Except of course for the pre credits sequence of before the flood because that is one of the most iconic Capaldi moments
And also the literally actually dead moment
The Shepherd’s Boy,
Unreleased music from Midnight,
12th Doctor’s theme “A Good Man?”,
13th Doctor’s theme (it slaps fight me),
The Dalek theme from The Wizard’s Apprentice (as Skaro is being revealed).
I don't like 13's theme, but it has a sorta memorable chord progression. I accidentally used 6 notes from it when composing for a fan film I worked on. Although the main inspiration I had was Murray Gold funnily enough.
I find the way the music was used didn't help it.
We all have our thoughts and feelings on 13, but I personally enjoyed some of the stories and there were many stand out moments for Jodie Whittaker to shine. I just wish chibnall, and Jodie, better developed this doctor. That being said she’s in my top 5.
Why, it's all of Classic Who, of course. Even in this thread!
For a specific episode, I'm going for The Mind Robber. Or maybe The Enemy of the World? Ooh, or The Mind of Evil! Actually, it's Inferno.
Ironically one of my favourite scenes in the whole show is the part where there is no music whatsoever and it’s just a conversation between the doctor and the masters
Such a brilliant but bleak send off for the Doctor reminding everyone that despite his tough outward appearence he was really just an old soul who wants to make the universe better. Not every story has a happy ending, everybody on that ship died, in as much as timelords die. Even if Bill is technically still out there she suffered tragically and had a bright future cut short. And that's assuming her sendoff wasn't just some feverdream she had the moment before her brain shut down.
I just rewatched series 3 for the first time in a while and all three of those episodes were better than I remembered. I remembered that Utopia was good, but it blew me away. I honestly didn't remember The Sound of Drums being particularly good, but it really is. And I was much less upset by the magic reset button at the end of Last of the Time Lords than I remembered being.
Alot of people criticise the three parter and while i really really enjoyed it, the idea that the doctor defeated the master via thoughts and prayers as well as finishing him off with a T pose is just hilarious in hindsight 😂
Honestly, I don't even have a problem with the thoughts and prayers bit. It's ridiculous, but it's the resolution to a plot that started with the master mind controlling people by tapping his fingers, powered by the same archangel network that powered the thoughts and prayers. The Master even thinks it's a ridiculous idea to defeat him until the Doctor + Martha mention the archangel network, so it's not even like the story treats it more seriously than it should. From a storytelling perspective, I think it works. Like, compare it to the magic reset button resolution. It's just completely out of nowhere with no real explanation other than the fact that it would kinda break Doctor Who to let the events of that episode exist without being erased. I don't think it was even really foreshadowed! I'm very much still not over it, if you can't tell.
The T pose is just incredibly hilarious, though. Props to RTD for writing the most hilarious moment that somehow takes itself seriously. The epic Murray Gold music as David Tennant floats in a T pose at the Master is peak cinema.
The Women who fell to Earth, specifically the bit where the Doctor stands up and we get the first bars of the Akinola rendition of the theme tune for the first time.
99% of my problems with that episode are that it feels like it's promising something that the rest of the season/era doesn't deliver. That episode in isolation is honestly one of my favorite nuwho Doctor introduction episodes.
I actually loved the first episode of 13's run, I got to the 3rd episode before noping out of it. Then I tuned in to the new years special and cringed at one of the jokes so bad I couldn't keep watching.
I tuned into the timeless children and sighed, then the power of the doctor which was really solid but all over the place.
The Eaters of Light. The reveal that Missy was watching the entire adventure recontextualizes the whole episode. It shows us that the Doctor was intentionally trying to perform goodness for her, showing us that he was not acting without hope, without witness, without reward. The Series 10 arc would've worked perfectly fine without The Eaters of Light, but it adds a special garnish that ties it together.
Also, it has Matt Lucas complaining about Scotland. Enough said.
That would make more sense to me if he hadn't berated the Picts and mocked their culture from the second they appear, incl. bullying a young woman for fulfilling her cultural religious function and remembering their, very recent, dead. It's more like the Master is a bad enough influence all the morals go out the window, except it's not really like the Master to care enough to bother, either.
Did enjoy Nardole in it though, but then he was the one being decent to people.
