Doctor Who: 10 Times The Doctor Went Too Far
We’re going to need a lot more than four knocks by the time we’re through with these…
The Doctor, as a character, is at their absolute best when they aren’t as squeaky clean as their image as a family-friendly pop-culture icon would suggest.
The Doctor, especially in the modern run, is an ancient being who often masks that weariness and ruthlessness behind a playful mask, travelling with a human companion in order to keep their impulses in check and keep them (sometimes literally) down to Earth.
But sometimes, all the more when they have no one to stand in judgement of them, the Doctor’s darker tendencies tend to surface.
In this list, we’ll be looking at ten times the Doctor allowed these feelings of rage, their god complex, or their love of their companions to push them over the line into acts of ill-advised vengeance, violence, or sometimes, straight-up evil.
10. Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS might not be the first episode to spring to your mind when you see this title, either because it doesn’t present itself as a dark episode, or because you, understandably, forgot it existed.
However, right from the opening moments, the Doctor goes straight into the danger zone.
Clara is trapped somewhere deep inside a heavily-damaged TARDIS, and the Doctor enlists the Van Baalen brothers, who are responsible for said damage, to help. I say ‘enlists’, but it’s more of a forced conscription, as the Doctor locks them all inside the TARDIS with a ticking countdown, threatening to let the place explode if they don’t help.
The Brothers aren’t exactly great people, but they’re also far from evil. They certainly don’t deserve death, but the Doctor ends up leading them to it anyway, albeit in an aborted timeline.
As the TARDIS crumbles around them, the Doctor’s usual whimsy is nowhere to be found – he’s cold, threatening, and dangerously in control. Thankfully, this pays off and he’s reunited with Clara, only to turn on her. Trapped at what he believes is a literal cliff edge, with certain death just around the corner, his suspicions surrounding the mystery of Clara’s identify boil to the surface, getting in her face and demanding her to spill her secrets.
It’s a rare loss of composure as the mask slips, revealing a man who is terrified of not knowing all the answers.