8 Doctor Who Episodes Ruined By Their Endings

4. The Almost People

Doctor Who The Almost People Jennifer Flesh monster
BBC Studios

While most Doctor Who episodes include a big bad monster for the Doctor to vanquish, Series 6's The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People did things a bit differently.

In this story, the "villains" are just ordinary humans, who are desperately trying to survive. A solar storm at an isolated factory has led to the small group of people who work there (along with the Doctor, who is paying them a visit) being duplicated, meaning that they have to fight themselves - literally - in order to escape.

This results in an atmospheric and tense story that explores several fascinating philosophical questions: what does it mean to be human? Should the duplicates be considered real people? Do the original humans have the right to kill their clones?

It's interesting to watch the characters struggle with these questions, and the story shows some impressive restraint by remaining in this grounded territory throughout, not feeling the need to shoehorn in one of those aforementioned big bad monsters.

That is, until the very end of the second episode, in which our characters run down a suspiciously long corridor while being chased by an unconvincing, messy blob of pixels. This is easily the worst scene in the entire two-parter: not only is the CGI terrible, but this monster really does come out of nowhere, almost like the writers felt the need to cram in a monster at the eleventh hour.

It's a shame that the story didn't have an ending that was as engaging as the deep-seated drama that preceded it - this one was a real missed opportunity.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!