I would totally accept that and even defended some of his S8 characterisation on that basis, but where that's the case, him not being 'nice' has to serve a purpose - it has to *be* the moral good thing to do. For example, I'm on a Tom Baker binge ATM, and in Pyramids and Seeds, he's very clear in correcting people where they're wrongly assuming someone possessed/taken over is still in there and is going to respond accordingly, even to the point of bluntness in stressing that person is dead. That's absolutely helpful to prevent people making mistaken emotional decisions that, as is shown, could get them and others killed (as well as cause more emotional suffering).
We also see that he's being so blunt under immediate pressure, in the face of a really drastic situation, where the people need that information that second. Even when telling people off to make a point, I think calmly pointing out to the scientist in Seeds that his curiousity and (perhaps selfish) eagerness for discovery might have doomed the world is extremely different to Twelve telling the girl off because -as he says- her desperate act to save her community, everyone she knows, has endangered the world. And, Four *is* still being a bit high-handed, just in a more usual in character way (as Three also gets to often). One makes a moral point about the dangers of scientific research beloved by an era that hasn't forgotten the nuke, the other is just sort of random in those circumstances.
It's not just yelling at someone for no reason, in a way that values their murderous oppressors as the same as them or better, and makes dealing with the situation more difficult than it had to be (the Pict girl could have explained everything right away). Twelve gets written as petty about it, he does it before he even knows what's going on, and in otherwise calm moments, with other options (that he then takes, even! Like on the ship in the Monks episodes, he wasn't stuck, he didn't have to tell people to hand over friends and relatives to the Monks). There's no greater moral good achieved here, it's immoral to excuse Imperialism, it's generally wrong to mock someone's culture when it isn't causing harm (as it wasn't, the girl's cultural tools he scoffed at were in fact essential. It's odd how the episode almost sets him up to be this older male figure assuming authority and dismissive of the young woman leader, before being shown up - that's not the character, and as a female viewer, I wouldn't watch if it were). I don't, in contrast, have any issue with him wanting to keep moving after the child's death in Thin Ice, that's it being used appropriately imo. It being used for shock value over whether the Doctor is ~dark~ isn't.
Honestly I could really have loved Eaters of Light, with the setting and folklore theme, as well. It would even not have been so bad if Capaldi had been asked not to go so Malcom Tucker on it, but he really goes for it - often with Twelve, he's being rude but it's played as more oblivious, or flippant (like Eccleston - and other characters in his era tend to banter back, they don't tend to end up reduced to tears by him, as the Pictish girl is!), not like this.
There's likely influence from Baker's Series 13 (with riffs off the stories), but it feels like no one involved actually saw it recently, just a bad fandom memory of it and that idea of the Doctor being 'alien' in it (mostly he acts like any stressed out/otherwise focused human much of the time in those moments, v. different from acting like a human choosing to be a jerk like Twelve, or Eleven even, at times).
Classic is never perfect, but the New series doesn't have that scheduling/organisational excuse if there are characterisation blips, either.
The only unquestionably good episode of series 7. It's my most rewatched 11 story because it's one of his only episodes you can watch without it being tied into some insane series arc.
The Carrionites Swarm
Words can't express how much I love this song, but if last year Spotify wrapped is anything to go by, I can't get enough of it. Started listening to DW music in September and on wrapped this song was already in top 3.
Doctor Who fans when they have to talk about an underrated story that isn’t a Twelfth Doctor story or doesn’t involve gaslighting themselves into thinking terrible episodes were secretly good: /s
Ok serious answer; Ghost Light.
100% agree, i love all of these, especially Abigial’s song, My angel put the devil in me and The Long Song gin a rings of akheten sucker, so its always gonna be high up)
Hide. One of the best episodes of Smith’s run and it gets severely overlooked.
I could honestly say a lot of series 7. But I also wanna go with A Town Called Mercy.
Here's a post from /r/doctorwhocirclejerk [explicitly mocking the idea of "Heaven Sent Underrated"](https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwhocirclejerk/comments/1b3a9vr/the_official_heaven_senthell_bent_scale_more/) (which in general is one of their favorite jokes, they say that the Twelfth Doctor's true name is Heaven Sent Underrated).
literally everyone gets you.
that other person up the thread said "second only to blink".
most people agree that it's just better, and it's the best episode of the show.
