10 Doctor Who Fates Worse Than Death
4. Living for an Eternity in Pain
The history of Doctor Who is littered with the corpses of scientists who believed they could cheat death. John Lumic, dead on his Cyber throne. A naked and shivering Professor Lazarus, who fell from the belfry whilst in the form of a giant scorpion. The shattered and broken remains of Morbius in his patchwork body at the bottom of a cliff.
And then there's Mawdryn and his fellow scientists, who used Gallifreyan technology to replicate the Timelord's regenerative abilities. Predictably, it failed spectacularly and they were forced live a life of unending mutations and excruciating agony. We first meet Mawdryn as a charred corpse, who eventually regenerates into something that can only be described as Riff Raff from Rocky Horror with a plate of carbonara on his head.
Unable to take the agony any longer, Mawdryn and his colleagues plead with the Doctor to use his regeneration energy to euthanise them all in one of Doctor Who's bleakest story beats. The Doctor is willing to oblige, until an alternative method prevents itself at the story's climax.