10 Doctor Who Episodes That Accidentally Changed The Show Forever

For its first few seasons, Doctor Who's historical episodes were just that: historical. They had no aliens, no futuristic technology, and no sci-fi shenanigans of any kind (barring the TARDIS of course).

That all changed in 1965’s The Time Meddler. Set in 1066, it sees the First Doctor and his companions involved in their usual fare for the time – getting accidentally mixed up in historical events, and trying to avoid making any big alterations to the timeline.

But this serial has an additional twist in the form of another rogue Time Lord (though they weren’t called that yet) named the Monk, who is attempting to subvert history by helping the Saxons defeat William the Conqueror’s armies at the Battle of Hastings.

While this is pretty tame by modern standards, it was the first time the show’s two distinct episode types (historicals and futuristic sci-fi) had mixed, kicking off a trend of sci-fi elements in historical settings that would very quickly outright replace the usual “pure historicals”.

These largely fell out of fashion by the time Patrick Troughton took over as the Doctor, and there hasn’t been a single pure historical since Black Orchid in 1982.