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Let's run down every incarnation's darkest moment!
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00:00There are so many things about Doctor Who today that we take for granted.
00:03Great villains like the Daleks, brilliant concepts like regeneration,
00:07Shooty Cat was fabulous outfits, I mean just look at him, is there anything he can't make look good?
00:12But everything has to start somewhere, and a lot of the concepts that make Doctor Who Doctor Who
00:16were never intended to cause as many ripples as they actually did.
00:19I'm Ellie for Who Culture, and this is 10 Doctor Who episodes that accidentally changed the show forever.
00:25Number 10. The Deadly Assassin
00:27Ask any Doctor Who fan how many lives a Time Lord has, and they'll answer 13.
00:32What they might not know is that this limit, commonly accepted as gospel among fans
00:36and later the show's writers themselves, was not always part of the mythology.
00:39It wasn't until 1976's The Deadly Assassin, over a decade into the show's original run,
00:45that the 12th regeneration limit was first mentioned,
00:48with the Doctor on Gallifrey trapped in a web of intrigue spun by his old enemy, the Master,
00:53who returned for the first time since the tragic death of Roger Delgado,
00:56who originally played the role. At the same time, Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes,
01:01the show's producer and script editor, were on their way out. Not wanting to leave their
01:05successors stuck with an actor they hadn't cast, they decided to leave the Master in a
01:09transitional state. And so, the 12th regeneration limit was created, as a plot device to explain the
01:15Master's decrepit zombified appearance. This throwaway line of dialogue has never been forgotten,
01:19embedding itself so deeply in the Doctor Who hive mind, that in 2013,
01:24Civil Moffat had to dedicate an entire Christmas special to getting around this
01:2812th regeneration slash 13 life limit, with the 11th Doctor being granted a fresh set of
01:33regenerations. I mean, that's quite an impact from a story that just wanted a reason to make
01:37the Master look weird. Moffat generously left this new set of lives undetermined,
01:42so the writer of the 28th Doctor's regeneration can rest easy,
01:46knowing they won't have to work an arbitrary limit into their script.
01:49Number 9, Fury from the Deep. The Doctor's signature piece of equipment throughout their
01:54various incarnations is the good old Sonic Screwdriver. This magical multi-tool is as important
01:59to the Time Lord as Superman's cape or James Bond's pistol, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any
02:04Who fan who didn't receive one under their Christmas tree as a child. Yet the Sonic wasn't always as
02:08important as it is now. Its first appearance was a brief, unremarkable scene in the first episode of
02:131968's Fury from the Deep, where the second Doctor uses it to examine a pipe on a beach.
02:19Really riveting stuff, honestly. It's doubtful that Victor Pemberton knew what he'd started when
02:23he wrote the unassuming instrument, which on the page was intended to be a regular screwdriver,
02:28into his script. But the Sonic stuck around, making a few more appearances in the 60s before
02:33really taking centre stage in the mid-to-late 70s as the Doctor's go-to space army knife. It became
02:38such a recurring fixture that in 1982, producer John Nathan Turner ordered it be blown up in the
02:44visitation, as he thought it had become a crutch for writers. If he thought it was bad then,
02:48we can only imagine his reaction to Matt Smith waving it around every 30 seconds in 2010.
02:53It's not a lightsaber, man.
02:55Number 8. Love and Monsters
02:57While the first series of Russell T. Davis' 2005 revival went off without a hitch on screen,
03:02its production was far from smooth, with a long and intense shooting schedule that was reportedly a big
03:08factor in Christopher Eccleston's decision to depart after only 13 episodes. And so, in an attempt to
03:13lighten the load for Series 2, Davis decided to experiment with a Doctor-less episode. While this
03:18had been done before, with 1965's Mission to the Unknown, that episode had long been lost to time,
03:24and importantly, it featured the Daleks at the height of 60s Dalek mania, when their fame rivalled
03:28the Doctor's own. Love and Monsters had no such help. It would have to stand alone, with no returning
03:33villains, next to no budget, and only a few short appearances from the Doctor. And while the
03:37episode itself was of questionable quality, it did kickstart a trend that led to some of the best
03:42episodes in the show's history. So the next time you see Love and Monsters on a worst episodes list,
03:47just remember, without it, we wouldn't have got Blink, Midnight, or Turn Left. Now isn't that
03:52a scary thought?
