Movies do it all the time. Carefully selected scenes in a three-minute teaser can make even the worst film look interesting. Comedies, especially, tend to have hilarious trailers...and then you see the movie and find that the only good bits were in the trailer.

So here's a challenge: what's your favorite scene in a Doctor Who episode you dislike? My choices start with an audio:

1. McGann's stirring "That's adventure!" speech in Storm Warning. It pretty much encompasses what the whole 35+ years of Doctor Who are all about. It's twenty seconds of genius. Unfortunately, it's surrounded by 100 minutes of mediocrity.

2. In The Web Planet, the whole aspirin/Can-you-believe-I-had-to-go-to-school-for-a-whole-two-hours-a-week scene was great.

Even the worst stories probably have their moments. They may only last a couple seconds, but I'm sure those moments are there. I don't remember one offhand, but we could probably even find a worthy scene somewhere in Twin Dilemma....unfortunately that would require watching it again.

Hm, good question. Pex's funeral (if you can have a funeral without a body) was a terrific scene in an otherwise mediocre story. I find it incredibly moving, for some reason. 'Hail Pex. Hail the Unalive...'

Genocide has an extraordinary prologue to a dreadfully boring book...an alien monologue to a silent figure, telling him what humans had done to her people, asking if in response - like her - he'd have killed all humans, for all time, and ending with the memorable line, 'Doctor? Are you still alive?'

And of course Down blows your brains out and irrevocably alters your entire relationship with books. After boring you silly for 284 pages.

And how could I forget Planet of the Spiders! Six episodes-worth of boring badly-acted stupidity - an INSULT to our beloved Pertwee! - and then WHAT a death-scene! Admittedly I'd find even the most dire regeneration worshipful if it brought us the joy of Tom Baker, but in this case it was worthy of them both.

And of course A Yawnable, sorry, Unearthly, Child is blessed with the glorious 'We are not of this race. We are not of this Earth...' speech. It's not quite as good as Hartnell's 'One day I shall come back' speech, but I can't mention that because Dalek Invasion of Earth is great. Well, mostly.

And the Doctor's betrayal scene - especially the dig at the Brigadier ('Goodbye Jo. I shall miss YOU') in Claws of Axos is the one moment that prevents me chucking out my tape of this waste-of-space (that and obsessive completism).

And Warriors of the Deep has 'There should have been another way.' Talk about waiting till the last possible moment before justifying your existence!

And The Dominators has that Troughton/Jamie conversation ending with the immortal line 'Just act s t u p i d. Do you think you can manage that?'

Trial of a Time Lord: a) the opening shot - very impressive. Pity they blew the entire budget on it (OK, I'm probably exaggerating), b) a bald Peri talking in that mentor's voice and getting shot by Ycranos, c) 'The Doctor, or, as I have always known him, the Valeyard.' So...that makes at least two minutes'-worth of good stuff out of three and a half hours.

Timelash: I quite liked Herbert attempting to exorcise the Doctor - it's amazing no-one's ever tried this before. Admittedly calling this a good scene is probably a slight exaggeration, but compared to the rest of the story, it's brilliant.

Look, is anyone else going to join in or am I going to continue talking to myself?

My mind seems to have blocked out all but the most fleeting memories of Trial of a Time Lord. Probably a defensive mechanism. I remember "You killed Peri!" which amounts to all of two seconds. I remember seeing some Alice-in-Wonderland-type weirdness in the Matrix somewhere near the end, though I don't remember if what I remember was any good, if that makes any sense. Don't remember the opening scene, but everyone seems to praise it, so that was probably a good moment as well.

Let's see...the cliffhanger to episode one of Spectre of Lanyon Moor, with the hikers in the dark, was downright chilling. Spooky, scary, unnerving. Having hiked a long trail like that, in some places alone and in the dark, that scene really got me.

Planet of the Daleks, or maybe it was Death to the Daleks--one of those late Pertwee disappointments. I liked the opening scene in the TARDIS when the power goes out.

Time and the Rani: a few seconds of Mel caught in one of those flying, globular, exploding traps actually made Doctor Who special effects look good.

The Twin Dilemma: I actually liked the Doctor's post-regenerative scene. I remember laughing when he mentioned going off to be a hermit... and Peri would come with him.
It's a shame Colin Baker had the worst scripts. I think the sixth Doctor would be better remembered if he had some decent material to begin with.

