Doctor Who series 8 – every episode ranked

We haven’t done a TV review in a very long time and missed out on reviewing any episodes from the eighth series of Doctor Who but we’re compiling them from best to worst in this list. To put a bit of perspective on our Who opinions, we reckon the show peaked at series 5 and 6, when The Silence were actually cool. Series 7 was disappointingly bland and I still have mixed feelings about to 2013 specials. Series 8 retained Steven Moffat as chief writer and Jenna Coleman as the companion Clara but introduced The Thick of It’s Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, a seemingly inspired casting for a darker doctor. Sadly this Doctor, and the whole of this series, seems to be more comical than actually dark. Several episodes just seem as if they were discarded ones from the David Tennant or Matt Smith eras. They rarely had a unique sense of twelfth Doctory-ness to them.

Series 8:

1. Listen – Episode 4 – Writer: Steven Moffat – Starring: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Samuel Anderson, Kiran Shah – UK Views: 7.01 million
2. Dark Water – Episode 11 – Steven Moffat – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, Samuel Anderson, Chris Addison, Sheila Reid, Andrew Leung – 7.34 million
3. Kill the Moon – Episode 7 – Peter Harness – Peter Capadli, Jenna Coleman, Ellis George, Hermione Norris, Samuel Anderson – 6.91 million
4. Time Heist – Episode 5 – Stephen Thompson, Steven Moffat – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Keeley Hawes, Jonathan Bailey, Pippa Bennett Warner, Samuel Anderson – 6.99
5. Deep Breath – Episode 1 – Steven Moffat – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart, Dan Starkey, Peter Ferdinando, Ellis George, Michelle Gomez – 9.17
6. Into the Dalek – Episode 2 – Phil Ford, Steven Moffat – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Nicholas Briggs, Zawe Ashton, Michael Smiley, Samuel Anderson, Nigel Betts, Ellis George, Michelle Gomez – 7.29
7. Mummy on the Orient Express – Episode 8 – Jamie Mathieson – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Frank Skinner, Daisy Beaumont, John Sessions, Samuel Anderson – 7.11
8. Flatline – Episode 9 – Jamie Mathieson – Peter Capadli, Jenna Coleman, Joivan Wade, Christopher Fairbank, Samuel Anderson, Michelle Gomez – 6.71
9. Death in Heaven – Episode 12 – Steven Moffat – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, Samuel Anderson, Chris Addison, Jemma Redgrave, Ingrid Oliver, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Nicholas Briggs, Nick Frost – N/A
10. In the Forest of the Night – Episode 10 – Frank Cottrel Boyce – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Samuel Anderson, Abigail Eames, Harley Bird – Michelle Gomez – 6.92
11. The Caretaker – Episode 6 – Gareth Roberts, Steven Moffat – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Samuel Anderson, Nigel Betts, Ellis George, Chris Addison, Michelle Gomez – 6.82
12. Robot of Sherwood – Episode 3 – Mark Gatiss – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Tom Riley, Ben Miller

All in all the series was very mediocre. It isn’t Smith that the show misses but rather genuine imagination, excitement and scares, glimpsed in all too brief dashes.

Four new stills from Hobbit 2, new trailers for Boxtrolls and Hercules: The Legend Begins and Doctor Who Christmas special pic and title

Above is the first official image from this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special or, as we must now call it, The Time of the Doctor. The title stems from this year’s “of the Doctor” mini series. It started with the series seven finale The Name of the Doctor. The second major instalment of this trilogy was last Saturday’s 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor but that was preceded by the short film The Night of the Doctor. The Time of the Doctor will conclude Matt Smith’s time as the Doctor and will also introduce Peter Capaldi as the new incarnation. We won’t see Capaldi properly until Autumn next year when series eight begins with a two part episode directed by Ben Wheatley.

We know Jenna Coleman will star as Clara but no other castings are confirmed. The Silence, the Weeping Angels, the Cyberman and the Daleks are confirmed to be just some of the villains to feature and I think that they’re unlikely to leave Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Jenny (Catrin Stewart) and Commander Strax (Dan Starkey) or indeed River Song (Alex Kingston).

Two Hercules films are to battle it out in 2014. We’ve no idea how the studios managed this but it’s awfully bad luck as their both hovering over August. One, Hercules, is from director Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand, Rush Hour, Red Dragon), stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the title role with John Hurt, Peter Mullan, Rebecca Ferguson, Ian McShane and Joseph Fiennes and goes for a tale set after the traditional Twelve Labours of Hercules legend.

The other is Hercules: The Legend Begins. Renny Harlin, director of Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea, is calling the shots on a production which doesn’t seem to have many major stars beside Twilight’s Kellan Lutz. The first trailer reveals that this may have enough action and stun in it to go beyond the seemingly limited cast. With two versions of the Greek tale in production, the release is subject for change but it should come in August 8th.

The new trailer for The Boxtrolls has also landed. It serves as a cinematic teaser and a peek behind the scenes of an animation style that’s notoriously technical. Laika are the team behind brilliant stop-motion hits such as ParaNorman and Coraline so we can expect great things from this dark fantasy comedy. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Elle Fanning, Toni Collete, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, Jared Harris and Isaac Hempstead Wright all lend their voices while Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi direct.

We’ve now got some lovely new pics fresh from the editing room of Academy Award winning director Peter Jackson’s fantasy sequel The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (click next to cycle through). Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Dean O’Gorman, Ian McKellen, Sylvester McCoy and Luke Evans are the focus of today’s update.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – December 13th

The Boxtrolls – September 12th 2014

Hercules: The Legend Begins – August 8th 2014

Doctor Who 2013 Christmas Special/The Time of the Doctor – December 25th