10 Doctor Who Scenes More Terrifying When You Know The Truth
From haunted houses to real bones, some Doctor Who moments are even scarier than they look.
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00:00Doctor Who has had viewers hiding behind the sofa since 1963.
00:04The Daleks, Chief Clown, Peg Dolls, and Miss Evangelista have given both kids and adults
00:09sleepless nights, but some of the scariest things about the show come from beyond the TV screen.
00:15I'm Ellie for WhoCulture, and this is 10 Doctor Who Scenes More Terrifying When You Know The Truth.
00:2110. The Tragedy of Skye Silvestri
00:24As the host of the mysterious Midnight Entity, Skye Silvestri is utterly terrifying. But in
00:29the moments before she gets possessed, she's pretty terrified herself. It's hard not to feel
00:34sorry for her as she retreats into the corner of the Crusader 50, knowing the creature has picked
00:38her as its first victim. And given that she's been dumped by her partner, she's not exactly in
00:42the best mental state to begin with, and that's putting it mildly. Even if the Midnight Entity
00:47hadn't struck, her trip would have still been tinged with tragedy, because upon reaching her
00:51destination, the Sapphire Waterfall, Skye was actually planning to kill herself.
00:56This extra bit of backstory isn't explicit in the script, but as Russell T. Davis revealed
01:00on the episode's DVD commentary, there's one crucial line that gives the game away.
01:05Russell commented, she's on her way to a waterfall palace, but she says,
01:08I'm on a schedule. Which is like, what for? What on earth are you going to a waterfall
01:13on a schedule for? Midnight is a scary episode as it is, but knowing that this was going on
01:17in the background, and is potentially why the Entity picked Skye in the first place,
01:21makes it a whole lot darker, doesn't it?
01:239. The Cave of Actual Skulls
01:26Doctor Who's second serial, The Daleks, saw the Doctor face his most enduring enemy for the first
01:31time. However, debut instalment An Unearthly Child had sent the nascent TARDIS travellers
01:36to an environment that was arguably just as hostile. The Daleks might be proper monsters,
01:41complete with grating voices and metal tanks, but cavemen aren't much better. Nor is prehistoric
01:46Earth much better than the petrified jungle of Skaro. And if that wasn't bad enough,
01:50things were pretty grim behind the scenes too. Aside from the pressure of being the
01:53first Doctor Who story to go before cameras, there were all manner of unsavoury set dressings
01:58to contend with. Shrubbery ridden with insects, fur skins ridden with fleas, and for the Cave
02:03of Skulls set, countless replica skulls, with some real bones thrown in for good measure.
02:08Yep, that's right, Doctor Who's first ever story featured actual human bones
02:12sourced from an abattoir. As you can imagine, under those hot studio lights,
02:16they didn't exactly smell like roses, a stark reminder of how different production standards
02:20were in the 60s compared to today. Could you imagine if that's what they did today?
02:25Number 8. The Landlord's Nightmare
02:27With its creepy-crawlies, wooden lady, and omniscient landlord, Knock Knock is one of the
02:32most unsettling Doctor Who stories in recent years. But like the best haunted house stories,
02:36it's the tragedy rather than the scariness that unnerves you the most. In a shock twist,
02:41we learn that the spooky happenings at 11 Cardinal Road are the result of the Landlord trying to
02:45protect his mother, with the house absorbing its tenants to extend her lifespan. The only way this
02:50twisted tale can end is with a mercy killing, with Eliza sacrificing herself and her son to
02:55the lice. This scene required little acting from David Suchet, who had found himself in
03:00a similar predicament 50 years earlier. As he recalled on Doctor Who The Fan Show,
03:04he once rented a room in Liverpool with nothing more than a horsehair mattress and an old woolly
03:08coat in the way of bedding. On one occasion, the young Suchet went to bed, only to wake up,
03:13covered in wood lice. Being able to pull on a memory that traumatic clearly aided Suchet's
03:18performance, and it makes it even tougher to watch when you know that something similar
03:22actually happened to him in real life. 7. The Drunken Yeti
03:26The Yeti were one of 60s Who's most memorable monsters, and together with the Cybermen and
03:31the Ice Warriors spooked a whole generation of children. And as it turns out, life playing a
03:36Yeti was just as terrifying. One scene of their mostly missing debut story, The Abominable Snowman,
03:41involved a particularly precarious moment. As Professor Travers actor Jack Wattling recalled
03:46in an interview, he said, There was a low-angle shot, with us looking up at the Yeti on the
03:50horizon. Suddenly one of those Yeti fell off. He bounced hundreds of feet down. We thought
03:56he's killed himself. Fortunately, the actor in question was perfectly fine. Amazingly,
04:00his seemingly fatal fall had been cushioned by the foam rubber of his Yeti costume.