Paradise Towers: I rather liked the Kangs' slang terms, like "Ice hot!" Also various bits of humor. How the Doctor escapes from the guards by quoting a made-up rule.

Eric, you mention Time And The Rani & forget to mention the Doctor choosing his new outfit & all his malaprops?
Also it's Death To The Daleks that has the power go out.

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy... well,... it was kind of amusing how the Gods were compared to TV viewers, but nothing else springs to mind.

Can't think of anything that justifies the existence of the truly awful Curse Of Fenris.

Oh, I can, KAM. I love it when the Soviet figures out his belief in the Revolution will repel vampires (and that the priest's lack of faith is his undoing).

Okay, I do seem to remember thinking that the Soviet's belief was interesting, although the whole repel-a-vampire-by-believing-in-something has really been overused since then.

For 'The Curse Of Fenric' how can you not feel a lump in your throat when the Doctor says that she cared about the baby, and Ace cries out something like "I didn't know she was my mother!"
For 'The Twin Dilemma' I like the scene where the Doctor says, "Wait a minute! I know you! You're the Chancellor! I don't like you."
For 'The Krotons' the Doctor's bumbling around with Zoe about the test, and his line, "GReat jumping gob-stompers!"
For 'Paradise Towers', just seeing Daisy from 'Keeping Up Appearances' was interesting.

No lumps in my throat and who couldn't guess that the baby wasn't Ace's mom? The Curse of Fenric, or Fenris, or whatever, just never appealed to me on any level.

As someone who was recently rapsodising over The Underwater Menace, I realise I'm hardly in a position to complain about other people's tastes, but...WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!! Curse of Fenric is JOY, pure unadulterated JOY! (OK, so I'm lying about the 'unadulterated' bit, I always cringe when it gets to 'We fight together eh comrade' not to mention 'she's my mother and I don't love her' but we're supposed to be talking about rubbish stories with good moments, not mind-bogglingly brilliant stories with the occasional moment of excruciating embarrassment.)

Eric - some of the Matrix bits in ToaTL (btw, three and a half hours? What was I thinking of? If only!) weren't too awful - Colin Baker being sucked down on that beach springs to mind - but they were a BAAAAAAAAAAAAD mistake, they couldn't help recalling those Matrix moments in Deadly Assassin, a glory which at the time of ToaTL seemed had deserted Who forever. Ditto for the McCoy clothes-choosing scene - it may have been minimally less godawful than the rest of Time and the Rani (apart from the bit where the Doc tried pulling out Bonnie Langford's hair. Now THAT was a good scene) but of course it just begged comparison with the fifty billion times better Tom Baker clothes-changing scene.

WhoopS! I think I fell asleep and forgot the part about 'bad stories', Emily. I like Curse of Fenric-- I should, since I taped it long ago, and skipped many others. I stand corrected.

Keys of Marinus fits this category perfectly. On the whole, it's awful: forgotten lines, hilarious sets, "hidden" bad guys in plain view, Monty-Pythonesque knights jumping up and down. But it's full of so many good bits it's actually sort of fun.

I liked the moment when Barbara discovers the room with brains-in-jars, and the first example of people not seeing what's really there in episode 2 (the second example, the Doctor and Ian in the "lab" was terrible, though). Some good scenes at Ian's trial at the end.

I also liked the fact that the Voord, instead of being yet another silly, rubber-suited monster, were actually *supposed* to be what they looked like: men in rubber suits! Wet suits, scuba gear. Though it does raise the question of why they never bothered to change out of their scuba gear, considering that the Doctor and crew were gone for several months. I guess they forgot to pack extra clothes, and Arbitan's entire wardrobe must have been out to the cleaners when they attacked. Tough luck, that.

OK- I thought of one moment. In "The Massacre" episode 4 where the Doctor has just had a spat with Steven and Steven exits in a huff from the TARDIS. The Doctor does a bit of pontificating about what he has tried to "teach" all his companions. It is a beautiful moment that totally sums up the Hartnell (and I suppose Troughton) Doctors.
And I am ignoring the slaps against Trial of A Time Lord because there is a lot of excellent work in that show- pity most of McCoy's era wasn't as entertaining. Some people just have a bee up their bum about that season for no reason.

