10 Doctor Who Characters Who Died For No Reason

Series 5's The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood is a decent story from current showrunner Chris Chibnall. It's full of high points - like the Silurians and the humans arguing over the ownership of planet Earth - but it also contains examples of Chibnall's worst writing habits, from extreme contrivances, to ridiculously dumb characters.

At one point early in the second episode, both of those things combine to create one of the most frustrating deaths in modern Who - that of Alaya, a Silurian warrior.

When Alaya's people take several humans hostage, the Doctor decides to capture her, holding her hostage in return. The Doctor then sets off to Silurian base camp in order to arrange for the safe exchange of hostages, and before he departs, he implores his human allies - Rory, Ambrose, and Tony Mack - to keep Alaya safe.

Simple enough, you might think! Alaya is chained up in the basement, so she isn't going anywhere. All the humans have to do is leave her alone.

At this point though, Chibnall comes in with one of those aforementioned dumb character/contrivance super-duper combos, with Ambrose pulling a bizarre move and actually deciding to shoot Alaya, destroying the Doctor's only bargaining chip.

What makes this particularly silly is that Ambrose's son and husband were among the captured humans. To get them back, all she had to do was, y'know, not kill the Silurian hostage - but she couldn't even manage that simple task.