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Doctor Who is full of iconic moments, from shocking cliffhangers to major plot twists. But what happens when these huge reveals lead to nothing? Join us as we explore 10 major moments in the show's history that ultimately had no impact or payoff.
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00:00Doctor Who is a show of many iconic and memorable moments.
00:04Plot twists, cliffhangers, romance, action and laughs, often all in the same episode.
00:09But sometimes, the show's biggest moments don't always have the impact or payoff that you'd think they would.
00:15I'm Ellie for Who Culture and these are 10 huge Doctor Who moments that didn't matter at all.
00:21Number 10, Mavity.
00:23No one quite knew what to expect from Wild Blue Yonder.
00:26But one thing we definitely didn't expect was a pre-title sequence featuring Isaac Newton and Gravity becoming Mavity?
00:34Immediately, fans began to wonder what the significance of this scene would be.
00:38We'd seen butterfly effect moments before where small changes create big ripples.
00:43Was this going to be something similar with the Doctor's mistake coming back to haunt him?
00:47Would an unassuming character say Gravity, revealing them to have some sort of greater cosmic awareness?
00:52Well, as it happened, no.
00:54The show committed to the bit by having characters refer to Gravity as Mavity throughout the Disney era,
00:59and even in a big Finnish Torchwood audio released just prior.
01:02But these references went nowhere, and history remained otherwise unchanged.
01:06Which begs the question, why bother?
01:09Was it just a gag, or was it just a way to wind fans up and generate content?
01:13Which maybe could be forgiven if Russell T. Davis hadn't hyped up Wild Blue Yonder's big secret cold open so
01:19much.
01:19Now, yes, I can already hear you pointing out that Mavity might still be resolved in the upcoming Christmas special.
01:25Though, with so much else to wrap up, it does seem doubtful, doesn't it?
01:29At this point, we might just have to accept that we're never going to fully understand the Mavity of the
01:34situation.
01:35You get it? You can see what I did there?
01:37Huh. Anyway.
01:39Number 9. The Doctor is President of the Time Lords
01:42The Deadly Assassin is a notable story for a number of reasons.
01:46It was the first story to feature the Doctor travelling alone with no companion.
01:51It was a story that got the show in trouble with what was perceived to be an overly violent, watery
01:55cliffhanger.
01:56Oh, and it also saw the Doctor casually become President of the Time Lords,
02:00a title he's held on and off ever since.
02:02Now, in fairness, the Doctor only becomes President by default when it transpires that the only other candidate,
02:08Chancellor Goth, conspired to kill Gallifrey's outgoing President.
02:12Corrupt politicians?
02:14Shock. Horror.
02:15Once the day is saved, the Doctor naturally runs a million miles away,
02:18presumably because he doesn't want to spend his days cutting ribbons and speaking in public.
02:23However, he does play President again twice in The Invasion of Time and Hellbent,
02:28purely because it suits him.
02:29Elsewhere, when the Time Lords try and get him to serve a proper term at the end of the Five
02:34Doctors,
02:34he's having none of it.
02:36So, while this does pop up here and there, it's never actually been properly explored.
02:40The Doctor as Lord President is a big deal,
02:43but never seems to carry any weight or last beyond a story.
02:46It's one of the many examples of how Gallifrey has been somewhat underutilised in Doctor Who history.
02:51Although, to be fair, there's a reason the Doctor ran away from it in the first place.
02:55Number 8. The Seventh Doctor's Mysterious Backstory
02:591980s script editor Andrew Cartmel had bold plans to reveal the Doctor as a founding figure
03:05from Time Lord society, much of which never actually ended up on screen because of classic
03:09Who's cancellation.
03:11Additionally, a line about the Doctor being far more than just another Time Lord was cut
03:16from Remembrance of the Daleks by producer John Nathan Turner.
03:19However, some references to this so-called Cartmel master plan did make it into Silver Nemesis
03:25via the 17th century aristocrat Lady Paineford, who is granted cosmic knowledge by the Nemesis statue.
03:32Specifically, she speaks of secrets concerning Gallifrey and the Time of Chaos, threatening
03:37to spill them if the Doctor doesn't play ball.
03:40Retroactively, we can perhaps read this all as an allusion to the Timeless Child,
03:45though the fact that the Doctor seems to know what Lady P is talking about muddies this theory somewhat.
03:50In the end, though, it all just amounted to nothing, through no fault of those involved.
03:54With Doctor Who taken off the air, there simply wasn't anywhere to develop these ideas further,
03:58despite the significance of what they were hinting at clearly being massive.
04:01In the end, it's probably for the best that we didn't learn too much about the Doctor's history anyway.
04:12It's a question that fans and disembodied blueheads have been asking for as long as Doctor Who has been around,
04:18so it might surprise you to learn that we actually got an answer back in 1979.
04:22During the Armageddon Factor, the fourth Doctor runs into his old classmate Drax,
04:27who greets him as Theta Sigma, a name that combines two letters from the Greek alphabet
04:32and, according to some sources, means God.
04:34In context, we've no reason to believe this isn't the Doctor's real name,
04:38yet it's never been mentioned again.
