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The peak of Rose/Doctor shipping was in Series 4. Once Rose was paired off with the Doctor's half-human clone, most of the fire died out. Values Dissonance, such as society's increasingly critical view of The Unfair Sex, also led to a dip in Rose ships.
Mickey/Jackie, formerly a popular Ship Mate to Tenth Doctor/Rose, has pretty much died off since the pairings of Jackie/alternate Pete and Mickey/Martha became canon.
After Amy and Rory got married, Doctor/Amy vanished pretty quickly from the internet.
It did a fairly good job of killing Doctor/Amy/Rory too which was once pretty popular.
There was also a marked drop-off in the number of fics where River was paired with Amy and/or Rory after the reveal that she's their daughter.
Doctor/River took a serious hit after "The Name of the Doctor" after it showed, what was believed to be, the two's last meeting with the Doctor seemingly ready to move on with Clara. It got its popularity back after "The Husbands of River Song."
Subverted in the case of Doctor/Clara. Though the casting of Silver FoxPeter Capaldi initially seemed to herald a new age of "No Hugging, No Kissing", this was proven to be nonsense very quickly with Doctor/Clara actually gaining more support over the course of Twelve's run. The Series 9 finale all but canonized it, showing how far the Doctor is willing to go and is prepared to do for Clara.
The Gender Bent Thirteenth Doctor has seen a lot less shipping than her predecessors despite the establishment that her last two major love interests (River and Clara) were bisexual.
Acceptable Targets: Religious groups, figures of authority, and Americans are the preferred targets of the Doctor's wit.
Tom Baker and Lalla Ward had very strong chemistry during her time as Romana. How strong? Well they wed not long after she left the show (though sadly their marriage didn't very long).
Jenna Coleman gets this with both Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi given her incredible chemistry with both. Though everyone seems to insist that she's Platonic Life Partners with both, helped by all three being in committed relationships, Jenna is such an impish little troll that she loves teasing the fans about it. Helped by the fact that, of all the terms that Jenna could have used to describe Matt leaving, she went for saying that Matt "dumped [her]."
In particular the Master. In "The End of Time" it was revealed the drumming in his head (that had tormented him his entire life and led to him being totally unhinged) was in fact put there by Rassilon for his own purposes. At that point, some just really wanted to give him a big damn hug, so when he went out in a vengeful blaze with that "get outof the way" it didn't help at all.
Even a freaking DALEK gets one in the episode "Dalek", giving one last, rather morose-sounding "Exterminate!" before blowing itself up out of self-loathing.
The Minotaur in "The God Complex".
The Twelfth Doctor seems to feel this way towards the Cybermen, noting that they just want to survive.
Alternative Character Interpretation: The series on a whole. Is it about an ancient alien travelling time and space in a dimensionally transcendent box, or is it about the people who he travels with and how he changes them? Arguments could be made for both sides.
The Doctor:
The First Doctor. Is his impatience and grumpiness and general abrasiveness because he is old and had a life hard lived, or because he is a young man trying to seem much more important than he is? The Eleventh Doctor seems to lean towards the latter option but Eleven frequently confesses to be an Unreliable Narrator.
The Tenth Doctor. Lonely, messianic, all-forgiving, pacifist woobie martyr with a Guilt Complex and a generally jovial, exuberant, happy-go-lucky and sociable personality? Or flippant, narcissist, self-righteous, self-pitying hypocrite with a god complex, serious anger management issues and a tendency to drive people away, whose manic personality and preemptive excuses (as opposed to actual apologies) are just a mask for a borderline sociopathic, ancient alien? Or both: a genuinely tragic, conflicted Byronic Hero who's too alien to receive much comfort from the love of humans but human enough to be hurt by their rejection?
Christina's meant to be seen as a adrenaline junkie Femme Fatale with a heart of gold but can be more easily seen as a borderline sociopath when you notice she had no regrets about getting her partner arrested, is extremely selfish, arguably kissed the Doctor just to manipulate him and only wanted to come along because the police were about to catch her.
Amy. Is she simply a quirky fun-loving young woman, or secretly rather unbalanced due to her abandonment by the Doctor and the mental manipulations she's gone though? And are her wedding jitters normal for a 21 year old or a sign she doesn't really love or deserve Rory?
Some fans theorize that Rassilon was benevolent at one point, partially because he was one of the founders of Time Lord Society, and partly because there is canon of another Time Lord whose dark side attempted a takeover.
The classic series has its share of this as well. For example, the Seventh Doctor is generally considered to be The Chessmaster, but there's some evidence that suggests that he actually doesn't really know what he's doing at all but just happens to be very good at Xanatos Speed Chess, making everyone to think he's pulling all the strings for his own reasons.
The Bad Wolf. Is it Rose using the power of the time vortex to save the Doctor, or the time vortex controlling the mind of Rose to stop the Daleks? Or given the events of "The Doctor's Wife" is it in fact the will of the TARDIS? The latter theory seems one of the most popular.
The Beast, from "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit". Is it actually the Whoniverse's version of the Devil, who fought before time against the followers of God, the Disciples of Light, and has inspired all the devils in every religion? Or is the Beast simply an incredibly powerful and evil being who lies to cash in on fears of religion's Satanic figures, so that the scared humans are more easy to defeat and influence? There's evidence for both, and by the end even the Doctor doesn't seem completely sure.
ThisYouTube video of a Doctor Who Confidential offers one for Madame Kovarian: a woman "of a certain age" who never had any children of her own. It seems to be suggesting that not only will Melody/River be raised to be a weapon, but also that Madame Kovarian intends to make Melody/River into something of a Mommy's Little Villain.
Rose Tyler gets this a lot. Was she a Book Dumb but kind and caring girl or a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who embraces It's All About Me? By seeking to return to the Doctor, was she a Determinator and an example of how love conquers all or was she a selfish Spoiled Brat who would damn both realities just to get what she wants? The general consensus seems to be that she's somewhere in the middle. Hey, she's only human.
Not "Character" but "Alternative Timeline Interpretation." In "The Day of the Doctor", did the Doctor change time so that Gallifrey didn't fall or did Gallifrey always survive and the out-of-sync timelines led to Ninth Doctor forgetting the details and assuming that he'd destroyed his planet?
In "The Day of the Doctor", the Moment used the image of Rose Tyler during her stint as the Bad Wolf. Was this actually the Bad Wolf or did the Moment just copy her likeness? And if it was the latter, did it just randomly choose Rose as someone who had great influence over the Doctor or is this meant to indicate that Rose was the most important companion in the history of the show?
Why did the Time Lords grant the Doctor a new regeneration cycle in "The Time of the Doctor"? As later media confirmed, by speaking directly to them, Clara confirmed that they'd found the right universe so they didn't need the Doctor anymore. Was it simply out of gratitude for his war time actions, to protect the truth of the Timeless Child, or just a way to deny the Daleks their ultimate victory?
The new series as a whole received a shot of enthusiasm in the arm when it was announced that 'proper' actor Christopher Eccleston had been cast as the Doctor after a long period of worrying tabloid stories about various light-entertainment stars being rumoured for the role.
The Russell T Davies era securing the rights to use the Daleks after their participation had been questioned by the estate of their late creator assuaged many fans' fears.
For some, the announcement of Steven Moffat as show-runner following Russell T Davies' departure.
The Twelfth Doctor. The Doctor being played by an old man will only ruin things right? Try one of the best received incarnations of the character if not the most beloved.
The Thirteenth Doctor. Her gender barely affects anything and while she's not quite as beloved as her predecessor, though that seems more due to a decline in writing quality, she's still beloved.
The Doctor tends to ignore the fact that he just died to near-pathological levels when he regenerates.
Eleven in general in comparison to both Nine and Ten. It's shown in series 6 however that he still has guilt for what he did to Rose, Martha and Donna as well as the loss of the Time Lords.
A general complaint about the Thirteenth Doctor's era. Character deaths, companion departures, most of the universe being destroyed. Nothing ever gets any meaningful reaction.
Anvilicious: Yeah, painting the TARDIS pink in "The Happiness Patrol" was probably a bit on-the-nose...
Looking back, the 1988-1989 series in general can be a bit too unsubtle about how 'right-on' politically they are. In 2010, the producers admitted that they'd been directly opposed to Margaret Thatcher and had been working to do their bit to help bring her down — which led to a certain amount of derision, partly because the viewing audience at this time wasn't exactly a massively influential voting block (comprised primarily of kids and hardcore fans), but mostly because thanks to this trope, this was hardly a secret.
To a lesser extent, if you started a drinking game about how many times Rory being a nurse got brought up, you'd be drunk very quickly.
