Hi, folks ๐ When I was deleting my account from the other place I found this post of mine. It seemed a shame to delete it entirely as I imagine a lot of folks will be starting up watches/rewatches in prep for the new series.
Jodie's Doctor is portrayed brilliantly but with some poor writing stopping her from ever truly shining in the role. That said, she does have some standout episodes. There are also some overarching plots too which we're currently unsure if they'll come over to what I'm going to take this opportunity to dub 'New new Who'.
Here is a spoiler-free list of episodes you should watch, and episodes you can skip over:
- The Woman Who Fell to Earth
- The Ghost Monument (An otherwise skippable episode but there is an important scene for the overarching narrative. Here it is on YouTube if you want to skip. You also get to see the new TARDIS interior for the first time too.
- "Spyfall Part 1 and 2 (Return of an important enemy)
- Fugitive of the Judoon
- Ascension of the Cybermen
- The Timeless Children
- Revolution of the Daleks (So so but important if you care about the companions)
- The mini series: The Halloween Apocalypse, War of the Sontarans, Once, Upon Time, Village of the Angels, Survivors of the Flux, The Vanquishers (They're all linked together and none of them are true stinkers. As a whole, they're alright, worth it for the introduction of new companion Dan who you'll see more of later) (You can cut a couple of these, but I'd recommend seeing the whole thing just to see the end of the story).
- The Power of the Doctor (the big pay off to the main narrative, and regeneration scene).
Honourable mentions: Jodie actually had some pretty great episodes outside of the overarching narrative.
- Rosa (A historical!)
- Demons of the Punjab (another one!)
- It Takes You Away
- Resolution (Daleks!)
- Can You Hear Me? (Some great companion story development)
- The Haunting of Villa Diodati (Doctor hangs with Mary Shelly as they are inspired to write Frankenstein. Leads into Ascension of the Cybermen. Episode itself is pretty fun)
- Eve of the Daleks (Many will say skip this one, but I'm a big fan of Time Loop stories. This isn't the best, but it is fun.)
This all reminds me of the big Digg migration. Reddit likes to think that people chose it because it was special. For a good majority of us, especially the 10+ year accounts, it was Digg's terrible redesign and very poor product decisions. The nail in the coffin was not understanding its core content producing users willingness to move. History repeats itself.