@No:
Isn't that how we defend Dexter's Lab's status as an iconic series as well ?
There was a multi-year hiatus between the last season and the season that didn't happen, and the original creator was not involved, and the art style changed. Its easy to write off as a result.
Same for Gargoyles. If the original creator leaves (or basically the entire cast ala Sliders) and the tone and content changes completely…
@Insider2000:
There's being campy, and then there's being sucky. Something can be campy yet still be considered good. I'm assuming Spoony meant campy, but who knows, maybe he does think it sucks.
Given how much of the RTD era was really bad and cheesy… and near as I can tell Spoony tuned in on some of the worst episodes of Mofatt's run... and the old show is really slowly paced and low budget... it's an easy assumption to make.
And lets face it. Doctor Who really IS a case where you can say "Oh no, you caught one of the stupid episodes. The good ones are really good!" but... its possible to tune in and catch 20 different episodes and for all of them to bad. It has a really bad ratio for that. I think Spoony has legitimately tuned into to Who several times to give it a chance, and has always managed to get one of the bad ones. At some point the "some episodes are really good!" excuse stops holding weight and just becomes "fans that like a stupid thing defending it with a lame excuse.
When you have to hand pick episodes and present them as "this is the good stuff that will get you hooked" there IS a problem, and Who is rife with that... especially after you've already seen a lot of the bad stuff and think its the majority. I completely get Spoony's stance there. He needs to see Blink or Silence in the Library as his first episode. Not randomly catch the really meh "Angels Take Manhattan" or "fear Her" or something.
(Even dedicated loyal fans didn't care for most of the recent batch of 5... and they're already fans!)
I grew up on the show, and got dragged back in by randomly catching SitL... but I tried watching some of the new stuff when it first started and hated it... and I had a predisposition to liking it! Even after getting hooked back in proper I don't like a lot of it.
At some point your perception becomes instead "Its run for 50 years and people insist it to be the case, so there's probably SOME good episodes in there that could be handpicked, but most of them are bad and its not worth the overall experience." Which... can easily be the case with Who. I even agree with it for large portions of the series.