Much of the Thirteenth Doctor's tenure is dedicated to unsubtly saying that she's now a woman, how wonderful that is, and that racism is wrong.
With the finale of the sixth series, Moffat ran into this for River and the Silents/Silence, if critical reviews were any indication. This arc lasted for the whole of Eleven's run! Three years!
The Doctor constantly questioning their morality has started to become this as it's a fully known that they'll never go down the Master's path for more than three episodes at a time.
Many a fan grew tired about the Doctor Wangsting over being the Last of His Kind to the point where they felt there wasn't any story left to tell there. As it happens, Steven Moffat agreed and made it so that Gallifrey was never destroyed.
Ass Pull: It seems the Doctor has a knack for saving the day through some trick of space, time, the TARDIS, or his sonic screwdriver about which we've never heard before, and may not ever hear of again, though sometimes, a trick might get resurrected later, just to add a bit of continuity.
Also, Peri's random save against existence failure. Actress Nicola Bryant didn't even know about this until years later, to boot!
Ashildir managing to outlast the universe with her Mire chip as there's no evidence that the rest of the Mire lived that long with what seems like very basic technology to them. It led to a fan theory that she's the Master's missing daughter and the chip is using her latent regeneration energy to keep her going.
Bi-generation in "The Giggle". Hell, one could argue that the Fifteenth Doctor is literally pulled out of the Fourteenth's ass.
"The Dalek Invasion of Earth." After the runaway success of "The Daleks", the pepperpots were brought back. How successful the Hand Wave is in explaining how they came back is best left to each individual to decide on their own.
After their poor reception, the New Dalek Paradigm introduced in "Victory of the Daleks" was slowly phased out and the Time War Daleks brought back. Discounting the poorly received design however, the NDP finally brought the Dalek race back to its former glory, ending the trend of that particular Dalek group being the "only" Dalek survivors from the Time War.
"The Day of the Doctor" brought back the Time Lords. It also went a way in explaining how there were so many Dalek survivors of the Time War. The Moment was never used and the Dalek fleet was destroyed in a more mundane explosion.
After Ten's drawn out regeneration, Eleven and Twelve were much more gracious about theirs, even if Twelve was hesitant to go through with it at first. Even One's reluctance to regenerate, being afraid since it's the first time he's done it, was better received than Ten's.
After Wintson Churcill's, a racist pro-colonial, overtly positive portrayal in Series 5, Series 11 took a much more critical view of the British Empire, not being shy in saying how the British were needlessly cruel towards India.
The Series 12 finale addressed one of the biggest questions that the snarkier fans had about the Cybermen, namely why they keep harvesting organic matter when they can survive as purely technological beings? First it has them be purely mechanical, then it justifies them incorporating organic matter, namely Time Lord corpses and the regeneration abilities therein.
The 60th Anniversary specials are considered to have gone a ways in correcting some of the more controversial aspects of Series 4 such as having David Tennant's Doctor be more graceful in accepting his regeneration and giving Donna Noble a happy ending. It was hardly unanimous but it did leave a better feeling in the fandom's mouths than Series 4.
The Doctor. Smarter than most everyone else in the galaxy and he knows it.
Even the show itself can be guilty of this to an extent, even though the cast and crew are all very humble about getting the honor of working with it. It knows that it's a worldwide phenomenon that is somehow silly enough to work. You can call this show many things, but you can't say it's humble.
Pick a Doctor, any Doctor. There will be people who love him and people who think he ruined the show FOREVER. Yes, even THAT Doctor.
Special credit goes to the War Doctor, the unknown incarnation between Eight and Nine. Is he a worthy addition to canon or is it Moffat needlessly rewriting history? In fairness to the Moff, Christopher Ecclestondenied to return and the BBC prevented him from using any classic Doctors (which Eight technically counted as).
The biggest one has to be the Thirteenth Doctor. Though the debate is less about her personality and more her stories with the argument being whether or not they're worthy additions to canon.
The Ruth/Fugitive Doctor. Is she awesome example of Batman Grabs a Gun or does that fact make her too violent to be the Doctor?
The Companions:
Rose Tyler, although she's generally well liked in her first series. Afterwards, she either underwent Character Development to become a Badass Normal or she devolved into a Mary Sue.
Her return in the 50th anniversary, or lack thereof (the Moment took the form of the Bad Wolf). Was it a good idea, and a nice compromise, or should Rose have returned?
Donna Noble. Was she a realistic companion who had some great Character Development and neatly avoided a romantic mess or was she still a Jerkass who was a bit too tough and confrontational to be likeable?
River Song. It only got worse during series six, to say nothing of the finale, which set the internet aflame. She's either Crazy Awesome or a Canon Sue. A third opinion, one that popped up after "The Diary of River Song" audios is that River isCrazy Awesome and a very interesting character in her own right, but only when she isn't framed as the Doctor's One True Love because that's when she becomes a Black Hole Sue.
Jenny (AKA the Doctor's Daughter). Good lord, Jenny. She's either completely hated, or she absolutely has to return for another episode.
Amy Pond. There were actually people who stopped watching the show altogether because of her, as they felt that she turned it into "Amy Pond and Her Boys". Her mistreatment of Rory and coming on to (including forcing herself on/kissing)/flirting with the Doctor was a turn-off for some people. Others argued that the flaws are the point as it shows how Amy grew up.
Clara Oswald. She's either the greatest companion in the history of the show or one of the worst, with her being a nice summary of everything that's wrong with Moffat's writing. Though as time passed, she was generally considered to be Vindicated by History with her haters gradually coming to occupy a Vocal Minority.
Ashildir. An interesting and dynamic character or a useless, unsympathetic Jerkass? There's very little middle ground with her.
The Thirteenth Doctor's Fam. Them being so grounded and normal is either one of the best things about them, making them very relatable or they're a bunch of boring Flat Characters who add nothing of value to the story.
Depending on the fan or story, Davros is either an Ensemble Darkhorse or The Scrappy. "Genesis Of The Daleks" is widely considered one of the greatest Doctor Who stories of all time, but his inevitable overexposure from being brought back in every Dalek story of the classic series since made a lot of fans wish he'd go away and let the Daleks take centre stage again. To others, he offers a nice speaker for the Daleks instead of the homogenous legion.
The Daleks themselves. Are they dangerous antagonists whose personal connection to the Doctor makes for very interesting and compelling stories that delve into the Doctor's psyche and analyze their morality? Or are they riding the laurels of nostalgia that came with being the show's first Big Bad with their being a bunch of other antagonists, usually the Cybermen, more worthy for the title of "most dangerous being in the universe", only winning because the writers always nerf the other antagonists when they're around?
Broken Base: For every fan that likes something in this show, there is a fan that hates it, and vice versa. Just look at the Who entries under Awesome, Narm, Tear Jerker, etc. The overlap is something like 90%.
Since the moment it happened in "Journey's End", it was debated whether the Tenth Doctor's aborted regeneration had used up a full regeneration or not. "The Time of the Doctor" revealing that it had, and thus, along with the Retcon of the War Doctor, making the Eleventh the last of the Doctor's incarnations, only furthered the divide.
The 2013 redesign of the Cybermen. While they've always been partly mechanical, some fans felt it made them too robotic and downplayed their Body Horror qualities. Though as Series 12 pointed out, becoming Mechanical Lifeforms was the logical endpoint of the Cybermen's evolution. Others thought it was cool.
Saving Gallifrey in "The Day of the Doctor." Steven Moffat was on-record as saying that he never liked the idea of the Doctor destroying his home as the Doctor is the type of person who would have taken a third option and thus made this canon when given the opportunity. To some, it's fantastic and gets rid of the played out baggage of the Doctor being the Last of His Kind justifying it on the grounds of "If the Daleks can survive the Time War, why can't the Time Lords?" To hardcore RTD fans, it's yet another example of Moffat needlessly rewriting canon.
The First Doctor's overtly chauvinistic portrayal in "Twice Upon a Time." Was it funny, and accurate to One's time on the show, or Character Derailment? For what it's worth, the novelization states that One was playing up his attitudes just to piss off Twelve whom he initially didn't like and didn't think was actually a future version of him.
So, so much of Series 12:
Having a Snap Back for the Master, ignoring Missy's Character Development. A return to form for the character or an insult to Moffat's work?
Destroying Gallifrey and killing off the Time Lords once again. For those that liked the Doctor being the last of the Time Lords, feeling that it added depth to his character, it's an Author's Saving Throw. For others it's another invalidation of Moffat's work and makes "The Day of the Doctor" All for Nothing while wasting so many potential stories and characters.
