10 Best Doctor Who Characters In One Scene Only

6. Adrian (The Caretaker)

Doctor Who The Caretaker Adrian Clara
BBC

If you want to kick back and relax with a fun, breezy Doctor Who episode, then Series 8's The Caretaker is a really solid option.

A spiritual sequel to the Eleventh Doctor episodes The Lodger and Closing Time (which were also penned by Gareth Roberts), this is another "fish out of water" storyline in which the Twelfth Doctor attempts to blend in with ordinary human society... really poorly. Sorry Doc, but you're just too weird for that.

The Doctor's alien-ness (and lack of social skills) creates tons of laughs throughout, but one of the biggest is a scene in which the Doctor mistakes Clara's friend (and fellow teacher) Adrian for her boyfriend.

Casting director Andy Pryor and costume designer Howard Burden did a magnificent job with actor Edward Harrison in this scene. The whole gag is that Adrian resembles the dashing Eleventh Doctor (which is why the Twelfth Doctor assumes that he and Clara are dating), and instantly - without a shoehorned-in line of dialogue where one of the characters explains the joke - the audience just gets it. Add in Capaldi's hilarious performance, and it's impossible not to smile.

Though Adrian does briefly return during the parents evening scene, it's such a nothing moment that it may as well not be counted. So we ain't counting it! The entire purpose of his character is for this Eleventh Doctor joke anyway, so from that angle, he's very much a one-scene wonder.

In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!