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

What’s worse than a fantastic episode that falls at the last hurdle? An episode that is hard to watch the entire way through, and then manages to squeeze in one last kick in the teeth before the credits roll.

Doctor Who is at its best when the Doctor delivers a powerful speech that sticks with us for years to come, but you can’t just have any old speech and automatically generate an all-timer moment.

The Doctor’s final speech in Orphan 55 is a perfect example of this, as while it might’ve sounded alright on paper and there’s nothing inherently wrong with the core sentiment, in execution it comes across as patronising and way too on the nose. At the time this was a big criticism of the Chibnall era as a whole, and this was one of the worst examples – like you were being hit with a sledgehammer rather than being told an organic story.

Over the years it hasn’t exactly aged well either, and the clip itself has been downvoted into oblivion on YouTube. It wasn’t helped by the terrible episode surrounding it to be fair, nor the bizarre, laughable thumb-sucking finale that preceded it.

And then just for a final bit of missing the mark entirely, the cut to a roaring Dreg as the Doctor mentions what humans could become gives us one last eyeroll to go out on. Lovely.