10 Most Overrated Doctor Who Episodes

Okay, you've seen the title, you know this one's probably gonna be a bit spicy

If you agree with our picks, then great, fantastic. If you don't agree, that's gravy, we're all friends here

Let us know your picks in the comments. Although if any of you put silence in the library, I will scream

I'm Ellie for Who Culture and these are the 10 most overrated Doctor Who episodes

Number 10, The Zygon Invasion slash The Zygon Inversion. Let's get this out of the way first

We don't have a single bad word to say about Capaldi's impassioned anti-war speech in the back half of this two-parter

It remains one of the absolute highlights of 12's run, and watching it back, it's clear why Moffat had the confidence to give Capaldi the show's first one-hander in that very same series

But, beyond its final 20 minutes, the Zygon Invasion slash version spends a lot of time treading water

It finds itself in the rather awkward position of clearly needing two parts

but also not having quite enough story to justify the double runtime. Jenna Coleman's turn as Bonnie is enjoyable and she's clearly having a lot of fun playing the villain

But the unit stuff here is weaker than usual and tends to kind of just plod along

A lot of the first episode feels like padding to the point where it's kind of difficult to remember

This is an hour and a half long, but our memory of it is the final half an hour

Generally, not a great sign It's still a good story, but we do think that people tend to focus on that one fantastic scene when they rave about this whole story

Number 9, The Woman Who Fell to Earth The Woman Who Fell to Earth has some strengths going for it

It introduces a likeable cast of companions who are more fleshed out here than for most of the era

though they do kill off the most likeable one, which is a shame. It also has a half-decent villain in Tim Shaw

who works well as a background antagonist for a first episode. It also features the most relatable and beloved character of Chibnall's run

Eat my salad. I mean, what a legend. Where it falls apart is in establishing a new Doctor

Whittaker gets plenty of silly post-regen babbling as per the norm, but comparatively little material that solidifies her authority, intelligence or grit

It culminates in her big I am the Doctor moment falling rather flat

with us not really seeing what she has to offer yet. We'd have to wait a whole year until Series 12 for that

It's so important to stick the landing on introductory episodes like this

and between introducing four companions, a villain that gets way too much screen time

and so much needless fluff, I mean, the subplot about the guy finding the space mushroom

could have easily been cut, this script completely fumbles its primary goal

of establishing the new Doctor. Number eight, The Fires of Pompeii. This is perhaps our first truly controversial pick

and despite The Fires of Pompeii being part of the stellar fourth series

this is another one of those episodes that's remembered for the last ten minutes, which, granted, are fantastic in a horribly traumatic sort of way

But the rest of the episode is lacking. The villains aren't particularly strong

You have the underdeveloped and nearly impossible to understand Sibylline Priestess and then the Pyroviles who crumble the moment they come into contact with water, which undercuts their threat significantly

The main antagonist, Lucius Petrus Dexterus, is painfully hammy, and not the good kind of hammy, the kind of hammy that makes you want to slap him in the face really hard

The plot itself meanders around Donna telling people Vesuvius is about to ruin their day and everyone else responding with a resounding nah mate it won happen This element of the plot while vital in introducing Donna to the rules of time travel starts to grate the third time you hear the same conversation The family themselves are fun enough characters and Capaldi is naturally a delight

but the insistence on using modern-day slang, plus the running joke of comparing Quintus to a 21st century teenager

take you out of a plot that would have benefited from a more serious tone. It's about one of the most cataclysmic natural disasters in history

It's not difficult to read the room on how this story should feel. The Fires of Pompeii is solid, but it's on the lower end of the Series 4 scale

To be fair though, it is up against some fierce competition. Number 7, Village of the Angels

Village of the Angels is often thrown into the ring as one of 13's best

but we mostly put that down to two things. A fan favourite monster getting their own story for the first time since Series 7

and Kevin McNally giving us a lovely guest character in Professor Jericho

What a top guy. Where this episode starts to fall apart is a lack of direction

The front half, while genuinely spooky, spends an awful lot of time not saying a lot

while the back half is essentially half an hour of running away. There's an interesting idea in there about the Angels being an extraction squad for division

but not a lot is done with it beyond some rather dull Chibnall-style expositioning

and after the cliffhanger is resolved, the Angels are swept under the rug very quickly

