20 Best Deaths In Doctor Who History

2. Death By Chair (Terror Of The Autons)

Part of what keeps the world's longest-running science-fiction series fresh is the idea that anything can happen. The Doctor may go anywhere in time and space, facing a variety of threats from a parasitic Wirrn to a grumpy Sontaran, but even he would have been surprised by the events of Terror of the Autons. Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor met the Nestene Consciousness and its peculiar habit of controlling plastic right at the start of his tenure in Spearhead From Space. It wasn't long before he encountered it again, this time in alliance with his oldest (and at that time newest) enemy, the Master (Roger Delgado). A memorable sequence saw a creepy doll come to life to murder a man years before the likes of Chucky in Child's Play. Though surely the story's standout death involved an invitation to sit down with extreme prejudice. Harry Towb's hapless corporate stooge McDermott was used by the Master as part of an experiment. Seating himself in a chair that wouldn't look out of place in Fifty Shades Of Grey, the unsuspecting pawn got eaten by a deceptively comfy item of malevolent furniture. Clearly the actor had to help it along a bit (at this point an honourable mention must be given to John Challis's Scorby in The Seeds of Doom, who effectively attacked himself with a lethal trellis!), yet this is a minor quibble. This was a particularly British form of horror at its best.