“Fourteen's all about being free.”

Season by Season

Back in the 1990s there was a running joke among Doctor Who fans that if asked in a social situation what their favourite season was, more fans would reply “fourteen” than “spring” or “autumn”. In 1988 a poll of the series’ entire history for Doctor Who Magazine declared what we would now call that series’ finale, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, the best Doctor Who story of all.

When the script for that serial was published by Titan Books in late 1989, as twentieth century Doctor Who came to an end, the editorial material with it expressed a then entirely uncontroversial view that that serial, twelve years in the past and nearly at the middle of the series’ seemingly completed history, was the end of Doctor Who’s golden age. That after it the series was never as good again. Or even any good at all.