As you might have heard, Doctor Who Magazine recently released the results of its readers survey (to which over 6700 replied) rating the Doctor Who stories broadcast on television to date. While many excellent stories continue to be rated highly, many more excellent stories continue to be rated lowl and remain completely under-rated. Rather than list all such under-rated Who stories (by my count, going on this poll, there are nearly 150 of them out of 200 in total), here are the 5 results which I find most surprising, disappointing or just frankly bizarre:

5. It’s bad enough that The Sun Makers, one of the wittiest, cleverest and down-right solid scripts in the history of the programme is down as low as #147, but to make the result truly unforgivable, the story immediately ahead of it in the charts is Battlefield, which still hasn’t come close to making sense even with the addition of deleted scenes on a recent DVD release. I’m sorry DWM readers, but that’s just wrong.

4. It doesn’t surprise me too much that Fear Her is the lowest rated story of the RTD era, but it is surprising that it already has made the bottom ten overall.

3. On the flip side, I don’t know anybody that has been able to sit through The Web Planet in one sitting since 1965, but somehow it didn’t even finish in the bottom 20. For a story that tends to get beaten only by Time and the Rani for most “worst story of all time” votes, it did quite well.                                                                                                                                             

2. A pleasant surprise for a change - the debate with fans on what is the worst season of all time tends to be between Seasons 23 and 24, but in this poll Season 23 kicks Season 24’s ass quite comprehensively - by about 14% percentage-wise and also by four spots on the season charts as Season 24 finished dead last out of 30, and by a considerable margin.

1. This was for me the most surprising and bizarre result - those fans who bothered to vote for the hilarious 1985 Jim’ll Fix it Sketch “A Fix with Sontarans” decided to give it an overall mark of 36.92% (by comparison Music of the Spheres got 65% and The Infinite Quest - the animated story I haven’t heard a single fan say a single good thing about, got over 61%). Were people jealous of Gareth Jenkins or something? I’ve never watched this skit with someone who didn’t find it to be hilariously funny, including rooms full of Doctor Who fans. None of whom apparently (like me) voted in this poll, because I certainly didn’t see this one coming.