Doctor Who/YMMV

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• Abandon Shipping: Subverted. While it was initially rumoured that this was to be the case with Doctor/Clara once youthful Eleven regenerated into Silver Fox Twelve, it was quickly revealed to be a hoax. If anything, more people jumped on the Doctor/Clara ship with the romantic tension between the two increasing. By Series 9, they became an Official Couple in all but name.
• Acceptable Targets: Religious groups, figures of authority, and Americans are the preferred targets of the Doctor's wit.
• Actor Shipping:
  • 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.
  • David Tennant and Billie Piper. Never mind that the two are currently Happily Married.
  • 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.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Adric.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Quite a few of these.
  • 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 out of 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 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 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.
  • This YouTube 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • 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?

• And the Fandom Rejoiced:
  • 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 showrunner following Russell T Davies' departure.
  • Also, Neil Gaiman writing for series 6.
  • Captain Jack Harkness returned in Series 12.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: A show about a madman in a box bouncing around through time and space? Oh yes, that's worth a BBC budget.
  • 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 and quite possibly 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 her stories, she's still beloved.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • 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.
• 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.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • With the finale of the sixth series Moffat has run into this for River and the Silents/Silence, if critical reviews are 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.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • "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 done away with. 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.
  • 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.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Doctors 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 11.
• Awesome Ego:
  • The Doctor; the Master is an evil version.
  • Depending on who you ask, River qualifies as this as well.
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Base Breaker:
  • Rose, although she's generally well liked in her first series. Afterwards, she either underwent Character Development to become a Badass Normal or she turned 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?
  • 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 Eccleston denied to return.
    • 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?
  • River Song. It only got worse during series six, to say nothing of the finale, which appears to have set the internet aflame.
  • 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?
  • Amy Pond. There are actually people who have stopped watching the show altogether because of her, as they feel she's 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 is a turn-off for some people.
  • Jenny (AKA the Doctor's Daughter). Good lord, Jenny. She's either completely hated, or she absolutely has to return for another episode.
  • 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.
  • Clara Oswald is a big one. 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.
  • Ashildir. An interesting and dynamic character or a useless, unsympathetic Jerkass? There's very little middle ground with her.
  • The Daleks. 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%.
  • The First Doctor's overtly chauvinistic portrayal in "Twice Upon a Time." Was it funny, and accurate for the era his show aired on, or Character Derailment? For what it's worth, the novelization states that One was playing up his attitudes just to piss of Twelve.
  • 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? Though this might have some wiggle room as the O Master could conceivably pre-date Missy.
    • 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 given that it ruined the show forever.
• 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.
• Crazy Awesome: Pretty much every Doctor.
  • 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.
• Crossover Ship:
  • Amy Pond has decently popular ones with Sherlock Holmes of Sherlock and Dean Winchester of Supernatural.
  • Clara Oswald seems to get shipped with the Marvel Cinematic Universe's versions of Captain America and Bucky Barnes quite a bit thanks to Jenna Coleman having a cameo in Captain America: The First Avenger as Bucky's date.
• Cult Classic: The Seventh Doctor's tenure, which had the lowest ratings from the series' history but a very loyal fanbase.
• Damsel Scrappy: Tegan, Mel.
• 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.
• Dork Age: 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Ear Worm: The theme tune.
  • The Master's drumbeat.
• Ending Fatigue: The 15-minute farewell scenes in The End of Time.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • From Classic Who, both the Daleks and Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Both originally intended as one-off characters in the 1960s. Guess what? They've both appeared on television since Doctor Who's revival (the Daleks ongoing and the latter on the Spin-Off The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2008, fifteen years after his last televised appearance).
  • Within just one episode, the Weeping Angels were heavily regarded as the show's most terrifying villains. Even more so than the Daleks, just from the sheer paranoia factor. Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone only increased their popularity (except among certain fans who screamed Ruined FOREVER at some of the changes).
    • Yet another creation from Blink is also widely beloved: Sally Sparrow.
  • Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead's Monster of the Week, the Vashta Narada, have turned out to be one of the most popular in the entire new run, arguably only being bested by The Weeping Angels. A loyal section of the fanbase has been clamouring for their return.
  • Eleven's Fez.
    • And his bow tie. Both are cool.
  • Despite Sharaz Jek only appearing in The Caves of Androzani and dying in the final episode, he's arguably one of the most popular side characters in the show's history.
  • Wilfred Mott. He attacked a Dalek with a paint gun. He was so popular that he was brought back as The Doctor's companion for The End of Time.
