13 Darkest Doctor Who Endings Ever

Doctor Who isn’t exactly ‘gritty’ television – it’s episodic, prime-time, family entertainment, which often caters to the casual viewer. Other series, like Harry Potter, might ‘grow up’ with their audience, getting darker as they progress, but the circular nature of Doctor Who, and its long history, mean that this approach doesn’t really work.

The result? A show that tonally slingshots all over the place.

Sometimes it feels almost entirely aimed towards a young audience, but the next week, it’s dealing with mature and dark themes. This isn’t a criticism – it’s one of the strengths of the show, made possible by its mostly anthological format. It’s one of the things that makes this show so unique.

In this list, we’re going to look at thirteen times the Doctor’s luck ran out, ditching the usual reset buttons and status quo resets and leaving us with an ending that was decidedly lacking in sunshine and roses. We’re mostly going to discount ‘part one cliffhangers’ here, with a handful exceptions, as these are often hopeless by design but immediately remedied the next week.

In other words, here are some of the times that this ‘family show’ left us depressed as hell…

In this episode, Rory dies.

"Big woop", I hear you say. "He dies in every episode."

And while, absolutely, Rory’s deaths become less and less convincing with each passing fake-out, this one felt saddeningly real (in spite of him having also died in the previous story, Amy’s Choice).

This death is the one that stuck though (for a few episodes at least). In the closing moments, out of absolutely nowhere, Rory takes a laser shot to the chest for the Doctor. He’s clearly in a huge amount of pain, and the show doesn’t play down the realistic panic and fear of death like it normally does. It’s quite a harrowing sequence, with Rory, despite his heroic sacrifice, not going out with a lot of dignity – it feels like he’s gone too soon, like this shouldn’t be his end.

And then to add insult to injury, he begins to be eaten up by the crack in time, erasing him from existence. Arguably the darkest part of this sequence is the Doctor forcibly dragging a sobbing Amy to safety, practically throwing her into the TARDIS so she can’t get back out to say goodbye to her dead fiancé. He doesn’t allow Amy to save his body, ensuring that Rory, along with his sacrifice, will be forgotten, which happens moments later as Amy springs back to normal as if nothing has happened.

The Doctor, who is still aware of what has happened, chooses to keep this from Amy, who is oblivious to the fact that her husband-to-be has just been killed.

Eleven really doesn’t mess around, does he?