5 Most Cringeworthy Doctor Who Moments From '90s

4. "The Doctor Is Half-Human!" - The TV Movie

Had it not been the Master saying this line, coupled with some nonsense about the Doctor having human retinas (what?), this little nugget of Doctor Who lore could easily have been ignored, and the Doctor's later line about being "half-human - on my mother's side" could easily be passed off as a witticism. But there it is, and it makes us cringe every time. What exactly is it about this failed attempt to add something new to the Doctor Who mythos that rubs fans the wrong way? For one thing, it doesn't seem to have any purpose - had this backdoor pilot gone to series, perhaps they might have picked up on it in later episodes, since at least one version of the series bible said something or other about the Doctor's father being an explorer and marrying the Doctor's human mother during his travels. But in the context of the movie, it just sits there, unless it's meant to be some justification of why the Doctor is suddenly interested in romance - and as wittier people than us have noted, if the reason the Doctor is interested in Grace is because he's half-human, it must be his lower half. If there had never been a 2005 series or a series of books that carried on the story after the TV movie, it may not have been such a big deal - but there were, and both have had to address the thorny question of the Doctor's genetics by either ignoring it entirely or coming up with ever-increasingly bizarre fan theories to explain the line. Our favourite is that the Master had the Eye of Harmony turned round the wrong way and he was looking at his own retina, not the Doctor's... In any case, it's only one of several scenes to fast-forward over when rewatching the movie.