The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

I'm not going to beat about the bush. The Matt Smith era is far from my favourite in the long history of Doctor Who, and whilst I may enjoy a number of his episodes, I find many of them marred by his performance. After watching The Eleventh Hour (with its truly awful extended opening scene with the newly regenerated Doctor eating various things brought to him by a juvenile Amelia Pond) I was hopeful that, as with his predecessors, I would grow to like him as his first few stories unfolded. By the end of his first season, however, I was a little disappointed. Not only had I failed to warm to the new Doctor, but I had taken a disliking to his unpleasant new companion and felt that even the best episodes of Series 5 had been pretty underwhelming and average. Unfortunately, the next few years did little to change my mind. But I'm not here to moan about the Eleventh Doctor; this is about my favourite of all his serials! Since I can count the truly great Matt Smith stories on...

Following an extended break while I focus on work and move house I've reached my favourite of the Tenth Doctor's adventures, and to be honest it's a pretty difficult choice. Tennant got some really good episodes in his tenure, many from his relatively flawless third series. Accompanied by the bolshy, mature (and in no way romantic interest) Donna Noble he encountered aliens made of fat, Agatha Christie, River Song and the return of the Sontarans and Davros. The series (and Tennant's run) peaked, however, just before the season finale with two fantastic episodes separately centring around the series' two leads. Whilst Turn Left focused on Donna, and is a fantastic exploration of what the world would be like without the Doctor to save it, my favourite Tenth Doctor story is the episode which preceded it because of its themes and execution. It's unsurprising that this episode won BAFTA Cymru awards for Best Writer, Best Editor and Best Sound! Midnight is a p...