A Whovian Halloween

Words by Casey Hynes & Liam Horgan

Intro:

Halloween is around the corner, and so too is the latest series of Doctor Who. The long-running sci-fi show is soon to enter its thirteenth season in late 2021. The Doctor and their companions are used to facing numerous foes and creatures, some of whom have been absolutely terrifying. With this in mind we thought we’d look at the modern series and suggest some episodes worth watching in time for Halloween. We’ve got at least one episode from every Doctor so without further ado - ‘Allons-y’!

The Ninth Doctor

The Unquiet Dead (Season 1, Episode 3): 

Christopher Eccelston’s third episode in the 2005 reboot was NuWho’s first episode in the past. Written by future-recurring writer Mark Gatiss, the premise of the episode is a simple one: the Doctor and Rose visit Victorian Cardiff on Christmas Eve where they meet Charles Dickens, and encounter corpses that walk around as if resurrected from the dead. The episode features some great guest work from Simon Callow as Charles Dickens and Eve Myles as Gwyneth. The villains in this episode are an alien race known as the Gelth. The Gelth appear as gaseous beings, resembling ghosts, who lost their real bodies due to effects from the Time War. This episode features some effective scares and great performances. Although Gatiss has written other Doctor Who episodes, this episode being his first is still one of his strongest outings to date. 

The Empty Child - The Doctor Dances (Season 1, Episode 9 & 10):

This two parter, the first of many episodes written by future-showrunner Steven Moffat, follows the Doctor and Rose as they once again journey to the past, this time to London during the Blitz. In search of a mysterious cylinder that they had been chasing through the Time Vortex, the pair become deeply entangled in the mystery surrounding a gas-masked little boy who is tearing the city apart in his search for his mother and find a new companion in renegade Captain Jack Harkness. 

Dark streets, medical maladies and the horrifying, desperate calls of a child for his Mummy are abound in these episodes, leaving viewers sitting on the edge of their seats. Equal parts humorous and bone-chilling, these episodes have stood the test of time and remain massive fan favourites (evidenced by the consistent presence of gas masks in the Doctor Who cosplay repertoire) and are unique for their uplifting final note: ‘Everybody lives!’

The Tenth Doctor

Human Nature - The Family of Blood (Season 3, Episodes 8 & 9):

This two parter from David Tennant’s third season is one of the Tenth Doctor’s best. It’s also worth noting that it is part of one of the strongest run of episodes a Doctor Who season has ever had as it is followed by the iconic Blink and Utopia. The premise follows the Tenth Doctor and Martha as they travel to 1913 England to escape pursuers simply known as the Family. Here the Doctor transforms into a human, known as John Smith, and hides as a school teacher. What makes this two parter unique in Series 3 is that not only does it help to set up aspects of the latter half of the season (the concept of a Chameleon Arch and the Doctor communicating via video) but it also shows the darker side of the Doctor. 

Set at Farringham School for Boys, the Doctor, as John Smith, and Martha live undercover until the threat of the Family has been wiped out. Of course, that relative peace doesn’t last long as the Family soon possess some of the nearby townspeople and pupils. Led by headboy Baines (played delightfully creepily by Harry Lloyd), the Family use an army of reanimated scarecrows to invade the town. The Family as a whole are quite unnerving as they inhabit human hosts, uncanny in how inhuman they are. The scarecrow foot soldiers are delightfully creepy also with the design putting the scare in scarecrows. 

Alongside the creepy villains, this episode asks some important questions. It delves into the concept of what and who the Doctor is. As the human John Smith, the Doctor is for once shown to be alien. John Smith is shocked by the fact the Doctor never considered falling in love as a potential and is appalled at the nature of the Doctor. John Smith’s love interest Joan Redfern questions if the Doctor could have prevented blood shed if he had simply not come to 1913. The episodes turn the view of the Doctor on its head and in turn make the audience question the Doctor. Finally the closing moments of The Family of Blood show just how dark the Doctor can be as he punished each family member by trapping them in some form of eternal prison, giving them what they truly desired: eternal life.

Blink (Season 3, Episode 10):

Incredibly Doctor-lite and starring the phenomenal Carey Mulligan, Blink can easily be claimed as the most terrifying episode in Doctor Who history and quite possibly one of the best episodes the show has ever seen. Based on a short story written by Steven Moffat for the 2006 Doctor Who annual, the episode centres on a young woman, Sally Sparrow, as she becomes intrigued by a message found underneath old wallpaper in an abandoned house, and subsequently finds her world turned upside down, and time turned inside out. Accompanied by her friend Kathy’s sci-fi-obsessed brother, Larry, the pair embark on a mission to rescue the Doctor and Martha from 1969, where they have been sent back sans Tardis by new monsters, the Weeping Angels. 

