A Month of TV Commentary: A Meme in 30 Parts: Day 7

[autographedcat]

From aiela , via madlori , the 30-Day TV Meme.

Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite t.v show

While coming up with a favourite Doctor Who, episode was hard, this one is easy. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of bad Doctor Who episodes. Even forgiving the budgetary restraints that they had to work with, and being as kind and generous as possible, there's still a lot of stories that weren't very good, went on too long, contained glaring continuity holes, and all the other nonsense that separates the good from the poor. (While watching the DW: Confidential for a recent episode, kitanzi saw a clip from 1970's "The Silurians", laughed out loud at the rubber-suit alien and said "C'mon, they weren't even trying!")

For all that, however, in this particular case, one episode does stand out to me as the nadir that Doctor Who was capable of on a given day. An episode so notable for its awfulness that even to this day, thirty years after it first aired, hejira2006 and I will say "Well, that was bad. But it wasn't nearly as bad as 'The Horns of Nimon'.

I wish I could find a clip of Graham Crowden mincing through the halls of the spaceship, calling out "Lord Nimon! Lord Niiiiiiimon!" to give you an illustration of just how absurd this one was. (No offense to Crowden, who has done good work elsewhere, most notably in Waiting for God, which I rather enjoyed.) It may not be the very worst of Doctor Who, but it's an exemplar to stand in for the worst the show has to offer.

(I did find this one clip, from a fellow who seems to be arguing tongue-in-cheek for the opposite viewpoint. I Include it here in the interest of fairness, and to let you see both the Crowden scene mentioned above, and just how awful the minotaur costume was, even by the standards of 1979 BBC production budgets.)

Day 01 - A show that should have never been cancelled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this t.v season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favourite episode of your favourite t.v show


Day 08 - A show everyone should watch
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you’ve watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best t.v show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First t.v show obsession
Day 29 - Current t.v show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Heee. Yep. And like Spock's Brain, while it may not be the dullest episode of the series, or the dumbest, or even necessarily the worst executed, it reaches a level of unbelievable absurdity so iconic (as keristor notes, "so bad it's good"), and maintains that dizzying height for so long, that you still insist people who have never seen it sit down and watch it, just so they appreciate how magnificently wretched it is.

(If you really wanted to point to the worst episodes of the show, there's any number of part 4s of 6 or 7 where nothing happens, because the six-parter only had about 4 episodes of plot and thus entire segments in the middle are just time-filling padding. But what fun would that be to write about? *grin*)