“Doctor Who” – Every Season Arc Ranked

Now that NuWho has officially finished (for now …), it’s made me reminisce about all the great episodes of this show. And then, naturally, I began to look back fondly on my favourite overall seasons.

And then I got to thinking – what are the best season arcs this show has ever done? The overarching narratives and mysteries which eventually get resolved? The connective tissue between episodes that leads to a bombastic and (sometimes) satisfying finale?

I’m going to rank all fifteen seasons based on their season arcs. And be warned of some major SPOILERS ahead – I can’t talk about these season arcs without giving the endings away!

Before we begin, you can check out some of my related blog posts below:

EVERY Doctor Who Episode Ranked

EVERY Doctor Who Monster Ranked

Doctor Who – Top 20 Songs

Doctor Who – Every Regeneration Ranked

Terrible

15 – The Timeless Child (Season 12)

After Season 12 finished airing, I took a break from “Doctor Who”. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever come back – that’s how badly the Timeless Child reveal affected me.

I’m in the camp of people who thinks this is one of, if not THE worst thing to happen to NuWho. It’s such a clumsy and provocative reshaping of the canon in a way which both makes the show worse moving forwards and disrespects almost everything that came before it.

But what makes it the worst season arc in NuWho, in my opinion, is the build-up to it. Barring “Fugitive of the Judoon”, which threw an interesting spanner in the works, the only hints we got of the Timeless Child were the off-hand comments made by random foes. How did they even know about it? Why bother even mentioning it? The build-up, like the twist itself, makes less and less sense the more you think about it.

I also hated how the Timeless Child plotline was immediately dropped after “Fugitive of the Judoon” until the finale. Me and a Whovian friend excitedly theorized that the latter half of Season 12 was going to build to the finale as one complete arc (a bit like what “Flux” ended up being), but instead we got “Praxeus” and “Can You Hear Me?” which had nothing to do with the overarching narrative.

What a waste of potential, and everyone’s time.

14 – Omega / The Rani (“Season 2”)

I never thought we’d get a finale as bad as “The Timeless Children” ever again … but then “The Reality War” left me gobsmacked. RTD decided to go toe-to-toe with Chibnall and he almost won!

“Wish World” and “The Reality War” is built around summoning Omega for reasons which I can’t remember and don’t really care about. After his grand return, he’s then on screen for about three minutes before getting banished once again. What the hell was the point of all that build-up?!? I know they had to reshoot some of the finale’s scenes after Ncuti decided to leave, but this strikes me as the original, planned ending for Omega. Baffling.

But Omega wasn’t the only bad thing about the finale, unfortunately. We’d been teased with Mrs. Flood across RTD2’s two seasons, and then at the end of “The Interstellar Song Contest” Mrs. Flood bi-generated into The Rani. A twist with no real shock value for NuWho fans, but whatever. I was interested to see what RTD was cooking.

Well, it turns out he was cooking absolutely nothing at all. Mrs. Flood gets relegated to a weaselly sidekick and the new Rani is cartoonishly evil and plain. Her plan to bring back Omega is convoluted and ill-advised, and lo and behold she gets eaten by Omega immediately. What a waste of a character.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall when RTD wrote “The Reality War”. Why did nobody on the production team voice their concerns? Why was he allowed to get away with this?

Bad

13 – Tim Shaw … I guess? (Season 11)

When Chibnall became the showrunner of “Doctor Who” for Season 11, he made the bold decision not to have a season arc. No returning villains, nothing to build towards in the finale. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, that didn’t pay off in the slightest.

Rather than just saying “nothing” for Season 11’s arc, I decided to give it to nobody’s favourite villain Tim Shaw. He appears in the opener and the finale, so I guess he can be considered the common thread of the season. As tenuous as that is.

He’s sorta responsible for Graham’s wife’s death, so that gives the finale some stakes, I suppose. But he just sulks in his room for the whole episode! He’s one of the least imposing villains ever, let alone for a finale, and so “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” falls completely flat as a result.

The Doctor and her companions don’t grow as people across the course of the season. They don’t learn anything come the finale. What was the point of the ten episodes I just watched? Why should I be invested in a story that doesn’t have a storyline, or any progress whatsoever?

And yes, I’d take no season arc at all over the Timeless Child and Omega fiascos.