04:40Seriously, Moffat?
04:41You spent basically an entire era teasing Doctor Who,
04:45even though we'd known for over 30 years at that point.
04:48Did you not do your homework?
04:49The only other time the Doctor brings it up is when he encounters the similarly named
04:53Trevor Sigma in The Happiness Patrol, clarifying that Theta Sigma is just his old nickname.
04:59There are also symbols referring to Theta Sigma plastered onto the cliff face by River Song,
05:04the best character, in The Pandorica Opens.
05:06On balance, it's not entirely unsurprising that the show moved on from this so quickly.
05:11After all, once you've revealed the Doctor's name, where do you go next?
05:14It's a prime example of the question being more exciting than the answer,
05:18and no matter how thoughtful an answer the show's writers come up with,
05:21it's never going to match the mystery.
05:23Nor will said writers get a cheap chuckle whenever they have someone say,
05:26Doctor Who in the show again.
05:29Number 6. Mrs. Flood's Fourth Wall Breaks
05:32Due to the Disney era's premature end, many RTD2 plot threads are still unresolved.
05:39Who is the boss?
05:40Who picked up the master's tooth?
05:42And will the Doctor ever be reunited with Susan?
05:44One of the few things we did get an answer to is the identity of Mrs. Flood.
05:48And even then, we still have questions.
05:50Mainly, just what was the deal with all those fourth wall breaks?
05:53From her very first appearance, Mrs. Flood seemed to know she was being watched,
05:58addressing us directly in the Church on Ruby Road, Empire of Death, and the Robot Revolution.
06:03She told a baffled Cherry Sunday about storming down the gates of gold and seizing his kingdom in my true
06:09name.
06:09In Lux, she playfully referred to the Doctor's adventures as a show.
06:13Naturally, this had fans rabidly speculating that she could be the god of stories,
06:18manipulating events as though they were fiction.
06:20But in the end, it was all a load of old nonsense.
06:23This could have been building to some epic reveal.
06:26But instead, Mrs. Flood bi-generated into the Rani, and it all went out the window.
06:31What makes it even more frustrating is that Russell T. Davis reportedly has his own explanation,
06:36which he has no intention of sharing.
06:37Though at one point, it was going to appear in the Star Beast.
06:40Never seen an unanswered Doctor Who plot point before?
06:43If only.
06:455. Amy and Rory Losing Melody
06:48River Song, the best character, turning out to be Melody Pond,
06:52was an astonishing cliffhanger with major implications for everyone involved.
06:56However, one thing that's never followed up on is Amy and Rory's grief over losing their daughter.
07:02Consider how distraught Amy is when she realizes Melody has been swapped out for a flesh avatar in A Good
07:08Man Goes to War.
07:09That should have continued into Series 6B, with the Pond struggling to come to terms with the fact that they've
07:15missed out on raising their newborn.
07:16Instead, Let's Kill Hitler opens with Amy asking the Doctor if he's found Melody,
07:21as if he's been searching for the next segment of The Key to Time.
07:24Then we're quickly propelled into a whole other adventure, and the mavity of the situation is swiftly forgotten about.
07:29Of course, Melody does feature elsewhere in the story, in other, older incarnations.
07:33And the reveal that she was under the Pond's noses all along as Mel's is something of a consolation for
07:38them.
07:39But the huge and monumental significance of them not getting to raise their baby is essentially swept under the rug.
07:45Interestingly, this is something Stephen Moffat has admitted himself,
07:48and is one of the reasons he wanted to write another story focused on grief, which became Heaven Sent.
07:53He said, quote,
07:54I never found a way to have Amy and Rory grieve over their lost baby, and I still don't know
07:59how I would do that.
08:00I could never work out how to write that, so I just cut forward several months and rather ducked the
08:04issue.
08:05Well, at least we got a banger episode out of it.
08:07But the original storyline definitely wasn't done justice.
08:11Number 4.
08:12The 14th Doctor's Familiar Face
08:14From the moment the Doctor regenerated into David Tennant again, the question on everyone's lips was, why?
08:21Also, what?
08:22The real-world reason was clear, to draw in a big audience for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary.
08:27But we were promised an in-universe explanation as well, with lines like,
08:31why did this face come back, featuring prominently in all of the trailers.
08:35In a way, this mystery was the thrust of the entire 60th celebrations.
08:39But in the end, it was just the Doctor telling himself that he's old and needs to slow down, or
08:43something along those lines.
08:45Bit of a cheat, really, isn't it?
08:47I mean, like it or not, at least with Peter Capaldi, it was woven into the plot in a significant
08:52way.
08:53By saying 12 chose a face he met in Pompeii as a reminder to hold himself to the mark.
08:58Conversely, the answer for the 14th Doctor's face was so throwaway, that you could conceivably miss it quite easily.
09:04Now, in fairness, this might be one of those things where fans get carried away with speculation.
09:09At the time, we were all thinking that this was something to do with the Toymaker's meddling,
09:13or perhaps that it would be somehow linked to the Metacrisis Doctor.