The finale, revealing that the Doctor is the Timeless Child, the being from which the Time Lords reverse-engineered the regeneration process, was very devise, even if the acting was universally praised. In increasing popularity, the opinions go, "I like it", "Let's wait for more information before making rash decisions" to the one of the biggest examples of Fanon Discontinuity in Who canon claiming that it ruined the show forever.
Series 13/The Flux. To some fans, it was a welcome serialized story, comparable to something like WandaVision that was a nice follow-up to the Timeless Child reveal and added some fantastic Worldbuilding. To others, it was a confusing mess that didn't seem fully planned out, had generally underwhelming villains and raised more questions than it answered.
Was Chris Chibnall's era too politically left or too politically right? On the one hand, there are a lot of Anvilicious morals about equality, racism and gender issues but on the other, the Doctor now seems to defer much more to authority figures and seeks to preserve non-egalitarian systems and institutions rather than drop big bombshells that would force more equal treatment.
Oh the 60th Anniversary:
In general was the heavy focus on Russell T. Davies's Series 4, most notably bringing back David Tennant to play the Fourteenth Doctor, rather than having the Tenth Doctor return, and Donna Noble as the companion. Some cheered as the favourites returned, others thought it was Pandering to the Base.
The Doctor bi-generating. Some think it a brilliant way to have a Multi-Doctor story. Others think it's just perpetuating RTD's refusal to allow David Tennant's Doctor to regenerate.
The Doctor undergoing rehab. Not because its detractors dislike it but because they argue that the Doctor has already been moving on from their trauma since Steven Moffat's era and it seems like RTD just patting himself on the back.
Cargo Ship: Some fans pair Doctor and sonic screwdriver.
The show itself pairs the Doctor and the TARDIS.
Counterpart Comparison: Clara Oswald has been compared to Sarah Jane Smith, by fans and critics, more than a few times. Both were the last brunette companion of the third Doctor of their series (Sarah first travelled with the Third Doctor and Clara with the Eleventh, the third Doctor of the revival) in a season that was considered a step down from the Doctor's previous ones before both girls really made a name for themselves with their next Doctor. Both are objects of ire for the Rose/Doctor shippers and both are affectionally referred to by the Doctor as "My Sarah Jane"/"My Clara." This photo really hammers it home. Clara was even named after Elisabeth Clara Heath-Sladen (Sarah Jane's actress). Has led to much disappointment from the Clara fans that the two never met and their petitioning for a Clara spin-off.
Common Knowledge: Despite what some reviews for Series 12 might say, the CyberMasters are not the Hybrid from Series 9. Though they do stand in the ruins of Gallifrey, no hearts are broken, the Web of Time is not unravelled and Cybermen aren't technically a race. At their core, the CyberMasters were nothing more than technologically augmented Time Lords. That's not even getting into the fact that the plot, unlike what many say, was actually resolved. The Hybrid, as was said in "Hell Bent", was the Doctor and Clara's relationship.
Also, Vincent van Gogh. He's the only person who can see the Monster of the Week. So he stabs it with his easel.It works.
Some of River's stunts are this. Highlights include jumping out of an airlock, confident that the Doctor would show up to save her and defacing the oldest mountain in the universe to leave a message for him. Oh, and fighting Nazis with regeneration.
John Simm's Master and Michelle Gomez's Missy.
The CyberMasters. Time Lords, organics with the ability to regenerate and self-repair in Cyber-armor. And yes, they can still regenerate.
Critics of Doctor/River Song usually cite this as their main issue with the pairing. Until "The Husbands of River Song", seven years after River first appeared, very little actually suggested that the Doctor was in love with River. There was ample evidence that she was in love with him, or was at least a Stalker with a Crush, but the Eleventh Doctor never really reciprocated the flirtations, to the point that some even argued that their wedding in "The Wedding of River Song" was more the Doctor placating a tantruming child. Even In-Universe, Clara Oswald, someone whom the Doctor heavily flirted with, noted that the Doctor's description of River left her with zero impression that River was one of the Doctor's romances. To put this in context, River is the Doctor's wife.
Doctor/Yaz suffered similar critiques. Yaz may have been there for the whole of the Thirteenth Doctor's tenure but Yaz was largely an Out of FocusFlat Character who had little to no character moments with the Doctor, making it rather jarring in "Legend of the Sea Devils" for the Doctor to confess romantic feelings for Yaz. True they had some offscreen adventures alone but the Doctor never so much as flirted in Yaz's general direction while she was onscreen.
Die for Our Ship: The new series upped the (previously unspoken) romantic side of traveling through space and time with a heroic, dashing genius, with each companion dealing with it in their own way. Of course, everyone has their favorites. The most aggressive about this trope are the Doctor/Rose shippers but Doctor/River ones often write up long comments defending their ship.
Obviously the 16 years when the show was off the air (TV movie aside), though many fans tend to agree that "The Trial of a Time Lord" and then Sylvester McCoy's first season are the low point of when the show actually was airing.
The Thirteen's Doctor era is generally considered this for NuWho, people citing poor character writing, questionable and variable morals, way too much exposition of things people can clearly see happening and a very controversial Myth Arc.
Draco in Leather Pants: The Master, especially when the drumming was revealed to be real. Series 10 even tried this out in canon with the Twelfth Doctor trying to reform Missy.
The most egregious example is the Harold Saxon Master. He was outright labelled as the cruelest of all the Masters, turning Bill into a Cyberman out of petty spite, shrugged off his unleashing an entropy wave that ate most of the universe in an aborted timeine and he's the one that the fangirls most commonly write as a good guy.
Dry Docking: The fandom has "Stay away from the Doctor!"
Dude, Not Funny: After a while, John Simm's Master's jokes stop being funny and start being more along the lines of horrifying.
Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: "The Happiness Patrol" is the most (over)analyzed story in the history of Doctor Who. Is it a biting criticism of Thatcher? Is it about homophobia? Is it a satire of runaway commercialism smothering society? Is it just plain crap? Or all of the above? Just about the only thing anyone can agree with is that it features a candy robot that kills people.
Fan Dumb: Many of Steven Moffat's haters complain about his scripts sometime being too complicated to follow or that he didn't wrap everything up. And many of these complaints can leave people asking if the complainers actually watched the show given that most, if not all, of their complaints were clearly explained.
The Classic Series or the Revival? Which was better?
And among the Revival, who was the best showrunner? RTD, Moffat, or Chibnall?
Like the Time Lords themselves, the Whovians seem very protective of Time Travel and generally tend to look down on other shows who feature it, often writing up fanfics of the Doctor, normally the Tenth, telling off the other traveler for being so stupid.
With Star Trek. Assimilation² only made things worse as the Whovians indulged in some very Unsportsmanlike Gloating that the Cybermen were Eviler Than Thou to the Borg even though it's perfectly in character for both. The Borg assimilate civilizations, not individuals, and the Cybermen upgrade anyone. It only got worse when the Cybermen came back in "Nightmare in Silver." How was their Villain Decay undone? By making them near 100% copies of the Borg (somewhat ironic considering that the Borg started out as Cybermen expies).
The Who fandom could be considered an Unknown Rival to Transformers. Whenever someone highlights the Daleks' Memetic Loser status, the Whovians are quick to mention the Decepticons, particularly the ones from the original cartoon. The Transformers fans have never mentioned the Daleks when someone points out the flaws in the Decepticons' MO, instead embracing the Narm Charm. Those Transformers fans who do acknowledge the rivalry usually end the discussion by saying that the Decepticons would just step on the Daleks.
Fanfic Fuel: Everything is fanfic fuel in this show. How did Rassilon capture the Eye of Harmony? Why only twelve regenerations? What did the Cloister Wraiths say to the First Doctor? How much sex has Captain Jack had? Did Davros ever get the unlimited rice pudding?
With The Reveal about the Timeless Child, the fandom was given a free pass to write up every and anything.
Fanon: Pretty much every question that's gone unanswered has fan theories, some more widely accepted than others. The most popular seems to be that Omega was "The Could've Been King" mentioned in The End of Time.
One of the best examples is the Rose fans washing their hands with the show after Ten regenerated. Some rage-quitted halfway through Eleven's run because the Doctor wasn't crying over Rose.
The Series 12 finale, the Doctor being the Timeless Child, was essentially the Whovian equivalent to the initial reaction to The Last Jedi. Whether this means disregarding the entirety of Thirteen's run or just the finale is really up to the fan to decide.
A good number of fans consider "The Tenth Planet" to be when the Cybermen were at peak creepiness.