Meh

12 – Flux (Season 13)

Chibnall learned from his Season 11 mistake and decided to dedicate the whole of Season 13 to the “Flux” storyline. I can respect how he went for a more serialized narrative, akin to Classic Who … but it was still very underwhelming.

The whole season is a meandering mess that doesn’t go anywhere. To make matters worse, Chibnall decided that the epic stakes of “Flux” was to have half the universe get destroyed … and then not do anything about it come the resolution. Everything after “Flux” continues as if nothing happened, and all future episodes will completely ignore this intergalactic elephant in the room.

The Fourteenth Doctor seemed shaken by the events of “Flux” during one noteworthy scene in “Wild Blue Yonder”, but it’s weird how the Thirteenth Doctor – the one responsible – never seemed to really care. That’s Chibnall’s writing for you.

Oh, and the Timeless Child stuff is sorta elaborated on but not really. It was a very non-committal season as a whole.

11 – Sutekh / Ruby’s Origins (“Season 1”)

Rounding out the bottom five is the remaining post-2017 season arc. Neither the Chibnall nor RTD2 eras managed to provide satisfying overarching narratives to any of their seasons.

In Russell’s defence, the pieces were all there for his first season. Having Ruby’s mother’s origins be a mystery felt a bit cheap but it was better than nothing, and Sutekh’s return in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” was extremely hype when it first aired (even if the climactic “Sue-Tech” twist was a cheap knock-off of Season 3’s YANA reveal …). The various Susan Twist cameos in every episode were intriguing and got the fanbase talking, which can never be a bad thing.

But, sadly, none of these plot threads panned out. Sutekh ends up wiping out the universe for about ten minutes before it’s restored, a bit like “Flux”, and Ruby’s mother was the most underwhelming reveal this show has ever done. Why, after all that build-up, would you pull the rug out from under the viewers and reveal that her mother is a nobody?

And why the heck did she wear a cloak and point dramatically at the street sign when nobody was watching?!? It reeks of a last-minute script change, but the more likely excuse is that Russell didn’t yet know the answer when he first posed the question in “The Church on Ruby Road”. It’s amateurish writing – something RTD should’ve been well beyond with all of his experience.

AND WHY THE HELL WAS IT ALWAYS SNOWING?!?

Okay

10 – The Hybrid / Ishilda / Clara’s Overconfidence (Season 9)

There’s a big jump in quality from now – all of the pre-Chibnall season arcs had some redeeming qualities beyond the general intrigue and build-up … even if some of them failed to stick the landing.

The “Mystery Box” that Moffat cooked up for Season 9 was The Hybrid, a figure of legend supposed to destroy Gallifrey. Or “stand over the ruins of Gallifrey”. These prophecies are always wishy-washy. It’s an intriguing premise which hinted towards an action-packed finale … which “Hell Bent” then failed to deliver.

The worst part about this whole Hybrid debacle, in my opinion, is that it never gets resolved. People have since speculated that the Master from the Thirteenth Doctor era fulfils this prophecy with his CyberMasters, but this is just a theory. We may never know who or what this “Hybrid” truly was.

Other than The Hybrid, I think Season 9 can best be summarized in two other ways – Ishilda (Maisie Williams) turns up intermittently and does nothing, and Clara becomes way too overconfident and it results in her death during “Face The Raven”. The latter would’ve been an amazing send-off … if “Hell Bent” didn’t then immediately backtrack on her death two episodes later.

9 – The Impossible Girl / Trenzalore (Season 7)

Ah, Season 7. The NuWho season that got split into two parts. The first five episodes with Amy and Rory have no real arc other than seeing them off, so it’s down to Season “7b” to provide the season arc(s).

The big central “Mystery Box” of this Moffat season is undoubtedly Clara Oswald, the “Impossible Girl”. In classic Moffat fashion, she’s a character who’s the most important thing in the whole-wide universe. The mystery seemed too big to wrap up in a neat bow … and, as it turned out, it was.

In “The Name of the Doctor”, the Doctor and Clara end up visiting Trenzalore, which was teased to be the Doctor’s final resting place. There, the Great Intelligence jumps into the Doctor’s time stream to foil him across all of space and time. And then Clara jumps in after him.

At a surface glance, this is a neat solution. The reason we saw variants of Clara in “Asylum of the Daleks” and “The Snowmen” was because of this courageous act. But, a bit like the Timeless Child reveal, the more you think about it the less it makes sense. Why have we not seen Clara before, if she was supposedly everywhere in his timestream? And why have we not seen her since the Twelfth Doctor era?

