Doctor Who: 12 Big Moments When Moffat Delivered The Chills

11. Gantok Is Eaten Alive By The Skulls Of The Headless Monks - The Wedding Of River Song

It's a pure Indiana-Jones style moment and one of the nastiest scenes of recent years. In his search for The Silence, The Doctor takes on their servant, Mark Gatiss's Viking impersonator Gantok, in a chess match to the death. Defeated and humiliated, Gantok leads the Doctor to Seventh Transept but refuses to head his warnings. Gantok steps on a booby trap and falls into a pit where he dies screaming, devoured by the skulls of the mysterious headless monks. While Doctor Who often goes dark - it is a common theme these days - this moment was a particularly nasty one for a family show and sure to give children nightmares. There's always something particularly creepy about animated skeletons, going all the way back to masterpiece of Ray Harryhausen's work in the 60s. Moffat draws on that and under Jeremy Webb's direction brings the dead to life in a moment of pure horror. It's a very quick sequence and that's why it doesn't have an impact as much as some other moments on this list. But it's still a prime example of how Moffat brought chills to the show.