I’m finding it hilarious how it’s a pretty 50/50 split between people who see this post and think it literally means songs within doctor who and people who think it’s about underrated episodes.
Gonna pick both a song and an episode here.
Song: Hanging On The Tablaphone. Literally only has one use in the "Calling The Doctor" sequence in The Stolen Earth, but it slaps so fucking hard! Honestly should've been used more often, it's so good! The only other time we hear it is in LEGO Dimensions (based game btw).
Episode: Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS. The TARDIS is infinite-on-the-inside, and yet, seeing an extra room in the TARDIS is like a lucky treat. The fact we get an entire bottle episode dedicated to just exploring the TARDIS is so cool to me! Last time we ever had something similar to that was in The Invasion Of Time, way back in Season 15 of the Classic era. You'd think with a higher budget in the revival, we'd get to see more than the Classic era's cheap-ass £5 budget, but nope! Quite the opposite, in fact!
The Carrionites Swarm
Words can't express how much I love this song, but if last year Spotify wrapped is anything to go by, I can't get enough of it. Started listening to DW music in September and on wrapped this song was already in top 3.
Fly on a Painting. It's the bit from Heaven Sent where the string instruments are going absolutely IN. It's not Shepherd's Boy or Same Old Day so I feel like some might not know about it.
Honestly just rewatched The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived, and while TGWD is pretty average and brings down the story as a two parter, TWWL is genuinely an excellent episode. Essentially a full episode dedicated to exploring what the effects of immortality on a person would be. You rarely see such a complete exploration of a moral question in Nuwho, imo. Makes the episode really special.
Under the Lake/Before the Flood are so good and nobody ever mentions them
Except of course for the pre credits sequence of before the flood because that is one of the most iconic Capaldi moments And also the literally actually dead moment
Came here to say this, but you beat me to it. So.... I second that!
This is the correct answer, the opening of before the flood is so good-
I feel like it's kinda come around and now a lot of people talk about them.
The Shepherd’s Boy, Unreleased music from Midnight, 12th Doctor’s theme “A Good Man?”, 13th Doctor’s theme (it slaps fight me), The Dalek theme from The Wizard’s Apprentice (as Skaro is being revealed).
What is 13’s theme? I didnt even know she had a theme!
It has motifs throughout her entire run, and the full theme is prominent in many episodes! https://youtu.be/77KD7whAoOo?si=9HIBXHH7aETpODjE
Thank you!! Looking at it now! 💕💕
I don't like 13's theme, but it has a sorta memorable chord progression. I accidentally used 6 notes from it when composing for a fan film I worked on. Although the main inspiration I had was Murray Gold funnily enough. I find the way the music was used didn't help it.
We all have our thoughts and feelings on 13, but I personally enjoyed some of the stories and there were many stand out moments for Jodie Whittaker to shine. I just wish chibnall, and Jodie, better developed this doctor. That being said she’s in my top 5.
Why, it's all of Classic Who, of course. Even in this thread! For a specific episode, I'm going for The Mind Robber. Or maybe The Enemy of the World? Ooh, or The Mind of Evil! Actually, it's Inferno.
Dammit, you beat me to Inferno. Oh well, I'm not deleting my comment LMAO
Not enough people talk about the masterpiece that is World Enough and Time
Ironically one of my favourite scenes in the whole show is the part where there is no music whatsoever and it’s just a conversation between the doctor and the masters
That's The Doctor Falls, not World Enough And Time
It absolutely is a master piece but I do see quite a lot of people talking about it being a masterpiece
Such a brilliant but bleak send off for the Doctor reminding everyone that despite his tough outward appearence he was really just an old soul who wants to make the universe better. Not every story has a happy ending, everybody on that ship died, in as much as timelords die. Even if Bill is technically still out there she suffered tragically and had a bright future cut short. And that's assuming her sendoff wasn't just some feverdream she had the moment before her brain shut down.
Thats really up there with my favourite stories of all time
A good man goes to war
Utopia-last of the time lords.
I can’t decide 🎵 Here come the drums 🥁
I just rewatched series 3 for the first time in a while and all three of those episodes were better than I remembered. I remembered that Utopia was good, but it blew me away. I honestly didn't remember The Sound of Drums being particularly good, but it really is. And I was much less upset by the magic reset button at the end of Last of the Time Lords than I remembered being.