The Impossible Girl isn’t as unsatisfying as The Hybrid, but I thought it was just as forgettable.

Good

8 – The Prison Box / The Masters & Cybermen (Season 10)

I was struggling to recall what the season-wide mystery of Season 10 was, but then I remembered the whole ordeal of the prison underneath the university. It’s hilarious to me that for Moffat’s final “Mystery Box” he decided to make a literal box the central mystery.

The prison is intriguing at first … but it’s revealed quite quickly and unceremoniously that Missy is inside of it. Quite an obvious twist, really, but it leads to some fun dynamics with the Doctor talking to an imprisoned Missy for advice and absolution – “Silence of the Lambs” style.

I almost put this down in the “Okay” tier for how obvious and clichéd it was, but I have to give major credit to how Missy and the Master were then used in the finale. Missy’s arc of becoming a better Time Lord comes to a head when she faces her past incarnation (as well as an army of Cybermen), and her inner turmoil made for some of the most compelling character work this show has ever done.

So yeah. “World Enough and Time” and “The Doctor Falls” being awesome bumped this season arc up a tier.

7 – The Doctor-Donna / Rose / Missing Planets (Season 4)

Weirdly, my least favourite season arc from the first RTD era was from my very favourite season of the show – Season 4. The whole season is peak Tenth Doctor, and the two-part finale “Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End” provided a ton of thrills.

Everyone reuniting is teased well across the season – especially with Rose making random appearances here and there. I was too young to be a part of any online forum back in 2008 but I imagine Whovians were losing their minds each time Billie Piper showed up.

The main arc of the finale (other than the missing bees and planets) is “The Doctor-Donna”, a concept teased in other Season 4 episodes like “Planet of the Ood”. This will be a hot take … but I didn’t like how this arc played out. Donna being forced to have her memory wiped at the end is obviously heart-breaking, but a big-brained Donna saving the day felt very cheap and far too easy.

Still, this was a classic case of RTD building the tension and letting it explode in a bombastic way. Despite my gripes I couldn’t help but smile.

6 – River Song / The Silence / The Doctor’s Death (Season 6)

Season 6 was a bit of a mess in terms of how many plots it tried to cram in and resolve by the finale, but I can’t deny that it was an entertaining mess.

“The Impossible Astronaut” is one of the best opening episodes in the series in terms of the season arcs it sets up. The Silence are an intimidating yet intriguing monster, and starting with the Doctor’s death was a helluva opening statement. Few NuWho seasons have ever raised the stakes so high and so early on.

This is, however, predominantly the “River Song season”. She was introduced in Season 4’s “Silence in the Library” and she appeared a couple of times across Season 5, but Season 6 is all about her backstory and the truth behind her importance.

Both “A Good Man Goes To War” and “Let’s Kill Hitler” show us key points in River’s life, and it filled in a chronology which fans were desperate to see. And then “The Wedding of River Song” did too much.

The finale didn’t have any satisfying answers about the Silence, and it didn’t resolve the River Song or Doctor’s death storylines in ways I liked. But hey, I don’t hate the fact that this show was still taking big swings in its sixth season.

Great

5 – Bad Wolf (Season 1)

Season 1 of the revived show had a lot to juggle – it had to introduce us to the Doctor, the companion, all of the various Sci-Fi gizmos and tropes, AND it had to give us an arc for the season as a whole. It’s a miracle how RTD managed to pull all that off.

I love how cohesive the whole season is. We’re introduced to the Daleks, the Space Station orbiting earth, the heart of the TARDIS, Captain Jack … and then it all comes crashing together for the two-part finale “Bad Wolf” and “The Parting of the Ways”. It’s great how each episode’s plot furthers the overarching narrative, giving the season a sense of momentum.

The season culminates in Rose becoming the “Bad Wolf” – a being of time incarnate. Is it a bit cheap / deus ex machina to have the companion come in at the end and fix everything? A little, but at least it made for a gripping spectacle.

4 – Torchwood (Season 2)

Season 2 has one of the clearest, simplest, easiest to understand and follow arcs of the whole show. I think that works massively in its favour.

There are mentions across the season of a mysterious “Torchwood Institute”, an organization created to monitor and foil the Doctor as well as keep an eye on extraterrestrial beings, and it of course makes its debut in the two-part finale. Don’t you miss the times when teases and questions got resolved in the same season, rather than endlessly postponed until later seasons?

