Death to the Daleks gets its 2.5 stars generously rounded up to 3, because the idea of a living city as seen in the final part was fun! I liked the eerie antibodies, I liked it screaming in pain, the puzzles were far too easy to warrant the drama given to them but I guess you can't have it all.

The rest of the serial was. not good. It wasn't even bad it was worse than that: it was boring. The human crew only really got interesting near the end, the way the indigenous species of the planet was treated was bad, and the Daleks could have been any other villain and it would have worked the same. I've previously said that everyone thinks they can write a Dalek story and few people actually can, and this was an example of that

The Daleks having a little TARDIS they use as target practise was an inspired choice though, fair play

Lot of reviews criticising the appearances of the dinosaurs in this serial. Frankly, I think everyone needs to let go of ideas like "good special effects" and "scientific accuracy" and have some fun.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs has an excellent plot, a good point it's making, a great supporting cast, and strong performances from the main characters. It's a shame how the cliffhangers frequently depend upon the ugliest looking dinosaur models you've ever seen in your life, but I was nevertheless deeply endeared to said beasts. Let the dinosaurs into your heart and you'll have a blast with this one

An awful lot of odd plot points (who the hell points at a sign like that), weird lines (why are we stressing this person is her """real""" mother over Carla, biological family isn't everything), and emotional beats that didn't quite hit (why is Kate a poet now, and also clearly she wasn't going to stay dead as soon as the sand started taking out everyone), which nevertheless didn't stop me from having a pretty fun time. The parts with the Memory TARDIS and also   Mrs Flood at the end were for sure the best

I just wish we'd had more time. I think things would have worked out better if we had more than only 8 episodes

The Green Death is one of those episodes everyone is right about when they say how good it is. BOSS was fun, the maggots actually looked really good, the ending was heartbreaking, the neon green slime was silly. What more do you need from Doctor Who

I know why they brought Sutekh back, it's because RTD is apparently a huge Pyaramids of Mars fan and always wanted to do a sequel to it. Outside of that though, the main question The Legend of Ruby Sunday left me with was Why on Earth did they bring Sutekh back?? It seems such a specific choice to bring back This One Guy instead of another death god or even a new one.

I thought the episode was a good first half of a finale, there was pretty good build-up, but for me the big twist reveal got let down by the utter bafflement of What the f**k is he doing here

Everybody say thank you Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman

Little bit dull, if I have to be honest. The Doctor had a pretty decent speech in part 6, and I enjoyed the scene with the very-clearly-miniature model Daleks but ultimately not enough plot to fill 6 parts

Possibly the problem is on me for expecting 90s sci-fi to be normal about either women or disabled people.

There were some good moments, but enough bad ones for my 3-star "pretty good with a weak plot resolution" rating to get knocked down to a 2-star "Jesus Christ, man".

Rogue did nothing much new for a Doctor Who story (compare it to something this series like The Devil's Chord or 73 Yards), but that doesn't mean it didn't do it well. I had an absolute blast watching it, Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson were brilliant as ever, and the character Rogue was wonderful. All around great fun

I think RTD has finally learnt what racism is

Dot and Bubble left a few unanswered questions: what happened to Homeworld? What's the deal with the slugs? What's the deal with the Dot?, but I'm almost prepared to argue that was the point. Lindy Pepper-Bean is an almost Sally Sparrow like character, she's under attack from creatures she can't begin to understand, and she has to learn to trust the Doctor and Ruby through the screen as they help her survive and figure out what's going on.

Except, it doesn't go like that. Lindy doesn't trust the Doctor, because he's Black. She lets another character die because she believes she deserves to live more than him. She and the rest of her young, rich, white-supremacist society go to  try colonise the planet they're on in a move that will almost certainly lead to death.

It's almost a deconstruction of how we expect this kind of Doctor Who episode to go, and fascinating because of it. I just really wish there were any Black people on the writing team

"This story was carried by the main characters" is an odd thing to say, given how stories work, but there is a reason I enjoyed Frontier in Space and it wasn't the plot (anti-war storyline started strong and weakened with each episode), the side characters (forgettable), or the aliens (very racialised in design, most obvious with the Ogrons, who are a few small steps removed from blackface, but also with the Orientalism in the Draconians)

It's a shame this was Delgado's last story. Obviously, they couldn't have known he was going to die, and fair play the interactions between the Master, the Doctor, and Jo really make this serial, but it's a but of a flop to end in

Carnival of Monsters has fun set pieces, delightful costumes, and a pretty solid plot. It's not life-changingly good but not everything has to be.