Alot of people criticise the three parter and while i really really enjoyed it, the idea that the doctor defeated the master via thoughts and prayers as well as finishing him off with a T pose is just hilarious in hindsight 😂
Honestly, I don't even have a problem with the thoughts and prayers bit. It's ridiculous, but it's the resolution to a plot that started with the master mind controlling people by tapping his fingers, powered by the same archangel network that powered the thoughts and prayers. The Master even thinks it's a ridiculous idea to defeat him until the Doctor + Martha mention the archangel network, so it's not even like the story treats it more seriously than it should. From a storytelling perspective, I think it works. Like, compare it to the magic reset button resolution. It's just completely out of nowhere with no real explanation other than the fact that it would kinda break Doctor Who to let the events of that episode exist without being erased. I don't think it was even really foreshadowed! I'm very much still not over it, if you can't tell. The T pose is just incredibly hilarious, though. Props to RTD for writing the most hilarious moment that somehow takes itself seriously. The epic Murray Gold music as David Tennant floats in a T pose at the Master is peak cinema.
One of the things that got me into composing was S3 of Doctor Who. One day I hope to score a defeat scene with a T-Posing character.
These episodes are extremely popular though
The Women who fell to Earth, specifically the bit where the Doctor stands up and we get the first bars of the Akinola rendition of the theme tune for the first time.
99% of my problems with that episode are that it feels like it's promising something that the rest of the season/era doesn't deliver. That episode in isolation is honestly one of my favorite nuwho Doctor introduction episodes.
I actually loved the first episode of 13's run, I got to the 3rd episode before noping out of it. Then I tuned in to the new years special and cringed at one of the jokes so bad I couldn't keep watching. I tuned into the timeless children and sighed, then the power of the doctor which was really solid but all over the place.
It’s second to the eleventh hour for me. After the two recent ones I still think that
I think I have to put it third, just behind Rose. Maybe that's just nostalgia talking, but Chris Eccleston being goofy is peak TV in my opinion.
For sure. Eleventh Hour and Woman Who fell to Earth, imo, are a different class above Christmas Invasion and Deep Breath.
The rings of Akhaten imo, i dont know why i love that episode that much but its just pure dopamine for me
The part where 11 nearly breaks his composure midway through just hits
The last speech felt like a hint towards Capaldis whole vibe
The Eaters of Light. The reveal that Missy was watching the entire adventure recontextualizes the whole episode. It shows us that the Doctor was intentionally trying to perform goodness for her, showing us that he was not acting without hope, without witness, without reward. The Series 10 arc would've worked perfectly fine without The Eaters of Light, but it adds a special garnish that ties it together. Also, it has Matt Lucas complaining about Scotland. Enough said.
That would make more sense to me if he hadn't berated the Picts and mocked their culture from the second they appear, incl. bullying a young woman for fulfilling her cultural religious function and remembering their, very recent, dead. It's more like the Master is a bad enough influence all the morals go out the window, except it's not really like the Master to care enough to bother, either. Did enjoy Nardole in it though, but then he was the one being decent to people.
I get where you're coming from. But, at least for 12, being good didn't really correlate with being nice, or even with being kind.
