Worst Episode Ever?

[andraste]

Glancing at the Outpost Gallifrey forums before bed, I noticed that someone had finally posted the combined results of the last round of cross-medium 'what's your favourite story?' voting. The answer is still Spare Parts, while The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the top story most people have actually heard of.

The bottom story, on the other hand, was the book version of The Ghosts of N-Space. While this is a legendarily bad story, I don't think I'd say it was the worst Doctor Who in all its occasionally glorious badness has to offer. Even given the Elvis impersonator. My nominations?

If I have to stick to TV stories, Time-Flight gets the wooden spoon. Pointless, annoying, boring tripe that looks like it was made for approximately $1.50.

My least favourite of all, though? The Unbound audio Exile, one of the few Doctor Who stories that personally offends me [1]. It's is disgustingly sexist without the excuse of having been made in the last century, but far worse, it's not funny. "The Doctor regenerates into a woman and promptly becomes an incompetent drunk" is probably the least good idea for a story in the history of anything ever. Offensive on every possible level, and made me think less of everyone involved.

So, what's your most hated Doctor Who?


[1] As opposed to the absolute legion that are offensive in the more general sense. To give you an idea how hard I am to offend, I am the card-carrying feminist who owns Sin City on DVD.

Comments

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

The entire Trial of a Time Lord season. Confusing, pointless, and with gaping continuity errors, along with the least charismatic Doctor ever (including William Hartnell at his grumpiest).

[saltedpin.livejournal.com]

If I have to stick to TV stories, Time-Flight gets the wooden spoon.
A story so full of suck that even Peter Davison couldn't keep a straight face.

I have to say, I thought 'Timelash' was pretty stupid when I last saw it. I don't know about worst ever, but it's the episode I have the worst memories of XD

[nwhyte]

What about "The Twin Dilemma"?

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Completely agreed about Exile. The female Doctor's suddenly incompetent, knows nothing about Earth (she's never heard of vodka or Princess Anne? What?) and even when it looks like she's finally getting back to being the Doctor... she loses. The Time Lords outsmart her. And there's no reason for her being the only portrayed-as-being-crap Doctor they've ever done other than "she's a gurl, lol"

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Of the stories I actually have on DVD, Timelash. Of stories I remember as being crud, The Twin Dilemma and Time and the Rani. Of New Who, The Christmas Invasion was painfully incompetent and deeply unpleasant in its characterisation and ideology.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Caves of Androzani. It's tedious, highly derivative (and derivative of the already fairly lame and derivative "Phantom of the Opera", at that), and I've never managed to actually stay awake through the entire thing. Also, it features the whiniest companion ever, the stupidest "touching" self-sacrifice (DUDE, enough with the idiotic quest for bat milk; just spare us the pain of the coming season and let her die, all right? Seriously, does it make a difference plot-wise whether you unceremoniously give her to Caveman Brian Blessed or to the Phantom of the Quarry?), and it contains a sum total of 70 seconds of watchable senes; 30 of them are the secretary overthrowing the company, and the other 40 are all Colin Baker. And 70 seconds out of what feels like a goddamn thirty-two part story or something (I can't quite remember how many it is - I think I usually sleep through 12 or 13 of the episodes) is not much.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I usually say "The Sontaran Experiment," for which I have a deep and active hatred, but I'm not sure whether even I can defend it as being worse than "The Twin Dilemma." :)

[st-aurafina.livejournal.com]

I hate, hate, hate Four to Doomsday. All that sitting around watching dancing when people are going to be killing them any time now? And Tegan, argh! Normally I'm fond of her, but in this one, she's getting her Aussie on so hard it makes my skin crawl.

[redfiona99.livejournal.com]

Not read many of the non-episode based books or heard any of the audios, so I'm a bit useless for that, but in terms of TV episodes - 'Tooth And Claw'. There have been more boring episodes, there have been episodes with far worse effects, there have been plots that were much more stupid, but no other episode causes me to want to put my fist through the face of our heroes.

[fangrrl-squees.livejournal.com]

(wandered over here via vilakins, btw)

For worst audio evar, I'd have to say "Creed of the Kromon" - although I've only heard about 25 minutes of it, because that was all I could take.

For TV... I think I'm with you on Time Flight or possibly that awful one with the licorice allsorts monster (the name of which, I've scoured from my memory)

I've only just started catching up with the books (that's my reading list for the next three years sorted...) but recently I was completely and utterly underwhelmed by Halflife, an EDA by Mark Michalowski (sp?)

[lizvogel.livejournal.com]

TV only, since I've not read/heard enough of the others to form a balanced opinion.

Old Who: It's a toss-up between The Web Planet (the concept's not bad, but if I never hear the ssssslowly talking bugssssss again....) and Frontier In Space, in which nothing happens for at least 3 of the 6 episodes.

(I recall really hating both Ghost Light and Curse of Fenric, but I haven't seen either in quite some time, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until the rewatching gets to that point.)

New Who: Love and Monsters, hands down. Just, um, no. Please, no.