10 Best Victorian Set Doctor Who Stories

4. The Next Doctor

The rebooted Doctor has flirted with a steam punk aesthetic almost as often as he's flirted with Captain Jack Harkness, but the Christmas special that saw a gigantic steam powered Cyberman stomping through Victorian London is the closest the show has come to becoming a full on steam punk extravaganza. It's all part of a ploy by sinister Miss Hartigan, played by voice of Marks and Spencer Dervla Kirwan, who is taking children from the workhouse to build her giant CyberKing, a creature that it takes two Doctors to stop. Sort of.

With 10th Doctor David Tennant having recently announced the impending end of his tenure in the blue box, it was easy for audiences to believe that the eponymous Next Doctor might genuinely be the man that the BBC were lining up as number 11. Given the quality of David Morrissey's adventuresome yet emotional performance it's almost a disappointment that this was not the case.

As it was, though, there was plenty of pathos in both Russell T. Davies' script and Morrissey's performance to make the reveal that his "Doctor" was really teacher and near Cyberman victim Jackson Lake imprinted with the Doctor's life story an affecting one. With his not-so-sonic screwdriver and TARDIS that is really a hot air balloon, Lake is a fun creation that imagines how a genuinely Victorian Doctor might function.