10 Doctor Who Moments That Broke The Fourth Wall

8. Nothing Without An Audience (Heaven Sent)

Doctor Who The Shakespeare Code witch
BBC

Steven Moffat really had a thing for self-referential humour, which, considering his background as a comedy writer, totally makes sense.

His meta stylings can be found in every single era of his Doctor Who writing career, whether it's the Weeping Angels being frozen in place by the viewers at home, or the Twelfth Doctor mocking the formula of the show in his (and Moffat's) final episode.

While these kinds of things can be considered "fourth wall breaks" in a certain sense, one of the only examples of Moffat directly breaking the fourth wall came in the Series 9 all-time classic, Heaven Sent, where Capaldi's Doctor quips "I'm nothing without an audience" while shooting a knowing glance down the camera lens.

Even though Clara (or at least, a weird vision of Clara) is in the room with him, this moment was actually included in Moffat's script, where it was specifically written as a fourth wall break.

Along with our next entry, this is also one of the only times the Doctor directly refers to the audience at home - making it a rather special entry in the show's meta back-catalogue.

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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.