10 Things Doctor Who REALLY Wants You To Forget
If only the BBC had a TARDIS to go back and change these parts of Doctor Who history...
From Donna Noble to Clara Oswald to Ada Lovelace, the Doctor has a habit of attempting to wipe the memories of their friends.
If only Doctor Who itself had a similar power to remove memories of some of the more embarassing or sleazy aspects of the show's 61-year history.
In some ways, it does have this power, by removing episodes from the iPlayer for a judicious re-edit. This happened to The Sarah Jane Adventures episode The Curse of Clyde Langer, which had its totem pole iconography spliced out in the interests of increased cultural sensitivity.
Elsewhere, other embarassing elements like lacklustre home entertainment releases can be made obsolete by a considered and substantial special edition re-release.
And then of course, the other option is to completely ignore these embarassing or uncomfortable elements so as not to reignite the controversies. While that can work, it's a more complex issue when Doctor Who asks its audience to forget a character whose presence impacts on other characters and actors who haven't done anything wrong.
10. Doom's Day
No, not the Series 2 finale. Ten and Rose saying goodbye on Bad Wolf Bay was bloody Shakespeare compared to this.
Doom's Day was a special multi-platform story to celebrate Doctor Who's 60th anniversary. It cast the supremely talented comedian Sooz Kempner as Doom, and took place across books, comics, and audio dramas.
Seemed like a strong enough recipe, but the event itself did not go down well.
The signs were bad from the off, with Kempner being unveiled in front of a shoddy green screen background dressed in whatever random sci-fi accessories BBC Studios could get its hands on, in a not-so-convincing attempt to tell us that Doom was the "greatest assassin in the universe."
Fan reactions to Doom's Day ranged from bemused ambivalence to frothing outrage, but the whole story has now been largely forgotten.
In fact, Doom's Day seemed to lose interest in itself as it went on, with the 'big finale' taking the form of a short story on the Doctor Who website.
It's safe to say this is one character we won't be seeing in televised Doctor Who.