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Doctor Who may be a show for families - but it's also far from cBeebies...
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00:00People talk about hiding behind the sofa from Doctor Who with good reason. It's a scary show,
00:04especially by the standards of family television, and there's a lot of stuff it probably wouldn't
00:07get away with if it wasn't already grandfathered in with the excuse of, but we've been doing it
00:12like this for decades. Seriously, how many early evening TV series regularly have dozens of people
00:16being brutally massacred by evil fascist alien robo tanks? Not many, I'd wager. But even with
00:21its reputation as a terrifying show, there have been moments in Doctor Who that step over the
00:26threshold from scary to actively traumatic, and while some of these moments are pretty
00:30obvious and right there in the text, there are more than a few that can easily slip under the
00:35radar. Until a handy list like this, that is. I'm Sean Ferrick for Who Culture, here with
00:4010 Traumatic Doctor Who Facts You'll Wish You Hadn't Heard.
00:43Number 10. Mancini's Restaurant Has a Children's Menu
00:46The beginning of Peter Capaldi's tenure as the Doctor marked a sudden and distinct change of
00:51tone. Gone was the whimsical fairy tale atmosphere of the Matt Smith era. In its place, deep breath
00:56introduced us to a 12th Doctor who was dark, brooding, unsure of himself, and potentially
01:01even willing to kill in cold blood, depending on how you interpret the episode's ending.
01:05Alongside the darker Doctor was a suitably dark premise, with deep breath seeing a return
01:09of the clockwork droids from the girl in the fireplace. This new group of robots, this time
01:14from the SS Marie Antoinette, quickly get back to their old tricks, setting up the fake Mancini's
01:18family restaurant and harvesting customers' body parts to rebuild their ship. In some particularly
01:23gruesome imagery, they even repurpose their victim's skin to make a hot air balloon.
01:27But the most distressing aspect of this is also the easiest to miss. Mancini's is a family
01:32restaurant and they have a children's menu. As the Doctor confirms to a horrified Clara,
01:37we are the menu, which indicates that the children's menu in question actually consists
01:41of kids' body parts, as opposed to turkey dinosaurs and potato waffles. The robotic staff of the SS Madame
01:47de Pompadour massacring its human crew to use their bodies for scrap is already harrowing enough,
01:51but imagining the same happening to innocent children is on a completely different level.
01:55No wonder Moffat decided to leave that one as a background detail instead of bringing attention to it.
02:00Number 9. The Ood Abattoir
02:03It's not just the way a monster looks that makes them scary, it's the reason they look the way they do.
02:09This was the case for the Suited Silence, the cloth-faced Mondassian Cybermen, and the bandaged
02:14Foretold. It was also the case for the Ood, not because of their mottled skin and pink fronds,
02:19but because of their translation orbs, which are stitched onto them by the merciless Ood
02:24operations. It's an ironic name for a company that literally performs surgery on its workforce,
02:29removing their secondary hind brains to make the necessary alterations. It's a grim thought,
02:33but the Ood as we know them have been mutilated. Planet of the Ood writer Keith Temple originally
02:39planned to make this more explicit with a sequence set inside the Abattoir-like conversion centre.
02:44Though deemed too horrific for the finished episode, this material was reinstated in the
02:48Planet of the Ood novelisation which was released in 2023, and it reads as follows.
02:53The hydraulic system of surgical devices hanging above the conveyor belt a short distance away
02:57had one purpose, to amputate natural Ood's hind brains. So if you thought that Donna went through
03:03the ringer seeing the Ood locked in a cage like cattle, her trip to the Ood sphere was nearly
03:07much more harrowing. Number 8. The Extremis Simulation Wasn't a One-Time Thing
03:14Simulation theory has been a topic of discussion on various corners of the internet for years now,
03:19so it's surprising it took Doctor Who so long to get around to using it for an episode. But when it
03:23eventually showed up in series 10's Extremis, it did not disappoint. Stephen Moffat's script really
03:29leans into the psychological horror of discovering you live in a simulation, incorporating more references
03:34to, and depictions of, suicide than most people would think possible in a primetime BBC drama.
03:40What's more, he really sells that these simulations aren't just two-dimensional copies of the real
03:45characters. They're in many ways sentient in their own right, feeling both the physical pain
03:49and existential dread of the situation they find themselves in. Which makes it all the more grim
03:54when you realise that this isn't the only time the monks have run a version of this simulation.