It makes this story feel like filler. Pretty fun filler, we'll admit, but New Who's most iconic original creations deserve a lot better than to be a taxi service moving the Doctor from one plot to another

Claire was built up quite a lot in Flux, to the point where it seemed like she was going to be integral to the plot

and some people thought, for who knows what reason, that she was a Clara Echo

But she was hardly relevant to the wider story at all, leaving her scenes feeling a little redundant

If you want a 13-story that's creepy and atmospheric, but actually has a lot of substance to it

The Haunting of Villa Diodati is the one you want. Number 6. Army of Ghosts slash Doomsday

The ending of Army of Ghosts, which teased the showdown between the Doctor's two greatest foes

was enough to shatter Whovian brains in 2006. But the payoff for that long-awaited moment has always been lacking

Doomsday starts off very strongly with the iconic Dalek Cyberman slam poetry throwdown

Outline resembles the inferior species known as Cybermen. But quickly descends into an army of Cybermen being absolutely minced by four Daleks

The end result? The Daleks solidify their already established threat level, but the Cybermen are so thoroughly trounced

that it takes them until the final episodes of the Capaldi era to be scary again

Ten and Rose don't end on a particularly high note either, with their cringe factor reaching its apex just in time for the finale

Lots of you-wouldn't-get-it in-jokes and a slightly obnoxious honeymoon period vibe. We're not against romantic interests for the Doctor, but with Rose, things are far too sickly sweet

It might be sacrilege to say this, but that famous wall scene, while hauntingly scored by Murray Gold, has not aged well

and verges into looking like a melodramatic Green Day music video. And a special mention has to go to Mickey stacking it and accidentally activating the Genesis arc

despite knowing that he needs to steer completely clear of the thing. It's a piece of spectacularly awkward writing that nobody ever seems to comment on

We really feel like Mickey doesn get enough stick for almost dooming the planet with his bumbling incompetence Army of Ghosts is a solid hype builder but Doomsday fumbles the bag probably the weakest of RTD finales Number 5 The Rings of Akaten Confession time

we've got a soft spot for The Rings of Akaten. However, we must concede that, like many fans

that's mainly due to the episode's amazing speech. Few moments in the show manage to convey the

burden of the Doctor's immortality like this one, and Matt Smith, backed by a stirring choir

is the perfect Doctor to deliver it. Take that scene away though, and The Rings of Akaten is a

bit slow at best and boring at worst. The central plot is split between Merry running away from her

big performance and the Doctor trying to ascertain what on earth is going on. There's absolutely

nothing wrong with a slow burn. Look at episodes like Face the Raven and World Enough and Time

But in order to craft this kind of story, the core mystery has to provide enough intrigue to

justify the time spent unraveling it. And this one doesn't. And with the Doctor and Clara's

relationship not moving forward due to them spending a lot of time separated, you have to

ask where the runtime even went. And then we have Clara's magic story leaf. The concept of using

potential futures as a source of stories to feed the evil Teletubby son is actually quite neat

but it doesn't work. The Doctor literally pours his hearts out, reliving an extended lifetime of

trauma, and that's beaten by a leaf? Tosh, we say. Absolute tosh. But on the bright side

the long song is a total banger. Number four, Rose. Sorry, I'm just putting on my riot gear

before I start this one? Rose, the episode, not the companion, isn't very good. Yes, we know

series one seems to be immune from criticism, but frankly, its opener is one of those episodes

that's difficult to watch without second-hand embarrassment. It's hard to justify this as a

starting point over the 11th hour, for example. Okay, the good bits. The introduction of the

