Camping on i7

The Dorian root chord - the i7 - is a great place to hang out. Every note in the scale is consonant over this chord - you’ve got a 9th, an 11th, and a 13th, which means your melodic options are pretty free and easy, and harmony players can add and remove color to the chord without signalling a chord change.

When you’re just on the i7 - a chord shared with Aeolian - how you use the 6th is an important aspect of how and where the song sounds Dorian. It can appear in the melody, as an added chord color (a 13th), and it can even replace the b7 so that you’re playing a i6 chord instead (common in jazz).

A note on the variants: all of these work and are highly interchangeable because we're camping.