The Best Doctor Who Stories Ever*

*that still exist.

These are not necessarily the most iconic stories of all time, although one does grace Ye Olde Toppe Five Liste. These are, simply, what I think of when I think of the best Doctor Who serials or episodes of all time. All of them, obviously, have gotten/will get 10/10s on their individual reviews.

The Mind Robber
Carnival of Monsters
City of Death
Remembrance of the Daleks
"Blink"

Honorable mentions (9/10):
The Time Meddler
Frontier in Space
The Time Warrior
Genesis of the Daleks
Pyramids of Mars
The Robots of Death
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
The Caves of Androzani
"The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances"
"The Waters of Mars"

The question you're probably asking is "Hold up, Genesis, Pyramids, Talons and Caves are all top-five fan-favorites, and you put them behind Remembrance?" Yes I did. Remembrance of the Daleks is a surprise return to form for the series. More importantly, those other four stories all have flaws that fans are only too happy to overlook (giant rat, for example).

For the sake of an argument, here's why Remembrance gets a 10/10 despite the silly music, while Genesis, an acknowledged classic, does not. Aside from the hilarious giant clams, the biggest problem with Genesis is...

...if I were the Ninth Doctor, I'd go back to 1981 and grease the railing on the Pharos telescope! Seriously, the Doctor's told to go back and murder the Daleks at birth. He's all up for this until it's time for him to touch two wires together to wipe out something that he himself referred to as a "disease" about 20 minutes previously. Now he suddenly goes off about how he wouldn't kill a child even though he knows that child will grow up to be the ultimate evil, and then at the end he handwaves the entire thing by saying that something good will eventually come of the Daleks.

Well, they sure did a good job wiping out that awful race of sanctimonious bureaucrats, so I'll give them that. Anyway, when it's his turn, Seven doesn't have any of this nonsense. Bam, goodbye Skaro. Seven's got two warring Dalek factions going at it on Earth itself, and yet he manages to keep the body count nice and low and wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky. On top of that, I don't remember Sarah Jane beating up a Dalek with a baseball bat!

"Have I the right" indeed. Have you the right to condemn literally billions of people to agony, slavery and death, Doctor?