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The moments that changed EVERYTHING for certain Doctor Who characters.
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00:00Over the years, Doctor Who has presented us with many, many situations, and then flipped them on their heads,
00:05much to the shock and delight of everyone watching.
00:08These reveals often changed what we thought we knew about a character or story,
00:12and featured some truly brilliant drama, with ramifications across a single episode, a whole series,
00:18and sometimes, though rarely, across the entire rest of the show.
00:21So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, here with 10 best everything-you-know-is-a-lie moments in Doctor Who.
00:28Number 10. The Bracewell Bomb in Victory of the Daleks
00:33When the Doctor and Amy turn up in World War II London,
00:36they discover that Winston Churchill and his scientists have developed a new superweapon to use against the Nazis.
00:42He calls them Ironsides, but the Doctor, and everyone watching at home, immediately recognises them as those pesky Daleks.
00:49In this episode, Scarrow's favourite sons, or daughters, or others,
00:53it's never really quite explained how Dalek gender actually works,
00:56were supposedly invented by Professor Edwin Bracewell,
00:59a kind Scottish fella who seems immensely proud of his work.
01:03However, halfway through the episode, poor old Bracewell's reality is shattered,
01:07when he discovers that he didn't create the Ironsides.
01:10In fact, they created him.
01:12Oh, and he's also a bomb that's about to explode.
01:14Talk about kicking someone while they're down.
01:16Bracewell had memories of a life he'd never actually lived,
01:19which was a particularly cruel thing for the Daleks to do, even by their standards.
01:23But on the plus side, those memories come in handy during a heartwarming scene
01:27where Amy forces the Professor to embrace his humanity,
01:30which cancels the countdown on the bomb.
01:32You feel genuinely sorry for Bracewell,
01:35as he desperately tries to cling to his implanted human emotions and memories,
01:39and it makes for a strong emotional beat,
01:41and a standout moment for new companion Amy in an otherwise average episode,
01:45especially when you remember that it introduced us to those Skittle Daleks.
01:49Number 9. Time is an actual living thing in The Vanquishers
01:54Doctor Who can get pretty detailed in its explanation of the space-time continuum.
01:59Equally, it can describe it as wibbly-wobbly.
02:01There's no real consistency, let's be honest.
02:03However, during the Flux story arc that made up New Who's 13th series,
02:08it was revealed that all those past explanations of time were totally wrong.
02:12The Doctor ends up on a planet called Time,
02:14the epicentre of the Force throughout the universe.
02:17By the end of the series, she actually comes face-to-face
02:20with the thing she's been travelling through all these years.
02:23Time itself.
02:24Time first appears as Swarm, Flux's main villain,
02:27before eventually morphing into the 13th Doctor.
02:30It's hardly the most inspired depiction,
02:32but regardless, this avatar of time completely changes everything
02:36we thought we knew about the fourth dimension in Doctor Who.
02:39Up to this point, it had been a natural force with no agenda of its own.
02:43Now, here it was, not only sentient, but able to communicate, to think, to feel.
02:48Even the Doctor is surprised, commenting,
02:50I always wondered what time would look like when it initially appears
02:53as a swirling mass of purple particles.
02:55And if the Doctor is surprised, then you know it's a big deal.
02:59Number 8.
02:59The Time Lords are alive in the end of time.
03:02Like the War Doctor twist several years later,
03:05the reveal of the Time Lords in the end of time changed Doctor Who forever.
03:08Though we'd been led to believe that the Time Lords had perished in the Time War,
03:12and that the Doctor was the last of them,
03:13David Tennant's final regular appearance as the 10th Doctor
03:16saw his people return in truly epic fashion.
03:19Turns out that the Time Lords, the Daleks, and everything else in the Time War
03:23had been sealed inside a bubble of sorts.
03:26Then, after getting fed up of staring into Galactic Groundhog Day,
03:29Lord President Rassilon, or Bond, James Bond,
03:33had launched a plan to pull his planet out of the loop.
03:36This plan involved the Master, the drums inside his head,
03:38and a special diamond, but the long and short of it is,
03:41the Time Lords were several times more alive than we thought they were.
03:44Literally everything we thought we knew about the Time War,
03:47Gallifrey, and the Time Lords themselves changed in this episode.
03:51Also, Timothy Dalton as Rassilon?
03:54Instant yes.
03:55Number 7.
03:56It came like a miracle in The Beast Below.
03:59Matt Smith's second full episode as the Doctor took him to the UK.
