4. Nightmare in Silver: The Cyber-Planner Menaces Clara
With the exception of the multiple large armies devoted to violently murdering him, everyone loves The Doctor. Whats not to love? Hes cheeky and out-going and is constantly zipping around to right wrongs and aid the helpless. But its a thin line between anarchic hero and destructive villain, and its a line that the WHO producers have toed carefully over the years. And on certain occasions, they have dived directly into the more malicious, under-handed range of characteristics that The Doctor inhabits. Particularly in season sixs endgame, Moffat and his team took great pains to underline again and again the most callous aspects of their hero. Episodes like The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex placed The Doctor in situations with no easy escape, and followed the character as he sunk to under-handed execution of cold-blooded schemes to extract himself. While these episodes were strong, it was this past seasons Nightmare in Silver that allowed Smith to take his capacity for wickedness and run with it. As The Cyber-Planner run amok with The Doctors body, Smith was positively chilling, tweaking his usual performance and vocal tics in certain ways to signify the transition from Time Lord to maniac, all the while displaying just how frail that divide is. Especially haunting are the moments when The Cyber-Planner digs into Clara, the current companion. These scenes linger especially because of our awareness that The Doctor can be condescending to, and manipulative of, his friends, even before being possessed by genocidal AI. Its a stand-out performance by Smith, all but guaranteeing him decades of work menacing super-heroes from behind two-way reflective glass (after hes allowed himself to be captured as part of a larger agenda, obviously).