10 Doctor Who Characters Who Died For No Reason

7. The Bus Driver (Planet Of The Dead)

Doctor Who Planet Of The Dead bus driver death
BBC

2009 Easter adventure Planet Of The Dead takes place on the baking-hot desert planet of San Helios, where the Tenth Doctor has unwittingly trapped not just himself, but an entire bus full of human civilians.

The only way to escape this barren hellhole is via a nearby portal, which sounds quite convenient! On the downside though, anyone who walks through it will be stripped down to a skeleton in a matter of seconds - which is exactly what happens to the poor old bus driver, who lunges through it without a care in the world.

Now sure, he was a bit of an idiot for not listening to the Doctor's warning about the portal, but some of the blame for his easily-preventable death can also be levelled at the Doctor himself. The driver is clearly eager to return home, and the Doctor is obviously smart enough to sense what he's about to do. So how does this mighty, intelligent Time Lord respond? He half-heartedly holds out a single arm.

Come on Doctor, you can see that this guy is about to walk into a fiery portal of death, so why not put a little more effort in? Why not rugby tackle him to the ground? The sand would cushion your landing!

In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

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!