The Weeping Angels: a reversed-Medusa group of aliens who can only move (and, therefore, kill you) when you are not looking at them, and the ultimate creation for fear-making. Causing many viewers to dry out their eyes for fear of blinking, and causing numerous others to be very, very wary of stone statues, if there was ever an episode of Doctor Who that newcomers should watch as a once-off, this is the one.

Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead (Season 4, Episodes 8 & 9):

A two parter from Steven Moffat that would see him begin to lay down some of the major groundwork for his own running of the show two years later, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead sees the Tenth Doctor and Donna encounter a remarkably quiet, surprisingly  deadly library, with a warning to ‘count the shadows’.

For the Library and its books are the forests of the Vashta Nerada, a teeny-tiny swarm of piranha-like entities that cannot be seen to the naked eye but can be noticed when attached to one of their prey, in the form of a second shadow. Tensions are high and nerves are exceedingly frayed throughout these two episodes, as we see the Doctor and his companion, accompanied by a group of expeditioners led by Professor River Song (a new character for both the Doctor and viewers, but a key player for the arcs to come), attempt to escape certain doom by invisible predators and the skeletal animated corpses they have feasted upon, in a maze of books that is seemingly endless.

In typical Moffat fashion, the writer seizes upon the everyday fears of normal people and makes them ten-times worse. With The Empty Child, its masked figures (and, some might say, children themselves). In Blink, it’s statues. In this two parter: the dark, which makes these episodes perhaps some of the most spine-chilling of all. Terrifying and filled with genuine moments of hopelessness, this two parter looms over the viewer like a shadow, in a season that, before this, was otherwise filled with light-heartedness and success. Acting almost as a premonition for what would be to come (in the following episode - see below - and the end of the season itself), these two episodes are made even more remarkable.

Midnight (Season 4, Episode 10):

Following on from its fellow terror-inducing compadres of the fourth season and written by showrunner Russell T Davies, Midnight sees the Doctor embark on what is meant to be a leisurely and informative sightseeing tour of a waterfall made of sapphires on the planet Midnight. Instead, he finds himself stranded in a compact shuttle bus alongside an assortment of other tourists (including Merlin actor Colin Morgan as a stroppy goth teenager), awaiting rescue and trapped inside, as the planet’s surface radiation would boil them instantly were they to venture out. 

But something has apparently survived on the hostile plains for who knows how long, and it seeks escape in the form of sightseer Sky Silvester. As Sky, in its possession, begins to repeat and mimic her fellow frantic passengers, agitation and anxiety enter the mix, playing tricks with the minds of humans as they so often do in real life. Tensions build and build like a crescendo, leaving viewers gasping for air as the situation worsens and worsens and finally, finally ends. This episode is not for the faint of heart and will leave you exhilarated, and in terrified awe of both the unknown, and humanity itself.

Waters of Mars (Specials):

When it was announced that David Tennant was leaving the role of the Doctor, Whovians worldwide were treated to a group of specials ending with Tennant’s departure in the End of Time two parter. Of all the specials, yes even Ten’s last episode, The Waters of Mars is by far the best. This episode sees the Doctor arrive on Mars to the first Martian colony, Bowie Base One. The Doctor realises he has arrived at a fixed point in time, one that ends with the entire crew perishing. The Doctor tries to avoid any involvement but the actions of this episode's monster forces his hand. 

The Flood is a villain who should never return to Doctor Who, not because they were awful, quite the opposite in fact. The Flood is one of the scariest villains the show has produced, existing as a virus that lives in water, the Flood infects it’s hosts turning them into essentially zombies. When infected, the hosts would also develop cracked skin (especially around the mouth and neck) and blackened teeth, as well as an internal fission in the host's body that produced the water. The Flood screams sounded like twisted metal and they could survive being exposed to Mars surface. 

The episode plays out essentially like any zombie film would, the crew is slowly whittled down to it’s surviving members as more and more people are infected by the viral water. Again this episode also sees the Doctor lean into his darker side, choosing to defy the laws of time by saving the remaining crew. In doing so, the Doctor re-writes time. The captain Adelaide Brooke (played by a fierce Lindsay Duncan) in defiance of the Doctor rewriting time, kills herself at home as she was always destined to die. This is one of the moments in the show where the Doctor is shown to be fallible, to be in the wrong. He becomes so blinded by his self-importance that he fails to see the consequences of his actions. 

The Eleventh Doctor

The Time of Angels - Flesh and Stone (Season 5, Episode 4 & 5):

When Steven Moffat took over as head writer for Doctor Who he knew he wanted to bring back one of his most iconic creations; The Weeping Angels. Taking inspiration from the genre differences between the films Alien and Aliens, this Eleventh Doctor two parter is more action packed then the Doctor-lite Blink. The episode sees the Doctor and Amy meet with River Song to explore the crashed ship, the Byzantium. However despite being more Doctor focused this story is still terrifying. Building on the lore already established in their first appearance Moffat reveals new facts about the Angels. 