To this day, it's not uncommon to find someone who deems Roger Delgado as having been the best Master.
Series 1 of NuWho was always very highly regarded but as time passed and more issues cropped up, many began viewing it, and how nicely self-contained it was, as the best, dubbing Nine as their favorite Doctor.
Series 5, the Eleventh Doctor's introduction, is usually considered to be his best series.
For all that fans of the classic show lambaste the series' drop in quality starting in Season 19, much of the flaws; the Villain Decay, the demystification of the Time Lords, the plastic-y looking sets, the inconsistently written characters; can be found back as early as Season 14. The difference is that Seasons 14-18 had Tom Baker's sheer force of personality to carry even the weakest stories along with his fantastic chemistry with the companions and the Fourth Doctor's Byronic Hero qualities to contrast the wacky. When John Nathan-Turner forced Tom Baker out and wrote the Fifth Doctor as a much more subdued character, the flaws became all too apparent and the show started to look Denser and Wackier. Notably, Adric was just a Kid Sidekick alongside Four's Large Ham tendencies but with Five being so calm, Adric, whose character had not changed at all, was suddenly regarded as an Insufferable Genius.
Daleks fans often lambaste Davros' appearance in the classic show as all Dalek stories following "Genesis of the Daleks" became Davros stories, them just serving as their creator's Mooks. But what were considered the best Dalek stories, save "The Daleks" and "The Power of the Daleks", before Davros' introduction in "Genesis of the Daleks" all had someone else as a primary antagonist and a mouthpiece for the baddies. The difference is those primary antagonists were either King Mooks or someone the Daleks would betray, both cases giving the Daleks agency as antagonists. When Davros was there, the Daleks had little agency, to the point that the Imperial Daleks were created as just expendable Mooks loyal to Davros.
Clara Oswald's character arc. Compared to the feats of prior companions like Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, Amy Pond and River Song, Clara's status as the Impossible Girl, convincing the Doctor to save Gallifrey and convincing the Time Lords to give the Doctor more regenerations are arguably less impressive. But Clara did all those fantastic things within a few months of each other (both In-Universe and out); as opposed to other companions either achieving similar feats over years' time or only having one such feat to their name; making her seem hyper-competent to her haters. Even her becoming a Distaff Counterpart to the Doctor was, to a degree, done before with Donna but since Clara stayed longer and wasn't subjected to Laser-Guided Amnesia, she was allowed to take it to its logical conclusion, again seeming like a Mary Sue to her haters (most of whom just so happened to ship the Doctor with someone else).
Though "The Power of Three" is generally held up as one the best Slice of Life episodes the show produced, it does foreshadow more than a few of the elements that would come to define writer Chris Chibnall's rather controversial tenure as showrunner. The main threat takes way too long to be fleshed out, the resolution is a quick Deus Ex Machina and there are elements of Moral Dissonance and Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending with regards to the Doctor's actions. This generally slipped under the radar at the time because Series 7's Troubled Production caused viewers to be more forgiving of its gaffs and because Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill's chemistry made the Slice of Life parts memorably enjoyable. When Chibnall took over though, the show had every resource it needed and the leads didn't have the same level of chemistry. And as these tropes popped up in most of Chibnall's scripts, most fans quickly lost patience.
With The Thick of It. The idea of a foul mouthed Doctor is an amusing one.
With Rick and Morty. Pretty much the entire internet has agreed that Peter Capaldi should be cast as Rick if there's ever a live action film.
With My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic given the background pony of Doctor Whooves. Its peak happened in MLP's fourth season which premiered on the same day as "The Day of the Doctor." Unusually compared to most of MLP's Friendly Fandoms, this one endured even after it ended.
Growing the Beard: Being that the series has a few decades of history, it's a bit inevitable that there have been a lot of times when the show's quality gets lower a few times and then back up later. The most notable are the Second Doctor compared to the First, the Sixth Doctor's second season (season 23, Trial of a Time Lord), Seventh Doctor's second (season 25), and Tenth Doctor's, you guessed it, second season (series 3/season 29).
Some fans would argue that the new series in general was a beard growth compared to the eighties and nineties, and others see it as the point where the show was Ruined FOREVER.
The Second Doctor was a noticeable improvement on the First, making stories more action-orientated, and spreading his influence to every other Doctor after that.
And The First Doctor's second serial, "The Daleks", is seen as where the show really took off. As opposed to the rather dull first serial involving Cave Men.
The Twelfth Doctor's run was considered to get better after each series.
In general, it appears that most Doctors have a "breaking-in" period. Around the time of their second to fifth stories, they'll have settled into who they are (which would eventually be canonized as partly due to Resurrection Sickness) and the show dynamic under them.
At the end of "The Time Monster", when the Doctor states that eternal torment was something he'd never subject anything to. Aboutthat...
The scene of Rory sadly playing with the dream!cot in "Amy's Choice" is made even more heartbreaking by what happens in series 6 and the later revelation that the Church made Amy infertile.
"The End of Time":
When the Tenth Doctor regenerated, while it was sad, the way he harped on it made it somewhat Wangsty to some given that, as the tenth incarnation, the Doctor had three more bodies to burn through. Then 2013 revealed the introduction of the War Doctor and that Ten's aborted regeneration had counted as a full regeneration. Ten's regeneration used up the last one in his cycle. And he already knew that he was fated to die on Trenzalore in his next body.
Ten's last words of "I don't want to go." Repeated by Spider-Man in Avengers: Infinity War.
After all the struggles in "The Day of the Doctor", Series 12 sees Gallifrey "nuked" with the finale destroying any organic matter left.
He Really Can Act: Give the new Doctor and/or Companion a few episodes.
He's Just Hiding: Oh the Daleks, Cybermen, and the Time Lords (specifically the Master) are dead? Give it one to four seasons and they'll be back, and in greater numbers.
In "Day of the Moon", Richard Nixon asks the Doctor if he'll be remembered in the future. The Doctor, wishing to remain coy on the details, simply replies that "they'll never forget about [Nixon]" and "say hello to David Frost for me". Two episodes later, the Doctor has an encounter with a being voiced by Michael Sheen, who played David Frost in Frost/Nixon.
In a Black Comedy sense, Rory tells Alaya in "Cold Blood" that he trusts the Doctor with his life. That proved not to be a great idea.
Max Capricorn is a cyborg on wheels who lives on board a ship and plans to kill all the passengers. Sound Familiar?
Holy Shit Quotient: The series does outdo itself constantly in this area due to thrills and scares, but very few can compare to the sudden reemergence of the TIME LORDS in the final scene of The End of Time Part One, and their Title Drop of just what they plan to do.
Specifically, when the viewer gets out ahead of the plot on that one and realizes what's coming just soon enough to scream 'HOLY SHIT' about twenty times before the event actually happens.
"Silver Nemesis" is technically the show's twenty-fifth anniversary but most fans find it to be just a bog-standard episode, remembered only for the Signature Scene of Cybermen fighting Neo-Nazis. It led most fans to consider "Remembrance of the Daleks" as the true twenty-fifth anniversary special.
Fandom example. Rose was a fine character on her own, but when Martha was frequently compared to her by both the show and the fanbase, even some of the people who liked Rose have come to see her as The Scrappy.
The 60th Anniversary has a reputation of this. Compared to previous anniversary epics like "The Three Doctors" (10th), "The Five Doctors" (20th) or "The Day of the Doctor" (50th), the 60th just feels like a few rejected Series 4 scripts pulled off the shelf to fill time.
A lot of Rose fans are insistent that only she get to perform the important acts in the show's history. For example, Rose can become the Bad Wolf but Clara becoming the Impossible Girl and/or pleading with the Doctor to find a better way than destroying Gallifrey is her, somehow, stealing Rose's thunder.
Many critiques that hardcore Russell T. Davies fans make about Steven Moffat's era are perfectly, if not more, applicable to RTD's first era as showrunner.
I Am Not Shazam: The main character's name is "The Doctor", not "Doctor Who." No matter what Missy says on the subject.
As the Doctor gained more and more control of the TARDIS, a good number of episodes would never have happened, or at least wrapped up much quicker, if they'd just parked closer or summoned the TARDIS to them. Clara hangs a lampshade on this in "The Bells of Saint John" with the Doctor justifying it (or Handwaving it depending on the viewer) as keeping the TARDIS away from the enemy should be killed so as to reduce the chances of them taking it.
Of all the ways for Rose and the Doctor to be separated, did they have to choose that? Couldn't the Doctor have closed the breach from the TARDIS? After all, it passed through the void and wasn't sucked in.