03:53Number 7. Resurrection of the Daleks
03:56The early 1980s was a time of great change for Doctor Who. A new Doctor for the first time in
04:01seven years, a new theme tune for the first time in over a decade, a new production team,
04:06and perhaps the least remembered, a new transmission schedule. At the beginning of season 19, the show
04:10was moved from the coveted Saturday evening time slot and would instead air twice a week on
04:15consecutive weekdays. This all worked well and good until it ran into a scheduling conflict,
04:20the 1984 Winter Olympics. Unable to be aired at its usual time due to BBC's daily coverage and
04:26unwilling to leave a break in the middle of the season, John Nathan Turner had Resurrection of the
04:30Daleks re-edited. It was changed from its original format of four 25-minute episodes and became two
04:3645-minute episodes to be aired on consecutive Wednesdays. Though this was a last-minute change
04:41forced by necessity, the 45-minute format was adopted for the entirety of the following year's
04:45season 22, and would eventually become Doctor Who's default episode length from 2005 onwards.
04:51So thank you, I guess, to the International Olympic Committee?
04:55Number 6. The Time Meddler. For its first few seasons, Doctor Who's historical episodes were
05:01just that, historical. They had no aliens, no futuristic technology, and no sci-fi shenanigans
05:06of any kind, barring the TARDIS of course. That all changed in 1965's The Time Meddler. Set in 1066,
05:12it sees the first Doctor and his companions involved in their usual fare for the time, getting accidentally
05:17mixed up in historical events and trying to avoid making any big alterations to the timeline.
05:21But this serial has an additional twist in the form of another rogue Time Lord, though they weren't
05:26actually called that yet, named The Monk, who is attempting to subvert history by helping the
05:32Saxons defeat William the Conqueror's armies at the Battle of Hastings. While this is pretty tame
05:36by modern standards, it was the first time the show's two distinct episode types, historicals and
05:42futuristic sci-fi, had mixed, kicking off a trend of sci-fi elements in historical settings that would
05:47very quickly outright replace the usual pure historicals. These largely fell out of fashion
05:52by the time Patrick Troughton took over as the Doctor, and there hasn't been a single pure
05:56historical since Black Orchid in 1982.
05:59Number 5. The Stolen Earth and Journey's End
06:02Reality under threat from Davros and the Daleks, The Return of Rose, and David Tennant's 10th Doctor
06:07Regenerating, all with one episode still to go. It's not without reason that a lot of fans consider
06:13the Stolen Earth the most epic cliffhanger in the show's history, but it's also one of the most
06:17important too. In Journey's End's opening moments, Russell T. Davis resolves this unresolvable
06:22cliffhanger quite ingeniously, by having the Doctor blast his excess regeneration energy into a
06:28handily placed spare hand, allowing himself to heal without changing his face. In the process,
06:33he accidentally creates the Metacrisis Doctor, a human clone of his 10th incarnation. So all's well
06:38that ends well. Rose gets a human Doctor to stay with her on her alternate Earth, and the real
06:43Doctor gets to keep David Tennant's fan-favourite face. Jobs a good'un, except for one little quibble.
06:48Five years later, when Steven Moffat sat down to write Matt Smith's final episode, he realised
06:53something. If the Doctor's regeneration in The Stolen Earth counted, and after he'd sneakily inserted
06:58the War Doctor between 8 and 9 for the day of the Doctor, Matt Smith was actually the 13th Doctor.
07:03He had no more regenerations left, and in response, Moffat wrote The Time of the Doctor,
07:08where his crack-in-the-wall story arc culminated with the Doctor gaining a brand new set of lives
07:12from the Time Lords. If RTD had picked literally any other solution to his big Stolen Earth cliffhanger,
07:18Moffat's tenure as showrunner could have taken a very different course. But aren't we all glad
07:22that Moffat took the time to actually go back and research this and find the problem? Because
07:26there are so many shows where writers don't go back and check things, and then things don't make sense,
07:32and things contradict themselves, and if this had happened in Doctor Who, fans would have been pissed.
