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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

51 Comments

  1. Wack'd
    October 9, 2016 @ 9:05 am

    I’d like to clarify that my putting down Clara Oswald for Best Doctor was not a typo.

    Reply

    • Caitlin Smith
      October 9, 2016 @ 9:11 am

      Three other people agree with you, including me

      Reply

      • Wack'd
        October 9, 2016 @ 9:12 am

        I’m an idiot, see below for details

        Reply

    • Wack'd
      October 9, 2016 @ 9:12 am

      oh hey that got four votes, how narcissistic am I that I skimmed the 1-point club and went “whelp guess there was an error”

      Reply

  2. Jack Graham
    October 9, 2016 @ 9:42 am

    It’s absurd and awful that Moffat won best writer. That’s ridiculous. Clara as best companion is also nonsense. Honestly, what’s wrong with you people? Harrumph.

    Reply

    • Sean Dillon
      October 9, 2016 @ 3:20 pm

      Yes, clearly you should have been given best writer and best companion should have been either Felix or Ace.

      Reply

      • Jack Graham
        October 9, 2016 @ 5:31 pm

        What do you mean “or Ace”?

        Reply

  3. Aylwin
    October 9, 2016 @ 9:57 am

    One specifying Mary Tamm, Nine specifying Lalla Ward, Five not specifying

    Wait a minute, the Doctors voted in this poll?!

    Reply

  4. Sombra
    October 9, 2016 @ 10:01 am

    Am I the only one who’s really disappointed that Turlough got no love?

    Reply

    • Jack Graham
      October 9, 2016 @ 10:04 am

      Turlough got plenty of love from Five off-camera. That’ll have to do him. The Doctor certainly did.

      Reply

    • Peeeeeeet
      October 9, 2016 @ 10:16 am

      I find myself more sad that Cwej has been forgotten. Should have thrown the big lunk a vote. Oh well.

      Reply

  5. Wood
    October 9, 2016 @ 10:02 am

    Fuck Earthshock indeed. I think it was my last place vote and it was heartening to see how many people shred my opinion on it.

    Reply

    • Andrew
      October 9, 2016 @ 10:14 am

      Earthshock is Eric Saward’s attempt at doing the first 5 minutes or so of Star Wars Episode 4. With David Banks as Darth Vader, and Beryl Reid as Hans Solo. Which is a fantastic idea, don’t try and deny it.

      And Malcolm Clarke’s music is way, way better than John Williams’s. I admit it would probably work better without the Doctor and his companions in it, but I really liked it when I was 8.

      Reply

      • Jack Graham
        October 9, 2016 @ 10:22 am

        Earthshock is a guilty pleasure if you’re in the mood. The mood, for me, specifically being ‘nostalgic’. It’s not ‘good’ in any meaningful sense, however.

        Reply

      • Sean Dillon
        October 9, 2016 @ 3:22 pm

        A shame there were four uninteresting episodes surrounding that idea.

        Reply

    • JJ Gauthier
      October 9, 2016 @ 4:16 pm

      I still like it, but it’s one of those things like “Goldfinger” where it’s problematic but brilliant fun the first time, and then gets worse each time you rewatch it. Its pleasures are all very surface-level, and its flaws egregious enough that rather than ignoring or accepting them as part of the charm, they just seem more and more devastating.

      So part of the reason I still like it is that I’ve only watched it 3 times total, and it’ll be some years before I try again.

      As opposed to Kinda, which just gets better each time you watch it and find another fantastic layer there. On a first viewing, I absolutely would have put Earthshock above it; only Tegan’s trippy nightmare stuff towards the start fully engaged me the first time. But each successive viewing makes me appreciate it more, even if I suspect I’ll never love it as much as Snakedance, which is less dreamlike but builds to a much more satisfying conclusion.

      Reply

      • Andrew
        October 9, 2016 @ 5:54 pm

        Given that Earthshock was designed only to be watched once (as was Kinda), it’s not surprising it was popular at the time.

        Reply

  6. Jack Graham
    October 9, 2016 @ 10:03 am

    I hope this isn’t an omen. Y’know, a poll won by a man despite his recorded history of sexist comments…

    Reply

  7. John G. Wood
    October 9, 2016 @ 10:03 am

    I think I’m about 50% trad fan, 30% naturally weird, and 20% influenced by this site. Certainly coming back to DW after a long break I was surprised how much I enjoyed discovering the Hartnell and McCoy eras, and then coming here has helped me understand why (and also boosted my enjoyment of almost all eras).