I liked it :]

73 Yards is, I think, going to be one of the episodes regarded up there with Caves of Androzani, Blink, and Heaven Sent. What an episode

Now I like it when horror (because I feel confident in saying 73 Yards was horror) doesn't explain everything; you can have a coherent plot without needing to explain every last mystery, right? And 73 Yards didn't! It's a ghost story and a fairytale both, about making mistakes and the fear of abandonment and someone on tbe production team who thought they could get away with call a 19-year-old in glasses and a wig 40

Fair play to the BBC: they decided to celebrate 10 years of Doctor Who with a story bringing all three actors who'd played the Doctor together for the first time, and they knocked it straight out the park

The plot is compelling, Omega makes for a great antagonist, and the interactions between the Second and Third Doctors are wonderful to behold. All around banger serial

Boom is a very Moffat episode, for better or for worse.

Sometimes, it must be said, for the worse - there were a few times you could have swapped Ruby out for Clara or Amy and would've gotten the same outcome. There was also a few too many concepts and metaphors packed into one episode,  it'd've been nice to get rid of some to let the others breathe

But GOD did it give me brain bees. The concept was fascinating, the execution was mostly very good, and Ncuti Gatwa was incredible. It was tense it was emotional it was a damn good episode

The Time Monster suffers from a sudden tonal shift a little over halfway through, side characters that seem like parodies of themselves, and a meandering plot

But by god it's fun

I liked everyone having to say TOMTIT with a straight face. I enjoyed side character scientists Feminist and her assistant Gay Man. "Male and female are just shapes" non-binary Kronos was an inspired choice. And, let us not forget the two best lines in all of Doctor Who appear in this serial: The Master's "I'm sorry about your coccyx too, Miss Grant." and Jo's "I'm fine! Dead, of course, but I'm fine."

The Mutants has it all: a surpringly well-done anti-colonial and anti-racist story for 70s Doctor Who, good pacing for a 6-parter, and perhaps most importantly the Third Doctor in shirtsleeves

CAMP

Oh but The Devil's Chord was fun. Jinkx Monsoon absolutely killed it as the Maestro, what a character! I really loved the storytelling theme we seem to be picking up this series, with the fourth-wall breaks, the Maestro playing the show theme on piano, and the Doctor being able to hear the soundtrack. The musical number, much like in Church on Ruby Road, sucked, but by god was it fun

I only wish we maybe toned down the soundtrack a bit. It could have been fun, when Maestro had stolen the music, to not have any backing music either! But this is Murray Gold we're talking about, and whilst I fully agree the guy knows how to make good music, he doesn't know when to stop making it

Space Babies has got all the marks of a classic Doctor Who episode (classic as in notable, not classic as in Classic Who), and by that I mean a political metaphor so obvious you could close your eyes and still see it, the old "that's not a proper conversation that's just exposition", a deeply silly plot resolution, and of course, some incredible character work for both the Doctor and Ruby.

The plot was. fine? Pretty solid, nothing all that special imo, but where this episode shone was Ncuti Gatwa really being able to show what kind of a Doctor he's going to play, and how he acted alongside Millie Gibson as Ruby. God I love them

Sometimes in Classic Who you find the longer serials (or to be fair, any serials) don't have enough plot to fill their time. I'm so glad The Sea Devils is not one of those

I liked the plot and the acting, the Sea Devil costumes are charming, and the location filming was enthralling (shout out to the sea <3). The Doctor had a sword fight with the Master, stole his sandwich, and then stole Jo's sandwich too. What more do you want from Doctor Who

To ask "is The Curse of Peladon good?" is the wrong question, although yes, it was. The more important question is "did I enjoy The Curse of Peladon?", to which the answer is Yes, immensely.

I cannot overstate how thoroughly enamoured I am with the Delegate from Alpha Centauri

The extent to which the Fifth Doctor benefits from recency bias is bonkers in all honesty.

Let me go back a bit: The Caves of Androzani is almost exactly as good as everyone says it is. The plot is good, the characters are good, I actually do like that one guy's asides made direct to the camera, it's good television

And as a side-effect, when I think of Five's run, I remember this one stronger than the others, which yknow, fair play. It's good

It is very easy to write a mediocre Dalek story and very, Very hard to write a good one.

Rob Shearman has gone and written one hell of a Dalek story. It pokes fun at anniversary episodes. It takes on the meta quality that Daleks have - the idea that as recurring villains they can't ever win. It has a good enough plot I can even forgive Big Finish for making me listen to Dalek sounds for about 2 hours