Doctor Who: 8 Story Arcs Of The Revived Series Explained

8. Bad Wolf

When Doctor Who burst back onto our TV screens in 2005 it didn't waste any time in introducing the first of its now traditional story arcs which would be slowly built up throughout the course of the series to ultimately take centre stage in its finale and - in the case of Bad Wolf, at least - beyond.e Those mysterious two words followed the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler throughout their adventures but the first reference to them would have been initially overlooked by viewers - if it was even picked up by them at all. It was mentioned in passing by the Moxx of Balhoon in Series 1's second episode, The End of the World, but at that point nobody had any reason to suspect its relevance to the series' overriding narrative as a whole. It was in the next episode, The Unquiet Dead, that fans began to realise there was something fishy going on when it was suggested by psychic maid Gwyneth that Rose had been subjected to "the big bad wolf". Whatever that meant! The Doctor's new companion was just as confused as the audience and the rest of Bad Wolf's blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearances over the preceding episodes - which included the phrase appearing on posters, graffiti and even on the side of a Nazi bomb, to name but a few - did nothing to explain what the enigmatic expression actually meant. It was a cool thing to look out for, though. It wasn't until the episode Boom Town that the Ninth Doctor himself began to question its ominous presence and in the two part finale, Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways, it was finally revealed that the words were a message scattered through time and space by Rose after she looked into the heart of the TARDIS and inadvertently absorbed the energies of the time vortex. It was ultimately a link between her and the Doctor and she's pretty much been defined by it ever since. The beach on which they bid their final farewell - both of them, in fact - was called Bad Wolf Bay and it even popped up in Series 3 as a suggestion that the connection between them was still going strong, despite the fact she was trapped forevermore - or so everyone thought, anyway - on a parallel universe. The phrase heralded her grand return in Series 4 and most recently, in last year's 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor, the Moment took on its guise as part of its attempt to connect with the War Doctor. Simply put, the Bad Wolf is never too far behind, though if your eyes lit up and you possessed the ability to fire beams of energy from your hands, you'd find it pretty hard to stay away, too!