10 Most Iconic Alien Planets In Modern Doctor Who

An Intergalactic Travel Guide to the coolest and most memorable planets in all of time and space.

Doctor Who New Earth hospital
BBC Studios

Since Doctor Who's revival in 2005, the Doctor has travelled in time and space to some of the most unusual, unique and often mind-boggling planets.

From snowy hinterlands to mysterious archaeological sites, gleaming pleasure palaces to shadowy citadels - the Doctor has faced deadly monsters, overcome cunning enemies and saved countless lives.

Through CGI, amazing location filming or the ingenuity of the production team, these planets have been brought to life spectacularly and are instantly recognisable as being iconic Doctor Who, and iconic sci-fi. The adversaries battled, time spent and stories told on these remarkable planets have helped to inspire a whole new generation of Doctor Who fans.

Following on from our previous list of the Ten Most Iconic Alien Planets from Classic Doctor Who, these are coolest and most memorable worlds that the Doctor and friends have frequented throughout their travels in the modern series.

Read on to explore Ten of the Most Iconic Alien Planets in all of time and space, and find out about the dangers the TARDIS team faced there...

10. The Dalek Asylum

Doctor Who New Earth hospital
BBC

Surrounded by a dense forcefield and a killer nanocloud, this snowcapped world was home to some of the most deranged Daleks in the universe.

Mountainous and expansive, the Dalek Asylum looked like an unassuming ski resort from the outside. The interior, however, hosted a network of dingy, abandoned tunnels and crumbling facilities to house insane Daleks. Inside this labrnyth, you could find intensive care units and prison cells bursting with the worst of the worst of the Dalek race.

The Daleks incarcerated in the Asylum were either malfunctioning with age or survivors of conflicts with the Doctor. Variants from throughout Doctor Who history were present on this terrifying world, including Special Weapons Daleks and Emperor's Guards.

Fully automated and with the security nanocloud rewriting intruders' DNA to become zombified Dalek Puppets, this was one of the last planets in the universe you would want to end up.

Even the Daleks were scared of it - sending the Eleventh Doctor through the forcefield and on a mission to help them destroy it in 2012's Asylum of the Daleks. Whilst on the planet, the Doctor and his companions also encountered a crashed escape pod from the starship Alaska, buried under the snow.

With the help of Oswin, a former crewmate-turned-Dalek, the planet's forcefield was lowered and the Doctor and his friends managed to escape before the Daleks decimated the Asylum with a missile strike.

Intergalactic Travel Advice: Try the soufflé.

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Eden Luke McIntyre is a Scottish writer, editor and script consultant, with an MA in TV Fiction Writing. He writes content for TV, radio, stage, and online, and was appointed as a BBC Writers Room Scottish Voice in early 2020. Eden can usually be found rambling about Doctor Who, The Beatles, and obscure things that no one cares about.