Doctor Who's issues with this trope can be explained by pointing out one key fact of the franchise—for the first 30 years of its existence, the Doctor was almost never depicted with an on-screen love interest, the sole exception being Cameca in 1964's "The Aztecs". Romances as a whole were generally ignored. Some of this was done out of sensitivities of the times — as the show was geared toward a child audience, it was seen as creepy for a much older man to be flying around in space with young women on his arms. Over time, this led to a large portion of the fandom and even people involved with the franchise declaring the character essentially celibate, to the point where they even attempted to Retcon why he had a granddaughter in his first incarnation in the Expanded Universe. So, for all time, there is always a large portion of the Doctor Who fandom that ships "Doctor/NOBODY!" and violently despises the franchise post-1996, when the series finally started going against the trend and showing him engaging in intimate relationships, and acknowledging that said granddaughter was definitely by blood and not adopted.
- Woman #1 in the line of fire was Grace Holloway, who appeared only in the TV Movie, kissed the Doctor twice, and earned eternal hatred. But some of this was also due to other issues with the film's treatment of the franchise, and she hasn't gotten much extreme hate since due to her lack of subsequent appearances even in the Expanded Universe.
- Woman #2 is Rose Tyler, the first revival series companion. She stayed on for two series and received a few guest appearances afterward; more importantly she was the first woman explicitly shown to be in a relationship with the Doctor. Talking to those that hate her, she's also Russell T Davies' creation so he could live out his fantasies of being in love with the Doctor. This was not helped by how the Doctor's relationship with his next companion often led to on-screen comparisons with Rose, in which Martha found herself lacking, but we'll get back to that...
- Martha Jones, the companion of Series 3 and a guest character afterwards, had a one-sided relationship with the Doctor, whom she eventually left due to her tiring of the situation, though a later episode suggested that the senseless deaths that happened in all their stories didn't help matters. She would be the source of hate from Doctor/Rose shippers and, of course, Doctor/NOBODY! shippers.
- Donna Noble, the companion of Series 4, took innumerable amounts of shipping flack despite not even being presented as a love interest — in fact, she stated quite emphatically that she wasn't interested in the Doctor that way! Some of this was related to feelings towards the actress, Catherine Tate.
- Series 5 and 6 brought another complication with Amy Pond, who spent Series 5 trying to work out her feelings for both the Doctor and for her fiancé Rory, which ended when she married Rory and they remained a close couple in Series 6. This annoyed some fans, who either A) hated Amy for interfering with the Doctor/NOBODY! ship, B) hated Rory for interfering with the Amy/Eleven ship, or C) hated Amy for interfering with the Rory/Eleven ship. People in the A group got particularly upset and lodged complaints with the BBC over Amy trying to get the Doctor to sleep with her at the conclusion of "Flesh and Stone". The B group is somewhat justified, since Rory's Amy-sexuality means they can't pair him with anyone else!
- River Song is a Shipping Wars Omega of the fandom. She appeared once in Series 4, where her introduction was that of a future lover of the Doctor. She came back in Series 5 and 6 and this connection was, to put it simply, made far more explicit. This naturally draws her hate from some of the people that ever shipped the Doctor with anyone or no one. Because she's also got a complicated history similar to the Doctor's, this has also led to people in those groups frequently accusing her of being Steven Moffat's pet who lets him live out his fantasies with the Doctor. (Wait...déjà vu!) See below for more on this.
- Reinette, Madame de Pompadour, showed up for the episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" and explored a deep and intimate relationship with the Doctor (even though he only knew her for about five minutes!). The episode won multiple awards for its writing quality, but you'd never know that from the number of people who wanted her to die in that very fireplace. They've even gone as far as to suggest that the episode was only written so David Tennant could have an on-screen fling with his girlfriend Sophia Myles, ignoring that the episode was written before Tennant's casting and Myles and Tennant only met on the set of the episode in the first place!
- While the classic series kept it subtextual, Romana II and the Fourth Doctor carried on like lovers in many of their stories anyway, as both Lalla Ward and Tom Baker were lovers in real life at the time (though they both claim that their characters were in love before they were). Thus, Romana drew heat for interfering with the Doctor/NOBODY! pairing well before the internet proper was running.
