10 Doctor Who Side Characters With Tragic Backstories
The Doctor has a dark past, sure - but he's never been ripped apart and turned into a robot.
When people talk about how emotional Doctor Who is, they're usually thinking about all the regenerations and companion departures: those grand farewell speeches, those tearful goodbyes, and those heart-wrenching deaths.
These are always going to be the most memorable parts of the show from an emotional perspective, because, well, watching beloved characters move on is a really hard thing to do! But Doctors and companions aside - and allow us to get really depressing here for a second - there's a lot more suffering and loss to be found if you look a little closer at some of the show's smaller side characters, too.
From one-off heroes to one-off villains (or, y'know, just one-off randomers), the last decade-and-a-half of Who is littered with side characters whose backstories are deeply tragic, from soldiers who are actually grotesque government experiments, to sinister aliens with some truly disturbing origins.
These backstories often aren't given much attention in their episodes, so it's little surprise that fans rarely talk about them when discussing the show's saddest moments - but the characters involved are definitely worthy of our sympathy.
10. Ada Gillyflower
The scars on Ada Gillyflower's face make it clear that her past is riddled with trauma, but even so, she hasn't let her horrific backstory consume her.
As evidenced by the fact that she voluntarily takes care of a severely injured Eleventh Doctor, she's a kind, gentle soul who was simply dealt a rough hand in life - and in her case, that rough hand manifested in the form of her mother, Winifred Gillyflower.
Early on in Series 7's The Crimson Horror, we're told that Ada's blindness and scarring was caused by her father in a drunken rage, but this is a total lie. The truth is - unbelievably - even darker still.
It was actually Ada's mother who scarred her, during a series of experiments involving red leech venom. Winifred was trying to find an anti-toxin to combat this venom, and she used Ada as her test subject throughout this process. She blinded her own daughter, for nothing more than personal gain.
What makes this even worse is that Winifred doesn't seem remotely sorry for her actions, which is why it's extremely satisfying when she falls to her death at the end of the episode. Karma at its finest.