  • Captain Jack Harkness was popular enough to get his own show after just five episodes. When he came back in Series 12, And the Fandom Rejoiced didn't even begin to describe it.
  • Madame Vastra, the Lesbian Victorian Silurian Detective and her partner-slash-servant, along with their Sontaran butler Strax, are incredibly popular, with the fandom begging for a spin-off.
  • Canton Delaware III is another recent example. Partly due to the fact that it's very hard to forget an ex-FBI agent from 1969 who wants to marry a black man.
  • Craig Owens, The Doctor's roommate in "The Lodger," who gained a lot of popularity based on the excellent chemistry between James Corden and Matt Smith. And the Fandom Rejoiced when it was announced that the Doctor would go back and visit him.
  • Bonnie, Clara's Zygon Evil Counterpart.
  • Spandrell and Engin from "The Deadly Assassin" are hugely popular for being such Nice Guys and Reasonable Authority Figures in Time Lord society.
  • The War Doctor only appeared once on television but he was played by John Hurt. And everyone loved John Hurt.
  • The Cult of Skaro.
• Epileptic Trees: Every Myth Arc has dozens of pages' worth of theories as to how it will be answered.
• Escapist Character: The Doctor and his companions.
• Ethnic Scrappy: The council worker in "Fear Her".
• 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.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • 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. Star Trek the Next Generation Doctor Who Assimilation 2 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.
  • 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.
• Fandom Specific Plot: See here.
• 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.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Inevitable in such a long show.
  • 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.
• Fashion Victim Villain: Eric Roberts' Master always dresses for the occasion.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • The Eleventh Doctor has a meme now. Memes are cool.
  • As of series 5, the Angels have started becoming this.
  • Missy. Everything Missy says.
• Fridge Logic: Has its own page.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Sherlock. Got stronger when Steven Moffat was made the head writer on Who.
  • With Legends of Tomorrow. Arthur Darvill is back in a time machine.
  • 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."
  • With Broadcurch. David Tennant, Arthur Darvill, and Jodie Whittaker appeared on both shows.
• Foe Yay: Has its own page. Most it dedicated to the Doctor and the Master.
• Franchise Original Sin: Quite a large complaint about Clara is that she began to outshine the Doctor in some episodes. 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.
• 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.
  • 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 and the show dynamic under them.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • At the end of The Time Monster, when the Doctor states that eternal torment was something he'd never subject anything to. About that...
  • 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.
  • 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 destroyed 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.
• Hell Is That Noise: The attack prayer of the Headless Monks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In "World War Three", Jackie banters about how the Doctor and Rose should be knighted and wonders whether or not the Doctor even eats normal food.
  • 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.
• Hype Backlash: 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.
• I Am Not Shazam: The main character's name is "The Doctor", not "Doctor Who." No matter what Missy says on the subject.
• Idiot Plot:
  • 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.
  • In "Kill the Moon", if the Doctor hadn't been so needlessly obstructive, the whole thing could have been a quarter of the length.
• 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.
• Iron Woobie:
  • 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 overwhealm 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.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Thanks to copious amounts of Moral Dissonance right from the get-go, the Tenth Doctor.
  • Turlough. Especially in his first episode. He gets better.
  • Amy as well, thanks to her Bitch in Sheep's Clothing moments.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Every time The Master is killed off. Ditto for the Daleks.
  • Series 6 opened with a future version of the Eleventh Doctor apparently getting shot to death and cremated. It was shapeshifting robot that morphed into the Doctor's likeness.
• 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.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Barbara Wright. To hear the fandom talk, she's the Oncoming Storm.
  • Rory "Chuck Norris" Williams.
  • Apples. An apple a day keeps the Doctor away, making them the most powerful weapon in the Dalek arsenal.
• Memetic Loser: 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 known of the show but don't watch it.
  • 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 that Long 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.
• Memetic Molester: The Eleventh Doctor has No Sense of Personal Space. At. All. Especially around Clara. He really likes her butt.
• Memetic Mutation: EVERYONE is a Time Lord.
  • And everyone in Series 5 is a duck.
  • Eleven has a meme now. Memes are cool.
  • Every second of the Doctor Who cast and crew's 500 Miles music video.
    • Sue from Catering now has her own Facebook and Tumblr tag.
  • See the memes page for a more complete list.
• 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.
• Moe:
  • Jo Grant provides an excellent live action example.
  • Amy; the original entry on the Characters page compared the chibi-like fanart for her to Karen Gillan.
