- 2 months ago
It's a show about a time traveller, but which episodes handle the concept of time travel the best? We explore the most clever, emotional, and mind-bending time travel plots in Doctor Who's long history, examining the rules, the consequences, and the wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00For a show about a time traveller, Doctor Who deals with the perils of mucking around with our past and
00:04future with a surprising lack of regularity.
00:07This year's festive special, Eve of the Daleks, is the first time that the show has properly explored the phenomenon
00:13of a time loop,
00:14barring flirtations in the likes of Carnival of Monsters and Megalos.
00:18So when else in the show's 58-year history has it explored the ramifications of travelling through time?
00:24And in the reedian genesis of the programme, what do these stories teach a young audience about cause and effect,
00:29consequences and morality?
00:31Time travel may seem like a tempting prospect.
00:33It's what finally convinced Rose Tyler to climb aboard, after all.
00:37And yet, it can also provide you with a devastating moral dilemma or an insight into the horrors of history.
00:43Let's travel back across 58 years of time and space through the prism of our favourite tea-time sci-fi
00:49show.
00:49Watch out for butterflies and remember, don't interfere unless Catherine Tate asks you to.
00:54With that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, and this is 10 Best Doctor Who Time Travel Stories.
01:00Number 10.
01:01City of Death.
01:03Forget Biff Tannen's almanac.
01:04The greatest use of time travel for financial gain can be found in Douglas Adams' classic Doctor Who story.
01:10Trapped on Earth and splintered across human history, Scaroff needs funding for the time experiments that will make him whole
01:16again.
01:17In what is one of the most ingenious villainous schemes in the history of Doctor Who, he plots to steal
01:22the Mona Lisa using alien technology.
01:25Not only that, but centuries earlier, he also managed to convince Leonardo da Vinci to paint six copies of the
01:31famous artwork.
01:32Once the news breaks, he intends to sell one each to the seven nefarious art collectors who covered the painting.
01:38After all, they're hardly going to brag about it, are they?
01:41It's a wonderfully inventive use of past and present communicating with each other, and clearly influenced Stephen Moffat's later work.
01:48Not only that, but the accident that splinters Scaroff across time is the very spark that begins life on Earth.
01:54In one of the best jokes in the whole story, the brutish but well-meaning Duggan puts human history back
01:59on course by lamping Scaroff with the most important punch in human history.
02:04It's a simple resolution completely at odds with the tricksy time narrative, which is why it's utterly hilarious.
02:10Number 9. The Aztecs
02:12Whilst Doctor Who had visited cavemen and travelled with Marco Polo, it was the sixth serial, The Aztecs, which first
02:19attempted to deal with the morality of time travel.
02:22Travelling to 15th century Mexico, history teacher Barbara Wright is mistaken for a god, and is tempted to use this
02:28newfound status to save the historic civilisation, much to the horror of the Doctor.
02:33William Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill had great chemistry throughout their time together on the show,
02:38and their scenes where they argue about interfering in Aztec society are one of the early standouts in the show.
02:44It's also here that the rules of time travel in Doctor Who are firmed up.
02:48Over the course of The Aztecs, you can't rewrite history, not one line, becomes,
02:52You can't rewrite history, but you can change one man's mind.
02:56Much like the Doctor and Donna in The Fires of Pompeii, Barbara saves the life of Ortlok by opening his
03:01eyes beyond his faith.
03:02The final scene with the Doctor suggesting this to Barbara is wonderful.
03:06She has succeeded on a small scale in her attempt to end the human sacrifices at the heart of Aztec
03:12society.
03:13Number 8. Father's Day.
03:14Did I mention it also travels in time?
03:16Were the words that convinced Rose Tyler to leave Mickey and run through the doors of the TARDIS?
03:21In Father's Day, we find out why that was such a deal-breaker.
03:24It starts, as universe-ending catastrophes often do, quite simply.
03:29The Doctor agrees to take Rose back to the 1980s to see her parents get married.
03:33Deciding she wants to be there for her father at the moment of his untimely death,
03:37Rose makes a choice that threatens to doom all of mankind.
03:40The first half of the Ninth Doctor's era is quite breezy, murderous Dalek and PTSD aside,
03:45but it's the long game of Father's Day that Russell T Davies begins to introduce the audience to the more
03:50painful side of travelling in time.