07:36Number 4. The TV Movie
07:38Before the 2005 revival, there was the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. And before the Doctor was getting up
07:45close and personal with Rose Tyler and River Song, there was Doctor Grace Holloway. The Paul McGann-fronted
07:50film made a lot of deliberate alterations to Doctor Who lore that have largely been ignored by the
07:55modern series and the fandom. Anybody remember when the Doctor was supposed to be half-human? But while
07:59the TV movie might have failed to have an effect on canon, it certainly set the tone for what was to come,
08:05by introducing the world to a younger, more action-oriented Doctor, there was a big departure from the
08:10fatherly figures of the classic series. McGann's Doctor pulled a gun on himself, chased an ambulance through
08:16San Francisco on a stolen motorcycle, and most shocking of all, kissed his companion.
08:20Good heavens! Now that might seem unremarkable today, but at the time, there was fan outrage, and many an internet
08:28forum descended into chaos. But unfortunately for those who liked their Doctor decidedly
08:33non-romantic, McGann's Doctor arguably became the blueprint for Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith's take on the
08:39character. Number 3. The War Machines
08:42With the show's original sci-fi historical episode rotation out the window, it wasn't long before another, even bigger
08:48change to the format snuck its way in. Visits to the present. Nowadays, the Doctor defending contemporary Earth
08:54from alien invasions is so fundamentally woven into the fabric of the show that it's taken for granted
09:00that it will happen at least once a year. So it may come as a surprise that it wasn't until the finale
09:04of the show's third season, The War Machines, that the TARDIS found its way back to 20th century London.
09:10The story takes full advantage of its modern setting, featuring a swinging 60s nightclub, the newly built
09:16landmark of Post Office Tower, and evil robots on the streets of London. Though the titular War Machines
09:21never caught on as the potential Dalek replacements they were hoped to be, the story's setting certainly
09:26did. It started something that would soon come to define the show, with the Doctor developing a firm
09:31fondness for our small blue planet, and even being trapped there for a few seasons in the early 70s.
09:36Number 2. The Brain of Morbius
09:38The second appearance of Robert Holmes in this list, and once again, it's a big one. Perhaps the biggest of
09:44all. In the climax of his 1976 story, The Brain of Morbius, the Doctor and Morbius, a Frankenstein's
09:51Time Lord whose head is a brain in a fishbowl, peak 70s television, have a mind-bending contest,
09:56during which we see Morbius, the Doctor, and his three previous incarnations. In addition,
10:01eight unknown faces were also shown, beginning one of the longest-running debates in Doctor Who
10:06fandom. Were these faces previous incarnations of the Doctor from before William Hartnell,
10:11or something else entirely? The show itself carried on treating Hartnell as the original
10:15incarnation of the Doctor, particularly during Moffat's tenure as showrunner, where references
10:19to the Doctor's numbers became common. That was, until 2020's The Timeless Children, where Chris
10:24Chibnall established that yes, those mysterious faces seen 44 years previously were, in fact,
10:29the Doctor, who had lived countless other lives pre-Hartnell. For all the fallout and controversy
10:33that followed this massive revelation, it is interesting to think that Chibnall was only picking up on an
10:39unused plot thread set up nearly half a century previously. Whether it was a plot thread that
10:43should have been left and buried is another debate entirely, but point still stands.
10:48Number one, The Daleks. No bug-eyed monsters. This was apparently one of Sidney Newman's directives
10:55when he and Verity Lambert were developing Doctor Who in 1963. Unfortunately for Newman,
11:00Terry Nation had other ideas, and his request was almost completely ignored in the show's second
11:04story, with the introduction of perhaps the greatest bug-eyed monsters of all, The Daleks.
11:09An immediate hit on broadcast, the seven-part serial that eventually became known as The Daleks,
11:14was instrumental in shifting the show away from its original goal of being educational,
11:19turning it into the sci-fi adventure we know and love today.
11:22Nation was quickly commissioned to write The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and many other writers turned
11:26their hands to creating their own fantastical space aliens. Without The Daleks, we might never have
11:31got The Cybermen, The Ice Warriors, The Silurians, Sontarans, Zygons, or even a second season at all.
11:37And An Earthly Child may have been Doctor Who's first episode, but The Daleks is when the show
11:42became what it is today. So I guess, yay for bug-eyed monsters! And that concludes our list,
11:48but for other ways Doctor Who has changed over the years, why not check out 10 Doctor Who changes
11:52that were completely justified? In the meantime, I've been Ellie for WhoCulture,
11:56and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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