With the newest season of Doctor Who at an end, certain episodes have made a more positive impression on fans than others. The cheesy, over-the-top, and outright ridiculous aspects of the first few episodes featuring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor and Millie Gibson as his companion Ruby turned some fans off from the Disney+ run of the sci-fi classic, with the first official episode of the season, "Space Babies," earning a low 5.2 on IMDb.

This season is far from the first one to have its share of camp, however, even among New Who seasons. Doctor Who’s more silly filler episodes, rather than detracting from the show, create its character and continued appeal. While in other shows, the filler can grow tedious while waiting to get back to the overarching plot, Doctor Who embraces the episodic and puts action-packed, intriguing and wonderfully bizarre stories into one-off episodes that make the show what it is.

What Makes a Good Doctor Who Episode?

Many of the top ranking episodes of Doctor Who are those that culminate a season’s worth of buildup, introduce significant characters or rely on established character dynamics. This isn’t surprising—afterwatching intricate stories like the Bad Wolf plotline or the mystery of the Silence play out for months at a time, it’s satisfying to see the creators pull everything together. Yet, even among the most popular self-contained storylines, most have heavy, suspenseful or frightening plotlines; "Blink," New Who’s highest rated episode, was a stand-out one-shot that haunted the viewer with its introduction of the now iconic Weeping Angels.

These one-off episodes of Doctor Who often excel because of the great creature concepts and their explorations of intense themes. Season 4, Episode 10, "Midnight" featured a fascinating monster which possessed a passenger on a train and then began imitating the Doctor, playing on the human passengers’ paranoia and fear of the other. The episode forces the audience to look inwards for the prejudices the humans display in the episode. Even most recently, Season 1, Episode 5, "Dot and Bubble" told a strong story critiquing social media from a fresh perspective. However, too much insistence on a grander message or too on-the-nose a monster will turn an audience away, as seen in IMDb’s worst ranked episode, Season 12, Episode 13, "Orphan 55," where the environmentalist message was all but said straight to the audience. Even among expertly crafted episodes, though, there is still a need for some comic relief.

How Doctor Who Makes Filler its Strength

Campy filler episodes give Doctor Who its levity among the more dramatic plot-building episodes, and it’s this very levity that characterizes the show as a whole. Initially created as a family show targeted at child, teen and adult audiences alike, lighthearted episodes help to keep this broad appeal into the modern day. The fun romps still show that, while the Doctor in New Who is always haunted by the Time War on Gallifrey and the continuous loss of his companions, he is, at his core, still an alien going on wacky adventures through time and space in a Police Box.

Doctor Who’s most recent season certainly has not forgotten these origins. "Space Babies" focused on a group of speaking babies on a space station, left alone aside from a disembodied voice that took care of them, the station’s computer system, and a mysterious monster. The twist of the episode revealed that the monster was created as a "bogeyman" by the computer system, which, taking the concept literally, means the monster was made out of boogers. The types of humor this ending relies on— puns and gross-out jokes— are hallmarks of children’s media, and in an episode all about babies, match the tone. While to many fans it reads as immature and, frankly, disgusting, the bogeyman of this episode is not alone; Season 9, Episode 9, "Sleep No More" had a similar monster in its Sandmen, creatures made of rheum, or eye mucus—"Sleep No More" also had similarly poor reviews.

While they may not be the top-rated episodes, however, some of the most memorable, funny, endearing and character-building moments come from the most absurd episodes of Doctor Who. Season 8, Episode 3, "Robot of Sherwood" emphasized Peter Capaldi’s stubborn and irritable streak as the Doctor while playing with beloved folklore. Season 2, Episode 1, "New Earth" gave a satisfying and empathetic ending to the side character Cassandra and let Billie Piper as Rose Tyler and David Tennant as the Doctor delightfully overact while possessed by her. Additionally, Season 5, Episode 11, "The Lodger" showed Matt Smith’s Doctor from an outside perspective as he attempted to live somewhat like a regular man. They all brought their own humor and insight into the classic Doctor Who structure, and the love built for the characters in these episodes was what really allowed more climactic ones to shine. Even an episode like Season 2, Episode 10, "Love and Monsters," reviled as it may be, had its undeniably memorable moments.

Doctor Who Season 1 Suffers From a Limited Episode Count

Fluffy filler episode romps are an essential part of Doctor Who, but that doesn’t mean they can still fall flat, as some of the silliest episodes of the most recent season do. As is the case of many modern streaming shows, Season 1 of Doctor Who is short—only eight episodes. Within those time constraints, it becomes difficult to make genuine filler episodes, so every episode of the past season included overt references to the overarching plot. Unlike previous, lengthier seasons where storylines were planted slowly, like the references to disappearing bees and planets scattered throughout season 4, the mystery of Ruby’s abilities, like the snow she makes appear, was brought up in every episode and connected back to the main story.

Expecting audiences to follow along with talking babies in space is already a big ask of their suspension of disbelief. It is not outside the realm of possibility for Doctor Who, certainly, but the more absurdity added to an episode, the harder it becomes for an audience to stay engaged. Even harder is to ask the audience to take a campy, seemingly one-off episode and view it seriously in the context of greater storylines. Where "Space Babies" started to falter was where the episode drew on the Doctor's backstory for emotional resonance and introduced the strange snow Ruby summoned. Season 1, Episode 2, "The Devil’s Chord," too, forced in Ruby’s strange past, seemingly just to continue to weave that into the story, which detracted from its own pageantry.

The rush was what made these episodes suffer. While not everyone was a fan of the singing, dancing, and over-the-top costuming of the newest season, there was at least an earnestness to the spectacle. They may never make it to everyone’s top ten, but the quirky and offbeat filler episodes show the range of Doctor Who, and keep it fresh, innovative, and experimental. Without Doctor-lite episodes, for example, "Love and Monsters" would never exist, but neither would "Blink," and the show as a whole would lose something from missing both episodes. When they are forced to carry further plot elements, however, campy episodes lose some of their lightheartedness; no longer filler episodes, they struggle to contain both their out-there episodic plots and the more developed season plots.

Doctor Who needs the time of a cable series to thrive so that it can find its footing with each new Doctor and companion, and so the audience can grow to care about the characters and the stakes through the inconsequential episodes. On top of needing space to make campy one-shots for the sake of those episodes, it also needs that time as the only way to ensure there is space for such contained and moving episodes as the inimitable "Vincent and the Doctor."Doctor Who is made by its filler, and without it, the silly episodes feel weighed-down, and the serious ones may require viewers to think back to a monster made of boogers at a pivotal plot moment.