"The Angels Take Manhattan". While the plot holds up, people have questioned why Amy and Rory were doomed to 1930s New York. What was to stop the Doctor from taking a cab from New Jersey and putting a false grave?
In "Kill the Moon", if the Doctor hadn't been so needlessly obstructive, the whole thing could have been a quarter of the length.
It Was His Sled: Originally, the Daleks had been brought to near-extinction by the Time War.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks: After the Series 8, 10, and 12 finales, many are hopping that the Series 14 finale won't feature a Villain Team-Up between the Master and the Cybermen.
Informed Wrongness: Harriet Jones blowing up the Sycorax ship. As she says, the Doctor isn't always there, something that's proven later on, and the human race has to defend itself. The show treats it as the ultimate example of Humans Are the Real Monsters.
Since the revival, the Doctor. Special credit goes to Twelve in "Heaven Sent" and "Hell Bent". He tortured himself for 4.5 billion years to try and get Clara back.
Amy.
In series 5's "The Big Bang", Rory spends 1894 years alone guarding his in-suspended-animation fiancee in a giant metal box keeping it safe from outside influences, following it wherever it is taken and writing himself into the myths and legends of a dozen civilizations in the process.
Then in Series Six he has to deal with all his memories of 2,000 years threatening to overwhelm him, the constant suggestion that Amy prefers the Doctor over him (she doesn't), his wife dissolving into goo, then his child dissolving into goo, and then the revelation that River is his daughter. Poor guy.
Magnificent Bastard: So very many. The Master pretty much takes home the gold, though. Davros gets the silver. Madam Kovarian gets the bronze.
Mary Sue: There are arguments for any number of companions, not to mention the Doctor. Take a look at the list of traits and you'll find that the Doctor has quite a few. Proof that Tropes Are Not Bad.
A lot of the villains tend to become this. Despite how often the Doctor touts that whatever particular villain is the most dangerous creature in the show and universe, they're always defeated within an hour. A common one is stating that any hero from any other franchise could probably plow through the Doctor's rogue gallery.
The Daleks are the biggest victim of it. Nothing ever shown suggests that they could have fought the Time Lords on equal footing, their design is stupid, and they're constantly prone to Bond Villain Stupidity. They're more likely to be a victim of this by the casual fans or those who know of the show but don't watch it, yet it's not uncommon to find even some very devoted fans laughing at how ridiculous they are.
The Time Lords. Despite their status as the Higher-Tech Species, the TARDISes seem to be their only real advantage over any other race, they're not that physically strong, and, compared to other fictional races, they're not even thatLong Lived. Until the era of the Twelfth Doctor, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of Thor (1500 years old) was older than the Doctor. While the Doctor is often said to be very old, even by Time Lord standards, Thor is a young adult by Asgardian standards. And then you have the Transformers who are The Ageless and don't consider four million years a long period of time. And all that doesn't even get into what Space Age Stasis has done to their reputation.
The Cybus Cybermen are not regarded very highly, even by fans of the original Mondasian breed.
Tzim-Sha. When even the show refuses to take him seriously and refers to him as "Tim Shaw", no one will ever take him seriously.
Of all the Time Lord's companions, Melanie Bush is most often regarded by the fandom as a giant screamer and the most generic of all the companions. Doesn't help that she was sandwiched between the mould-breaking Peri and Ace. Though her appearance in "The Giggle" seemed to rescue her.
Despite the fact that he Took a Level In Badass, several in fact, to some Rose/Doctor shippers Mickey Smith will forever be "Mickey the Idiot."
Among the Doctors themselves, the Thirteenth Doctor seems to get the least love but that seems more due to the stories under her tenure than her personality.
The Thirteen Doctor's Fam. If they weren't there, almost nothing would change during Thirteen's tenure and her talking aloud makes the companions all but superfluous. Hell even when the Toymaker is giving Donna a recap of Series 5 though 13 in "The Giggle", he skips over mentioning the Fam entirely.
Memetic Outfit: Every Doctor's uniform is iconic of that incarnation. Special mentions go to the Fourth Doctor's scarf and fedora, and the Eleventh Doctor's bowtie (which was inspired by the Second's).
Memetic Sex God: "There are no straight men, just men who haven't met Captain Jack Harkness" is a common line to describe the character, notable for the relatively few number of straight male fans who deny the statement. There's also a popular image macro with a nude screenshot from "Bad Wolf" captioned, "You're straight? So is spaghetti, before it gets hot."
Even justified In-Universe. 51st century pheromones are a potent lot.
In Dragonfire, Kane has the tourists, passers-through, and residents herded into a spacecraft and blows it to Kingdom Come.
In The Curse of Fenric, Millington locks two men up in a cellar, leaving them to their Haemovorey death.
In "Dalek", Van Statten is just arrogant and ignorant... until he decides to keep the Doctor as a specimen, for torturing. And later he dismisses his soldiers as "dispensable" when the Dalek massacres them. After that, there's no excuse.
In The End of Time, the Time Lords themselves have gone off the deep end as they are willing to destroy the fabric of space and time to escape their own demise, in a war that they started.
Rassilon goes further over the deep end in "Hell Bent." Not only has he devolved into spiteful jealousy that the Doctor saved Gallifrey instead of him, but he stuffed the Doctor into a custom-built torture chamber (the device's original purpose was to allow a dying Time Lord to make peace with and face his demons). Adding to that, he ordered Clara's death. Clara, not the Eleventh Doctor, being the one who let Rassilon know that he'd found the right universe and could restore his people.
The Second Doctor's era was not totally made up of "base under siege" storylines. It actually added a lot of important continuity and was regarded as vital in ensuring the series would last.
The Sixth Doctor strangling Peri. No one is ever going to forget that.
Classic series fans generally take one or two episodes from the new series and blow it out of proportion as a reason why all 80+ episodes from over twenty writers and directors suck. New Series fans do the same when looking at classic series episodes and all the Narm.
Not to mention the fans who bash David Tennant and/or Matt Smith solely because of the now-infamous line "I don't want to go."
The Cult of Skaro dishing out a Curb Stomp Battle to the Cybus Cybermen. Never mind that the Cult were Elite Mooks and the post RTD era has gone back to the Mondasian Cybermen, Dalek fans will always use that to justify why the Daleks are better than the Cybermen.
Nightmare Retardant: The cheaper costumes of the classic era. Sometimes pops up every now and then in the new series.
Older Than They Think: As Steven Moffat has said, Doctor Who has been on for so long that every idea has been done, or rejected, at least once.
Quite a large complaint about Clara is that she began to outshine the Doctor in some episodes such as "Flatline." That's true but also irrelevant. Every companion in the new series has had episodes that focused primarily on them as opposed to the Doctor. In fact, a case could be made that Series 1 was more about Rose than the Ninth Doctor.
For all that the Chibnall era has been critiqued for too many political themes, politics have always factored into Doctor Who. Even the Daleks started out as blatantly transparent Nazi expies.
Pandering to the Base: A common critique of the 60th anniversary special is that Russell T. Davies just honored his Series 4 rather than celebrating the whole show.
The Waters Of Mars. Don't drink the water. Don't even touch it. Not One Drop. Being turned into a monster if you touch something that your body physically needs is terrifying.
How about: "Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead! They are fast. Faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink! Good Luck."
Steven Moffat seems to be determined to give the entire planet a phobia of everything. So far he's covered ticking, statues, shadows and now cracks on the wall and... whatever the Smilers are.
And now anything that captures the image of a Weeping Angel becomes an angel. You have one on your television screen? It might just come out and get you, so don't look away. And if you stare at it too long, you might get one in your head. "Don't blink, don't look at it."
Makes people scared to death of their Gran's angel collection, too.
Speaking of the Moff, he also came up with the Silence, monsters that you instantly forget exist whenever you're not looking at them. Also, they look like Slender Man.
The Autons. Basically anything made of plastic could come to life.
Gangers. Human clones with the same memories. So how are you going to tell the original and the copy apart? Well, you can't, unless the Ganger is incomplete and has that smooth, transparent face. Just hope you won't be seeing it in the mirror. And then there's the twist of "The Almost People": who's to say that you aren't unknowingly piloting a ganger right now, separated from all your friends and family who don't even know you're missing?
Periphery Demographic: The classic series was popular with the gay community. As there was almost no suggestion of any sexuality at all, viewers could add their own interpretations on the various relationships between characters. For example, the "No Hugging, No Kissing" policy that led to Five not touching his female companions led to the belief that he was guy for Tourlough.
Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Amy can get this rather bad. "The Girl Who Waited", for example, was treated as sexist because the older Amy wouldn't save herself until young!Amy used Rory to convince her.
River Song also gets accusations of this because she's obsessed with the Doctor. On the one hand, it's a Justified Trope due to her being brainwashed to kill him her entire life. On the other hand, she also broke time itself and endangered the universe because of it.
The Cybus Cybermen are not regarded very highly compared to their Mondasian counterparts. Even after the Twelfth Doctor explained away the many origins of the Cybermen as parallel evolution, this lot of Cybermen is still regarded as total losers. Probably has something to do that these were the only antagonists of Ten's run who never left Earth or showed abilities that could rival those of the Time Lords. Had they been in Three's run, they might have been better received.
To diehard Doctor/Rose shippers:
Martha Jones. How dare she agree to a trip in the TARDIS and be attracted to the Doctor when he's so clearly pining over Rose?
10.5. He's clearly not the real Doctor and is totally unworthy of Rose's love.
Clara Oswald. The Doctor is in love with someone that isn't Rose Tyler? And who had a British-African boyfriend? It really is stunning how many Rose fans accuse Clara of stealing Rose's thunder. Keep in mind that Rose hadn't even been alluded to for two years when Clara first showed up and that if Clara could be compared to any previous companion, it would be Sarah Jane.
Any new Doctor / Master / companion is this to someone.
After the Zygons returned following "The Day of the Doctor", the Slithteen became this to them.
Donna Noble, thanks to a lot of Character Development. Unfortunately all undone at the end of series four.
Mickey Smith, from "The Age of Steel". Solidified at the end of "Army of Ghosts".
Amy Pond in Series 6 following her softening up and her love for Rory being more explicit.
Clara in Series 8. While she still has her detractors, she did gain much more Character Development starting then which is largely agreed to have made her a more interesting character than the Genki Girl of Series 7.
Ron the Death Eater: Though the upper echelons of Time Lord government are corrupt, the common citizenry is perfectly nice. If you asked the fans, particularly the Rose/Ten shippers, then the Time Lords are Always Chaotic Evil and would go so far as to torture Rose while laughing at the Doctor's Inelegant Blubbering for them to stop. If you also ask the Rose/Ten fans, then Sarah Jane Smith, Martha Jones, River Song, and Clara Oswald are all evil Clingy Jealous Girls who don't deserve the Doctor at all.
Which, of course, led to all the fans of those girls applying this trope to Rose.
Running the Asylum: It's the longest running Science Fiction show in existence, heavily influencing just about everyone in England who ever did anything related to Science Fiction. Most people who worked on the new series, writers and actors, were fans of the original.
Criticize whatever you want at your leisure, but never raise a voice against Sarah Jane Smith. Even the Rose shippers know better than to do that.
The Twelfth Doctor. Rocky start notwithstanding, nearly the whole fandom loved Twelve and criticisms of him are not good for one's health.
The Time War Dalek design. As shown by fan reaction to the New Dalek Paradigm, no one is allowed to touch that design.
Those who didn't like "The Timeless Children" have started to view the First Doctor as such, claiming that the ending insulted his legacy and invalidated not only his Character Development but the legacy of William Hartnell.
The Ninth Doctor. As said under Fandom Heresy, the internet will descend on you like a pack of Reapers if you say you don't like, or skipped, Series 1.
Scapegoat Creator: The series has no one creator to lay blame on, but aside from original producer Verity Lambert, legendary writer Robert Holmes and arguably Tom Baker's second producer, Philip Hinchcliffe, just about everyone who's ever worked on the show has been designated Scapegoat Creator by some segments of fandom.
The classic series' biggest scapegoat is John Nathan-Tuner (Produce from 1980-1989). Hardly surprising when most of the fanbase agrees that the Seasonal Rot happened under his reign with both Tom Baker and Mary Tamm expressing distaste for his policies and attitudes.
All three of the new series producers, Russell T. Davies (2005-2010; 2023-), Steven Moffat (2010-2017) and Chris Chibnall (2017-2022) also received it to various degrees.
Francine Jones, Martha's mother. She's rude to just about everyone right from the get-go, and ends up selling out the Doctor to Harold Saxon, a.k.a. the Master. Luckily, it doesn't keep, but the fans weren't terribly happy with her for all of that.
Sylvia Noble, Donna's mum. Her arrogance, smugness, constant belittling of her daughter, and inability to say the words "Thank You" left a bad taste in the mouth of many a fan.
The Slitheen have the unfortunate distinction of being the only Doctor Who race to be almost universally despised. Shoddy costume design, out-of-place toilet humor and the fact that the characters themselves were generally seen to be more irritating than menacing turned out to not be a very good recipe for an alien race, especially one that was the first recurring alien race of the new series.
The attitudes of the Vocal Minority that supports her have turned Rose into this for some fans, some of whom liked her once upon a time. Even the writing staff of Doctor Who (Titan) doesn't seem too fond of her.
The Third Doctor's last season is easily his worst, despite the arrival of Sarah Jane. Even Jon Pertwee and producer Barry Letts admitted this being the case, due to a combination of fatigue and depression over the death of Roger Delgado.
The Fourth Doctor's era is generally regarded to have gone downhill after the departures of Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes. Whether or not this applies to his final season usually depends on whether you're the type who thinks Doctor Who should be serious sci-fi (in which case it's usually regarded as a decent send-off) or whether you think it should be campy and fun (in which case it's where the Fourth Doctor's run completely went to hell).
To some fans, the Classic Series lost its spark when the Fourth Doctor regenerated.
Though Series 2 of the revival introduced the fan beloved Tenth Doctor, it's generally regarded as a large step down from Series 1, given how Wangsty the Doctor/Rose romance got at times, Rose undergoing Chickification, and both Ten and Rose dipping into Moral Dissonance / Designated Hero at times.
Series 6 is likewise considered a step down from Series 5 as it moved away from "delightful cosmic fairy tale" in favour of Arc Fatigue. Series 7 is also considered to be somewhat lacklustre but that's mainly due to the Moff having been busy with producing the 50th.
Series 11 and 12 definitely saw a downward slope in ratings but it's hard to get a clear reason as to why due to any accusation being branded as misogynistic, or at least partly motived by misogyny usually along the lines of "You wouldn't be saying that if Peter Capaldi had stayed." At the very least, the lack of Myth Arc in Series 11, combined with the heavy handedness of Thirteen being a woman, made it an unpopular one. Series 12 had a Myth Arc but uncovering it was never the Doctor's priority. Instead, the Master simply told her all the answers, another idea that proved unpopular with viewers.
The fans of the RTD era usually have Doctor/Rose, Martha/Mickey, and Donna/Captain Jack Harkness.
Mickey/Jackie was a fairly common Ship Mate for Doctor/Rose too, despite being a May-December Romance. After all, it's not like that alone would've stopped Jackie....
And if they're fans of the old series they might ship Sarah Jane with Harry Sullivan, claiming that he, not the Doctor, was the man "nobody could live up to" for her.
Since the Eleventh Doctor's appearance, the combination Doctor/River and Amy/Rory became quite popular. Both became effectively canon in the Series 6 finale.
After Clara was introduced, Eleven/Clara shares Amy/Rory as a ship mate. Helped by the fact that Karen Gillan stated her view that Amy was a Shipper on Deck for Eleven/Oswin.
In Human!AUs, the preferred route seems to be Ten/Rose joined by Eleven/Clara. After "The Husbands of River Song", Twelve/River, or Twelve/Missy, can join in.
Before Series 8, it was common to see Clara (usually in Time Lady!Clara AUs) shipped with the Saxon Master.
Jack Harkness/Clara popped up after Series 9.
Platonically, Clara has popular fan friendships with Amy (though that usually involves some flirting) and Sarah Jane.
Graham O'Brian/Sarah Jane Smith.
As said above, the Corsair/Chancellor Flavia is a popular ship despite the two characters never interacting and the Corsair never even appearing on-screen.
Romana/Four. Especially as she was the first woman the Doctor noted as being attractive. Helps that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were in a real-life relationship at the time.
Nyssa and the Fourth/Fifth Doctors.
Chesterton/Wright. Canon as of The Sarah Jane Adventures' fourth series, which mention an "Ian and Barbara Chesterton."
Ben/Polly. Running an orphanage according to the above SJA episode.
The Doctor/Clara Oswald. Not only did Eleven and Twelve both fall in love with her, but the War and Tenth Doctors were quite interested in her as well (and when it came to Ten, Clara loved Eating the Eye Candy).
The novelization of "The Day of the Doctor" has some moments where the three Doctors are practically competing over who can show off to Clara the most.
