Hide: Ghost Hunters in a Haunted House, 1974
Hide sends the Doctor and Clara into a haunted house in 1974, and the ghost story turns into something kinder than I expected. I give it 4/5.
Hide sends the Doctor and Clara into a haunted house in 1974, and the ghost story turns into something kinder than I expected. I give it 4/5.
Cold War thaws an Ice Warrior aboard a Soviet submarine in 1983 and leaves the Doctor with no TARDIS. Tense, tight and old-fashioned.
The Rings of Akhaten sends Clara to an alien market and a girl singing a god to sleep, then ends on a leaf. Thin plot, big heart.
The Bells of Saint John harvests people through the Wi-Fi as the Doctor meets Clara a third time. Fast and fun, but far too easily solved.
The Snowmen drops a sulking, retired Doctor into Victorian London and hands him a barmaid he can’t quite stop thinking about.
The Angels Take Manhattan sends Amy and Rory off with a chosen ending, a book from the future and the nastiest Weeping Angels idea yet.
The Power of Three drops a billion black cubes on Earth that do nothing for a year, wonderful about ordinary life and hopeless about its monster.
A Town Called Mercy hides a war criminal in a frontier town with a cyborg waiting outside the line, and the Doctor nearly throws a man to his death.
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship sends a Silurian ark at Earth with Rory’s dad aboard holding a trowel, and the Doctor does something genuinely cold.
Asylum of the Daleks: they kidnap the Doctor to save them, and a girl making souffles in a crashed ship is the most upsetting reveal in years.
My Doctor Widow Wardrobe review: a bumpy Christmas special, saved only by its last few minutes with Amy and Rory.
The Wedding of River Song collapses all of history into one afternoon when River won’t fire, and then gets out of a fixed point through a loophole.
Closing Time sends the Doctor to babysit with Craig Owens and fight Cybermen in a department store, with a goodbye hiding under every joke.
The God Complex puts the Doctor in a fake 1980s hotel with a room for every guest’s worst fear, and it’s more ruthless about him than I expected.
The Girl Who Waited strands Amy in a faster time stream for thirty-six years, and makes Rory choose which version of his wife gets to live.
Night Terrors answers a child’s cry for help and finds a cupboard full of monsters, in a small, warm horror story about a father learning what his son is.
Let’s Kill Hitler shoves Hitler in a cupboard, regenerates Amy’s childhood friend into River Song, and explains why she can’t regenerate in the library.
A Good Man Goes to War has the Doctor take an asteroid without firing a shot, lose anyway, and learn who River Song is. The reveal lands perfectly.
The Almost People gives the Doctor a Flesh copy of himself, asks whether a copy is a person, and ends on the most brutal cliffhanger of the series so far.
The Rebel Flesh takes the Doctor to a factory in an old monastery, where the Flesh copies wake up after a storm and want lives of their own.
The Doctor’s Wife puts the TARDIS inside a woman called Idris and lets her talk back, and the show tells a love story it’s been telling since 1963.