Ranking all the Doug episodes

[Rushy]

A while back, I published my ranking of the Grant Naylor era (https://rimmerexperience.blogspot.com/2025/02/ranking-grant-naylor-episodes-series-i.html), and people here seemed to really enjoy that so now that I’ve finished revisiting Doug’s run, I’ve also ranked his stories, worst to best: 

https://rimmerexperience.blogspot.com/2025/06/ranking-doug-naylor-episodes-series-vii.html

Topic

[Flap Jack]

Not surprised to discover that your ranking is irreconcilably different to mine, but I am glad to have an ally on team “Krytie TV is the worst”.

We’ll see what’s more controversial – your ranking or your designation of TPL as “Series XIII”. (Can of Worms and Timewave seem to have swapped series, too.)

Also, I’d never heard it said that Cured is a parody of The Thing. That means Doug parodied the same film 2 episodes in a row.

[Warbodog]

To be fair, those are only about half of the Doug episodes, as he wrote all the earlier ones too and used up many of his ideas there. But I obviously know what you meant.

As of 2023 (I may not rank so intensively again), my top 5 were:

1. The Promised Land

2. M-Corp

3. The Beginning

4. Cassandra

5. Mechocracy

Happy with those before I start to have more serious reservations. And there are already some reservations.

Bottom 5: Pete part 1 & 2, Back to Earth part 2, Timewave, Back in the Red part 2

[International Debris]

[Renegade Rob]

Since I rarely have a constant favorite episode of all time but instead usually have a handful that rotate as my favorite or least favorite, I can at least create “series” tiers of the best to worst Doug-only episodes, in chronological order since they’ll float around each other in mental rankings. The grade tiers are curved relative to the Doug era as a whole: 

S-Rank Series: “Tikka to Ride,” “Lemons,” “The Beginning,” “Give and Take,” “Krysis,” “Mechocracy”

A-Rank Series: “Stoke Me a Clipper,” “Nanarchy,” “Back to Earth, Part 2,” “Trojan,” “Samsara,” “Cured”

B-Rank Series: “Blue,” “Back to Earth, Part 3,” “Fathers and Suns,” “Twentica,” “Skipper,” “The Promised Land”

C-Rank Series: “Ouroboros,” “Duct Soup,” “Epideme,” “Cassandra,” “Entangled,” “Dear Dave”

D-Rank Series: “Beyond a Joke,” “Back in the Red, Part 1,” “Back to Earth, Part 1,” “Officer Rimmer,” “Siliconia,” “M-Corp”

F-Rank Series: “Back in the Red, Part 2,” “Back in the Red, Part 3,” “Krytie TV,” “Pete, Part 1,” “Pete, Part 2,” “Only the Good…,” “Can of Worms,” “Timewave”

[Ridley]

F-Rank is very upset.

[Renegade Rob]

I took the liberty of making a Smega-gif composite of the opening intro clips of the S-Rank Series episode to create an abridged opening montage of the best of the Doug Era (sadly Mechocracy isn’t represented in the intro montage, which is fair enough since there’s not a lot of action and it’s mostly a “talkie” episode, yuk yuk yuk). But in the timeline where these had been released together in the same run (and smoothed-out continuity-wise), it would be a pretty baller series, dare I say, up there perhaps near the bubble itself?

[Nick R]

Not a ranking, but these were the scores I gave them in the Coral Canvass:

8:
The Promised Land
7:
Tikka to Ride
Lemons
Give & Take
Mechocracy | M-Corp | Skipper
6:
Stoke Me a Clipper | Blue | Epideme
Back to Earth: Part I
Trojan | The Beginning
Twentica | Officer Rimmer | Krysis
5:
Ouroboros | Duct Soup | Beyond a Joke | Nanarchy
Back to Earth: Part II | Back to Earth: Part III
Fathers & Suns
Samsara
Cured | Siliconia
4:
Cassandra
Entangled | Dear Dave
Can of Worms
3:
Back in the Red: Part I
2:
Back in the Red: Part II | Back in the Red: Part III | Only the Good…
Timewave
1:
Krytie TV | Pete Part I | Pete Part II

[Author]

Replies