09:16But then again, when the show presents something as a massive moment and spends a full year hyping it up,
09:22is it unreasonable to expect an equally massive answer?
09:25I don't think so.
09:26Let's face it, when it comes to actors coming back as different characters, it's always a bit of a scramble.
09:31Perhaps in the future, we should just treat these cases as the coincidences that they are, and leave it at
09:36that.
09:36Although, in Billy Piper's case, that probably won't be the route they go down.
09:40Number 3. The Timeless Child
09:43After all of that fuss, this really wasn't a big deal, was it?
09:47It's the controversial law change everyone is still talking about.
09:51But years on, did the Timeless Child actually change all that much?
09:55It really didn't.
09:56Having learned that she was adopted, and the progenitor for the Time Lords,
10:00the 13th Doctor is fundamentally still the same person.
10:02So it's more about the storytelling possibilities on offer.
10:05Some of which were delivered on in flux, but for the most part, pretty much nothing was done with the
10:10Timeless Child after the reveal itself.
10:12In Space Babies, the Doctor was back to his old Last of the Time Lords spiel,
10:16with a handful of throwaway mentions that he was adopted.
10:19And most of the stuff that was introduced along with the Timeless Child story,
10:22as in Tech Taeyun, The Division, The Fugitive Doctor, were underdeveloped and gone in a flash.
10:27Most puzzlingly of all, the whole thing with Tech Taeyun's fob watch turns out to be a bait and switch,
10:31with the Timeless Child not mentioned at all after the vanquishers, and completely absent from the power of the Doctor.
10:37Maybe Chris Chibnall didn't want to double down too much for fear of incurring the fandom's wrath any more than
10:42he already had.
10:44But either way, the net result is that the whole thing now feels a bit pointless.
10:49Number 2. Destroying Gallifrey. Again.
10:52One of the best choices Russell T. Davis made when he brought back Doctor Who in 2005 was to do
10:58away with Gallifrey
10:59and make the Doctor the last of their kind, something that defined the character for much of early New Who.
11:04The Time War wasn't just an interesting story concept, it drove the Doctor emotionally,
11:09and gave us so many fantastic character moments as a result.
11:12The culmination of this journey was the 50th anniversary,
11:15in which the Doctor was able to confront that Time War trauma and save themselves from it,
11:19which was an incredibly cathartic moment for both the character and the fans that had been on the journey since
11:252005.
11:26In the aftermath, this opened up new storytelling opportunities,
11:29such as the Doctor actually getting to visit Gallifrey in the Series 9 finale.
11:33Hellbent may be controversial, but at least with Gallifrey back,
11:37the show could now do things that weren't possible during the first eight years of the revival.
11:42From here, the natural next step would be to have the Doctor visit Gallifrey every now and then,
11:46and to tell new stories with the Time Lord.
11:48Oh, wait, what do you mean they blew it up again?
11:51Everything we just said about the Time War being an emotional catalyst at the core of the Doctor's character
11:56does not apply to exploded Gallifrey 2.
11:59This time, it is pointless.
12:01Beyond the actual story that was being told, it didn't affect the Doctor whatsoever,
12:05and when it's been brought up in more recent stories,
12:08it's felt like a more lightweight version of the original Time War arc.
12:12There are interesting possibilities for a universe with or without Gallifrey in it,
12:16but going forward, can we please not just blow it up for no reason?
12:201. The Daleks forgetting the Doctor
12:23Having faked his death at the end of Series 6,
12:26the 11th Doctor continued to lower his profile in Series 7
12:30by inadvertently erasing himself from the Daleks' memory banks,
12:33thanks to some computer trickery from Oswin.
12:36The Doctor knowing the Daleks, but the Daleks not knowing the Doctor,
12:39is a fascinating concept, which could have resulted in some cracking stories.
12:44But sadly, that's not what we got.
12:46Indeed, the only time we get to see the Doctor interact with Daleks that don't know who he is,
12:50is at the start of the Time of the Doctor, when he's waving around that Dalek eye stalk.
12:55By the time the Pepperpots invade the Papal Mainframe later in the same story,
12:59it's business as usual, and they're fully aware of the Doctor again.
13:03What a letdown.
13:03There is at least a reason given.
13:06We're told that the Daleks extracted some intel from Tasha Lem,
13:09but it feels like a pretty offhand way to do away with a super major plot point.
13:13Perhaps it was considered too confusing for the Doctor's oldest enemies to not know who he is,
13:18especially for a Christmas audience.
13:19Or maybe we're being too kind.
13:21Because let's be honest, when all is said and done,
13:23this was basically just a way to have the Daleks say,
13:26Doctor Who, wasn't it?
13:28And you know what?
13:29Fair enough.
13:30Fair enough.
13:32And that concludes our list.
13:34But for a huge Doctor Who moment that did matter,
13:37don't forget to check out my interview with Alex Kingston on the channel.
13:40Was that a bit of a stretch for a segue?
13:42Yes, it was.
13:43But I want to talk about my chat with Alex Kingston,
13:45and I will take every opportunity to do so.
13:48In the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture,
13:50and in the words of River Song herself,
13:52goodbye, sweeties.
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