsday, Human Nature / The Family of Blood, Blink, Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, Midnight, Turn Left, The Waters of Mars, The Eleventh Hour, The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone, Vincent and the Doctor, The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, The Doctor’s Wife, Asylum of the Daleks.

9s went to: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Time Meddler, The Mind Robber, The War Games, Spearhead From Space, Pyramids of Mars, The Curse of Fenric, Dalek,
Father’s Day, Tooth and Claw, School Reunion, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, Smith and Jones,
Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords, The Unicorn and the Wasp, The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End, Amy’s Choice, The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War, The Girl Who Waited,The God Complex, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen, The Name of the Doctor



There's a list of top 50 stories to watch right there.

(2s and 1s went to: Planet of Giants, The Space Museum, The Krotons, The Time Monster, Timelash, Time and the Rani; Underworld, Meglos, Time-Flight, Terminus, The Twin Dilemma.)


Per Doctor, it works out that Christopher Eccleston's stories work out the most favourable (my first Doctor, even though I put Matt Smith on the poll), followed by David Tennant and then Matt Smith. Out of the older stories - lower on average no doubt due to ropiness, but they're not that much lower - it goes, surprisingly, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker (!), William Hartnell, Paul McGann (his one story), then Colin Baker.

That's stories, not the actors, of course. I tried to keep a wide distribution (or else I'd give them all 9s), and stories I haven't seen (seen, not just heard) are omitted. (This means in DWM, the lesser known 60s stories are voted for by less people... but then most are never going to be front runners, and 'less people' still equates to over a thousand!)

Don't ask me to pick a favourite out of that lot!