What makes this such a good season arc is that, aside from maybe Bad Wolf or the cracks in the walls, Torchwood is a plot point which becomes foundational for the series moving forwards. Beyond the spin-off show, it’s an organization which, like UNIT, returns over multiple seasons. I wish more season arcs had longer-lasting ramifications on the lore!

This was also an era where each reference to the season arc felt deliberate. “Tooth and Claw”, for example, was an entire episode explaining why the Torchwood institute got set up in the first place. A lot of season arcs beyond the first RTD era just felt tacked-on to random episodes, or the showrunner just threw in an important buzzword here and there to keep the fans engaged. I much prefer this baked-in, fully intentional style of plotting.

3 – Missy / The Nethersphere (Season 8)

New season, new Doctor – Season 8 really pushed the “Am I a good man?” conundrum for Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor, but that doesn’t get any real answers in this season. The main arc I’ll be looking at for this season is therefore its primary antagonist, the enigmatic “Missy”.

Straight away in “Deep Breath” we’re introduced to the idea that the dead are travelling to an afterlife called the “Nethersphere”, where a woman who calls herself Missy seems to be in charge. This was already a good hook, but it’s how it plays out which makes the season arc great.

“Dark Water” is such a fantastic episode – both because the Nethersphere gets expanded on in brilliant ways but also because Missy’s identity is revealed. I never suspected this was the new Master, but I was immediately on board with her charming yet sinister personality.

The only thing holding this arc back from the top spots is the finale, “Death in Heaven”. It’s such a boring episode in comparison to “Dark Water” and it does nothing to paint the season arcs in glory. It becomes mostly about the Cybermen and Danny Pink, and I didn’t care for either.

Still, I found this to be one of the best “Mystery Boxes” Moffat ever came up with. Second only to …

Amazing

2 – The Cracks in the Wall (Season 5)

Moffat ended up overusing the “Mystery Box” plot structure across his six seasons, but his first foray into an unknown, looming horror was his best.

Those cracks in the wall made an immediate first impression in “The Eleventh Hour” because they were set up as a great, terrifying cosmic event. Leave it to Moffat to turn something so mundane as a crack in a wall – something many kids across the UK would have in their rooms – into a piece of NuWho history.

The lore behind the cracks got a bit muddy as the Eleventh Doctor’s era went on, but in Season 5 it was a fantastic through-line for a lot of episodes. Whether they were spitting out TARDIS fragments or erasing people from existence, they always added an unknown, fantastical element to the story.

The finale “The Pandorica Opens” and “The Big Bang” was a great end to this arc, in my opinion. By fixing the TARDIS and restoring the Doctor’s place in the universe as its defender, I assumed that the cracks had served their purpose … so it’s a shame that arc continued for two more seasons. Oh well – I can’t fault Season 5 for what later seasons failed to deliver.

1 – Harold Saxon / You Are Not Alone (Season 3)

There are only a couple of NuWho twists which really shook me. River’s backstory in “A Good Man Goes To War” was probably the most shocking, but the best twist has to be the Master reveal from Season 3’s “Utopia”.

The Face of Boe teased that the Doctor was “not alone”, which was odd because all of the Time Lords were supposed to be dead. It came as quite a shock, therefore, when Doctor Yana (You Are Not Alone!) turned out to be the Master with his memories sealed away. The Scarecrow two-parter even set up this mind-altering Time Lord technology!

But Season 3’s twists don’t stop there. Across the season, we learn that a man named Harold Saxon has become Prime Minister – and he’s really interested in the Doctor and Martha for some reason. This then leads to the excellent reveal in “The Sound of Drums” that Harold Saxon is actually an alias of the Master … who is now Prime Minister of Great Britain. Stakes don’t get much higher.

What blows my mind looking back is that RTD had it all planned out, at least since the Tenth Doctor’s first episode. The Doctor brought down Harriet Jones in “The Christmas Invasion” with six words, which then paved the way for the Master to take office. Now that’s some great planning ahead!

Did “The Last of the Time Lords” provide a satisfying finale after all that? Not really, but I’m willing to look past it when the set-up was so perfect.

Aaaand that’s my list! If you liked this post and want to support me, please consider giving me a one-time donation. Even a few pence (or whatever currency you use) is fantastic! I’ve never monetized this blog before, but it would be great if I could do this comfortably and not have to worry about the yearly website domain costs. Thank you so much!