10 Best Doctor Who Time Travel Stories
You do know this is a show about time travel, right?
Transcript
00:00 For a show about a time traveller, Doctor Who deals with the perils of mucking around
00:04 with our past and future with a surprising lack of regularity.
00:07 This year's festive special, Eve of the Daleks, is the first time that the show has
00:11 properly explored the phenomenon of a time loop, barring flirtations in the likes of
00:16 Carnival of Monsters and Meglos.
00:18 So when else in the show's 58-year history has it explored the ramifications of travelling
00:23 through time?
00:24 And in the Wreathean genesis of the programme, what do these stories teach a young audience
00:28 about cause and effect, consequences and morality?
00:31 Time travel may seem like a tempting prospect - it's what finally convinced Rose Tyler
00:35 to climb aboard, after all - and yet it can also provide you with a devastating moral
00:40 dilemma or an insight into the horrors of history.
00:43 Let's travel back across 58 years of time and space through the prism of our favourite
00:48 tea time sci-fi show.
00:50 Watch out for butterflies and remember, don't interfere unless Catherine Tate asks you to.
00:54 With that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhoCulture and this is 10 Best Doctor Who Time Travel
01:00 Stories.
01:01 10.
01:02 City of Death Forget Biff Tannen's almanac, the greatest
01:05 use of time travel for financial gain can be found in Douglas Adams' classic Doctor
01:09 Who story.
01:10 Trapped on Earth and splintered across human history, Scaroth needs funding for the time
01:15 experiments that will make him whole again.
01:17 In what is one of the most ingenious villainous schemes in the history of Doctor Who, he plots
01:21 to steal the Mona Lisa using alien technology.
01:25 Not only that, but centuries earlier he also managed to convince Leonardo da Vinci to paint
01:30 six copies of the famous artwork.
01:32 Once the news breaks, he intends to sell one each to the seven nefarious art collectors
01:37 who covered the painting.
01:38 After all, they're hardly going to brag about it, are they?
01:41 It's a wonderfully inventive use of past and present communicating with each other,
01:46 and clearly influenced even Moffat's later work.
01:48 Not only that, but the accident that splinters Scaroth across time is the very spark that
01:52 begins life on Earth.
01:54 In one of the best jokes in the whole story, the brutish but well-meaning Duggan puts human
01:59 history back on course by lamping Scaroth with the most important punch in human history.
02:04 It's a simple resolution completely at odds with the tricksy time narrative, which is
02:08 why it's utterly hilarious.
02:10 9.
02:11 The Aztecs Whilst Doctor Who had visited cavemen and
02:15 travelled with Marco Polo, it was the sixth serial, The Aztecs, which first attempted
02:19 to deal with the morality of time travel.
02:22 Travelling to 15th century Mexico, history teacher Barbara Wright is mistaken for a god
02:27 and is tempted to use this newfound status to save the historic civilization, much to
02:32 the horror of the Doctor.
02:33 William Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill had great chemistry throughout their time together on
02:38 the show, and their scenes where they argue about interfering in Aztec society are one
02:42 of the early standouts in the show.
02:44 It's also here that the rules of time travel in Doctor Who are firmed up.
02:48 Over the course of The Aztecs, "You can't rewrite history, not one line" becomes "You
02:52 can't rewrite history, but you can change one man's mind."
02:56 Much like the Doctor and Donna in The Fires of Pompeii, Barbara saves the life of Ortlock
03:00 by opening his eyes beyond his faith.
03:02 The final scene with the Doctor suggesting this to Barbara is wonderful.
03:06 She has succeeded on a small scale in her attempts to end the human sacrifices at the
03:11 heart of Aztec society.
03:13 8.
03:14 Father's Day
03:15 Did I mention it also travels in time?
03:16 Were the words that convince Rose Tyler to leave Mickey and run through the doors of
03:20 the TARDIS.
03:21 In Father's Day, we find out why that was such a dealbreaker.
03:25 It starts, as universe-ending catastrophes often do, quite simply.
03:29 The Doctor agrees to take Rose back to the 1980s to see her parents get married.
03:33 Deciding she wants to be there for her father at the moment of his untimely death, Rose
03:37 makes a choice that threatens to doom all of mankind.
03:40 The first half of the Ninth Doctor's era is quite breezy, murderous Dalek and PTSD
03:45 aside, but it's the long game of Father's Day that Russell T. Davies begins to introduce
03:49 the audience to the more painful side of travelling in time.