  • On the male side of things, Rory, with his adorkableness, Undying Loyalty and almost constantly sad eyes.
• Moment of Awesome: Has its own page.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • 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 "dispensible" 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.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The characteristic TARDIS dematerialisation sound created, according to River Song, by the Doctor leaving the brakes on. (He claims it's deliberate). Of course, this raises the question as to why Romana and the Master had it happen to them, but River could have just been messing with the Doctor.
• Narm Charm: Often, the series manages to be cheesy while still being on the edge of your seat tense. Any non-humanoid Auton in particular.
  • In The Master's first-ever appearance, he tried to take over the world with plastic daffodils.
• Never Live It Down: 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.
  • 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 Sixth Doctor trying to strangle Peri, which they themselves don't get over until The Mysterious Planet.
• Nightmare Retardant: The cheaper costumes of the classic era. Sometimes pops up every now and then in the new series.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • 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 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.
• 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.
• Rescued From the Scrappy Heap: 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".
• Robo Ship: Doctor and TARDIS. Hinted at at various occasions, especially during the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh Doctor's tenure. Now, official, in-universe canon
• 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. 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. Many long-time fans, such as David Tennant or Peter Capaldi, were on the payroll at one point or another.
• Sacred Cow: Criticize whatever you want at your leisure, but never raise a voice against Sarah Jane Smith.
  • To a lesser extent, the Twelfth Doctor. Rocky start notwithstanding, nearly the whole fandom loved Twelve and criticisms of him are not good for one's health.
• 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 biggest victims of this are John Nathan-Turner (Producer, 1980-9), Russell T. Davies (Executive Producer and Head Writer 2005-2010), and Steven Moffat ((Executive Producer and Head Writer 2010-2017). And yes, Chris Chibnall also received it.
• The Scrappy: Donna Noble, in "The Runaway Bride".
  • More permanently, Adric and Mel.
  • Eric Roberts' Master.
  • 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.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • 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).
• Ship Mates:
  • 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 and 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.
  • Zoe/Isobel for Doctor/Jamie shippers.
  • Thanks to an ambitious AU of "The Doctor's Wife", any story featuring Doctor/Romana has to feature The Corsair/Chancellor Flavia as the Beta Couple.
  • In Human!AUs, the preferred route seems to be Ten/Rose joined by Eleven/Clara.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Jack Harkness/River Song.
  • 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.
  • Graham O'Brian/Sarah Jane Smith.
• Shipping:
  • The Doctor and the Master.
  • Jamie with Victoria, Peri and Zoe. And Two.
  • Romana/Four. Especially as she was the first woman the Doctor notes as 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).
  • 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, usually stand together against Doctor/Rose (though that could be because, some initial confusion notwithstanding, River and Clara got along beautifully).
• 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.
    • The jarring part is that Kamelion was humanoid, so they could've easily used a man in a suit.
  • 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.
• Squick:
  • The pulsating brain in The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp is nauseating. Great effect, though.
  • In "Love & Monsters", Elton mentions having a love life with a slab of concrete, with the slab rightfully telling him not to go into any more detail.
  • The Doctor gets himself and Amy ejected from a giant mouth by making the animal vomit. They go out screaming, with their mouths open.
  • The Headless Monks. All that remains of their heads is a tied-off stump.
• Theme Pairing: There's a portion of the fandom that ships Adric/Nyssa because they look cute together as Orphaned Human Alien Teen 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.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks: A major complaint about Series 12 is that it tried to be too much like RTD's era.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Inevitable given such a long show but there are some standouts.
  • 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.
  • 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.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • "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.
• 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.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The Adipose (cutest Body Horror ever!)
  • 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.
• Uncanny Valley: Incomplete Gangers have pale skin, visible veins, and oddly smooth features.
  • The Autons have this as their main schtick.
• Unfortunate Implications:
  • 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.
• 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.
• Villain Decay:
  • 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 have Taken A Level In Badass.
  • 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.
• Vindicated by History:
  • 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 the Innocuously Important Episode of the Whoniverse and how much it laid the foundations of what the Time Lords were.
• 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: Rose doesn't have any more fans than any other companion but Ten/Rose fans are no doubt the loudest of the lot.
• Wangst:
  • Tegan was always whining and complaining about something.
  • A common complaint levelled against Russell T. Davies' era. The Ten/Rose romance is the biggest example of this.
• 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.
• The Woobie: Pretty much everyone (even many of the villains) and especially the Doctor.
• WTH? Casting Agency: Eric Roberts as the Master.
  • 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.