10 Doctor Who Stories With WORSE Endings Than Flux
9. Death In Heaven (2014)
Danny Pink is dead. The Master, now going by Missy is in league with the Cybermen and is unleashing a macabre plan involving the world's dead.
Death in Heaven is DARK. There's a real weight on Peter Capaldi's first series that strives too hard to make things more adult, in a way that befits such an exceptionally talented character actor. It reaches its nadir with a story that turns every corpse into a Cybermen, alongside a grim hoax by Missy involving cremation. It's a Doctor Who story that plays into some very adult fears about mortality and death.
It also aired the day before Remembrance Sunday and tackles the morality of the military and interrogates the very idea of the Doctor as a blood-soaked general. And yet, it ends with "love saves the day" and a big daft explosion. Oh, and it turns the corpse of one of the Doctor's oldest and most trusted friends into an avenging Cyberman.
You thought making Lethbridge-Stewart a Corporal in Flux was insulting? And let's not even get started on what Clara's supposed to do with the Afghan orphan that materialises in her flat!
The very end of the story, with the Doctor and Clara lying to each other is an emotionally affecting moment, but it doesn't quite raise it above the tasteless tone of the previous 50 minutes. Santa Claus or no Santa Claus.