03:53 We see it in Adam's greed in the long game, and we see it again here.
03:56 At odds with earlier and later attempts to "just save one," everything hinges on Rose's
04:01 decision to save her dad's life.
04:03 By giving this one man a new lease of life, time and reality begins to unravel.
04:07 There are rules to saving people's lives, and you can't just do it willy-nilly, as
04:11 Rose finds out to devastating effect.
04:14 7.
04:15 The Curse of Fenric The Seventh Doctor's transition from cosmic
04:18 clown to dark manipulator comes to a thrilling climax in 1989's The Curse of Fenric.
04:24 It's discovered that the Doctor has been playing a long game across time and space
04:28 against Fenric, an evil from the dawn of time.
04:32 Picking up elements from previous adventures such as Dragonfire and Silver Nemesis, it's
04:36 a game that takes place in the present, the future, and concludes in our past.
04:41 Wibbly wobbly, etc.
04:43 Much like City of Death, this is a story that portrays time zones taking place simultaneously.
04:48 The Doctor can seamlessly travel from one to the other, wherever he needs to be.
04:52 It's one of the main appeals of the show.
04:54 An additional time travel spin is given to the story when Ace meets widowed mother Kathleen
04:59 Dudman, who is revealed to be her grandmother.
05:01 It's a reveal that comes towards the end of the story, after Ace has cradled and made
05:05 googly eyes at her own mother as a baby, the mother that she hated.
05:09 It's a moving moment and another time travel trope we don't often see in the show.
05:13 Who were these people in our lives before we met them?
05:16 They were scared little children like the rest of us.
05:19 6.
05:20 Blink Originally written as an apology for being
05:22 unable to produce a two-parter for the third season, Stephen Moffat's Blink has become
05:26 one of the all-time great Doctor Who stories.
05:29 And it barely features the Doctor.
05:31 And yet it is totemic of the fundamentals of the show.
05:34 Time travel, creepy monsters, and resourceful human beings.
05:38 The Weeping Angels feed on time paradoxes, and their method of dispatch is heartbreaking,
05:42 poetic, and pure Moffat.
05:44 They remove you from your own time, and deposit you in another time and place to live out
05:48 the rest of your days with your family and friends none the wiser.
05:52 Blink is the greatest iteration of this central conceit, and we see Sally Sparrow chatted
05:56 up by a young policeman who's simultaneously aged and dying in a hospital bed across town.
06:01 It's the same rain.
06:02 A beautiful, melancholic portrayal of time being the enemy.
06:06 It's a work of genius that would stylistically form the backbone of Doctor Who from 2010
06:11 to 2017.
06:12 5.
06:13 The Ark Having unwittingly exposed a future human civilization
06:18 to the common cold, the Doctor and his companions race against time to find a cure and save
06:22 the day.
06:23 Leaving in the TARDIS, they are surprised to materialize in the exact same spot seven
06:28 centuries later.
06:29 The Doctor and his companions' previous visit eventually led to a bloody uprising
06:33 by the enslaved Monoids, who now oppress their former captors.
06:37 Would any of this have happened if the TARDIS hadn't arrived?
06:39 Well, possibly yes, but it's the virus that has exposed the inequality on board the Ark
06:43 ship.
06:44 This 1965 story is a real underrated classic, and has increases in relevance as we continue
06:50 to deal with the pandemic.
06:51 Steven's concern over what else the Travellers have exposed other civilizations to is one
06:55 of the most chilling moments in all of Doctor Who.
06:58 The very fact that the Doctor has a time machine allows us as an audience to experience the
07:02 world that the Doctor leaves behind once he's saved the day.
07:06 It's a shame the series doesn't do it more often.
07:08 4.
07:09 The Pandorica Opens and the Big Bang
07:11 Amy's not wrong when she says this is where things get complicated.
07:15 In the finale of Matt Smith's debut series, there is a lot of zipping about and general
07:20 mucking around with time.
07:21 Little Amelia is thirsty, so the Doctor steals a drink from an earlier version of Little
07:25 Amelia.
07:26 She's trapped inside the Pandorica, so zips back to give Rory his sonic screwdriver to
07:29 release him after he's already freed.
07:32 It makes mincemeat of causality, and is having an absolute ball.
