It’s fairly safe to say that anyone who calls themselves a fan of Doctor Who knows about Daleks, Cybermen, and Weeping Angels. Most have probably at least heard of Sontarans, Autons, the Ood, and the Silents, too. But with a series history over fifty years long, there have been a vast number of species introduced, of which many only make brief appearances. For most of them, one would likely have to watch multiple times even to catch their names.

Creatures of various ilk are a hallmark of the show, and one can’t help but speculate that writers sit around trying to out-weird each other with their creations. Sometimes there’s probably a hope in the back (or even forefront, in a few documented cases) of their minds that their new monster will be the next big hit, the next Daleks.

Mostly, though, these aliens are simply the means to an end—a way to tell the best story the writer knows how to tell at that moment. They serve one particular purpose, and then they’re never seen again. It’s some of these obscure species that I find charmingly bizarre.

How many times have we seen it: “All the Doctors, Ranked Best to Worst” (or “Worst to Best”)? Every fan will have their own preferences, and that’s as it should be; different strokes for different folks, and all that. But to try to codify any one viewpoint by publishing it for the world to see makes no sense to me at all.

I mean, what can one possibly hope to accomplish? Unless your goal is to get people arguing with you on the Internet (and I’ll grant that for some, there appears to be no greater pleasure), you can’t win. No matter who the article writer’s personal #1 turns out to be, somebody’s gonna come away pissed. “They call that idiot ‘best’?” “How could you rank my fave at #5?” At best, you find the one or two other fans who are in complete agreement with your opinions of every Doctor; at worst, you get death (or other) threats.

Instead of trying to do something so controversial (and, frankly, impossible—not only do my opinions change from day to day, but it’s kind of like choosing your favorite child/pet/other loved one), I thus thought I’d spend a little space sharing my thoughts on why each Doctor is awesome in his own way. Though I’m sorry—if you want to see either Peter Cushing’s version or “the War Doctor” discussed, you’ll have to peruse a different blog (although that could be a different post; stay tuned).

Having just spent the last week packing up a ridiculous amount of accumulated crap, signing bunches of paperwork, and then unpacking some but good-god-nowhere-near-all-of-it-why-oh-why-do-we-still-have-all-this stuff, I’m starting to see a real advantage to spending one’s centuries in a TARDIS.

As we’ve moved house, we’ve stumbled across a whole lot of keepsakes that we’ve held on to for a vast stretch of years. They’re the kinds of things that when originally packed had too much meaning to let go, but have remained in boxes for so long that meaning may or may not have since faded. Sorting will take a redonkulous amount of time and effort.

I suspect the TARDIS is littered with such shelves and boxes, a collection that the Doctor has never bothered to curate. Hints at that tendency abound. For example, at least a couple separate times we’ve seen a wardrobe area littered with clothing from bygone Regenerations (and I doubt the Doctor even knows what all is lurking in the rooms filled with clothing his Companions have—or could have—used). And when Clara was lost in the depths during Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, we saw an array of memorabilia (such as the pinwheel that was in young Amelia Pond’s yard in The Eleventh Hour) suggestive of packrat tendencies I know all too well.

Continuity is a tricky thing in Doctor Who. Due to the nature of the beast, with a plethora of writers contributing to the “canon” (a loaded, debatable term), contradictions abound. For large things, like humanity becoming aware of non-Terrestrial life, a showrunner will usually find a way to smooth over the issue with a clever (or not-so-clever) retcon. A few such instances were highlighted recently in an article at the Houston Press.

However, sometimes rather egregious inconsistencies remain unaddressed. Other times, writers throw in ideas that some fans simply find distasteful (while others, of course, couldn’t care less). There is at least one of the former category—and several of the latter—that still irritate me. Here are some of the blips in the Doctor’s adventures I’d like to see sorted.

I’ll start with the actual discontinuity, which involves the Blinovich Limitation Effect (BLE). First mentioned in Day of the Daleks, and later in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the BLE began as a vague hand wave to explain (without explaining) why our heroes couldn’t simply go back and try again and again if they failed their mission the first time. Later, in Mawdryn Undead, we learned that an extension (or corollary, perhaps) of the Effect meant that if two versions of the same individual from different points on their personal timeline were to touch, there could be catastrophic effects.