10 Best TV Episodes Set In Just One Room

4. Doctor Who - Midnight

Doctor Who Midnight
BBC

For a show that can go anywhere in time and space, choosing to confine an episode to just one room is a bold move. But showrunner Russel T. Davies' ambition paid off, as Midnight is one of David Tennant's most chillingly memorable outings as the Doctor.

Taking place within the cramped interior of a futuristic tour bus travelling across a hostile planet, the Doctor must guide a handful of humans to survive against a hostile alien entity with unknown motivations. A terrifying creation, this entity is an invisible force which attempts to commandeer people's voices. Initially, the entity copies your every word. Then it syncs up with you, speaking at the same time. Then, it utters what you're going to say before you even say it. This is chilling stuff, and it's to their credit that the actors pull it off so convincingly.

But what makes this episode truly compelling is the way the Doctor is intensely disliked and distrusted by the people he's trying to save. Usually, people surrounding the Doctor are in awe of him, but here they're irritated by his smugness and frightened by his mysterious nature. The entity manipulates the tour bus passengers against the Doctor and they eventually conspire to kill him by throwing him out of the airlock, making for a climax rife with tension and horror.

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Patch is a pop culture enthusiast and purveyor of puns. He writes about media in a vague attempt to justify the alarming amount of time he spends consuming it. Nobody's convinced... but nobody's told him that yet. He spends his spare time working on Portal 2: Desolation, an ambitious fan-made sequel to Valve's beloved puzzle games.