Ultimate Doctor Who: The Specials

[SiHart]

So David Tennant was going. And didn't it seem to take forever?

Along the way we met the Cyberking, went to the desert, Mars all before a final tussle with the Master.

But which one was your favourite?

[Terry Leptil]

The year with no season. The End of Time is the one for me as it's David Tennant's final adventure and he goes up in a dramatic, sad way. (I wonder how Matt Smith will bow out?) Also nice to have Bernard Cribbins on board, the Master back and Timothy Dalton playing Rassilon.

[SiHart]

Waters of Mars is the best of a bad bunch.

[Wayne]

Waters of Mars is the best of a bad bunch.

Agreed.

[Dirk Gently]

Waters for me too. Although special mention to The Next Doctor which I really enjoyed (Cyberking notwithstanding )

[Andrew Curnow]

It's an odd bunch - at the time I found The Next Doctor much less fun than the previous Christmas specials. When I came to watch it again on repeat the following year I even dozed off!! But earlier this year Zel splashed out and got me the Specials boxset for my birthday, and I really, really enjoyed it a huge amount.

Planet of the Dead, admittedly I've only ever seen it once, but I really liked that one at the time. Other than the 'knock four times' shemazzle at the very end, it was just a straightforward & fun adventure with no loftier agenda than that, which appeals to me.

Waters of Mars, on the other hand, is a grim & moody story that I probably shouldn't enjoy - and yet I like it more and more every time I watch it. The sequence early on, where the Doctor is reeling off the crew's names and we get flashes of newspage headlines, is simple but powerful. Only the end lets it down, at least for me - it feels 'unfinished', giving us an amoral Doctor - and at the time I don't think I was alone in expecting this to be carried over into The End of Time (which of course it wasn't). It just sort of stops, for me, in a not terribly satisfactory manner.

Which brings us to The End of Time. Part 2 is better than Part 1, I think, and at the time I really didn't much enjoy it... but again, on rewatching I've found it more and more palatable. It's still a big unwieldy beast which is arguably longer than it needs to be, and possibly part 1 is just padding, but there is an epic quality to it. Although without Bernard Cribbins in it, it would be a pale shadow of itself - it's no exaggeration to say that he is extraordinary in this, and the best scenes are those between the Doctor and Wilf.

So..... so, I don't know! Oh, let's go for... oh, go on, The Next Doctor. And I'm as surprised as anyone!!

[Rob McCow]

Can I vote down Dreamland onto minus figures please?

[MacNimon]

None are particularly great, but I've went for End Of Time simply because of that scene where Wilf knocks four times.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

None are particularly great, but I've went for End Of Time simply because of that scene where Wilf knocks four times.

I know - it was a brilliant moment.

[Nyder]

Waters of Mars. A wonderfully creepy episode that lingered long in the memory.

[Stuart Wallis]

I watched The Next Doctor a couple of weeks ago and found it to be better than I remembered on previous viewings. This one I found to be the best of a pretty poor bunch. (The Cyberking still looks like something out of Power Rangers though.)