04:03Well, a version of it that was floating through space.
04:05After the Earth fell victim to deadly solar flares,
04:08the United Kingdom packed up its people and put them on a giant spaceship.
04:11Kind of like that ship from WALL-E, except everyone isn't out of shape.
04:15The Doctor and Amy Pond soon discover that the vessel isn't powered by engines,
04:18but rather a giant star whale carrying the entire country on its back.
04:22The government captured the creature and forced it to help them,
04:25sending shockwaves to its brain to essentially drive it through space.
04:28It's pretty appalling behaviour,
04:30but it was necessary in order for the nation to survive.
04:33Or was it?
04:34With Amy's help, the electrocution is stopped,
04:36and the star whale keeps on floating.
04:39Turns out that it wanted to help the entire time,
04:41and would have gladly carried the ship without being tortured.
04:44It's a really powerful reveal,
04:46particularly that final lonely and kind conversation between the Doctor and Amy,
04:50scored to perfection by the maestro that is Murray Gold.
04:53And it leaves everyone stunned.
04:55It's heartbreaking to think about the unnecessary pain the star whale endured,
04:59but this episode's message is ultimately a good one,
05:02restoring faith in the idea that the universe is full of selfless people,
05:06even if they are giant space fish.
05:086. Jackson Lake is not the Doctor in The Next Doctor
05:13Fans were extremely confused when the build-up to the 2008 Christmas special
05:17teased veteran actor David Morrissey as The Next Doctor.
05:21Though we learned that David Tennant was leaving two months before the episode aired,
05:25surely this Morrissey guy wasn't actually The Next Regeneration, right?
05:29Well, no. As it turns out, Jackson Lake, the character played by Morrissey,
05:33was just a regular bloke.
05:34His Time Lord cosplay was a result of an encounter with the Cybermen and an info stamp.
05:39This contained all the information the Cybermen had on the Doctor,
05:42and it fused with Lake's own memories following the death of his wife.
05:45And the end result?
05:46Well, Lake thinks that he's the TARDIS landlord.
05:49While we all knew that this would turn out to be a bait-and-switch,
05:52the actual reveal of Lake's tragic past was really well done,
05:55with Morrissey acting his socks off.
05:57And for some extra bonus points, we got a quick Paul McGann cameo as well.
06:01Number 5.
06:02Ruth Clayton is The Doctor in Fugitive of the Jadoon.
06:07Absolutely nobody was prepared for the events of Series 12's Fugitive of the Jadoon.
06:12What initially seemed like a standard mid-series romp involving everyone's favourite space rhinos
06:16quickly devolved into a twist that not only changed the lives of Ruth Clayton and The Doctor,
06:22but changed Doctor Who as we know it.
06:24Ruth is an ordinary woman with vague hints that there might be more to her,
06:28hints that are confirmed when she batters a platoon of Jadoon, not on the moon,
06:32and tears off their leader's horn.
06:33Savage.
06:34Turns out that not only is Ruth the titular fugitive,
06:37she's also The Doctor, with her simple human life being a lie to mask her real identity.
06:42That mask is lifted in a spine-tingling scene set at a lighthouse,
06:46where actress Jo Martin utters those immortal words,
06:49Hello, I'm The Doctor.
06:51Doctor Who fans were confused, the Doctor herself was confused,
06:55and well, everyone was really confused.
06:57This story arc may not have led to great things for The Fugitive Doctor,
07:01but the reveal itself was incredible, and that cannot be denied.
07:05Number 4.
07:05The Shadow Test in Extremis
07:08Now let's not deny it, at some point in our lives,
07:11we've all suspected that we might be part of a Matrix or Truman show scenario,
07:15where our existence isn't what it seems.
07:17Bill and Nardole find themselves in the middle of that situation in Series 10's Extremis,
07:22where they stumble across a group of suicidal scientists,
07:25who are about to blow themselves sky-high because they believe their world isn't real.
07:28To demonstrate why they believe this,
07:30one of the scientists gets Bill and Nardole to take the Shadow Test.
07:34They both pick a random number and say it at the same time,
07:36and bizarrely, they both say the exact same number every single time,
07:40a bit like the Midnight Entity repeating everything.
07:43Suitably spooked by this turn of events,
07:45Bill and Nardole retreat to a re-use set from The Girl Who Waited.
07:48We kid, but wait, is it actually?