Missy was also very comfortable with Clara.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: In addition to the above, people pretty much ship Anyone/Anyone on the show. Canon or not, they can get very defensive over their ship(s).
The most egregious offenders are the Doctor/Rose shippers. They wage war on anyone who ships the Doctor with someone else and viciously attack the idea of the Doctor loving someone but Rose (we will at this point remind you that the Doctor has a granddaughter). It's so bad, that the Doctor/Clara and Doctor/River shippers, who should be enemies, and the River fans do engage in some warring every now and then, usually stand together against Doctor/Rose (though that could be because, some initial confusion notwithstanding, River and Clara got along beautifully).
Signature Scene: Every era has one but there are some standouts.
The Cybermen walking out of St. Paul's Cathedral in "The Invasion." So much so that Steven Moffat leapt at the chance to recreate in "Dark Water."
Two's frightened forced regeneration.
The Fourth Doctor's iconic "Have I the right?" speech in "Genesis of the Daleks."
Eleven's speech in "The Pandorica Opens."
The Twelfth Doctor's anti-war speech and his speech to the Masters about kindness.
The Thirteenth Doctor breaking out of the Matrix.
So Okay It's Average: As time passed, this seemed to be the fan reaction to the Eleventh Doctor's run, though not Eleven himself. His era had its highs and its lows but many felt that it didn't quite match the Tenth and Twelfth's eras but also never had any serious misfires or properly terrible episodes.
Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Sure, "Vincent and the Doctor" was basically a Very Special Episode about depression - even the monster that provides the plot can be read as a metaphor for Van Gogh's mental illness - but it was handled so maturely that it falls squarely into this category. Even knowing that his paintings will be incredibly famous and loved in the future, Vincent still kills himself, because it's not a matter of cheering him up: he's got a disease that nobody in his time understands.
Space Jews: Gibbis in The God Complex seems to be a deliberate parody of this trope. Hailing from 'the most invaded planet in the galaxy,' he has vaguely ratlike features, no hair, and is in charge of planting trees so invading soldiers can march in the shade. It's like the producers are deliberately trying to get the audience to scream "That's racist" without actually knowing who it's racist towards.
Special Effects Failure: The BBC was somewhat notorious for giving the set and costume designers of Doctor Who a shoestring budget; that is, a bundle of shoe strings that they were expected to make fifteen monsters out of. Interestingly enough, however, this has always been viewed as part of the series' charm, and the fanbase reacted negatively when the TV movie upped the effects budget.
The low budget also effected the Chroma Key work throughout the seventies and eighties. It pops up every now and then in the new series but very infrequently.
The Kamelion prop could barely move... and whenever it did move, the movements were incredibly herky-jerky.
Though most of the problem with Kamelion was Creator Existence Failure. The only person who knew how to control it died after its introduction but before most of its use.
When the Doctor's army reveal themselves, you can already see Strax on screen for a moment before the sound effect, and there's no visual effect either.
In the serial "The Invasion", aspiring glamor photographer Isobel suggests getting proof of the Cybermen's presence in the sewers by going down to take pictures. The Brigadier agrees, but intends to use his own men instead, on the basis that such a situation is no place for a lady. Isobel blows up at how backward and sexist he's being, but the Brig refuses, and both girls gang up on Jamie for agreeing with him (despite the fact he's from the 18th century and has a legitimate excuse for being old fashioned) and both she and Zoe walk away in a huff to get the pics themselves with Jamie worriedly tagging along, which ends up getting a police officer and one of the UNIT troops sent to rescue them killed. While it could easily be argued that the Brig was in the wrong to assume they couldn't handle themselves for being women, it might have been better to let trained and experienced soldiers do the dangerous work, and neither of the girls are called out for their reckless actions getting two men killed.
In "Genesis of the Daleks", Sarah Jane is meant to be the naive child who can't comprehend the morals of the daunting task ahead of her (pulling a Ret-Gone on the Daleks), and Elisabeth Sladen even said as such in a later interview, but... they're Daleks. Whatever navel contemplating may occur, killing them would have saved innumerable lives. Indeed, the Doctor himself would even come to regard not listening to Sarah Jane as My Greatest Failure.
The Tenth Doctor is terrible with this, as he is The Hero and therefore Always Right, but his thought processes are... a bit suspect at times:
"The Christmas Invasion": The Doctor forces the Sycorax to retreat from Earth, until Harriet Jones orders their destruction with captured alien technology, and the Doctor is furious, berating Jones for attacking someone that was retreating while Jones replies that she was acting in self-defense, quite reasonable considering the Sycorax intended to kill hundreds of millions of people and demonstrated that they could easily not honour their promise not to return, with the Doctor winning because... somehow.
"The Poison Sky": While the Doctor has a point that the Sontaran behaviour is really suspicious, all he's telling UNIT to do is to "sit down and do nothing" in the middle of an Alien Invasion while the Sontarans are killing them. Colonel Mace eventually decides, "screw it" and moves to war footing, mowing down the Sontarans like they're nothing.
"Journey's End": The Doctor's half-human clone (long story) kills the Daleks, a literally Always Chaotic Evil species with no redeeming characteristics - deliberately engineered to be that way, and proud of it! - yet the Doctor berates him for genocide and dumps him in an Alternate Universe because... because...
Testosterone Brigade: Most of the companions are young, attractive women. Some of the fanbase appears to simply be Amazon Chasers who want to see the companions be utter badasses. Mary Tamm's Romana I seems to be the most popular invoker of this in Classic Who. Even Doctor Who Expanded Universe author Jonathan Clements admitted that Tamm was his favorite part of Doctor Who. In NuWho, Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald seems to be the winner.
Theme Pairing: There's a portion of the fandom that ships Adric/Nyssa because they look cute together as OrphanedHuman AlienTeen Geniuses traveling through time and space together.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Fan reaction to almost any regeneration and companion addition, sometimes initial, sometimes permanent.
Revealing the Doctor to be the Timeless Child provoked this in a big way, with many a fan viewing it as disrespectful to the First Doctor's legacy and making the Doctor too important to the history of the Time Lords.
They Copied It, So It Sucks: A major complaint about Series 12. Thematically, some felt that it tried to be too much like RTD's era and in terms of characters, it had three original villains (the Queen of the Skithra, Praxeus, and Zellin) that many regarded as cheap counterfeits of others (the Empress of the Racnoss, the Autons, and the Celestial Toymaker respectively). And then there was the Timeless Child.
Susan Foreman. Despite being a screamer, she also had powerful telepathic abilities which were rarely touched on. Indeed it was this lack of Character Development that led to Carol Ann Ford being the first companion to leave the show. And despite his promise, the Doctor has never, on television anyway, gone back to visit her.
The Valeyard. His being the Literal Split Personality of the Doctor's evil led to the character's use being stunted. Indeed the Thirteenth Doctor is convinced that she'll never see him again.
Ian Chesterton. With his actor still alive and healthy, many argued that he should have been featured in the 50th anniversary and Series 8 as the headmaster of Coal Hill and Clara's mentor.
While everyone loves Thirteen's "fam", the fact that there are three of them (even if Jack had a dream about that once) means that one of them (Yaz more often than not) is usually Demoted to Extra in the adventure and they can't be developed as much as the previous companions.
Jack's own cameo in Series 12 ultimately amounted to just that, to the ire of many fans.
The Lone Cybermen, Ashad. After two episodes of being a legitimately threatening Knight of Cerebus, he's shoved aside by the Master.
The Time Lords. The writers can never agree on how to write them and it seems that their purpose in the modern era is to provide an explanation as to how there can be more TARDISes rather than contributing anything major to the stories.
"Hell Bent" sees the Doctor finally return to Gallifrey. But that's not the driving force of the episode, his love for Clara is. Even those who love the episode and Clara herself will admit that Gallifrey's return was a wasted opportunity.
The Reveal about the Timeless Child was not very well received. Some have argued online that the Child could have been:
Rassilon's guinea pig for unlimited regenerations and when the Master, himself a pawn in one of Rassilon's games, discovered this, he attacked Gallifrey in a rage, staying true to Missy's attempts at redemption.
The Master himself, angered that his people robbed him of his natural immortality.
Too Cool to Live: The Ninth Doctor had the second-shortest tenure (12 weeks).
Father Octavian from "The Time of Angels/Flesh And Stone". He sets a standard for Face Death with Dignity that from now on everyone's going to be struggling to match.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: There are some bad scripts, and some truly cringe inducing ones, but the actors never phone it in.