04:04As for why he'd taken a tumble? Well, the cast reportedly enjoyed a drink or two between takes.
04:10A robot Yeti roaming the Himalayas is terrifying enough, but a drunk robot Yeti roaming the
04:15Himalayas scarcely bears thinking about. No wonder they left this moment out of the
04:19animated reconstruction. 6. Doctor Who's Pandemic Parallel
04:23Despite being produced pre-Covid, Revolution of the Daleks featured some rather timely imagery,
04:29with the Doctor locked in prison and forced to self-isolate from her fam. Flux was the first
04:34series of Doctor Who to be produced in a post-Covid world, and also featured parallels to the pandemic.
04:39But on this occasion, they were completely intentional. Most notably, the Flux itself
04:43was inspired by Covid, as former showrunner Chris Chibnall recently confirmed, saying,
04:47I mean, Flux is a metaphor for Covid. There's a big thing coming for you,
04:51a massive thing that's going to disrupt all life as you know it.
04:53This was implied in the episodes themselves, with Belle's opening monologue in Once Upon Time
04:59being a clear giveaway. The biggest changes to our lives start small, catastrophes creeping
05:04quietly and by the time you realise the life you once had is already behind you.
05:08The Flux has much in common with Covid beyond this. It's relentless, deadly, and takes many
05:13prisoners with those that do survive finding themselves in a world that has changed forever,
05:17and Tecteun explicitly refers to the Doctor as a virus.
05:21Anything too explicit would have been an unwelcome reality check in a show that's supposed to be
05:26escapism, but it was inevitable that the circumstances affecting Flux's production
05:30were going to creep into the scripts one way or another.
05:335. The Sheriff's Secret For Doctor Who's Robin Hood episode,
05:37writer Mark Gatiss paid homage to the 1980s drama Robin of Sherwood, choosing the title
05:43Robot of Sherwood. This was a reference to Robin's nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham,
05:47who, in a shock twist during the final battle, was originally supposed to be decapitated and
05:52exposed as a cyborg. This key moment was cut from the finished episode in truly tragic circumstances.
05:58In the months leading up to the broadcast, headlines were dominated by the terrorist
06:01group ISIS, who had been releasing horrific beheading videos online.
06:05And just days before Robot of Sherwood was due to go out, the group claimed their latest victim,
06:10US journalist Stephen Sotloff. Less than 48 hours later, the BBC announced that an edit
06:15had been made to the episode, and because early cuts of the first five Series 8 episodes had
06:21leaked earlier that summer, fans were able to quickly put two and two together.
06:25Sure enough, when Robot of Sherwood aired, the decapitation scene present in the early cut,
06:29which can still be viewed online, was absent. It was completely out of the team's control,
06:34but nevertheless cast a saddening shadow over the episode.
06:384. Milne Takes a Tumble
06:40Black Orchid isn't just any old historical, it's a pure historical. As such, the villain is not
06:46some alien menace, but the entirely human George Cranley. Cranley's disfigurement,
06:51the result of a run-in with an Amazonian tribe on a search for the titular Black
06:54Orchid, is unfortunate, particularly in light of the recent Davros discourse.
06:58Likewise, the idea that the experience should leave him deranged and murderous
07:02is questionable. Regardless, this is the direction the story goes in,
07:05concluding with Cranley having a fatal fall from the roof of his family home.
07:10It's a sticky end, and as Peter Davison recalled on the episode's DVD commentary,
07:14it was almost as painful for the actor playing Cranley, Gareth Milne,
07:17whose stunt went horribly wrong. Davison recalled,
07:20You can actually see him push off too far as he goes off the side of the roof.
