20 Things Doctor Who Wants You To Forget

6. The Vengeance Of The Doctor

Doctor Who Forget
BBC Studios

In The Five Doctors, the Time Lord Borusa brought the Doctors to the Death Zone on Gallifrey to inadvertently aid him in his quest for immortality. He gets what he wished for, only to discover that it is a poisoned chalice, when he ends up eternally trapped within Rassilon’s sarcophagus.

The Doctor must have taken inspiration from Rassilon’s trap, because he goes a step further when years later he nets out individually tailored punishments to the Family of Blood. They too wanted to be immortal, and get more than they bargained for. “We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure that we did.”

In the Doctor’s defence, he gave up being a Time Lord, using the fob-watch in order to avoid such an outcome. But when that plan backfired, did he really have to be so creative with his punishments? The Father is chained forever in an underground chamber, the mother trapped in the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, the daughter hidden inside every mirror in existence, and the son time-locked as a scarecrow. It takes quite an effort to be so cruel. Either the Doctor really didn’t want to return to being a Time Lord or he’d learnt far too much in his short spell as a human.

Contributor
Contributor

Paul Driscoll is a freelance writer and author across a range of subjects from Cult TV to religion and social policy. He is a passionate Doctor Who fan and January 2017 will see the publication of his first extended study of the series (based on Toby Whithouse's series six episode, The God Complex) in the critically acclaimed Black Archive range by Obverse Books. He is a regular writer for the fan site Doctor Who Worldwide and has contributed several essays to Watching Books' You and Who range. Recently he has branched out into fiction writing, with two short stories in the charity Doctor Who anthology Seasons of War (Chinbeard Books). Paul's work will also feature in the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme collection (A Clockwork Iris, Obverse Books) and Chinbeard Books' collection of drabbles, A Time Lord for Change.