Doctor Who: the Doctors' best and worst performances

When I published my Classic Who countdown last summer, serving up capsule reviews of all 158 classic serials (from my least-liked to my most-loved), friends asked if I had plans to do the same for NuWho. "God, no," I responded -- but I did want to start branching into more NuWho essays, or at least essays that embrace the entire history of the series, from 1963 to the present. And I knew where I wanted to start: with the actors who've played the Doctor, and taking a hard look at their best and worst performances in the role -- the times when they especially shined, and the times when they notably did not. The truth is, Doctor Who has, by and large, been blessed with such extraordinary actors in the title role that it's easy to take their work for granted -- to presume their performances are uniformly strong, and not focus in on the highs and the lows. But actors, like the rest of us, have good days and bad days, and in the case of Doctor Who, there are all kinds of factors that can contribute to the quality of a performance -- just as there are all kinds of criteria I have for judging them. So below, the eleven actors who've essayed the title role (excluding the Eighth Doctor, who had only one full-length appearance), and what I'd consider their best and worst performances -- and why. (In the paragraphs below, I've bolded the stories that contain their best and worst work, but I vary the order in which I present them. Sometimes, I list the good before the bad, sometimes vice versa; if you only look at the titles bolded, you might be surprised, when you ultimately read the text, to discover which is which.)

Doctor Who: in defense of "Delta and the Bannermen"

The third of seven neglected or maligned Classic Who serials that I consider worth revisiting, one for each Doctor. The series commences with "Terminus," then continues with "The Ark."

"In the end it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about you. You have to be exactly who and what you want to be. Most everyone is floating along on phony public relations... and for what?! Appearances. Appearances don't count for diddly. In the end, all that really matter is what was true, and truly felt -- and how we treated one another. And that's it."
-- Julia Sugarbaker, Designing Women

*****

Once upon a time, at the dawn of rock 'n' roll, at a holiday camp in South Wales, a boy named Billy spied a woman named Delta -- and it was love at first sight. And that evening, before they'd even had a chance to speak, he serenaded her from the dining-hall stage with a suitable new standard, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" And later that night, he stood outside her door, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and slicking back his hair with the other, and opened it, only to discover --