07:24Half of him missed the boxes, and his legs went slapping into the concrete.
07:27It was a very, very nasty moment. I don't think he broke anything,
07:31but he was very badly bruised. And to this day,
07:33there have never been any more pure historicals. Can't think why.
07:363. Ood Conversion
07:39It's not just the way a monster looks that makes them scary,
07:41it's the reason they look the way they do. This was the case for the suited Silence,
07:45the cloth-faced Mondasian Cybermen, and the bandaged Foretold. It was also the case for
07:50the Ood. Not because of their mottled skin and pink fronds, but because of their translation
07:55orbs, which are stitched into them by the merciless Ood operations.
07:58It's an ironic name for a company that literally performs surgery on its workforce,
08:03removing their secondary hindbrains to make the necessary alterations.
08:07It's a grim thought, but the Ood as we know them have been mutilated.
08:10Planet of the Ood writer Keith Temple originally planned to make this more explicit,
08:15with a sequence set inside the abattoir-like conversion centre.
08:19Though deemed too horrific for the finished episode, this material was reinstated in
08:23the recent Planet of the Ood novelisation, which reads,
08:26The hydraulic system of surgical devices hanging above the conveyor belt a short
08:31distance away had one purpose. To amputate natural Ood's hindbrains.
08:35So if you thought Donna went through the ringer seeing the Ood in the cage,
08:38well, her trip to the Ood-sphere was nearly much more harrowing.
08:412. The Toymaker's Curse
08:43The Toymaker is currently plaguing the Doctor and his friends, just as he did 57 years ago.
08:49And on that occasion, his influence extended far beyond the episodes themselves.
08:53During his debut story, the Toymaker forces the Doctor to complete the Trilogic Game,
08:58a puzzle that involves moving a 10-layer pyramid from one point to another,
09:02one piece at a time, all in less than 1,023 moves.
09:06The Celestial Toymaker was a favourite story of Steven actor Peter Pervs,
09:10and so the Trilogic Game prop was gifted to him as a memento.
09:14However, following his departure from the series a couple of stories later,
09:17Pervs struggled to get work. He came to see the prop as the source of his bad luck,
09:21so much so that he decided to throw it away.
09:23Things got even spookier, though, when the very next day,
09:26Pervs was offered work for the first time in ages, apart in the BBC police procedural Z-Cars.
09:32Within weeks, he was also a presenter on Blue Peter,
09:34a show that would keep him in steady employment for the next 11 years.
09:38Could the Toymaker's Curse strike again? If Catherine Tate steals a prop,
09:41chucks it away, and then ends up becoming the next Blue Peter presenter, don't be surprised.
09:46Hyde's Haunted House
09:48Doctor Who has had its fair share of haunted houses over the years,
09:51and some of them are just as creepy in real life.
09:53Field's House in Newport, which became the Weeping Angel-infested Wester Drumlins in Blink,
09:58and later the Landlord's Premises in Knock Knock,
10:01really was in a sorry state when the crew filmed there,
10:03and thus required little work from the art department.
10:06Similarly, the disused Custom House on Cardiff's Butte Street,
10:09which appeared in The Caretaker,
10:11is not somewhere you'd want to find yourself alone on a dark night.
10:14But none of these beats the haunted house that really is haunted.
10:18In 2013's Hyde, the Doctor and Clara find themselves at Caliburn House,
10:23where a professor and his assistant are trying to solve the mystery of the Witch of the Well.
10:27One of the locations used was the 19th century gothic mansion,
10:31Margam Castle, which has reportedly received visitations of its own,
10:35from a murdered gamekeeper, a burly blacksmith, and giggling Victorian children.
10:40Spooky.
10:41In-universe, the Witch was actually a trapped space traveller
10:44trying to escape from a pocket universe,
10:46but Margam's real-life hauntings remain unexplained to this very day.
10:53And that's everything for this list,
10:55but for some more spooky Doctor Who stories,
10:57then check out 10 Real Things That Prove Doctor Who Exists.
11:01In the meantime, I've been Ellie with WhoCulture,
11:03and in the words of River Song herself,
11:05goodbye, sweeties.