03:52We see it in Adam's greed in the long game, and we see it again here.
03:56At odds with earlier and later attempts to just save one, everything hinges on Rose's decision to save her dad's
04:02life.
04:03By giving this one man a new lease of life, time and reality begins to unravel.
04:07There are rules to saving people's lives, and you can't just do it willy-nilly, as Rose finds out to
04:12devastating effect.
04:13Number 7. The Curse of Fenric.
04:15The seventh Doctor's transition from Cosmic Clown to Dark Manipulator comes to a thrilling climax in 1989's The Curse of
04:23Fenric.
04:24It's discovered that the Doctor has been playing a long game across time and space against Fenric, an evil from
04:30the dawn of time.
04:31Picking up elements from previous adventures such as Dragonfire and Silver Nemesis,
04:36it's a game that takes place in the present, the future, and concludes in our past.
04:41Wibbly-wobbly, etc., etc.
04:43Much like City of Death, this is a story that portrays time zones taking place simultaneously.
04:48The Doctor can seamlessly travel from one to the other, wherever he needs to be.
04:52It's one of the main appeals of the show.
04:54An additional time travel spin is given to the story when Ace meets widowed mother Kathleen Dudman,
04:59who is revealed to be her grandmother.
05:01It's a reveal that comes towards the end of the story,
05:04after Ace has cradled and made googly eyes at her own mother as a baby, the mother that she hated.
05:09It's a moving moment and another time travel trope we don't often see in the show.
05:13Who were these people in our lives before we met them?
05:15They were scared little children like the rest of us.
05:18Number 6.
05:19Blink
05:20Originally written as an apology for being unable to produce a two-parter for the third season,
05:25Stephen Moffat's Blink has become one of the all-time great Doctor Who stories,
05:29and it barely features the Doctor.
05:31And yet, it is totemic of the fundamentals of the show.
05:34Time travel, creepy monsters, and resourceful human beings.
05:37The Weeping Angels feed on time paradoxes,
05:40and their method of dispatch is heartbreaking, poetic, and pure Moffat.
05:44They remove you from your own time,
05:46and deposit you in another time and place to live out the rest of your days
05:49with your family and friends none the wiser.
05:51Blink is the greatest iteration of this central conceit,
05:54and we see Sally Sparrow chatted up by a young policeman
05:57who's simultaneously aged and dying in a hospital bed across town.
06:01It's the same rain.
06:02A beautiful, melancholic portrayal of time being the enemy.
06:06It's a work of genius that would stylistically form the backbone of Doctor Who from 2010 to 2017.
06:15Having unwittingly exposed a future human civilization to the common cold,
06:19the Doctor and his companions race against time to find a cure and save the day.
06:23Leaving in the TARDIS, they are surprised to materialize in the exact same spot seven centuries later.
06:29The Doctor and his companions' previous visit eventually led to a bloody uprising by the enslaved Monoids,
06:34who now oppress their former captors.
06:36Would any of this have happened if the TARDIS hadn't arrived?
06:39Well, possibly yes, but it's the virus that has exposed the inequality on board the Ark ship.
06:44This 1965 story is a real underrated classic,
06:47and has increases in relevance as we continue to deal with the pandemic.
06:51Steven's concern over what else the travelers have exposed other civilizations to
06:55is one of the most chilling moments in all of Doctor Who.
06:58The very fact that the Doctor has a time machine allows us as an audience
07:01to experience the world that the Doctor leaves behind once he's saved the day.
07:05It's a shame the series doesn't do it more often.
07:08Number 4.
07:09The Pandorica Opens and the Big Bang
07:11Amy's not wrong when she says this is where things get complicated.
07:15In the finale of Matt Smith's debut series,
07:17there is a lot of zipping about and general mucking around with time.
07:21Little Amelia is thirsty, so the Doctor steals a drink from an earlier version of Little Amelia.
07:25The Doctor's trapped inside the Pandorica,
07:27so zips back to give Rory his sonic screwdriver to release him after he's already freed.
07:31It makes mincemeat of causality, and is having an absolute ball.
07:35To look too deeply into the hows and whys of everything
07:37would likely cause the whole episode to fall apart,
07:40but it's the sort of breezy, zippy, time-travel humor you can achieve
07:43when you've got a vortex manipulator.
