Doctor Who: Peter Capaldi’s 9 Coolest Stand Alone Episodes

Essentially, Steven Moffat was up to his old tricks.

In Capaldi's first season, there was a standalone ep that more or less managed to turn the entire ethos of The Doctor on its head. Listen pitched the character as a frightened child, anxiously travelling across time to track down a monster that never really existed. Alongside him, Clara desperately sought to make him see reason, only to implement herself further and further into the problem...

...so much to the point that she finds herself at the core of one of The Doctor's most vulnerable childhood moments. It's the closing moments of one of the most well crafted, well written, and marvellously suspenseful stories in the show's history. The concept of a companion taking assertive action over The Doctor had admittedly been done once or twice before, but never with such wisdom and originality. The episode is also remarkably creepy given that the monster involved is actually, er, nothing whatsoever.

There was no nonsense to be found in this one, just masterclass sci-fi, and a very personal delve into an already established TV institution. Don't let this episode pass you by!