10 Unluckiest Doctor Who Characters

4. K9

Doctor Who Death In Heaven Danny Pink Cyberman
BBC Studios

Lovable robotic pooch K9 is one of Doctor Who's biggest unsung heroes.

Despite being responsible for saving the day on many occasions, he just doesn't get as much credit as his fellow human characters do, and even worse, his heroic efforts frequently result in him being severely damaged - or even outright destroyed.

This has been the case throughout the iconic canine's entire Doctor Who career. One of his earliest scrapes came while travelling with the Fourth Doctor and Romana, when K9 Mark II succumbed to some serious water damage after chasing a ball into the ocean - and hell, on one of his very next adventures, he had his head knocked clean off.

This same K9 was injured by the time winds shortly after, and his successor - K9 Mark III - was blown up while assisting the Tenth Doctor.

After all that pain and hardship, maybe Mark IV would give the metal mutt some better luck? Well, no. Not too long after his creation, this particular K9 model was forced to enter deep space in order to stabilise an artificial black hole.

Even worse, he had to stay in space for ages, only able to communicate with Sarah Jane Smith intermittently. Incredibly bad luck for such a good doggo.

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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.