The Power of the Doctor isn't the only Doctor Who episode that leaves your jaw on the floor...
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00:00Since it first hit the air in 1963, Doctor Who has pulled out some of the greatest episode
00:05endings in British TV history.
00:08The size and scope of a show about the entirety of time and space means that literally anything
00:13can happen to the Doctor and their companions, which has led to some truly memorable cliffhangers
00:17over the years.
00:18Drastic decisions, mind-blowing plot twists, events totally changing out of left field
00:23— it's all happened in Doctor Who.
00:25So we've rounded up 10 endings that left viewers wondering what the hell they just
00:29witnessed.
00:30Usually in a good way, but not always.
00:32I'm Jess from WhatCulture, and here are 10 Doctor Who endings nobody saw coming.
00:3610.
00:37The Time of Angels
00:38The Weeping Angels was still new and exciting when this episode rolled around.
00:42Before their creator Stephen Moffat diluted their effectiveness, the Angels were a force
00:47to be reckoned with, and had the Eleventh Doctor and his friends cornered underground
00:50with seemingly nowhere to run.
00:52After some back and forth with the strangely charismatic Angel Bob, the Doctor announces
00:57that his enemies have made a huge mistake by placing him in a trap.
01:01He then grabs a pistol and shoots the gravity globe that had been illuminating the cave.
01:05It's not the greatest cliffhanger in the world, so why does this episode appear on the list?
01:09Well, because the Doctor used a gun.
01:12Fans had been repeatedly told that the Doctor hated all weapons, especially guns, always
01:16opting for the peaceful solution to any conflict.
01:19To see Matt Smith's incarnation of the character wield one so freely, and so early in his lifespan,
01:25was more than a little jarring.
01:26While he didn't fire it at a living creature, the juxtaposition of the universe's peacekeeper
01:31holding a firearm was enough to leave fans going, and all together now, what?
01:369.
01:37The Dominators – Part 5
01:38This second Doctor serial pitted the Time Lord against the titular race, known for their
01:42use of nuclear radiation to power their technology.
01:45The Dominators plan to destroy the peaceful planet of Dulkis and use its remains as fuel,
01:50something that the Doctor inevitably doesn't take kindly to.
01:53In fact, he takes so unkindly to it that he decides to obliterate them all with a nuclear
01:58weapon.
01:59In the serial's final episode, the evil aliens attempt to blow up Dulkis using small
02:04atomic bombs called Seeds.
02:06However, the Doctor manages to stop the Seeds from entering the planet's core, and smuggles
02:10one back aboard the Dominators' ship.
02:12The episode ends with the TARDIS flying away from a huge nuclear explosion that presumably
02:17killed every single Dominator on board.
02:19This level of rampant destruction is not something that modern fans would associate with the
02:24Doctor.
02:25Even at the time, this would have been considered a little over the top, especially with the
02:28real-world threat of nuclear devices looming large.
02:318.
02:32Last of the Time Lords
02:33Last of the Time Lords served not only as the climax to New Who Series 3, but also as
02:39the last regular appearance of companion Martha Jones.
02:43She bids the Doctor goodbye at the end of this episode, leaving Number 10 alone once
02:46again.
02:47Poor fella.
02:48However, he has no time to mope around, because the bow of a ship called Titanic crashes through
02:53the walls of the TARDIS.
02:54The Doctor's expression of bewilderment says it all.
02:57He even says, what, right after this happens.
02:59The collision of worlds was to set up the Christmas special Voyage of the Damned, which
03:03saw the Doctor team up with Kylie Minogue to escape a doomed space liner also named
03:08Titanic.
03:09You'd think they would've learned from the first time.
03:12It's safe to say that nobody had crashes into the Titanic on their Doctor Who bingo
03:15card that year, but this bizarre ending helped cut through the sadness of losing Martha,
03:20and created much intrigue for the upcoming holiday episode.
03:237.
03:24The Doctor's Daughter
03:25Sticking with 10 now, and that time he met his daughter, who would go on to become his
03:29wife, who's actually the daughter of himself, yeah, look, this episode gets weird when you
03:33get meta with it.
03:34The Doctor's Daughter takes place on a planet where human beings use cloning to provide
03:38soldiers for their war against the hearth.
03:41When the Doctor is cloned upon arrival, we get Jenny, his daughter, who is played by
03:45Georgia Moffat, 5th Doctor Peter Davison's real-life daughter and David Tennant's real-life
03:50wife.
03:51Again, meta.
03:52After growing attached to Jenny across the episode, the Doctor is devastated when she
03:56takes a bullet for him and dies from her injuries.
03:59However, after he leaves the planet, Jenny is brought back to life via the mystical power
04:03of the Source.
04:05Fans assumed that Jenny was a one-off character, nothing more than a plot device to teach the
04:09Doctor some lessons about parenthood.
04:11Seeing her get revived and then jet off into space on her own adventures was pretty surprising,
04:15and left viewers hoping for further interactions with Jenny in the future.
04:19It's just a shame we haven't seen her on TV since this episode aired in 2008.
04:236.
04:24Vengeance on Varos – Part 1
04:26Although Colin Baker was far from the only guilty party in Doctor Who's first major decline,
04:31his detractors got some catharsis in Vengeance on Varos' first episode.
04:35While searching for a valuable mineral to repair the TARDIS with, the Doctor and his
04:39companion, Perry, are held captive by the governor of the planet, Varos.
04:43The Doctor manages to escape, but ends up stranded in a desert and begins to die of
04:48thirst.
04:49At least, that's what we're led to believe.
04:51On Varos, public torture and executions are viewed as a form of entertainment.
04:55Think Big Brother, but way worse.