    This was a fun poll, and certainly closer to my thinking than most (though Greatest Show and The Time Meddler being outside the top 50 is still just wrong ;-). The format also means I’ve learned about things I’d never heard of before, which is a bonus.

    Thanks again! Now, get back to work on that McCoy book…

    Reply

    • Tom Marshall
      October 9, 2016 @ 10:31 am

      “Greatest Show and The Time Meddler being outside the top 50 is still just wrong”

      Hear hear!

      Reply

      • Anthony D Herrera
        October 9, 2016 @ 3:41 pm

        I would like to add two more hears to this.

        Reply

      • David Anderson
        October 9, 2016 @ 5:06 pm

        I’d add to the hear, hear, except that though they’re both in my top fifty, maybe even thirty, they’re not in my top twenty so I didn’t vote for them.

        Reply

  8. Aylwin
    October 9, 2016 @ 10:39 am

    Biggest surprise for me is quite how badly Pertwee did, even considering how much of a kicking his era got from Phil – surely the single most conspicuous rejection of “traditional fandom” inclinations in the whole poll. The relatively weak support for Tennant (who in Britain at least would very likely top any poll of the general audience with room to spare, with only Tom Baker maybe coming close) is also striking, though maybe less surprising.

    Reply

    • Nathan Mahney
      October 9, 2016 @ 3:01 pm

      Pertwee is greatness, but I’m a really trad fan (my fave Doctors are 1 through 4 in variable order depending on my mood). There’s no reality where he should be topped by Colin Baker, Paul McGann or David Tennant. Or even Peter Davison, unless we’re narrowing it down to “Peter Davison from Caves of Androzani”.

      Reply

    • Elizabeth Sandifer
      October 9, 2016 @ 3:03 pm

      Pertwee historically doesn’t do that phenomenally with trad fandom. Much like The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, he was much more popular with the general public than fandom.

      Reply

      • Aylwin
        October 9, 2016 @ 3:30 pm

        Fair enough – this is probably one of those moments where it becomes apparent that I’m basically an imposter as a Doctor Who fan.

        Reply

        • Jack Graham
          October 9, 2016 @ 5:29 pm

          Tell me about it.

          Reply

        • Wood
          October 10, 2016 @ 7:20 am

          My usual reply to the question “so, your a Doctor Who fan?” is “No, I like it too much.”

          Reply

      • Daibhid Ceannaideach
        October 10, 2016 @ 12:14 pm

        Really? I always think of “trad” fandom as being the side of the Great Pertwee/McCoy Wars that hated the NAs. I suppose radw in the late nineties isn’t representative of fandom, and thank goodness for that.

        Reply

    • David Anderson
      October 9, 2016 @ 4:37 pm

      Pertwee might do better in a poll in which you rank doctors. A poll in which you only pick your favourite Doctor disfavours him since a lot of what he brings to the part is also brought by others (in particular the two Bakers).

      Reply

  9. Roddy
    October 9, 2016 @ 2:34 pm

    It’s interesting that RTD did better than Moffat as a producer, given that his era’s season finales were so comparitively low-ranked.

    I know that’s nowhere near the only indicator – but you’d expect one big factor in voting would be how well tied-together the seasons are, especially given that single episodes from both eras seemed to do about as well.

    Reply

    • Roddy
      October 9, 2016 @ 2:43 pm

      The Moffat-era doctors & companions tended to score better as well. I wonder what factors swung it for RTD.

      (Not that he wasn’t an excellent producer, naturally)

      Reply

      • Nathan Mahney
        October 9, 2016 @ 2:56 pm

        Dependability? Moffat had a tendency for split seasons, and long breaks between seasons. You knew what you were getting, when and how much with RTD.

        Reply

        • Aylwin
          October 9, 2016 @ 3:53 pm

          And that despite the fact that you were getting an exceptional range of different things from him, in terms of the spin-off series etc which Davies instigated and oversaw, even without running them day to day. And that on top of the fact that the new series showrunner effectively has the combined responsibilities of the classic series producer and script editor, plus turning out several scripts of their own each season, and that Davies had had to put a new operation together rather than inheriting something already up and running. Moffat’s difficulties with managing his workload really throw into relief the extent of Davies’s capacities as a plate-spinner, even allowing for the advantage of having Julie Gardner backing him up. The fact that he was seemingly doing a significantly bigger job than any of his predecessors or his successor, and yet making it all run so apparently smoothly, was primarily why I voted for him in that category.

          Reply

          • Roddy
            October 9, 2016 @ 4:20 pm

            Yeah that all seems fair

      • Jane
        October 9, 2016 @ 3:56 pm

        I think RTD’s era is viewed as less problematic than Moffat’s. And, you know, reviving the show in the first place, he gets big kudos for that.