In The Time of Angels, companion Amy discovers just how terrifying an Angel can be. The concept of the image of an Angel becoming that of Angel is a horrifying concept of reproduction. Simply depicting an image of Angel makes it become one. The other thing that makes these Angels far more terrifying than their initial appearance is just how psychopathic they are. Usually an Angel will send an individual back in time in order to feed off the energy created, however in these episodes the Angels kill their victims as they do not need this energy, instead choosing to feed off the radiation leaking from the crashed Byzantium ship. The moment the Angels reveal that they have killed Cleric Bob and are using his vocal cords to communicate with the Doctor is chilling. Finally in Flesh and Stone, we get a moment where the Angels move, their heads twisting in the direction of Amy. It’s a chilling moment and one which is designed to scare! 

Hide (Season 7, Episode 9):

Everyone loves a ghost story. Sinister-looking old houses, creaking floorboards, scuttling noises and distant screams - spook to the max. That is what Hide is filled with, delivered to us in part by Neil Cross, creator of Luther and Hard Sun. In a setting so very reminiscent of the stereotypical haunted-house story (with tableaux throughout that one might compare to moments in The Haunting of Hill House, creepy draped statues in the background included), this episode and its plot are anything but. In typical Doctor Who fashion, nothing is what it seems. 

What is a ghost, if not a person or creature trapped in a moment of time, rooted in place? Well, in Hide, that’s exactly what it is - if that moment of time were to stretch across the entire timestream and the place it's rooted in is a pocket universe attached to our very own, that is. Better yet, amongst all the creepy and shaky-breath-inducing moments throughout, this is, in the Doctor’s own words, not a ghost story - but a love story - as we see people and beings brought together across time and space. 

That doesn’t diminish the chills and fears this episode creates, but perhaps serves to soothe them thereafter. Hide is not an episode to be disregarded, for even the Doctor himself felt ‘afraid’.

The Twelfth Doctor

Mummy on the Orient Express (Season 8, Episode 8):

This Twelfth Doctor episode is a stand out episode of Season 8. Having been invited to the space-faring Orient Express the Doctor and companion Clara investigate the mysterious deaths of passengers. Riffing on classic Hammer horror and Agatha Christie detective films, this episode is a thrilling ride. The Foretold, who takes the form of a Mummy, is a great design and well-executed concept. Preying on the medically weakest, the Foretold is an unseen entity to everyone but its victims. Imagine seeing a walking, stalking husk of a man follow you until it eventually catches up and kills you. That’s the true horror of the Foretold. This was screenwriter Jamie Mathieson’s first contribution to Doctor Who and what a great outing it was! Mathieson’s follow up story Flatline, cemented him as a fan favourite writer, and it all started with a Mummy on a train. 

Flatline (Season 8, Episode 9):

Taking place towards the end of Peter Capaldi’s first season as the Doctor, and following on from Mathieson’s Mummy on the Orient Express, we find the Doctor and Clara uncovering the answers behind the disappearance of numerous people in an estate in Bristol, while negotiating a slowly-shrinking Tardis (but only on the outside!). 

Finding the perfect balance between sombreness and levity, this episode might have less gasp-making moments than some of the others on this list, but its overall idea - the souls of humans captured within paintings or images - can easily be compared to other similar spooky stories, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Witches to name but a few. 

This episode has plenty of fear-filled moments, which is to be expected when what is hunting you is two-dimensional and nigh inescapable, and its main antagonists - the Boneless - fit in well with other NuWho monsters such as the Nestene Consciousness, the Vashta Nerada and the Gelth. Flatline also serves as one of few episodes where the resourcefulness and smarts of the Doctor’s companions shine through and save the day - a rare and worthwhile treat. 

The Thirteenth Doctor

The Haunting of Villa Diodati (Season 12, Episode 8):

While the Thirteenth Doctor's time in the Tardis has been a rocky one, it’s safe to say that this episode is one of her best. Although the plotlines lead into the controversial Timeless Child plotline, this episode as a whole leans into the scares. The episode is a simple one, the Doctor takes her companions to Lake Geneva in 1816 to witness Mary Shelley gain the inspiration to write Frankenstein. In the company of Shelley and her compatriots, the group witness strange goings-on. 

What first appears to be a haunted house tale evolves into something more. The ghostly apparition is revealed to be a half-formed Cyberman, who seeks something known as the Cyberium. After the episode plays out we see that this Cyberman is the inspiration for Frankenstein, a clever addition to the mythos of Frankenstein. While many have complained about the quality of Jodie Whitaker’s seasons, The Haunting of Villa Diodati stands as one of the best episodes produced under her tenure.