In honor of today's holiday in the US, Thanksgiving Day, aka Turkey Day, I'm going to try to find something to be thankful for in each of the following turkeys:

Time and the Rani, we thank you for the atypically good special effect (the exploding trap-spheres) plus that hopeful, heart-pounding moment when it looked like maybe, just maybe, Mel really was going to go kaput.

Timelash, we thank you for, um, for...well, for not being as long as Trial of a Time Lord.

Arc of Infinity....I'm afraid I'm stumped. But thanks for reminding me that sometimes even the best of intentions go awry.

Revenge of the Cyberman, thanks for demonstrating that even at his worst, Tom Baker was still pretty darn good.

Death to the Daleks, or Planet of the Daleks, or whatever you're called, I'm thankful for that scene where the TARDIS power goes out, and thankful that memories of the rest of the story (including, apparently, its title) have faded mercifully with time.

The Dominators, we can't thank you for droning on for 5 episodes or for dressing Zoe up like a ragamuffin, but the immortal line, "Just act ••••••. Do you think you can manage that?" almost makes up for it.

The Web Planet, thanks for what is actually an okay first episode. Also, thanks for Hartnell's utterly bizarre giggling fit, which makes us all wonder just what he'd been smoking for breakfast that morning. It was the 60s after all.

Can't leave out McGann. So, Stones of Venice, thank you for getting better on second listening. Not good, but better.

Well, I'm glad Stones of Venice gets better. Can't say I'm sorry for not giving it a second chance, though.

You forgot to thank Time and the Rani for getting rid of Colin Baker. Not that McCoy's presence in THAT particular story was any improvement on his predecessor, but, well...he grew into the role. And he ditched that coat.

What makes you think the Doctor and co were gone for several months on Marinus? I put it at two weeks, maximum.

I will attempt to ignore your blasphemous remarks about that perfectly-enjoyable-if-not-totally-original story, Arc of Infinity.

Hmm, you're right, it was probably only a week or two. I must have been thinking that the trial dragged on for months, when it was actually quite fast. Or maybe it was just that I watched parts 1-3 and didn't get around to parts 4-6 until a few months later. Still, two weeks is a long time to go without changing clothes (except for TARDIS crew members in the 1980s.)

The Space Museum part One is fabulous, really eerie and strange and very clever. Unfortunately, parts two to four have to rank amongst the very worst Doctor Who ever, being even duller than much of The Web Planet and (regulars aside) poorly acted as well. Underworld also starts very well, only to become rather dull, as does Terminus. Both of these stories have a fair bit of mystery and atmosphere in their first episodes only to become plodding later on. In Terminus the character of Bor is rather wonderful as well. Arc of Infinity has a wonderful moment where Omega has a brief of moment of 'existence' in the real world, as he listens to an organ and smiles at a small boy. The transformation sequence in The Mutants is quite spectacular for its time although whether it is worth sitting through six plodding episodes and Rick James' 'acting' is debatable.

Terror of the Zygons - the Doctor AND the Brigadier's sartorial efforts.

Edge of Destruction - Barbara having a go at the Doctor. I don't think any other Companion's ever managed to wipe the floor with their Doctor like that.

The Time Monster - the Master's pained refusal to eat with UNIT - because he's a pacifist.

The Chase - Ian and Barbara deciding to leave the Doctor.

Greatest Show in the Galaxy - that brat and her parents turning out to be gods.

Meglos - 'He sees the threads that bind the universe together and mends them when they break'. Plus Tom Baker going all cactus-y.

The Sontaran Experiment - Tom Baker talking to that big metal thing-with-legs as if it were a pet (almost crooning 'I won't hurt you') before...well...killing it.

Partners in Crime: Rose's appearance. The 'You're not mating with me, sunshine!' scene. And, of course, the mime scene.

Idiot's Lantern: Rose and the Doctor wiping the floor with Male Chauvinist Pig guy. The Doctor's 'Nothing in ze vorld' scene after seeing Faceless Rose. 'Edible ballbearings.'

Fear Her: The 'There's a storm coming' ending. The rather cute drawing of the Doctor.