07:50Where Nardole deduces that they're basically in a video game,
07:54confirming this suspicion he's melted into pixels
07:56when he tries to escape the confines of this very much virtual reality.
08:01Those scenes of mass suicide are incredibly dark for Doctor Who,
08:04and the reveal that our characters are essentially on board the holodeck
08:07is a strong moment in one of the best episodes of Series 10.
08:11Number 3.
08:12John Smith accepts his fate in Human Nature and the Family of Blood
08:16Now this entry is a little bit different,
08:18because instead of the audience discovering a lie,
08:21it's about a character on the show realising the truth.
08:24That character's name is John Smith, aka the Doctor in Disguise.
08:29After the evil Family of Blood begin pursuing the Doctor of Martha,
08:32our hero decides to mask his Time Lord energy by pretending to be a human.
08:36He transfers his essence into a fob watch, asking his companion to guard it.
08:40The Doctor forgets everything, truly believing he is a humble English schoolteacher.
08:44He even falls in love with a regular human woman,
08:47although being a Time Lord never really put him off that either.
08:50Hello, Rose.
08:51The penny drops for old Johnny Boy once the family catches up with him.
08:54Torn between his beloved Joan and his role as the universe's defender,
08:58he tearfully opens the watch and brings back the Doctor.
09:01It's a really sad scene, aided by visions of what his life with Joan could have been.
09:06It's challenging, thoughtful stuff, which is what makes this episode of Who so damn great.
09:12I'm not crying.
09:13You're crying.
09:14Okay, maybe I'm crying too.
09:16Number 2.
09:17The Pandorica Trap in The Pandorica Opens
09:20The Pandorica is the stuff of legend.
09:23Literally.
09:23It's a mythical prison hiding under Stonehenge,
09:26said to house the most dangerous individual in the universe.
09:29When the 11th Doctor finally comes across this bad boy,
09:32he is confronted by an alliance of his greatest enemies.
09:35We're talking Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, the Hoiks.
09:38Wait a second, the Hoiks?
09:40What on earth is that one doing there?
09:41That creature that turned up for like five seconds in Love and Monsters
09:44and was never even named?
09:46That one?
09:47Okay then, anyway.
09:48This band of baddies chillingly announces that the Pandorica is ready.
09:52When it slides apart, it is revealed to contain...
09:54nothing!
09:56Nothing but an empty chair.
09:57In this moment, we learn that the Pandorica was a prison built for the Doctor
10:01by his greatest foes, who had come together to trap him
10:05in order to prevent the TARDIS from exploding, as had been prophesied.
10:09Though pre-episode rumours and theories suggested that the Pandorica was a prison,
10:13the impact of the reveal nonetheless hit like a bomb, particularly for poor 11.
10:18The Doctor goes from hero to zero in a heartbeat,
10:21his enemies literally dragging him towards his fate.
10:24He did not see that coming.
10:27But anyway, yeah, the Hoiks.
10:29Seriously, Moffat, out of all of the creatures you could have chosen,
10:32why that one?
10:34Number 1.
10:35The Master is Revealed in Utopia
10:37After being flung to the end of the universe,
10:40the Doctor, Martha, and Captain Jack find themselves surrounded
10:42by the last surviving dregs of the human race.
10:45Among them is Professor Yana,
10:46an old scientist attempting to get the humans to Utopia where they'll be safe.
10:51Supposedly.
10:52But Yana has to be a good guy, doesn't he?
10:54He's played by Derek Jacoby.
10:56Look how kind his face is.
10:58Unfortunately, Jacoby is such a good actor that he even fooled the Doctor,
11:02as revealed when Yana opens a pocket watch,
11:04bringing his memories and his true identity back to him.
11:07He is the Master.
11:09Jacoby's transformation from kind old man to power-hungry villain is sensational.
11:15It's like he just flips a switch,
11:16and the build-up to the reveal is as tense as you could possibly imagine.
11:20You actually feel sorry for Yana at first as he breaks down in front of Martha and Chantho,
11:25before your sympathy gradually fades as it becomes apparent
11:28that this deranged killer is not someone you should be rooting for.
11:32This moment is often cited as one of Who's greatest plot twists for a reason,
11:36and it still holds up all these years later.
11:39And that concludes our list.
11:40If you think we missed something, then do let us know in the comments below.
11:43And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe,
11:46and tap that notification bell so you never miss a WhoCulture video again.
11:50I've been Ellie with WhoCulture,
11:51and in the words of Riversong herself,
11:53goodbye, sweeties.
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