When did Doctor Who start to suck?

For me it was a shaky proposition from the start. Time War backstory, mundane companion profiles, wonky steampunk TARDIS, funky dude Doctor, atrocious opening theme music and graphics, heavyhanded dumbed-down stories, bad pacing and probably other problems. I had the distinct feeling that the show was trying to fit into the hyper "Reality TV" culture of the year 2000 onwards era.

They did attempt to ameliorate these issues under the direction of Steven Moffat but the plonking, lecturing Doctor and friends team ethic still remained as did the essentially basic approach to stories and characters.

It's worth pointing out that this miscalculation started out in the Peter Davidson era onwards before NuWho existed years later. The idea of making Doctor Who a product and a platform for pleasing special interests really got into gear around 1980. That entailed changes to a number of things about the show to "make it better". Radically changing the opening graphics and musical theme, pushing the Doctor as a commercial image with "question mark" regalia as part of his costume, and bland silly story ideas which eschewed the intelligent writing of the likes of Malcolm Hulke, Douglas Adams, Robert Holmes, Terrance Dicks, etc. were changes that didn't make the show more appealing and probably contributed to it being terminated by 1989. Essentially NuWho was/is a continuation of the production ideas and objectives of the 1980s era with the exception of more advanced graphics.

Id say with the exception of the odd episode here and there nuwho sucked from the get go. I know Im in the minority in that, and thats fine. I just think it spend far too many episodes on earth. "where do you want to go? We can anywhere in time and space?" And yet they ended up in london or cardiff most of the time. RTD could be a bit OTT when it came to his social justice messages. It wasnt as bad as torchwood, but it was close. I hear that the new show runner also worked on torchwood so I have even less faith in the new era than I had in moffets.

Matt Smith's last season is when the show hit the wall.

Series 6

As has been said from the Fifth Doctor on it got a bit pandering to the BBC marketing department which saw it's inevitable demise. NuWho really showed signs of being back to that in Series 5, Episode 3 Victory of the Daleks when they decided to bring in the different coloured "New Dalek Paradigm" all because the BBC and BBC America wanted new toys to sell and wanted the Daleks in different colours (so you had to collect them all).

From that point on it started to slide as they tried to write stories around what the BBC and BBC America wanted to happen. Plus to get American audiences involved, Rose and the Doctor was pure CW network type stuff, like they play with in Arrow and The Flash. It was then David Tennant also pretty much became a parody of himself which lead to that god awful long death scene of his that seemed like it was meant for a Family Guy piss-take.

Having said that I do believe they can come back from it, there have been really good episodes among it, if James Bond can come back from junk like Moonraker then Who can come back as well.

Can only speak for myself (obviously), but I know I really started to lose interest in the show with the onset of Matt Smith. Didn't like his performance, and it just grated on me more and more -- it seemed so calculatedly "zany", which has never appealed, and with his new companions having Gen-X firmly in their sights and speech I realised I wasn't being catered for (or even accommodated) any more.

That's fine, I guess it's the evolution of TV shows and so is Just What Happens. But I felt like a Doctor's Companion who has realised it's time to get on with his life and stop hanging around police call boxes. I think I've only watched maybe three Capaldi eps -- I do admire him as an actor, but not much in this -- and the business of the new "As a feminist I'm excited" Doctor has left me with my sails luffing.

Never mind. I've started rewatching the NuWho from the Advent of Eccleston on Netflix, and so far (halfway through series 4) am having a bloody good time with it. I'll see when/if I feel it starts to sour.

I think it's really unfair to put it on "Bill" (not sure why the quotes since it is her name) but yeah it did. I think Moffat just got fed up with it and fully intended to end his run (and possibly the show) with last year's Christmas Special. It's no coincidence River was there to give these two a "happily ever after", well as far as one night goes anyway.

Then BBC probably decided to give the show another series and got Moffat on board but he was done with the story and he didn't really feel like giving more to it.

I completely disagree on A Good Man Goes to War. And I wouldn't call casting a new doctor "stunt casting" but then I'm not a dude and I also have a woman so I guess I can't think quite like pitiful Whovian virgins who live in their parents basement and have mommy issues...

In my opinion it was when Clara was introduced as the companion. When Capaldi replaced Smith as the Doctor the uncomfortable but developed relationship was lost. That reached it's height when we actually got to listen to Clara pout the Doctor wasn't hot enough for her anymore like she could do better. And once Bill was introduced it was as if the executives had interfered and decided to rewrite the show for children and just recycle the most unmemorable episodes.