I Watched Every Doctor Who Episode With Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor – These Are The Best

The jump from David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor to Matt Smith’s Eleventh is one of the biggest transitions in all of modern Doctor Who. Not only did Matt Smith have to follow the show’s most popular leading actor of all time, but Steven Moffatt was elevated to the show’s head writer after Russel T Davies left at the end of Tennant’s tenure.

It meant both men came into their runs with everything to prove, and it led to some fantastic television. While the show’s viewership dropped a bit, there are still plenty of brilliant episodes from this era that you should come back to watch if you initially skipped them.

You can see more Doctor Who rankings here as I watched every Doctor Who episode with David Tennant's Tenth Doctor.

The Eleventh Hour

The Eleventh Hour is the best series opener in Doctor Who history, without question. If you were someone on the fence about sticking around once Tennant left the show, this episode did everything it could to convince you to stay.

We get the fun of the Doctor being in a post-regeneration haze while we’re introduced to the new companion as a child, only to skip forward in time to see how even a five-minute encounter with the Doctor can transform the course of someone’s life. It then becomes a really enjoyable adventure that allows Smith to show the various sides of the Eleventh Doctor we’ll come to know and love.

The Time of Angels & Flesh and Stone

With Blink turning the Weeping Angels into an instantly iconic Who villain, the pressure was on to make their return appearance feel just as special as their first. Rather than using the Angels to tell another horror-heavy story, this two-parter is a bombastic adventure that mixes in all-out action scenes with quiet intensity and a creeping sense of unease. A perfect balance is struck that brings the best out of the Angels once more, solidifying them as monsters that are just as memorable as the Daleks or Cybermen.

Amy’s Choice

Amy is one of the best companions in modern Who and this episode is the perfect showcase as to why. Her feeling of being trapped between the Doctor and her husband-to-be Rory creates a unique dynamic in the TARDIS that would endear us to all three characters all the stronger.

This episode puts that conflict into focus, forcing the team to choose between their adventures on the TARDIS or simple family life, showcasing every character’s points of view and giving them all a fair shake. Plus, it’s wrapped in the strange mystery of the Dream Lord – one of the show’s best one-off villains.

Vincent and the Doctor

It wouldn’t be Doctor Who without occasionally going to visit some famous historical figures, but none have ever quite done them the justice that this one does for Vincent Van Gogh. An artist who wasn’t appreciated in his time and suffered many mental health problems, this episode doesn’t shy away from showing the dark side of Van Gogh, while still managing to capture why his perspective on the world is so beautiful to us now.

But of course, the main reason we all love this episode is (spoilers ahead if you haven’t already watched) the ending scene where the Doctor shows Van Gogh how beloved his works would become. Vincent cries, Amy cries, we all cry – it’s magical.

The Pandorica Opens & The Big Bang

If you like over-the-top climactic finales then this will tick all your boxes. The first part is a brilliant mystery that starts out slow but accelerates to a fever pitch by the end, throwing in one of the best twists and cliffhangers the show’s ever seen. Then the second part moves at a mile a minute, never letting you catch your breath but keeping you engaged and entertained to the last moment.

A Christmas Carol

Christmas episodes can sometimes feel a little gimmicky – for better and for worse – but this is perhaps the shining example of how to do it right. This takes the classic story of A Christmas Carol and does it in a way only Doctor Who can. In order to save a crashing ship, the Doctor goes into a grumpy old man’s childhood and changes his past right before his eyes, turning him into a softer, nicer person. It’s a masterfully told tale that keeps the message of the original while throwing in a new twist of how the Doctor’s meddling sometimes crosses a line.

The Doctor’s Wife

Written by legendary author Neil Gaiman, The Doctor’s Wife is a perspective on our hero's life and relationships that we’ve never seen before or since. The concept of “the TARDIS becomes human” is something you might initially roll your eyes at, but trust me, it’s fantastic. Allowing the Doctor to banter and work with his oldest companion introducing some hilariously yet brilliant ideas like it was actually the TARDIS who stole the Doctor all those years ago on Gallifrey, not the other way around.

Add to that Michael Sheen’s intimidating performance as the entity “House” and you’ve got an episode that brings our characters to dark places while still feeling fun – aka, Neil Gaiman at his best.

A Good Man Goes To War

And now the elephant in the room I’ve dodged talking about until now: River Song. The mystery of her true identity stretches all the way back into Tennant’s run, and it all builds to this mid-series finale that is simply a blast to watch. It’s not the deepest episode ever, but it moves at such a brisk pace that you won’t notice, all culminating in an incredible reveal that shows Moffatt’s long-term plotting at its peak.

The Girl Who Waited

Many of the best episodes in this era of Doctor Who are the ones that look at the relationships we take for granted from another angle. The Girl Who Waited is no different, asking “What if the Doctor’s best friend absolutely despised him?”

Through shenanigans, Amy is trapped in a separate time stream from the Doctor and Rory, and when they finally show up to rescue her, she is much older and bitter from being left alone for so many years. The action is a bit so-so, but the character writing at its core is superb, reminding us that “Rule 1: The Doctor lies,” isn’t just a fun catchphrase that lets us have lots of surprise reveals – it can be much darker.

The Angels Take Manhattan

Despite what the title may suggest, this isn’t actually that good of a Weeping Angel story, however, it is Amy and Rory’s goodbye episode, which makes it a must-watch on its own. It doesn’t break any new ground with the Angels, they’re still used to good effect, creating surprise moments and a seemingly unstoppable foe, but once again, it’s the character dynamics that drive this one.

There have been many tearful goodbyes in Doctor Who, but this one might just take the top spot for how cruel it is in the way it snatches the Doctor’s friends from him.

The Day of the Doctor

This is the 50th-anniversary special episode of Doctor Who and it nails it like you wouldn’t believe. Not only does David Tennant return as the Tenth Doctor, but we see a brand new face of the Doctor, kept secret from us for all these years. It’s a loud and proud adventure that unravels the one plot thread that has existed since the start of modern Doctor Who: the Time War, and the Doctor’s role in ending it. We get to see what happens in the Doctor’s darkest hour – a moment only hinted at for eight years, and how he responds when confronted with it all those years later.

The Time of the Doctor

Finally, we reach the end of the Eleventh Doctor, and unlike most other Doctors, this time he just ages out. What precedes that is a touching episode though, where our hero – confronted with the fact that he may have reached the end of his many lives – settles down and becomes the simple protector of a village hiding the universe’s most terrifying secret. It’s a slow-burner, but it builds to a classic regeneration scene featuring a powerful speech about change.