What to Know About 5 Scariest Modern Doctor Who Stories (Including 1 of TV’s All-Time Great Bottle Episodes)
While Doctor Who is widely known as one of the most beloved and influential sci-fi shows of all time, it has also delivered plenty of scares over the years. The central premise of the show centers on the Doctor, the last member of an alien race known as the Time Lords, as he travels around space and time in his TARDIS. Though it might be predominantly a work of science fiction, many of the best Doctor Who stories over the years have been those that embraced other genres. Among these, some of the most memorable are the Doctor Who episodes that took on a distinct horror aspect, moving away from the pure sci-fi vibes of its central story.
In the show’s modern era, some of the scarier episodes of Doctor Who have led to it being considered a terrifying sci-fi TV show. Some of its most frightening moments have endured in the hearts and minds of fans who have taken those scares to heart. The following rank as some of the scariest and most memorable stories in the modern era of Doctor Who, and from the day they first aired right up to the present, they’ve been keeping us awake at night thanks to their spooky sci-fi twists and turns.
5) The Waters of Mars
The Doctor’s many adventures in Doctor Who have seen him face some pretty creepy threats over the years. While the Flood might not be one of the outright scariest, the way their story unfolds in the episode “The Waters of Mars” cements their story as one of the most unsettling in Doctor Who‘s history. It sees the Doctor travel to Mars in the year 2059, where he encounters the first human colony on the planet, before realizing that they are in fact doomed to die as they are beset by a water-borne enemy identified as the Flood.
The way the Flood takes over the colonists one by one, distorting their features and speech and affecting their behavior, is truly horrifying. The inhuman mutation of their facial features gives “The Waters of Mars” an aspect of body horror, but the Doctor’s increasingly reckless reaction to upsetting the balance of time is equally disturbing. In terms of both the Flood and the way the Doctor’s story begins to shift, “The Waters of Mars” stands out as an especially scary episode in Doctor Who‘s history.
4) Listen
While many Doctor Who episodes feature alien threats that are memorable in a visual or narrative sense, there are a handful that instead use something more conceptual as the driving force behind their story. This is the case for “Listen”, season 8, episode 4 of Doctor Who, which sees Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor attempting to track a creature that has perfected its ability to hide. Concurrently, the episode explores companion Clara Oswald’s relationship with Danny Pink, exploring the respective childhoods of the characters along the way.
What makes “Listen” scary is the way it explores universal fears, many of which are rooted in childhood. The concept of a perfectly hidden creature lurking under the bed or knocking in the dark is something that taps into an innate fear present in all of us, and the episode knows not to press this too hard. Instead of delivering an out-and-out monster, “Listen” makes us confront the possibility that not all of our seemingly irrational fears are baseless, allowing its audience to make up their own minds. It turns out that there are few things scarier than an ambiguous ending.
3) The Empty Child
One of the earliest truly terrifying episodes of modern Doctor Who came shortly into the Ninth Doctor’s tenure. “The Empty Child” was the first of a two-part episode set during World War II London, and it saw the Doctor and Rose Tyler attempting to unravel the mysterious appearance of a child in a gas mask. The Empty Child qualifies as one of the best modern Doctor Who villains on memorability alone, as his repeated questioning after his mother and relentless pursuit of his victims are utterly terrifying.
The resolution of the Empty Child’s story, which comes in the episode “The Doctor Dances”, is far less frightening than his introduction. The creepy child trope does a lot of the heavy lifting in the first episode, as the character’s intentions and origin being unknown only makes his appearance all the more unsettling. The wartime setting combined with the faceless child pursuing the Doctor and Rose comfortably qualifies the episode as one of Doctor Who‘s most frightening in the modern era, if not of all time.
2) Blink
Season 3, episode 10, “Blink”, is remembered as the first appearance of an incredibly dangerous Doctor Who monster, but also as one of the show’s scariest episodes. It follows Sally Sparrow, a young woman in 2007 who receives cryptic messages from the Doctor, who has been stranded in 1969 after an encounter with the Weeping Angels. Conversing with the Doctor through DVD Easter eggs left by the Doctor in the past, Sally must both rescue the Doctor and avoid the Weeping Angels and their ability to transport people through time.
As the Weeping Angels are often considered one of the scariest modern additions to Doctor Who, it’s no surprise that “Blink” is an especially scary episode. Much of its unsettling nature stems from the Doctor’s absence, as the monster has already beaten him, and he must rely on a normal human to save him. This, combined with the Weeping Angels’ ability to move only when unobserved, makes for some truly unforgettable scenes. “Blink” is one of the best episodes in the show’s history, but it’s also responsible for countless nightmares among Doctor Who‘s audience.
1) Midnight
Often named as one of the most rewatchable episodes of Doctor Who, “Midnight” is an unforgettable piece of sci-fi television. Its story sees the Doctor briefly separated from his companion Donna Noble in order to embark on a tourist shuttle journey across the titular resort planet’s hostile surface. While aboard the shuttle, the Doctor and his fellow travellers are besieged by an unseen entity, which begins possessing the passengers one by one. The vast majority of the episode is set inside the shuttle, making it an especially claustrophobic bottle episode.
“Midnight” is, in fact, one of the best bottle episodes in TV history. The subtle way that fear and paranoia begin to creep in and turn its characters against one another, combined with the innovative and unerringly creepy repetition of each character’s respective lines by the entity, makes it by far the most unsettling and terrifying episode in Doctor Who‘s history. It also sees the Doctor narrowly avoiding death after being saved by one of the other passengers, marking it as one of the most harrowing chapters in the show’s long tenure on our screens.
