10 Doctor Who Characters Who Rejected The Doctor

3. Cass

Doctor Who The Night Of The Doctor Cass
BBC

We're going to bend the rules a little for this one, but it's such a powerful moment that we'd be remiss not to include it.

Cass' sole appearance in the Whoniverse came in the 2013 short episode The Night Of The Doctor, which served as a prequel to the 50th anniversary special The Day Of The Doctor. The short gave us more Paul McGann - which is always a good thing - and showed how the Eighth Doctor regenerated into John Hurt's War Doctor, the incarnation of the Doctor who fought in the Time War.

Cass turns down the opportunity to board the TARDIS in The Night Of The Doctor, but unlike our other examples, she isn't saying "no" to becoming a companion - she's saying "no" to letting the Doctor save her life.

Cass is the pilot of a crashing spaceship, and while she could've easily escaped when the Eighth Doctor materialised onboard and offered to whisk her away to safety, she chose death instead, rejecting him because the Time War had blurred the lines between the Time Lords and the Daleks - in terms of who is good, and who is bad.

In this moment, Cass views the Doctor as a villain, and as someone on the outskirts of the Time War - someone watching the Time Lords and the Daleks destroy each other in droves - who can blame her?

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.