Sontaran Strategem/Poison Sky: The Doctor/Donna mistaken-farewell scene. The Doctor saying 'Are you my mummy?' The Doc watching cartoons during Sontaran ranting. And the Doc doing the 'Stahl the Not-Quite-So-Undefeated' thing.

42: The Doctor's 'I'll save you' scene.

Lazarus Experiment: The Doc discovering the American Declaration of Independence (on the deleted DVD scenes).

The Next Doctor: TEN DOCTORS! TEN DOCTORS, EVERYONE!!!

I liked Partners in Crime! But, speaking of good scenes--what about the Doctor carrying hatboxes? Personally, I think Christina's biggest mistake in Planet of the Dead--the one that cost her the chance to travel in the TARDIS--was in having a shovel but no hats.

I liked Partners in Crime!

Why? How? I want to like it too...I want to LOVE it with all my heart...it's just rather...DULL. An attempt at a screwball romantic comedy that just doesn't work.

But, speaking of good scenes--what about the Doctor carrying hatboxes?

Of course I was including that particular joy in the 'You're not mating with me, sunshine!' scene.

Personally, I think Christina's biggest mistake in Planet of the Dead--the one that cost her the chance to travel in the TARDIS--was in having a shovel but no hats.

Either that or actually taking 'No' for an answer, which I don't see Donna doing...

Oh, and I forgot: Daleks in Manhatten/Evolution DOES have one redeeming feature (aside from the mere existence of David Tennant and a few Daleks): that 'Oh, Tallulah...you just watch me' scene as the Doc prepares to save Lazslo.

All right, find a redeeming feature for "The Unquiet Dead." And don't use the "you're Charles Dickens?" conversation in the cab; it wasn't that great.

While that scene was a little over the top it was fun.

Other than that probably the opening. Nice way to set a mood.

"I always like a happy medium"....

I thought the Doctor's willingness to let the Gelth use the dead bodies and his brushing aside of the counter-arguments was great.

Yeah, that was pretty good. "It's just wrong!" is right up there with "because I said so" for a weak argument.

All right, find a redeeming feature for "The Unquiet Dead." And don't use the "you're Charles Dickens?" conversation in the cab; it wasn't that great.

It bloody WAS that great!

The Ninth Doctor. Every shining moment of him.

Rose. Ditto. (Just look at her stepping out into the snow...we take joy-in-time-travel for granted now, but NONE of the old series Companions gave a toss about such things.)

The Ninth Doctor.

Dickens. Glorious!

The Ninth Doctor.

Gwyneth. So good they gave the actress her own series.

The Ninth Doctor.

Yeah, that was pretty good. "It's just wrong!" is right up there with "because I said so" for a weak argument.

It's just a shame that Rose turned out to be right and the Doctor wrong...kind of undercut the shock of being thrown into a new kind of morality...

Empress of Mars: the great new way of killing people. (I'm a psycho, aren't I. Oh well, let's not pretend any of us are surprised.)

Time Heist: Hanging around in the TARDIS afterwards, laughing and eating takeaways. That NEVER HAPPENS!

Dr Mysterio: Torture of squeezy toy.

Into the Dalek: 'Top layer if you want to say a few words' and 'She cares so I don't have to.'

Curse of the Black Spot: Amy in full pirate gear.

Night Terrors: The TARDIS reflected in that puddle. (No, really.)

I love the bit where Ainley uses the tissue compression eliminator on one of the Rani's henchmen and then quickly whirls around and points it at the other one.

Time and the Rani - As the Doctor runs from the Rani at the end of part two, he runs into the next room and does an amusing imitation of Charlie Chaplin rounding a corner as he balances on one leg for an instant. I love the silent comedy era, and I don't know if McCoy was intentionally channeling Chaplin, but it still makes me chuckle.
And then we see it again at the beginning of the following episode.

Dragonfire - Glitz asks the Doctor to distract a guard, so he asks said guard a philosophical question. And it turns out the guard just happens to be an expert on that particular philosophy and has longed for such a conversation.
So many stories in Doctor Who and outside of it just show guards as humans with no personality, usually because we generally don't get enough time to know them. Or maybe they're just there to be "cannon fodder." This scene seems to be a reverse parody of that in which we find that a guard actually does have a personality.

Wasn't that sadistic monster of a guard quoting The Unfolding Text, though...?