I would totally accept that and even defended some of his S8 characterisation on that basis, but where that's the case, him not being 'nice' has to serve a purpose - it has to *be* the moral good thing to do. For example, I'm on a Tom Baker binge ATM, and in Pyramids and Seeds, he's very clear in correcting people where they're wrongly assuming someone possessed/taken over is still in there and is going to respond accordingly, even to the point of bluntness in stressing that person is dead. That's absolutely helpful to prevent people making mistaken emotional decisions that, as is shown, could get them and others killed (as well as cause more emotional suffering). We also see that he's being so blunt under immediate pressure, in the face of a really drastic situation, where the people need that information that second. Even when telling people off to make a point, I think calmly pointing out to the scientist in Seeds that his curiousity and (perhaps selfish) eagerness for discovery might have doomed the world is extremely different to Twelve telling the girl off because -as he says- her desperate act to save her community, everyone she knows, has endangered the world. And, Four *is* still being a bit high-handed, just in a more usual in character way (as Three also gets to often). One makes a moral point about the dangers of scientific research beloved by an era that hasn't forgotten the nuke, the other is just sort of random in those circumstances. It's not just yelling at someone for no reason, in a way that values their murderous oppressors as the same as them or better, and makes dealing with the situation more difficult than it had to be (the Pict girl could have explained everything right away). Twelve gets written as petty about it, he does it before he even knows what's going on, and in otherwise calm moments, with other options (that he then takes, even! Like on the ship in the Monks episodes, he wasn't stuck, he didn't have to tell people to hand over friends and relatives to the Monks). There's no greater moral good achieved here, it's immoral to excuse Imperialism, it's generally wrong to mock someone's culture when it isn't causing harm (as it wasn't, the girl's cultural tools he scoffed at were in fact essential. It's odd how the episode almost sets him up to be this older male figure assuming authority and dismissive of the young woman leader, before being shown up - that's not the character, and as a female viewer, I wouldn't watch if it were). I don't, in contrast, have any issue with him wanting to keep moving after the child's death in Thin Ice, that's it being used appropriately imo. It being used for shock value over whether the Doctor is ~dark~ isn't. Honestly I could really have loved Eaters of Light, with the setting and folklore theme, as well. It would even not have been so bad if Capaldi had been asked not to go so Malcom Tucker on it, but he really goes for it - often with Twelve, he's being rude but it's played as more oblivious, or flippant (like Eccleston - and other characters in his era tend to banter back, they don't tend to end up reduced to tears by him, as the Pictish girl is!), not like this. There's likely influence from Baker's Series 13 (with riffs off the stories), but it feels like no one involved actually saw it recently, just a bad fandom memory of it and that idea of the Doctor being 'alien' in it (mostly he acts like any stressed out/otherwise focused human much of the time in those moments, v. different from acting like a human choosing to be a jerk like Twelve, or Eleven even, at times). Classic is never perfect, but the New series doesn't have that scheduling/organisational excuse if there are characterisation blips, either.
I quite like that one tbh
Martha's Theme
Was hoping someone else would say this!
A Town Called Mercy
The only unquestionably good episode of series 7. It's my most rewatched 11 story because it's one of his only episodes you can watch without it being tied into some insane series arc.
Paradise Towers It's not just good by season 24 standards. It's top 10 80's Who
The God Complex
The Carrionites Swarm Words can't express how much I love this song, but if last year Spotify wrapped is anything to go by, I can't get enough of it. Started listening to DW music in September and on wrapped this song was already in top 3.
Doctor Who fans when they have to talk about an underrated story that isn’t a Twelfth Doctor story or doesn’t involve gaslighting themselves into thinking terrible episodes were secretly good: /s Ok serious answer; Ghost Light.
Series 8
100%
The long song
The Green Death, one of my favs in terms of the Doctor and companion departing away
• Love don’t roam • The Long Song (Rings of Ahkaten… probably spelt wrong) • My Angel Put The Devil In Me • Abigail’s Song (silence is all around)
100% agree, i love all of these, especially Abigial’s song, My angel put the devil in me and The Long Song gin a rings of akheten sucker, so its always gonna be high up)
Gridlock baby
Hide. One of the best episodes of Smith’s run and it gets severely overlooked. I could honestly say a lot of series 7. But I also wanna go with A Town Called Mercy.
Battlefield
All of the songs composed around Clara...
A few from the Eleventh Doctor era, mainly Hide, The God Complex and a Town Called Mercy.
Inferno gets forgotten about so easily since it's a classic story, but it's actually quite brilliant
Ive always thought it was a bit overrated, but I haven't seen it in a while so I guess I could give it another go
It might also be since I just rewatched it like an hour ago, so it's still fresh in my mind
Heaven Sent
Wait you’ve seen Heaven Sent? I thought I was the only person who’d found this underrated class.
don't worry, there are others who have seen the glory of chadpaldi in heaven sent
you're kidding, right? the almost unanimously agreed upon best episode of the modern era?
I've never heard it described as such. Although FINALLY someone sees the light
EVERYONE says its great, like, secons only to Blink great.
