10 Most Bizarre Doctor Who Moments

2. The Doctor's Cardboard Companion (The Mind Robber)

Doctor Who
BBC Studios

The entirety of 1968's The Mind Robber is a peculiar affair, consisting of the Second Doctor wandering around the Land Of Fiction, a realm where nothing is as it seems.

Similar to the Fourth Doctor in the Matrix, the Second Doctor and his companions encounter all kinds of weirdness within this land, from creaky clockwork soldiers shambling about the place, to a 17th century Englishman seemingly pulled out of time. Oh, and there's also Rapunzel, skeletons, and a Minotaur. Totally normal stuff!

Possibly the strangest moment in the serial though is a sequence where Jamie is inexplicably turned into a cardboard cutout, with his face going missing.

The Doctor is then forced to re-assemble Jamie's face using a nearby selection of eyes, noses, and mouths, but unfortunately, he gets it wrong, and when Jamie returns to his fleshy form, he has a completely different appearance.

Interestingly, this plot point came about via a last-minute rewrite after actor Frazer Hines contracted chicken pox, forcing the role to be temporarily recast. The Doctor's baffled response to this discount Jamie is pure gold, resulting in one of the most delightfully weird Doctor Who moments ever.

Contributor
Contributor

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.