Twenty things that are great about the RTD era of Who

• 12th February 2010 • Feature by Seb Patrick •

Because, now that it’s finished, it seems to have become somewhat fashionable to bash the preceding five years of the show – spotlighting and picking at its flaws (some of which do exist, no question; don’t think us blind apologists) without really giving fair due to all the things that made it… well, five pretty darned excellent (on the whole) years of television that even the most wide-eyed optimist wouldn’t have expected, a decade earlier, ever to see associated with the name of the series again. So in the interests of balance, selected on a random whim and in no particular order, here are some of those things. Feel free to add your own in the comments, and we’ll tell you whether you’re correct or not.

1. Blink
2. Derek Jacobi and a fob watch
3. Julian Bleach’s Davros
4. Christopher Eccleston
5. Jackson Lake
6. Bernard Cribbins
7. Human Nature
8. “You were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was I!”
9. Dalek (the episode)
10. Rose (the episode)
11. All The Strange, Strange Creatures
12. John Simm
13. David Tennant upping his game whenever faced with Simm, Jacobi, Cribbins etc.
14. Song for Ten
15. Gridlock, Abide with Me & Gallifrey
16. A spaceship crashing into Big Ben (more exciting in the trailer, but still – a spaceship, crashing into Big Ben)
17. The Writer’s Tale
18. Just about everything the Model Unit did
19. “I don’t want to go”
20. “Steven, would you like to write a couple of episodes?”

Seb Patrick once met Paul McGann, who immediately pretended to be Mark McGann. He writes for Den of Geek, BBC America, Film4 and the official Red Dwarf website, among others. He owns over thirty toy Daleks and wishes the Dapol factory tour was still open.

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10 Responses

  5. Nope, I don’t mean the Neil Hannon-sung song – I mean the series three theme, which is titled “All The Strange, Strange Creatures” on the soundtrack album…

  8. 26. Midnight.
    27. “We’ve even got a bit of a bit of a love life” – “Oh let’s not go into that!”
    28. This trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQINlUB3Kww
    29. The Dalek silently exterminating Lynda in The Parting Of The Ways

    Do spin-offs count? If so:

    30. John Frobisher
    31. “And if we can’t identify the lowest achieving 10% of this country’s children then what are the school league tables for?”