10 Dark Doctor Who Facts That Are Never Spoken About
For every light and fluffy moment in Doctor Who, there's a dark secret hiding in plain sight...
Doctor Who is, by and large, a family show. Its weekend teatime slot means that it tends to favour fun storylines with happy resolutions over full-on tragedy, as most people would prefer not to be reminded how bleak the universe really is while tucking into their egg and chips.
However, on top of having its fair share of dark moments (and dark episodes) over the years, there are also plenty of unspoken, horrific truths within the Whoniverse – if you dig a little deeper to find them.
For the most part, these revelations were not the original goal of the writers and showrunners. Instead, most are implied, combining with pre-existing bits of lore to create unintended horrors that will leave you wondering why the BBC even commissioned this traumatic show in the first place.
Ok, maybe that's a bit far, but still.
From the fates of beloved characters to details about the Whoniverse that should never have been revealed – or even the horrendous actions of the Doctor themselves – these ten details will paint certain parts of Doctor Who in a much different, darker light...
10. Video Game Characters Can Feel Their Deaths
Gaming is one of the most popular hobbies in the world. The Doctor has played a little bit themselves in the past, memorably enjoying a spot of Wii tennis while investigating the Shakri cubes in The Power of Three.
Wii tennis aside, most video games involve blasting away wave after wave of virtual enemies. However, it turns out that the people you're mowing down aren't just pixels on a screen.
Series 10's Extremis finds the Twelfth Doctor dealing with a book called the Veritas, which causes anyone who reads it to commit suicide.
This ends up with everyone realising they're in a simulation, and as the Doctor attempts to explain this to Bill, he talks about how they can still feel real even while living inside a computer. He tells her, "Those pretend people you shoot at in computer games... they think they're real. They feel it."
The Doctor often says unusual things in jest, but this is such a serious moment that there's no doubt he's telling the truth. It means that every Goomba stomped in Mario, every soldier gunned down in Call of Duty, every ghost eaten in Pac-Man... they felt every single bit of it.
It'll certainly make you think twice while playing through a Doctor Who video game yourself.