10 Craziest Doctor Who Time Loops

9. Axos Apprehended (The Claws Of Axos)

Doctor Who The Claws of Axos Third Doctor Master
BBC

The closing moments of 1971's The Claws Of Axos feature the Third Doctor dealing with that titular alien menace, which plans to drain the Earth of all its energy.

Well, not on the Doctor's watch!

The Time Lord cunningly traps both Axos and himself in a time loop, but he soon manages to escape, leaving the villain to fester. And because this is the last time Axos has been in a TV story, we can only assume that he's still stuck in that loop, reliving those same moments over and over and over again.

This serial also sees the Doctor give the most lacklustre explanation of a time loop you could possibly imagine, telling the Brigadier that "a time loop is... er... well, it's a time loop. One passes continually through the same points in time."

Gee, thanks for that mate! Such incredible wisdom.

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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!