Doctor Who: 10 Moments Of Mind-Blowing Unexpected Cruelty From The Doctor

8. "Dinosaurs On A Spaceship"

Typically, with any encounter the Doctor has with a villainous "collector" of any sort, the results are less than desirable (see: Ghostlight, Dalek, The Angels Take Manhattan). His run-in with Solomon on the Silurian space ark went no differently. With Solomon's treating Queen Nefertiti as a "valuable item" and his being responsible for the near extinction of the remaining Silurians, perhaps Solomon's fate was deserved. The Doctor doesn't just leave the criminal for dead, though, but he ensures inescapable death. This comes right after Oswin Oswald erases him from the Daleks' memory banks and as the Doctor starts erasing himself from other major databases (see: "The Inforarium"). Perhaps, and despite how frequently he talks about wanting to be adored, the Doctor feels as though he can be himself most when no one who might hold his acts against him is watching. A Doctor not on the radar is not one to be trifled with. Or perhaps it's just another example of how visible genocide sits in the Doctor's heart, begging the question: If the Doctor watched some other Time Lord destroy his people, would he have issued that Time Lord the same death as he did Solomon? Does he feel as though he deserves that sort of death? Either way, his leaving Solomon to die offered a truly stark conclusion to an otherwise lighthearted episode.