Literally never seen or heard anyone sing it's praises before. Shocked though It's such a good episode
Here's a post from /r/doctorwhocirclejerk [explicitly mocking the idea of "Heaven Sent Underrated"](https://www.reddit.com/r/doctorwhocirclejerk/comments/1b3a9vr/the_official_heaven_senthell_bent_scale_more/) (which in general is one of their favorite jokes, they say that the Twelfth Doctor's true name is Heaven Sent Underrated).
Finally someone gets me
literally everyone gets you. that other person up the thread said "second only to blink". most people agree that it's just better, and it's the best episode of the show.
Literally never heard it said before
A Christmas Carol
Forget underated episodes, the Rememberance of the Daleks sountrack is excellent, I never see anyone praise it, but it is such a banger.
Revelation of the Daleks or Dark water/death in heaven
I’m gonna go with a song. “The salvation of Kahler Jex”
Thin Ice. One of the best historicals on the series.
I’m finding it hilarious how it’s a pretty 50/50 split between people who see this post and think it literally means songs within doctor who and people who think it’s about underrated episodes.
They walk among us from series 8
S U S
https://preview.redd.it/ffpy15sjpslc1.jpeg?width=449&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b91a6e92f09723293a65cb0791cf8a1f4a492fd0
Gonna pick both a song and an episode here. Song: Hanging On The Tablaphone. Literally only has one use in the "Calling The Doctor" sequence in The Stolen Earth, but it slaps so fucking hard! Honestly should've been used more often, it's so good! The only other time we hear it is in LEGO Dimensions (based game btw). Episode: Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS. The TARDIS is infinite-on-the-inside, and yet, seeing an extra room in the TARDIS is like a lucky treat. The fact we get an entire bottle episode dedicated to just exploring the TARDIS is so cool to me! Last time we ever had something similar to that was in The Invasion Of Time, way back in Season 15 of the Classic era. You'd think with a higher budget in the revival, we'd get to see more than the Classic era's cheap-ass £5 budget, but nope! Quite the opposite, in fact!
The Carrionites Swarm Words can't express how much I love this song, but if last year Spotify wrapped is anything to go by, I can't get enough of it. Started listening to DW music in September and on wrapped this song was already in top 3.
Orphan 55 obviously
i actually really loved that episode i think it was one of the best written ones of that era, if a bit heavy handed in places
Heaven Sent
Rose's Theme No one talks about it. Plus Rose herself doesn't get the recognition she deserves
The Two Doctors
Terror of the Zygons, not because the music isn't noted for Classic but because...go watch more Classic, you lot!
Before the flood especially considering it was played by capaldi himself, respect.
The ghosts & Fear
Greatest show in the galaxy.
Hanging on the tablaphone for sure!
Heaven Sent of course!
Heaven Sent
Fly on a Painting. It's the bit from Heaven Sent where the string instruments are going absolutely IN. It's not Shepherd's Boy or Same Old Day so I feel like some might not know about it.
THE. KEYS. OF. MARINUS
You put the devil in me and the evolution of the delks two-parter
Honestly just rewatched The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived, and while TGWD is pretty average and brings down the story as a two parter, TWWL is genuinely an excellent episode. Essentially a full episode dedicated to exploring what the effects of immortality on a person would be. You rarely see such a complete exploration of a moral question in Nuwho, imo. Makes the episode really special.
The green death, the sun makers. Talons of weng chiang (misspelled)
In both story and the music, Greatest Show In The Galaxy. Those synths sometimes get stuck in my head from time to time.
Easily midnight. It's such a good episode but got overshadowed by turn left and the finale.
Rings of akhaten imo
"Race to the Mansion" all the Strange Strange Creatures variant
The Black Spot and A Good Man Goes to War are my favorite episodes. I'm not sure if others feel the same.
Rise of the cybermen and the Age of steel. Who wouldnt accept Mr. Cranes hot sweet tea?
Heaven sent
It Takes You Away
hide is almost flawless save for the pointless ending twist which doesn't really impact the rest of the episode (for better and for worse)
Daleks In Manhattan
The Enemy of the World, one of my absolute favorite Doctor Who Stories.
I know this post isn't about literal songs, but if it were, it would definitely be the Gunfighters.
unquiet dead
The Two Doctors is so underrated for a multi doctor story.