10 Doctor Who Endings That Get Worse The More You Think About Them

It Takes You Away is a classic example of a rough ending overshadowing what is otherwise a pretty great episode of Doctor Who.

During the story we see the Doctor and her fam find their way into an alternate universe, where it appears that people’s loved ones have returned from the grave. This presents Graham with a dilemma – stay in this world where he can live with Grace despite knowing it’s not real, or return to reality?

It’s extremely effective and beautifully portrayed, with this idyllic reality containing a constant undercurrent of menace throughout (not to mention the literal undercurrent of menace in the form of the anti-zone), giving us some of the best character work of the Thirteenth Doctor era.

The episode then takes a sharp turn off a cliff and becomes even more surreal and a lot more nonsensical when the Doctor has a conversation with a frog sat on a chair. It feels more Monty Python sketch than Doctor Who, and was widely mocked upon the episode’s broadcast in 2018. 

It’s such a shame because this scene now dominates the episode’s reputation, rather than the pretty great episode leading up to it! You can see what they were going for but it just didn’t work, with the decision to give the frog Grace’s voice equally as strange as the decision to have a talking frog in the first place.

Would it have looked better as a CGI creature? I can’t possibly say, but what I can say is that It Takes You Away will always be remembered as “the one with the talking frog.”