Doctor? Chef's kiss. The whole mystery man angle with Clive's conspiracy theories? Love it. The

that-who-I-am speech, a contender for Eccleston's best moment. But the rest? Oh boy. It's hard to

decide what's worse. The burping bin with its truly awful CGI, or Rose not realising there's

something deeply, deeply wrong with her boyfriend when he's stuttering about pizza with a deranged

expression and swerving his car across the road. There's a lot of talk about there being a grittier

darker tone for a modern audience in Series 1, and that's certainly delivered on throughout the

series. But we're baffled to this day that with such a strong vision for what he wanted the show

to be in 2005, RTD launched with one of the most juvenile episodes he's penned. Without the end of

the world swooping in the following week, we wouldn't have got anything juicy until Dalek

around halfway through the series. From which point, on the plus side, the episodes are

consistently fantastic, so swings and roundabouts and all that. Number 3. Fugitive of the Jadoon. All together now, cameos do not equal substance. This could be

leveled at quite a few episodes of New Who, but none of them are as lazy as Fugitive of the Jadoon

This episode brought back Captain Jack Harkness for the first time since the RTD era, and proceeded

to do absolutely nothing with him. Aside from him not actually interacting with the Doctor

his sole purpose in this episode is to drop saucy gags and deliver some needlessly vague

foreshadowing about the lone Cyberman. Does Jack knowing this information even make sense? He's not

present for any of the events involving Ashad Now this episode did introduce us to Jo Martin doctor who is actually pretty baller But all the teasing about her origins and the introduction of the Division amounts to net zero by the end of 13 run Instead it clear that the Fugitive Doctor was created because a mysterious incarnation sounded fun

and not because Chibbers knew what to do with her, which is a crying shame and a waste of talent

On first watch, this episode makes you sit up and pay attention, so fair play to it. But on

reflection, it's a soulless, empty mystery box that doesn't deserve as much praise as it gets

Number 2, Listen Sorry, just double-checking my riot gear for this one as well

Listen seems to generate a level of hype we don't quite understand

With more than a handful of fans deeming it the pinnacle of Series 8

A baffling statement regarding a series that contains Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline and Darkwater and Death in Heaven

Listen is very unnerving and atmospheric And whatever was hiding under that blanket can go straight to hell

But the episode loses steam in a major way once we get to Orson Pink

His appearance at all is paradoxical, given Danny's little incident with the passing car later in the series

But beyond that, he's just a little bit of a charisma vacuum. We understand this story is about the Doctor's need to know all the answers

and his refusal to admit his fears might be unjustified, but the resolution doesn't land

If the entire future segment was removed and we had an episode with the same sentiment

but entirely set in the creepy orphanage with Danny as a child, Lyssen would have had a much stronger story

The monster of the week is still paranoia, but it would allow us to spend more time on the creepiest part of the episode

while developing Danny in a far more meaningful way, rather than using the bargain bin version of him

Elsewhere, we get what Moff was doing with the Clara and Danny date subplot

but two smart people would not talk or act like that. It's cringey, as intended, no doubt, but painfully contrived

And number one, the girl in the fireplace. A lot of fans consider every single Moffat script in the RTD era a straight 10 out of 10

but lumbering this one in with the Empty Child, Blink, and the Library two-parter is a major

disservice to the other three. Throughout this story, 10 is a bit of an arse. Slap-bang in the

middle of this romance arc with Rose, he drops her for the first woman who offers him a cheeky

dance, leaving Rose and Mickey on a creepy spaceship covered in human organs while he

parties and gets hammered in pre-revolutionary France. Later on, he full-on abandons them

without a second thought by trapping himself in the past with Renette

This feels like it should have major, major repercussions for his burgeoning connection with Rose

But despite her intense jealousy of Sarah Jane just one week prior

Rose is now totally chill with the Doctor dropping her like a sack of potatoes

It feels like a major missed opportunity. Their relationship could have benefited from a bit of straining

given how Rose sees him as completely flawless. Elsewhere, while the main plot is highly entertaining

with some great location shooting and costume work, plus the brilliantly creepy clockwork droids

the B-plot with Rose and Mickey drags the episode down every single time it comes back around

And you can tell that Moffat had no idea what to do with the companions in such a Doctor-centric story

The Girl in the Fireplace absolutely has merit, and it's still one of the best episodes of Series 2

although that probably speaks more to the amount of mediocre episodes in that series

But Moffat has definitely written a lot better than this, let's be honest

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just gonna go and hide before Sean Ferrick finds out that I've just slandered his all-time favourite Doctor Who episode

Bye-bye