Tough Act to Follow: Generally the reaction whenever a Doctor regenerates but Series 9 and 10 of the revival had nearly 100% approval ratings giving Series 11 and the Thirteenth Doctor a serious uphill battle.
Prisoner Zero can be this when it's not trying to scare people. Especially when you hear its voice.
The Ood. In fricking spades.
Ganger-Jennifer. Her degeneration makes her look like Voldemort's younger sister.
Unacceptable Targets: Mock the Thirteenth Doctor and Chris Chibnall all you want. But leave Jodie alone. She already had big shoes to fill and sell the idea of a female Doctor. She did her best with what she was given.
Uncanny Valley: Incomplete Gangers have pale skin, visible veins, and oddly smooth features.
In "The Idiot's Lantern", the Doctor and Rose encourage Tommy Connolly to make up with his father, who was explicitly abusing him and his mother verbally and heavily implied to have been physically abusing them on top of it.
The one maybe transgender character in the show, Cassandra, could easily enforce the misconception that transpeople are horrific surgery freaks (and, based on the Expanded Universe book Doctor Who: The Ultimate Monsters Guide, are also just trying to con people for sex or worse).
The Silurians of "The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood" are villainous anti-human racists who are Putting on the Reich with Mad Scientists. Oh, and they also happen to be Zionists looking to reclaim their lost homeland. Combining Nazis and Judaism in a single villainous race? Hooboy.
To be fair, they aren't shown to be all evil. However, following through with the Zionist analogy, more unfortunate implications arise with the provocation for the Silurian return to their homeland was a drilling project that only accidentally hurt them (in contrast to many examples of entirely non-accidental acts of anti-Semitic violence that provoked the rise of Zionism), one of the "good" Silurians says his people have evolved less than the humans (could perhaps just be analogous to a self-hating Jew, but could also be read as Jews being less evolved), and the "solution" to the conflict is for the Silurians to return to their Diaspora until the world is more understanding. Yeah. Either it was a poorly written metaphor or a poorly thought-out one.
The Series 11 episodes "Rosa" and "Demons of the Punjab" raised some anger from black and Indian, respectively, communities for showing the Doctor be complicit in the racism of the times. Some opined it sent out the message "The Doctor can defeat Daleks and Cybermen, but not the white man's empire."
As part of the Hype Backlash that she accrued, much of what Rose Tyler did proved off-putting to newer viewers. In Series 1, she was an Entitled to Have YouHypocrite towards both the Ninth Doctor and Mickey (who was accused of murdering her when she missed a year and Rose never apologized for that). When she's trapped in another reality, where she has a now obscenely wealthy version of her father, all she's concerned with it returning to the Doctor, even working on a way to return before the Dalek threat rears its head. To many viewers, she came off as ungrateful, selfish and spoiled.
The Tenth Doctor, Mr. Martyr Without a Cause, didn't come across too well in "The End of Time", reacting with open outrage that he had to perform a Heroic Sacrifice, something that none of his predecessors or successors did. The 2013 specials did do a bit to address this with the retcon that the Tenth Doctor was the Doctor's penultimate incarnation, explaining why he was reluctant to use up his final regeneration.
River Song in "The Wedding of River Song." In the name of saving the Doctor, she causes every point of time/space to collapse causing untold trillions to suffer in agony, yet River outright says that she'll suffer more than any of them if the Doctor dies. Her punishment? Get married to the Doctor and voluntarily be locked in a Cardboard Prison.
Yaz in "Revolution of the Daleks" is furious that the Doctor has been gone for ten months. While no one would fault her for missing the Doctor, she says her main reason for being so angry is that she doesn't want to stop seeing the galaxy. Not only are Graham and Ryan not angry but the Doctor has been gone for twenty years from her perspective and isn't totally stable as a result. While the episode tries to push that Yaz bonded with the Doctor, considering how Out of Focus she was in Series 11 and 12, it just makes her like an entitled brat. Not helped by the fact that she really doesn't do much in the episode.
Values Dissonance: Even accepting the recons and the wonky production values, many people trying to get into the Hartnell/Troughton era nowadays find it hard due to the rather questionable portrayals of race and gender. Given a lampshade in "Twice Upon a Time" where Twelve desperately tries to do damage control over his earliest self's chauvinistic attitudes.
The Classic Series' Cybermen went from "no known weaknesses" to "gold dust interferes with their respiratory systems" to "holy crap, anything gold kills them dead". The Five Doctors and Attack of the Cybermen didn't utilise any gold weaknesses, but they were still quickly shot down in droves, including one who forgot it was immune to ordinary bullets. The new series has actually gone some way toward reversing the effect. Although the ones that appeared from 2006-2008 weren't from Mondas, a single Mondasian Cyberman in The Pandorica Opens has more nasty tricks up its sleeve than they ever did in the classic episodes — including lasers, tranquilizer darts, Combat Tentacles and the ability to function separately as a body and a severed head when necessary. This is finally undone in "Nightmare in Silver" where the Cybermen are serious threats once again. The only way to stop them was by blowing up the planet.
The Slitheen were fairly menacing in "Aliens of London", "World War Three" and "Boom Town". By the third series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, they were quickly caught by their "cousins".
Arguably, the Sontarans and Ice Warriors. In the case of the Ice Warriors, them becoming less evil in general was actually part of the story, while in the new series the war-loving Sontarans Took a Level In Badass before Strax reduced the race to Comic Relief.
The Daleks. Even though they Took a Level In Badass, several levels in fact, they were never as dangerous as they were in "Dalek" and their Bond Villain Stupidity seemed to get more extreme with every appearance.
The Second Doctor's run. At the time, it was considered such a step down that the show was in danger of being cancelled. Now it's looked on very fondly with Troughton being praised for helping set the foundations for what the show would become.
"The Deadly Assassin." It was not very highly regarded when it came out for a variety of reasons but is now heralded as one of the all time greats for its status as theInnocuously Important Episode of the Whoniverse and how much it laid the foundations of what the Time Lords were.
After Series 11 and 12, a lot of Moffat's haters, who were eager for a return to the RTD style of writing, are now begging that the Moff come back to fix what they view as a hack copy of RTD's writing. Even some of his more controversial and experimental episodes, such as "Let's Kill Hitler" and "Hell Bent", started to be looked it in a better light.
Series 7, often viewed as Eleven's weakest season, saw a rise popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown due to its easily re-watchable nature.
The New Dalek Paradigm. Reception to the new designs in 2010 was so viscerally negative that the production team brought back the old Bronze Dalek design. And eventually some fans began to grow tired of an unending legion of Bronze Daleks that never changed in any way, appreciating that the Paradigm was at least an attempt at a fresh take on the Daleks.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Seriously, for all the mocking the classic series receives for its Special Effects Failures, they did manage to achieve some pretty awesome effects on pretty much no money at times. Examples that immediately come to mind include the epic opening shot of the space station in Trial of a Time Lord and the flying ships in Enlightenment.
Vocal Minority: Starting with the new series, every companion, or group of, has one.
Rose doesn't have any more fans than any other companion but Doctor/Rose shippers, Ten/Rose fans in particular, are some of the loudest Whovians on the internet.
Tegan was always whining and complaining about something.
A common complaint levelled against the first Russell T. Davies era. The Ten/Rose romance is the biggest example of this. The general complaint was that RTD gave too much focus to the soap-opera style drama at the expense of the sci-fi plots. Ironically, Steven Moffat's era having more focus on the sci-fi rather than personal drama got the opposite complaint.
What an Idiot!: So, Dorium, what did you think would happen when you attemped to negotiate with the Headless Monks?
What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: Some fans seem completely offended at the thought this is a family show in a family show time slot. Also a number of classic and revival stories have been rated 12 by the BBFC.
A lot of stories from the '80s, thanks to writers and producers making the show Bloodier and Gorier. "Attack of the Cyberman" has a 15+ rating in Australia, but it was still shown at 6 o'clock at night.
What Do You Mean It's Not Political?: Pretty much every time they've shown up, there's some sort of political tie-in that can be debated with the Silurians. The old-series seemed to have a more Soviet/Communist slant to the reptilians, while the modern re-imagining almost mirrors conflicts between native peoples of a land and those who would come to settle on it.
Nicholas Parsons' casting as Reverend Wainwright in "The Curse of Fenric" might appear to be an example of this at first glance, given that he was best known for being a quiz show host at the time of the story's airing. In reality Parsons was actually a pretty experienced actor, although he hadn't done any TV acting work for over a decade when the story was made.
Beryl Reid as Captain Briggs in "Earthshock". This was due to producer John Nathan Turner's love for light entertainment.