        Reply

    • Caitlin Smith
      October 9, 2016 @ 3:49 pm

      I expect the fact that he brought back the series has a lot to do with it.

      Reply

    • Lambda
      October 9, 2016 @ 4:28 pm

      By far the most important series he made was the one in 2005, and that came together beautifully.

      Reply

    • Nat
      October 12, 2016 @ 1:15 pm

      Maybe, maybe not. I go back and forth on this. If 12.5 of 13 parts of a series are great on their own and hang together well as a whole, how much does it devalue the whole series that that last half an episode is rubbish? I don’t think there’s one definitive answer.

      In the case of Trial of a Time Lord, i think we all agree that had the ending actually worked and tied things up and had threads throughout the season, it would’ve made a huge difference.

      But as disappointed as I’ve been in pretty much every series finale since The Parting of the Ways, they haven’t lessened my enjoyment for the rest of the series.

      On the other hand, drawing on a couple other works, the show finales of Battlestar Galactica and How I Met Your Mother left a sour taste that I have yet to overcome. And that’s despite loving both of them right up until the penultimate episode (or, in the case of HIMYM, through the first half of the final ep). I used to routinely rewatch episodes or whole seasons of HIMYM. Haven’t looked at it since the finale.

      So I’m not saying that a bad finale can’t color what came before. But it doesn’t have to, apparently, so I’m not surprised that collectively we can dislike the finales and like the seasons.

      Reply

  10. Kiki Basco
    October 9, 2016 @ 2:37 pm

    So to what extent is Capaldi/Clara taking the first spots in their respective categories recency bias?

    Reply

    • Elizabeth Sandifer
      October 9, 2016 @ 3:02 pm

      One Capaldi vote quoted my usual line on the matter, which is that Capaldi is my favorite Doctor because he shows up in new episodes periodically.

      Reply

      • Jack Graham
        October 9, 2016 @ 5:30 pm

        That’s probably the single best reason for voting for him.

        Reply

      • Sean Case
        October 10, 2016 @ 4:06 am

        So does Troughton, at this point.

        Reply

  11. Ashely
    October 9, 2016 @ 2:38 pm

    Not one vote for Hurt in Best Doctor? Very good.

    Reply

    • Tom Marshall
      October 9, 2016 @ 3:07 pm

      Why is that good, though? I mean, presumably it reinforces your own personal view, but … even with the stuff I dislike, I’m always rather charmed to find that someone, somewhere, loves it. I may not like X but l like the fact that someone likes X.

      This usually only applies to fictional stories and not real-life atrocities and/or presidential candidates.

      Reply

    • Przemek
      October 9, 2016 @ 3:24 pm

      Maybe the lack of votes for Hurt as Best Doctor is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the fact that he rejected the name “Doctor”?

      Reply

  12. Luke Hobbs
    October 9, 2016 @ 10:31 pm

    Thanks so much for doing the poll, Phil. It’s been a lot of fun.

    Is there an ETA for the McCoy book? Not that I’m ready for it yet…about to watch Trial of a Time Lord and get the Davison/Baker book, and then of course after televised McCoy there are a ton of novels to read, so it’ll be a while before I’m ready for it. But I’m still curious, all the same. Partly just can’t wait for the next amazing cover art.

    Reply

    • hitmonkey
      October 12, 2016 @ 9:43 am

      He was asked on a tumblr a little while ago and said it’ll be after Neoreaction and Last War in Albion come out. So not for a while.

      Reply

  13. Nathan Mahney
    October 10, 2016 @ 6:53 am

    I’m very happy to see Barbara Wright do well, but Ian was robbed, I tell ya. Robbed.

    Reply

  14. Daibhid Ceannaideach
    October 10, 2016 @ 8:53 pm

    “not appreciating the sublime genius of moon eggs”

    I can’t remember if I’ve said this here, but I’ve certainly said it somewhere; while I have certainly a problem with the idea that the moon is an egg, my dislike of “Kill the Moon” is just as much fuelled by resentment that it’s put me in the position of being the kind of person who objects to Doctor Who plots on the grounds of silliness.

    I’m quite convinced there could have been a moon egg story that worked for me, but “Kill the Moon” wasn’t it.

    Reply

  15. Christy Nicholas
    October 16, 2016 @ 12:54 pm

    I am sad I wasn’t in time to help vote 🙂 I’m also sad that Pertwee got the lowest votes! He is my third favorite. (After Tennant and Baker, T).

    Reply

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