04:57Actually, not that much worse.
04:59The Doctor is only hallucinating the desert due to the effects of a structure called the
05:03Punishment Dome, with his struggles being broadcast across the planet.
05:07When the governor orders the transmission be cut, the credits on the actual episode
05:11begin to roll.
05:12A clever ending that would have fit perfectly into the metafocused world of today, this
05:16episode must have blown everyone's minds when it first premiered in the 80s.
05:205.
05:21The Almost People
05:22The actual plotline of Series 6's The Rebel Flash slash The Almost People is so inconsequential
05:28that we're not even going to bother recapping it.
05:31All you need to know is that after defeating a group of rogue human duplicates working
05:34in an acid factory, the Doctor reveals that Amy Pond is actually a duplicate of herself.
05:39The episode then cuts to the real Amy, who's trapped in a pristine white room.
05:44Oh, and she's also pregnant.
05:46She's confronted by a lady with an eye patch, who tells her that she's about to give birth.
05:50The episode then goes off the air, with Amy screaming through the pains of labor.
05:54At the same time, across the country, millions of people watching Doctor Who all came down
05:58with a serious case of plot whiplash.
06:01This ending threw a huge curveball at the audience, who were expecting just the conclusion
06:05to the two-part storyline.
06:07Instead, the episode completely bulldozed through that plot and set in motion a chain
06:11of events that would affect the entire rest of the series.
06:144.
06:15The Name of the Doctor
06:162013's The Name of the Doctor begins with the Doctor and Clara hunting down a being
06:21called the Great Intelligence, which has captured their friends Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint,
06:26and Strax.
06:28The Great Intelligence, played by Richard E. Grant, wants to go back in time and undo
06:31all of the good work the Doctor has done, and so Clara and the Doctor enter his time
06:35stream to protect it from the Intelligence.
06:38In doing so, they come across a shadowy figure lurking in the depths of the Doctor's memories.
06:42This figure is the Doctor, but he's also not.
06:45He's a man who did awful things during the Time War in order to save the universe.
06:49He is the War Doctor.
06:51Stood there was the unmissable figure of John Hurt, portraying the Doctor's greatest secret.
06:56This story was fleshed out in the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, but at this
07:00point, viewers were as baffled by Hurt's arrival as they were captivated.
07:05Even hardcore Whovians didn't know there was a secret Doctor between 8 and 9, and that's
07:09because Moffat had only just made him up.
07:11Still, this was one of the biggest bombshells in the show's history.
07:153.
07:16The Daleks
07:17There's no greater or more recognizable Doctor Who villain than those lovable, plunger-wielding
07:22tin cans, the Daleks.
07:24Straight from the planet Skaro, the Daleks stand for everything the Doctor opposes — war,
07:29subjugation, apathy, and hatred.
07:31Their iconic design has become a symbol of the show all over the world, and their catchphrase
07:34of Exterminate is now part of TV lexicon.
07:38The Daleks' first appearance came at a first Doctor serial from 1963 and 64, called, well,
07:44The Daleks.
07:45The first episode of the serial ends with companion Barbara being accosted by a Dalek
07:49in what has been described as one of the series' best-ever cliffhangers.
07:54The Daleks were a revolution, and there is tangible evidence that their appearance led
07:57to a spike of interest in the show.
07:59They have remained a fixture of Doctor Who for over half a century, and all of their
08:03incredible storylines and moments can be traced back to this shocking ending.
08:082.
08:09The Caves of Androzani – Part 4
08:11At the end of the 1984 serial, The Caves of Androzani, the Fifth Doctor succumbs to an
08:16illness caused by a toxin.
08:18After hallucinating the faces of his past companions, the Doctor regenerates into a
08:22new form, swapping out the visage of Peter Davison for that of Colin Baker.
08:27It wasn't just the character's appearance that had changed, something was different
08:31about this new Doctor, and something felt a little off.
08:35His first line in the role, you were expecting someone else, was delivered with a biting
08:39sarcasm that felt very out of place with the bubbly, eccentric Doctors of old.
08:44This harsher portrayal of the character lasted less than three years, but the initial introduction
08:48of this more serious version of the Doctor is something that fans are still grappling
08:53with to this day.
08:541.
08:55The Stolen Earth – Part 5
08:56Between this, his actual regeneration, and his appearance as the Fourteenth Doctor, David
09:00Tennant really loves shooting bright lights out of his hands and face, doesn't he?
09:04Back when he was the Tenth Doctor, Tennant's era on the show looked like it was coming
09:08to a premature end when he got himself shot by a Dalek in The Stolen Earth.
09:12Moments after seeing Rose for the first time since she departed the TARDIS, the Doctor
09:16suffered this seemingly fatal wound, and had to be ushered back to his blue box by Rose,
09:21Donna, and Captain Jack.
09:23As his companions fret around him, the Doctor's hands begin to glow that familiar orange-yellow
09:27hue.
09:28He then gets to his feet and unleashes a salvo of energy, beginning the process of changing
09:33his face.
09:34There had been no news of Tennant leaving the show when this episode aired, so fans
09:37were left completely aghast when they saw their hero regenerate.
09:40Were they really going to replace him without warning?
09:43And if not, how would they get around the fact that he'd already begun regenerating?
09:47The answer would come in the next episode of the show, but that week was a very long
09:51one for Doctor Who fans.
09:53That's the end of our list, but let me know down in the comments which Doctor Who endings
09:57you did not see coming, and which ones are your favorites.
10:01As always, I'm Jess from WhatCulture, thanks so much for hanging out with me.
10:04If you liked this video, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account, where I'm
10:08at JessMcDonald.
10:09But make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.