You know what's cool? Bow ties are cool.

Recently, the Doctor Who Christmas special aired. Probably on Christmas day. I won't bore you with the details, but here's quick summary.

1. dr sad
2. dr visit humans
3. human like dr
4. human get in trubble 
5. dr saves the day
6. human dies (again)
7. Clara Oswin Oswald

That is the basis of most Doctor Who episodes. However, I've noticed a trend T.V shows and this show in particular. There are episodes that serve only to further the overarching story line. In the long run this makes the show awesome, but it can make the episode bad. Bottle episodes.

Character or story development episodes aren't necessarily bad, just usually. When writers focus on one thing, the episode itself, great things can happen. Shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy don't exactly have an overarching story line. The writers focus on what is happening in the episode and usually that leads to good thing.

This problem only plagues some shows. Doctor Who is a sci-fi action-adventure program and every episode should have action-adventure. If the writers focused on the big picture, smaller episodes wouldn't matter very much. If the writers focused on each individual episode, the show wouldn't be as great as it could possibly be. The creators and writers chose this burden and must live with it, to make the show great.