10 Dark Doctor Who Moments You Weren't Allowed To See

10. Everybody Dies! (New Earth)

Doctor Who stories where nobody dies are few and far between, with Steven Moffat’s first story The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances being a rare example. “Just this once, everybody lives!”

But as fans have often joked, it wasn’t “just this once”. From Rory to River Song to Osgood, loads of other Moffat characters have visited the God of Death and been resurrected in the years since.

This inclination to save characters has changed several stories over the years – it was Moffat who persuaded Russell T Davies to let Jenny live at the end of The Doctor’s Daughter.

He also inadvertently prevented a much more downbeat ending to New Earth.

Originally, the Doctor created a very different type of ‘cure’ for the diseased patients – one which killed them all. “He had set them free and it was their only form of release”, RTD explains in the episode's online commentary.

For a story all about new beginnings, this would hardy have been the right note to end on. And so, once again, everybody lived! Which is just as well, because “everybody dies!” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.