I enjoyed Smith when I was watching—and I actually really like him as the character—but I would say that the episodes around him began to get worse and worse. Some standout offenses for me are:

1. Rings of Akhaten. Matt Smith delivered a passionate speech that is one of my favorite acting moments of his only for it to get rug-pulled that actually that doesn't work so Clara can have her moment instead. (Seriously, I think Smith's speech is actually one of the best moments in the whole show. You don't even need to watch anything else, just watch that clip, appreciate it, and then understand that they undermined all of it in the next ten minutes of screen time).

2. The Ponds being written out of the show in the way that they were. Doctor Who's time travel logic has always been vague and nonsensical, but the whole "you can't change the past now that you read a book about how these events go" is so completely at odds with the entire premise of the show that it's absurd.

3. The Silence being resolved the way they were. You have these freaky aliens that first show up in association with a crack in the fabric of the universe, they have a weird power that messes with people's memories, they have an unrelenting obsession with killing The Doctor in order to "save the universe" and after three seasons of teasing and mystery the answer is that they're a splinter group from a universal megachurch? And the church is actually very well known and not mysterious at all and they all end up on The Doctor's side in about five lines of dialogue? And the fact that they make people forget them is so they can take confession and then you forget going to confession?

You have to be willing to overlook a certain level of questionable writing, camp, and plot convenience to enjoy Doctor Who in the first place. The issue with the Matt Smith seasons and later (outside of the woke stuff, of course) is actually that it began to take itself more seriously in the worst way, and thought it was much cleverer than it was.

...Hey, has the BBC ever had any other show like that...?

I enjoyed Smith when I was watching—and I actually really like him as the character—but I would say that the episodes around him began to get worse and worse. Some standout offenses for me are:

1. Rings of Akhaten. Matt Smith delivered a passionate speech that is one of my favorite acting moments of his only for it to get rug-pulled that actually that doesn't work so Clara can have her moment instead.

2. The Ponds being written out of the show in the way that they were. Doctor Who's time travel logic has always been vague and nonsensical, but the whole "you can't change the past now that you read a book about how these events go" is so completely at odds with the entire premise of the show that it's absurd.

3. The Silence being resolved the way they were. You have these freaky aliens that first show up in association with a crack in the fabric of the universe, they have a weird power that messes with people's memories, they have an unrelenting obsession with killing The Doctor in order to "save the universe" and after three seasons of teasing and mystery the answer is that they're a splinter group from a universal megachurch? And the church is actually very well known and not mysterious at all and they all end up on The Doctor's side in about five lines of dialogue? And the fact that they make people forget them is so they can take confession and then you forget going to confession?

You have to be willing to overlook a certain level of questionable writing, camp, and plot convenience to enjoy Doctor Who in the first place. The issue with the Matt Smith seasons and later (outside of the woke stuff, of course) is actually that it began to take itself more seriously in the worst way, and thought it was much cleverer than it was.

...Hey, has the BBC ever had any other show like that...?