- While it was mostly subtextual, the nice chemistry and occasional hints of romance in the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald's friendship in the second half of Series 7 led some fans to ship the two characters. While the nature of their relationship usually draws in the more reasonable fans, some bad apples do occur — when Eleven regenerated, a few mean-spirited fanfics emerged in which Clara murders the Twelfth Doctor
for being old and less approachable. - Although the Twelfth Doctor is reluctant to be a "boyfriend" and Hates Being Touched, tender subtext and chemistry continued with his and Clara's relationship in Series 8 even she gained a boyfriend, Danny Pink. After Danny was effectively killed three times over, over the 2014 Christmas special and Series 9 they truly became Platonic Life-Partners. There is a smaller-but-devoted anti-River Song and anti-Danny Pink crowd that supports the 12/Clara pairing, and suffice it to say this group was not happy to learn that River Song was appearing in the 2015 Christmas special...right after Clara departed at the end of the season. "The Husbands of River Song" presents River as Twelve's Second Love. There seem to be few shippers that accept that Twelve can have two romantic relationships, and then there's their respective outcomes. With Clara, he went mad and suffered for four-and-a-half billion years to save her from the grave after she died, but realizing they were unhealthily codependent they decided they could no longer be together and he lost his key memories of her to a mind wipe that was only reversed right before he regenerated into Thirteen. With River Song, he spends 24 happy years with her as their "last night" on the planet Darillium before he sends her to her death. This sparks debates over which woman he loved more, to the point that an Alternate Character Interpretation regarding his behavior post-"Husbands of River Song" sprang up among 12/Clara shippers: He's not brooding over losing River Song, but over losing Clara and his memories now that he doesn't have River as a "distraction" from those losses.
- The Eleventh Doctor also suffered from scorn after the Retcon that established Twelve as the one that took River to Darillium. River fans and Twelve/River shippers interpreting her speech in "The Husbands of River Song" as a clue that he had never really loved her until his twelfth incarnation or even that Eleven 'did something horrible to her'or was violent during their time together after "The Angels Take Manhattan", despite him barely raising his voice during their last scene in said episode. His actions in said episode and others of his era with River were also twisted to paint it as Domestic Abuse so River could receive an 'improved' version of her husband in the Twelfth Doctor. As well as saying that Eleven never wanted River to stay despite him asking her to travel with him on-screen.
- During the tenure of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, Mickey Smith came in for hate from fans for being "in the way" of Doctor/Rose, even though Rose had quite happily left him behind to travel with the Doctor. During his final appearance in the Tenth Doctor's last regular episode, it is revealed that he eventually married Martha, leading to even more ship-based hate, on account of breaking up the fairly-well-liked canon pairing of Tom Milligan/Martha and had been used to create a Token Minority Couple.
- There is a good portion of the fandom that would love to see the Doctor end up with the Master, due to their subtext. Never mind the fact that the Master really enjoys making the Doctor suffer as much as possible and them being arch-enemies. The new series hasn't helped by, among other things, introducing a female Master (Missy) in Series 8 who seems to have a one-sided crush on the Doctor, though in Series 9 she claims it's the continuation of a strange friendship that humans cannot understand rather than romantic love, a concept furthered by the Vault arc of Series 10.
- There doesn't seem to be much interest in shipping Thirteen with any of her male companions, and whatever sparks Twelve and Missy shared seem to have been snuffed out in their current incarnations (though that hasn't stopped some fans, who see it as a hate/love relationship), but there are a fair number who ship Thirteen with Yaz. The fact that Yaz stayed with the Doctor when the other two decided to stop traveling with them, the admiration and imitation we see Yaz direct towards her, even the fact that Captain Jack didn't flirt with Yaz in their second episode together but gave her Doctor-relationship advice instead, are all taken as signs Yaz, at least, has fallen for the Doctor. Whether the Doctor reciprocates (yet) is a whole other debate.