03:59In fact, they've been creating full, realised copies of our world again and again and again,
04:04repeatedly putting billions upon billions of simulated humans through the same terrifying
04:09experience of realising they're in a game before being switched off. Even the Doctor has died multiple
04:14times over, as the monks coldly inform him towards the end of the episode. Killing the Doctor once is
04:19a huge feat, so doing it on repeat takes a frightening level of power. Number 7. Gallifraean
04:24children are forced to leave their families. The Time Lords don't exactly have a great reputation as a
04:30species, generally being seen as pompous, arrogant elitists who consider themselves to be above the
04:35other races of the galaxy, but even by their low standards their parenting tactics could use a bit
04:40of work. While in most human cultures a coming of age usually involves a sort of party, or maybe
04:45handing down of a family heirloom to the next generation, or even a knackered old car, the Time Lords have a
04:50different take on things. As the Doctor explains in The Sound of Drums, children of Gallifrae
04:54are taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Time Lord Academy, where they stare
04:59into the Untempered Schism, a literal hole in the fabric of space and time up in the Gallifraean
05:04mountains. His use of the word taken implies that the kids don't actually get a say in the matter,
05:08and this had results that were about as successful as you'd expect. In the words of the Doctor,
05:12some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad. We at WhoCulture are not claiming to
05:17be parenting experts, but perhaps the Time Lords would have less trouble with renegade megalomaniacs like the
05:22Master and the Rani if they didn't snatch every eight-year-old child from their families to stare
05:27into the infinite abyss of all existence. Just a thought. Number 6, Unit massacred Silurian civilians.
05:35In modern Doctor Who, Unit is generally presented as a force for good. They share the Doctor's
05:39science-based approach, they employ many of the Doctor's ex-companions and keep a watchful eye on
05:43the rest, and the meetings between Kate Stewart and the TARDIS team are often filled with hugs and
05:47happy reunions. But back in the 1970s was a very different story. Unit, as it first appeared,
05:52militaristic, secretive, and not above completely ignoring the Doctor's advice whenever they decided
05:56they had a better idea, as seen in Doctor Who and the Silurians. After all the usual misunderstandings
06:01between humanity and our reptilian predecessors, the Doctor seems to have established an uneasy
06:06truce between the two Earth species. However, as the Doctor makes his way back to London he
06:10witnesses an explosion in the distance and realises with horror that the Brigadier has ordered Unit to
06:15destroy the caves above the Silurian bunkers, permanently sealing them in and condemning the base's entire
06:20population to an eventual death in cryostasis. This wasn't just a military installation either.
06:25Considering the Silurian's plans to repopulate the Earth, there will have been civilians in cryosleep,
06:29and maybe even children. Even worse, at this point nobody was even sure whether this was the only
06:34Silurian base still functional. Unit wasn't just committing mass murder, they were attempting a
06:38genocide. For all the doctors reminiscing about him now, the Brigadier could be a ruthless pragmatist,
06:42and the two rarely agreed on anything. It'll be fascinating to see if events like this get brought up in the
06:47upcoming spin-off, The War Between the Land and the Sea, which deals with a conflict between Unit and
06:51the Silurian's aquatic cousins, the Sea Devils. Number five, Riggsy had to deal with Clara's corpse.
06:58As far as companion's deaths go, Clara's concludes on a comparatively positive note. Though she'll always
07:03have to return to the trapped street at the moment of her death to prevent any paradoxical timeline
07:07shenanigans, she has her own TARDIS to travel the universe with in the meantime, and Maisie Williams'
07:11immortal a shielder to keep her company. Compared to Moffat's other companion deaths, this seems like a pretty
07:15good way to go. But at the end of the day, she is still dead on Trap Street, and that's going to be
07:19particularly traumatic for one person in particular, Riggsy, Clara's friend, who she first met in the
07:24Excellent Series 8 episode Flatline. Though this wasn't featured in the episode itself, the shooting
07:29script for Face the Raven contains the rather grim note that the doctor tasked Riggsy with taking
07:34Clara's body back to her family and informing Coal Hill School of her death. It's tough to imagine him
07:38lugging his friend's corpse out of Trap Street, and he won't have had much help either. The doctor can't
07:42have returned as his memories of Clara were wiped, and presumably a shielder won't be able to help
07:46either as her return would mean crossing time streams with her younger self, which means that Riggsy is
07:50left alone in the Trap Street with Clara's dead body, and with absolutely no knowledge that Clara
07:54actually got to live a full life travelling around the universe before her death. Poor bloke.
08:00Number 4. There Were Real Bones in the Cave of Skulls?
08:04Doctor Who's second serial, The Daleks, saw the doctor face his most enduring enemy for the first time.
