Doctor Who Marathon: Least Favorite Episodes

But, conversely from my previous post, there's going to be episodes where one wonders why the BBC continued to renew the program for 26+ years when episodes like these were the result. Once I get to the Pertwee and Baker era, I suspect a lot of Episodes 3's & 5's will populate this list. Early on, when the program is more serialized and they're still experimenting with the structure of the show, it will probably be more random.

• The Screaming Jungle (The Keys of Marinus Ep. 3) Bad design abounds. Bad characterization abounds. Just when you think the stone statue with the obviously human hands is the epitome of Cheap Doctor Who, Ian is trapped by the Cage of Dowel Rods and Barbara is nearly crushed by the Ceiling of Polyurethane Swords.   
• Journey Into Terror (The Chase, Ep. 3) - This is supposed to be a funny sendup of the whole horror genre. But it's more like a bad episode of Scooby-Doo.
• The Dominators, Eps 3-5 For it's first two episodes, The Dominators is actually not that bad. There's some cleaver satire of stodgy academia going on somewhere there. But the last three are as bad as it's reputation. It doesn't help when the antagonist hate each other more than the Doctor.
• Inferno, Ep 6-  Look, I really like Inferno, it's probably my favorite Pertwee story. But this is the weak link in the chain, an episode that is almost all padding. How many times does Petra try to rewire the nuclear power controls and get it wrong? Saved slightly by having possibly the best cliffhanger in the history of the show. 
• The Daemons, Ep 4 - You could basically excise this entire episode and not miss a thing, though those who like morris dancing my disagree with me. While watching The Daemons this time around I noticed that any time a character ends up in the pub, the writers are basically saying, "We have nothing for this person to do right now, so we're just going to stick them here for the time being." Benton, Yates, and the witch spend a lot of time in the pub. Ditto can be said about the whole heat converter scenes, though I do like Sgt. Osgood.   
• Invasion of the Dinosaurs Eps 1-2. I suspect I'm going to be listing every episode from this story, but I'm starting with the first two, with a different reason for both. Episode 1 actually starts off quite moody. Mac Hulke takes a page from Terry Nation's playbook and basically has the Doctor and Sarah exploring abandoned London on their own for the entire episode. Unfortunately, it's all padding. There's only about 3 minutes of real material here, and its between the Brig and General Finch explaining that London's been invaded by monsters. Ep 2 is just dull, dull, dull.  Absolutely no one seems to care about what's going on. London's been invaded by fucking dinosaurs, and they may as well be discussing golf. Actually, that's probably be more fun. 
• The Invisible Enemy, Ep. 2 - The first part of The Invisible Enemy is actually rather good. At worst, it seems like the story will be a Base Under Siege, but with the twist that the bad guy is coming from within. But then this mess of tin-dog poop happens, and the strongest run of stories since the Hartnell era comes to a screeching halt just like that. I dare anyone to make sense of what's going on here. Characterization, gone. Plot, gone. Even the bad guys don't make sense. Michael Sheer, as one of the virus' hosts, declares earlier that Titan would make a ideal spot for the nucleus to incubate. Then, when all he has to do is kill the unsuspecting Leela and game over, decides it's a good idea for the three of them to travel to a bloody hospital asteroid.