Doctor who

Doctor Who fans when the show loses most of its budget:

Imagine if you made a whole Doctor Who season out of: The Impossible Planet/Satan Pit, Blink, Human Nature/Family of Blood, Midnight, and Turn Left, before heading into your finale.

Those are all great episodes. They're all regularly cited as highlights of David Tennant's run on Doctor Who. I can sing the praises of each at length and will do so on demand. You compare them to the other episodes that make up their respective seasons and they're clear standouts amongst the alien runarounds and celebrity historicals.

But you can't make a season out of them. Because if you do, you lose the characterization of Ten as the Doctor. These are all episodes that stand out because they're exceptions to the way that Doctor Who usually goes. They either put the Doctor in unusual situations where his 'being the smartest guy around' strategy doesn't work, or they hardly feature the Doctor at all and build their tension through his absence. And in each case, they work so well because they're subverting expectations the season has already built up. And though the past two seasons have featured some really great episodes, they are all banking on expectations the seasons themselves have not engendered.

Let me put it this way: if I put the list of Series 4 Doctor Who episodes in front of 1000 people and asked them to choose a favourite, I don't think anyone would pick the Sontaran two-parter from the middle of the season. It's as generic a Unit-Monster runaround as you're likely to find. But that was my first Doctor Who episode, and it hooked me immediately. I got it completely, and it's never let me go since. But if that first episode had been Midnight? I'm not sure. Midnight is a much better episode by every conceivable measure, but so much of its power comes from the fact that it puts the Doctor in a vulnerable situation that you are not used to seeing him in. It's cashing in the cheque that the 'normal episodes' have written. 73 Yards is also a great episode, but I don't think you could hook a new viewer by showing them 73 Yards.