08:10However, debut instalment, An Unearthly Child had sent the first TARDIS travellers to an environment
08:15that was arguably just as hostile. The Daleks might be proper monsters, complete with grating voices and
08:20metal tanks, but the cavemen aren't much better, nor is prehistoric Earth much better than the
08:25petrified jungle of Skaro. And if that wasn't bad enough, things were pretty grim behind the scenes
08:29too. Aside from the pressure of this being the first Doctor Who story to go before cameras,
08:32it was all manner of unsavoury set dressing to contend with. Shrubbery ridden with insects,
08:37fur skins ridden with fleas, and for the Cave of Skull set, countless replica skulls with some
08:42real bones thrown in for good measure. Yep, that's right, Doctor Who's first ever story
08:45featured actual bones, sourced from an abattoir by designer Barry Newbery. As you can imagine,
08:50under those hot studio lights they didn't exactly smell like roses. It's pretty shocking and a stark
08:54reminder of how different production standards were in the 1960s compared to today, where you would
08:59fully expect something like that to be a constructed prop. Number 3. Not all cyber conversions are painless.
09:06Cyber conversion is already a pretty horrific process. It's hard not to be slightly traumatised
09:10by the idea of having your body forcibly modified, your brain stuffed into a metal shell,
09:15and all of your emotions and free will artificially suppressed, leaving you an unthinking, unfeeling
09:19machine. But if that's all that happens to you when you're caught by the Cybermen, you can count
09:24yourself lucky, because for some people it's even worse. Sometimes people are awake and conscious during
09:28the conversion process. The most notable and spine chilling example of this is probably in Rise of the
09:33Cybermen, when the homeless test subjects kidnapped by Cybus Industries can be heard screaming in agony
09:39as the cyber conversion process begins. Possibly even more horrific is in 1985's Attack of the Cybermen,
09:45when the Doctor encounters Lytton, a recurring character audiences were already familiar with,
09:49midway through the conversion process. Not only is Lytton fully aware of what's happening to him,
09:53he is able to communicate, begging the Doctor to kill him and end his suffering before he finally becomes
09:58a Cyberman. Lisa from the Torchwood episode Cyberwoman is another example of this, with the Cybermen needing
10:03soldiers quickly toward the end of the Battle of Canary Wharf and therefore not having the time to
10:08put people under before the conversion process began. We're largely led to believe that cyber conversion
10:13is fast and painless, but this isn't always the case. Number 2 Skye was planning to take her life
10:20I doubt there was anybody watching Doctor Who in 2008 who isn't still a little traumatized by the events of
10:24Midnight, which sits alongside Blink and Turn Left as one of the scariest most disturbing episodes of
10:29the Tenth Doctor's era. It's impressive then that there are still additional layers in the behind
10:33the scenes that can make the episode even more traumatizing. In the episode's DVD commentary,
10:37writer Russell T Davies reveals that Skye Silvestri, the unfortunate woman who is possessed by the
10:42mysterious entity and later killed, was planning to take her own life once the Tor Shuttle reached the
10:47planet's waterfall destination. This undoubtedly was related to her recent breakup, which is mentioned in the
10:51episode itself, but the exact reason she's on that shuttle is never disclosed. As Russell explains,
10:55she's on her way to a waterfall palace, but she says, I'm on a schedule, which is like, what for?
11:00What on earth are you going to a waterfall on a schedule for? From this we can infer that the
11:05Midnight entity didn't just choose Skye at random, it was specifically taking advantage of somebody at
11:09their absolute emotional lowest and using them to hurt others. To make matters even worse, she was lucky
11:14enough to be on the shuttle with the Doctor. In any other scenario he would have attempted to stop Skye from
11:19going through with it, but instead all he could do was watch her die.
11:23Number 1. The Doctor Painted Clara's Portrait
11:27Heaven Sent is widely considered to be one of the high points of modern Doctor Who and arguably one
11:31of the best episodes in the series entire run. Part of the reason this episode is held in such high
11:35regard is that due to its endlessly looping narrative there are so many little details and intricacies that
11:40only become apparent on the second, third or even fourth rewatch, so it's no wonder that we're still
11:44realising little details that passed us by all these years later. One of the most heartbreaking
11:49elements of the time loop, yes even sadder than the mote of 12th Doctor's skulls, is the portrait
11:54of Clara. Why is it there and how did it get there? Well that first part is easy enough to answer. The
11:59confession dial is designed to beat the Doctor into submission, so taunting him with the ghostly image
12:03of his dead friend is a pretty cruel way to wear him down, but what isn't so apparent is that according
12:08to the writer Stephen Moffat, this painting of Clara was actually created by the Doctor himself. This means that in one of the
12:12this means that in one of the earlier loops the grieving Doctor took the time to somehow find paint,
12:17brushes and a canvas and painstakingly draw a portrait of his lost friend, all while dodging
12:22the mysterious wraith that perpetually stalks the castle. As if Series 9's finale wasn't sad enough
12:27already. And on that cheerful note that is everything for our list today folks, thank you so much for
12:32watching along, you are awesome, you are wonderful, keep things wibbly wobbly and make sure that you're
12:35following us on the various socials, we are at Whoculture, I am at Sean Ferrick, most importantly make sure that
12:39you're subscribed to the channel and look after yourself. I will see you again soon, thanks so much for being
12:44here. Bye bye.
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