07:45Cheap and nasty time-travels, sure, but also a bloody good laugh.
07:49At the time, a lot of fans complained that it was too complicated for kids.
07:53Too complicated for grown-ups, perhaps?
07:55Kids were probably having a whale of a time with how silly it all is.
07:58It's the tricksy narrative of Blink blown up to series finale proportions,
08:01and is one of the all-time great Moffat finales.
08:05Number 3.
08:05A Christmas Carol
08:06Stephen Moffat has riffed on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol one or two times,
08:11in The Snowmen and The Day of the Doctor.
08:13His most obvious retelling of the classic tale is, of course, this 2010 Christmas special.
08:18However, it's not only Dickens that Moffat is stealing from.
08:21He's also stealing from his own back catalogue.
08:24Many years previously, he wrote a short story about the seventh Doctor
08:27changing the personal history of a miserable librarian,
08:30so that she would eventually allow him access to an important text.
08:33Smaller-scale stakes than a crashing space cruise liner,
08:36but both stories tackle some incredibly deep philosophical concerns,
08:40not least whether or not the Doctor has the right to do it in the first place.
08:43If someone goes back and changes our personal history,
08:46introduces us to love and friendship that we didn't previously have,
08:49then are we still the same person?
08:50It's the classic ship of Theseus, Trigger's Broom dilemma.
08:54And speaking of Trigger's Broom,
08:55Stephen Moffat also nicks the kinky roleplay gag from Only Fools and Horses.
08:59A Christmas Carol is a fun bit of Doctor Who does Dickens,
09:02and is classic Moffat.
09:03High-concept sci-fi, saucy jokes, and genuine heart,
09:07all delivered to you whilst you're woozy from too much quality street.
09:10Number 2. Fires of Pompeii.
09:12In the first Russell T Davies era, each series had a fairly rigid structure.
09:17One contemporary Earth story, a historical adventure, and a space one.
09:20It's a structure that outlines to new viewers exactly what Doctor Who can do.
09:24Whereas the previous series' trips back in time were romps involving zombies,
09:28werewolves, and witches,
09:29The Fires of Pompeii addresses one of the show's fundamental tenets,
09:33the Time Lord policy of non-intervention.
09:35James Moran's story is a 2008 update of the themes of 1964's The Aztecs,
09:41with the Doctor once more unable to avert a historical catastrophe
09:44to the horror of his companion.
09:46Whilst the alien pyrovial plot muddies the waters,
09:49it's still an affecting insight into the burden of gallivanting through time and space.
09:53It can't all be flirting with Shakespeare or solving murders with Agatha Christie.
09:57Much like the Aztecs, the Doctor and his companion do manage to save someone.
10:01Here is the family of the familiar-looking Caecilius,
10:03who, for reasons of people not understanding how television casting works,
10:07goes on to have a very influential effect on the Doctor's future.
10:11Number 1. Rosa
10:12It's astonishing, and more than a little embarrassing,
10:15that it took until 2018 for Doctor Who to properly explore
10:18what it would be like to travel in time when you're not white.
10:21We've had a glib aside in The Shakespeare Code and an odious racist in Thin Ice,
10:26but it's not until Rosa that the show tackles race head-on.
10:30Co-written by Chris Chibnall and Mallory Blackman,
10:32it's an all-too-plausible tale of someone who,
10:35when handed new technology, uses it to be appallingly racist.
10:39It also does something that the show hasn't done since the 1960s,
10:42present a period in history which is incredibly dangerous to members of the TARDIS team.
10:47There's unbelievable tension in the scenes where Ryan helpfully picks up a dropped glove
10:51and is refused service in the local diner.
10:54He's even threatened with a lynching in one of the episode's most shocking moments.
10:58We've rarely seen as hostile an environment in the history of Doctor Who,
11:03and it provides valuable insight into how far society has come
11:06and how far it still has to go with regards to racial equality.
11:10And that concludes our list of the best Doctor Who time travel stories.
11:14If we didn't mention your favourite time travel story,
11:16then we'd love to see it in the comments section below.
11:18And while you're there, like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
11:22I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of River Song herself,
11:25goodbye, sweeties.