There is something so, so wrong about people talking about "seasons" of Doctor Who...
Especially when the first half-dozen seasons happened in the
1960s!
I've never thought Daleks were scary. They're just cute. In the new series, they have made them a lot more awesomely powerful; the first "new" episode with a Dalek, with Christopher Eccleston, made the Dalek just so damn awesome it was basically very cool, rather than scary per se. I especially liked the bit where someone said to it, "What are you going to do, plunger me to death?" - in reference to the fact that Daleks have what appears to be a sink plunger sticking out of their front - and the Dalek then did just that, very satisfyingly.
Yes, the first nuDalek episode was good because I actually felt
sorry for it! I hate the idea that all the other Timelords are extinct, though. To me, Romana is still in E-space, doing all kinds of adventurish things!
I think the weeping angels were the best villains I've seen on Doctor Who. They were helped by the fact that that episode was one of the best episodes of the series ever.
Yes, they were scary.
I do remember a very scary Thing that lived in a swimming pool in one Sylvester McCoy story (the Seventh Doctor), which terrified me when I was little (ish). I also seem to recall that when said Thing was finally revealed it wasn't very scary at all. Which is always the way.
You thought that dumb thing was scary?
Getting eaten in your own kitchen was scary. The sugar highs the Kang girls will experience, now that the Doctor taught them how to operate the pop machines, are potentially scary.
Actually, "Paradise Towers" is one of my favorite Sylvester McCoy stories. For years, the hotel we usually went to for our annual summer science fiction convention was one that had its swimming pool on the top floor... hence we would get on the elevator and say we were "going to the Great Pool In the Sky" - and utterly confuse any non-convention attendee (aka mundanes) in the elevator!
As for the succession of Doctors, canon states that a Time Lord can regenerate only twelve times. Since the Doctor is now on his eleventh incarnation, that means that in theory he should only have two more. I suspect, however, that the writers would find ways to get around this. If memory serves, the Master (the Doctor's arch-enemy, and another Time Lord) managed to get extra regenerations on various occasions.
Just for reference:
Doctor #1 - William Hartnell
Doctor #2 - Patrick Troughton
Doctor #3 - Jon Pertwee
Doctor #4 - Tom Baker
Doctor #5 - Peter Davison
Doctor #6 - Colin Baker
Doctor #7 - Sylvester McCoy
Doctor #8 - Paul McGann
Doctor #9 - Christopher Eccleston
Doctor #10 - David Tennant
Doctor #11 - Matt Smith
According to the Colin Baker story arc "Trial of a Timelord" the 12th Doctor is actually the Valeyard. But the ending of that story was so confusing, I wouldn't mind if they changed that...
The Master used dirty tricks and outright murder to gain extra "lives" (ie. when his last regeneration failed and he hijacked Tremas' body in "The Keeper of Traken" - thus paving the way for Anthony Ainley to take over the role). However, in "The Five Doctors" the High Council of Gallifrey granted the Master a full new cycle of regenerations if he fulfilled a task they set for him - to rescue the Doctor (all 5 of them!). He did help sufficiently for that promise to be kept. But he must've gone through them in a godawful hurry if he was reduced to a boxful of oozing slime by the time of the Sylvester McCoy/Paul McGann movie.
Although I had the misfortune to grow up with Doctor Who during the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy years, I do think that David Tennant was the best Doctor ever, even better than Tom Baker - the one most people think was the best. Matt Smith seems good so far, although of course it is very early days yet.
People tend to think the best Doctor is the one they were watching when they got hooked on the series. For me, that's Tom Baker.
I got to meet Sylvester McCoy, the year his episodes premiered. He was on a tour of PBS stations in the U.S. and a friend and I travelled from Red Deer/Calgary to Spokane, Washington. There was a question-and-answer session, autographs, a TARDIS interior mockup where we could take pictures, and I even have a photo of myself sitting in Bessie (the Third Doctor's beloved car)!
