Doctor Who: The Timey-Wimiest Episodes Not By Steven Moffat

In 2007, a Doctor Who episode called Blink hit the air and caused quite a stir. In addition to introducing the most popular monster that the series had had for years (the Weeping Angels) and showing us just how good a “Doctor-lite” episode could be, Blink introduced a new bit of terminology that became quite familiar to fans of the series.

It was contained in one of the Doctor’s few speeches in that episode, where he described time as being "like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.”

In an instant, scriptwriter Steven Moffat gave us a term for all the zany but fun time travel nonsense that filled the series, and especially populates the episodes that Moffat himself wrote.

But Moffat isn’t the only writer to use time travel as something more than a way of getting the Doctor to and from the adventure. A variety of others have made their contribution to the mechanics and dynamics of time travel in the series.

Here are the ten best timey-wimiest episodes of the revived Doctor Who, not written by Steven Moffat…

Prior to this story, the series had introduced he idea of the “fixed points in time”-- moments which simply had to happen, either because of an intrinsic property of time or because of the importance of these moments in history.

So when the Tenth Doctor meets a doomed expedition on Mars, he feels powerless to interfere, knowing how critical this moment is to humanity’s future. But, overwhelmed by the horror of what is happening, he comes to a dangerous epiphany-- as the last of the Time Lords, the decisions about what is or is not permissible are his alone to make.

Acting according to his conscience, the Doctor saves the last members of the team and brings them to earth, not caring about the implications. However, one of the survivors, Adelaide Brooke, realizes the dangers and takes her own life to preserve the course of history, teaching the Doctor an important lesson about his arrogance.