10 Most Cringeworthy Doctor Who Moments From The '80s

8. "The Tree Won't Harm You!" - Mark Of The Rani (1985)

Now, it's going to seem like there will be a lot of beating up on Colin Baker a lot in the list, and it's not that, it's really, really not. Colin Baker himself is amazing. It's just that most of the stories that Colin Baker was actually in were various degrees of horrible. Mark of the Rani is actually one of the best ones, so long as you treat it as a Rani one-off and try to forget the second time she appeared (or that audio drama she was in...shudder). But it has its own moments of noteworthy cringe, including the Rani's bizarre trap in the forest, which is laden with mines. Regular mines would have been enough, but these turn people into trees. Yes, younger fans, you heard right: trees. No wonder so many of you don't want to watch the classic series, to which we respond: the new series has an episode all about singing to the sun, and farting aliens. Nyah. What makes all of this cringey is not the aforementioned arboreal transmogrification but what one of its victims does afterward. As Peri is about to walk into the trap, young Luke, who has been turned into a tree...um, grabs her with his limb and saves her. Think about that and let it sink in: a tree grabs Peri with its single limb. This leads to the Doctor's unintentionally hilarious line "The tree won't harm you!" No, because this isn't The Evil Dead, after all.