07:35 To look too deeply into the hows and whys of everything would likely cause the whole
07:39 episode to fall apart, but it's the sort of breezy, zippy time travel humour you can achieve
07:43 when you've got a vortex manipulator.
07:45 Cheap and nasty time travel, sure, but also a bloody good laugh.
07:49 At the time, a lot of fans complained that it was too complicated for kids.
07:53 Too complicated for grown-ups, perhaps.
07:55 Kids were probably having a whale of a time with how silly it all is.
07:58 It's the tricksy narrative of Blink blown up to series finale proportions, and is one
08:02 of the all-time great Moffat finales.
08:05 3.
08:06 A Christmas Carol
08:07 Steva Moffat has riffed on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol one or two times, in The
08:11 Snowmen and The Day of the Doctor.
08:13 His most obvious retelling of the classic tale is, of course, this 2010 Christmas special.
08:18 However, it's not only Dickens that Moffat is stealing from.
08:21 He's also stealing from his own back catalogue.
08:24 Many years previously, he wrote a short story about the Seventh Doctor changing the personal
08:28 history of a miserable librarian so that she would eventually allow him access to an important
08:33 text.
08:34 Smaller scale stakes than a crashing space cruise liner, but both stories tackle some
08:37 incredibly deep philosophical concerns.
08:40 Not least whether or not the Doctor has the right to do it in the first place.
08:43 If someone goes back and changes our personal history, introduces us to love and friendship
08:47 that we didn't previously have, then are we still the same person?
08:50 It's the classic ship of Theseus triggers broom dilemma.
08:54 And speaking of triggers broom, Steva Moffat also nicks the kinky role play gag from Only
08:58 Fools and Horses.
08:59 A Christmas Carol is a fun bit of Doctor Who does Dickens, and is classic Moffat.
09:03 High concept sci-fi, saucy jokes, and genuine heart, all delivered to you whilst you're
09:08 woozy from too much Quality Street.
09:10 2.
09:11 Fires of Pompeii
09:12 In the first Russell T Davies era, each series had a fairly rigid structure.
09:17 One contemporary Earth story, a historical adventure, and a space one.
09:20 It's a structure that outlines to new viewers exactly what Doctor Who can do.
09:24 Whereas the previous series trips back in time were romps involving zombies, werewolves,
09:28 and witches, The Fires of Pompeii addresses one of the show's fundamental tenets, the
09:33 Time Lord policy of non-intervention.
09:35 James Moran's story is a 2008 update of the themes of 1964's The Aztecs, with the
09:41 Doctor once more unable to avert a historical catastrophe to the horror of his companion.
09:46 Whilst the alien pyrovile plot muddies the waters, it's still an affecting insight
09:50 into the burden of gallivanting through time and space.
09:53 It can't all be flirting with Shakespeare or solving murders with Agatha Christie.
09:57 Much like The Aztecs, the Doctor and his companion do manage to save someone.
10:01 Here, it's the family of the familiar-looking Kykilius, who for reasons of people not understanding
10:06 how television casting works, goes on to have a very influential effect on the Doctor's
10:10 future.
10:11 1.
10:12 Rosa
10:13 It's even more than a little embarrassing that it took until 2018 for Doctor Who to
10:17 properly explore what it would be like to travel in time when you're not white.
10:21 We've had a glib aside in The Shakespeare Code and an odious racist in Thin Ice, but
10:26 it's not until Rosa that the show tackles race head on.
10:30 Co-written by Chris Chibnall and Malorie Blackman, it's an all-too-plausible tale of someone
10:34 who, when handed new technology, uses it to be appallingly racist.
10:39 It also does something that the show hasn't done since the 1960s; present a period in
10:43 history which is incredibly dangerous to members of the TARDIS team.
10:47 There's unbelievable tension in the scenes where Ryan helpfully picks up a dropped glove
10:51 and is refused service in the local diner.
10:54 He's even threatened with a lynching in one of the episode's most shocking moments.
10:58 We've rarely seen as hostile an environment in the history of Doctor Who, and it provides
11:03 valuable insight into how far society has come and how far it still has to go with regards
11:09 to racial equality.
11:10 And that concludes our list of the best Doctor Who time travel stories.
11:14 If we didn't mention your favourite time travel story, then we'd love to see it in
11:17 the comment section below.
11:18 And while you're there, like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
11:22 I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye,