10 Chilling Doctor Who Unsolved Mysteries

What exactly did the 73 Yards woman say? Doctor Who will never tell...

Doctor Who David Tennant Tenth Doctor Max Headroom signal hijacking v2
BBC Studios

Mystery has always been at the heart of Doctor Who.

From its weekly adventures to overarching series plots to the fact that we still don't know the main character's real name after more than 60 years, the show lives and dies by the intrigue it creates and the pay-offs it provides.

Doctor Who's real-life history is also full of unanswered questions, some of which are interesting, some of which are funny, and some of which are downright disturbing.

From plot points and characters in the fictional Whoniverse to strange occurrences in the real world, the last six decades of time and space are littered with some rather chilling unsolved mysteries.

Some of these secrets might get revealed one day, either in the show's storylines or through some tell-all book. But some of them are either too far in the past, too confusing, or just too weird, to the point that they will probably remain a mystery for the rest of time.

So grab your magnifying glasses and your deerstalker hats, and let's go over some of the scariest, most unsettling mysteries Doctor Who has to offer.

10. The Nature Of The Beast

Doctor Who David Tennant Tenth Doctor Max Headroom signal hijacking v2
BBC Studios

Up until recently, Doctor Who would offer sci-fi explanations for things like ghosts and vampires. Which is what makes the mystery of the Beast so fascinating.

The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit found the Tenth Doctor and Rose stranded on a strange planet orbiting a black hole. Unbeknownst to them, the planet is actually a prison for "the Beast", an enormous and ancient creature trapped beneath the surface.

The Beast's design is intentionally similar to the traditional depiction of Satan: red skin, horned head, generally unpleasant attitude. However, as the Doctor explains, most religions he knows of feature something that looks like this, implying that the Beast has served as the blueprint for the embodiment of evil across the universe.

But what exactly is the Beast itself? Is it the actual literal Devil, or the oldest fraud in the universe? And would a singular Devil imply the existence of a singular God? Even the Doctor himself is unsure, dismissing the Beast's claims that it existed before the universe was created.

The episode is intentionally ambiguous, which only makes this creature more unsettling. All that's certain is that the Doctor encountered an immense power in the depths of Krop Tor.

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Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.