With "The Power of the Doctor" set to air on October 23, Doctor Who fans are excited to see Jodie Whitaker face off against her scariest foes in one last adventure before regenerating. It's set to be an intense affair, with the Daleks, Cybermen, and Master all making appearances alongside several former companions.
Though the Doctor has faced many terrifying foes, the character themselves has also committed some despicable acts that have given viewers chills. Such actions are few and far between, but when the Doctor crosses the line, they can be just as scary as their most famous enemies.
Imprisoning The Family Of Blood
Though the Family of Blood were nasty villains who deserved to be punished for the people they harmed in "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood," Redditor jwd77 "found the punishments [the Tenth Doctor] dealt out in Family of Blood to be particularly brutal." What makes it so brutal and terrifying is the Tenth Doctor's mercilessness in it all.
The Tenth Doctor very easily could have let the Family of Blood die, but instead gave them immortality and imprisoned them for eternity in gruesome traps they would never be able to escape from. It's understandable that he'd be infuriated with the Family for taking away his chance to be happy and live a normal life, but damning them to a life of torture is arguably scarier than anything the group did.
Lashing Out At The Captain
"The Pirate Planet" is one of Doctor Who's funniest episodes, but it also features one of the Fourth Doctor's most dramatic outbursts. It comes during the middle of the story when the Captain of the Pirate Planet is explaining how his ship runs, to which the Doctor erupts in fury at the suggestion he appreciates the mass murder required to power the planet.
What makes the scene so impactful and uncomfortable is the way in which Tom Baker goes from silly and bombastic to ferocious in the span of a few short seconds. It's a volatile eruption of emotion so intense that krotonpaul noted "I wouldn't want to be shouted at by Tom Baker either."
Bullying Colonel "Runaway" Manton
The Eleventh Doctor is one of the more likable incarnations of the Doctor, yet beneath his childish demeanor is a darkness that makes his worst enemies tremble. Redditor springdew felt this was especially the case when Eleven "confronts Colonel Runaway Manton. It feels like he might do anything."
While the way in which the Eleventh Doctor orders Colonel Manton to tell his men to runaway is tense thanks to Matt Smith's tone and facial expression, it's the exchange he delivers to Madame Kovarian which cements the scene as terrifying. She attempts to undermine the Doctor's fury due to the countless rules the character has, only for Eleven to point out that "Good men don't need rules."
The Doctor Tries To Kill The Last Dalek
OmniscientRogue wrote "the Doctor terrified me with his rage against the Dalek and Henry van Staten" in "Dalek." It was the first time the Ninth Doctor showed the full extent of his trauma from the Time War, and his confrontation with the last Dalek cemented Christopher Eccleston as one of Britain's finest performers.
What makes the scene between the Ninth Doctor and the Dalek especially chilling is the way in which Nine goes from a coward to a bully. He trembles when he first sees the Dalek, but his confidence builds as talks with the creature, eventually acting like a Dalek himself when he attempts to electrocute the creature after taunting it.
Convincing A Dalek To Kill Itself
If there's one thing scarier than the Doctor trying to kill a Dalek, then it's convincing a "Supreme Dalek into killing itself" per the words of Cshelton002. It's a side of the character audiences so rarely see, and for good reason considering just how cold it shows the Doctor to be.
The scene in which the Seventh Doctor talks the Dalek to death is only one of a few dark moments from Sylvester McCoy's incarnation of the character, yet it remains one of the most defining ones. It's terrifying because it shows just how much power the Doctor has over his arch-nemesis, and how he can unleash it on any one person if he chose to do so.
Claiming The Title Of Time Lord Victorious
"The Waters of Mars" is often seen as one of the best Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who episodes, thanks in large part to the moral dilemma the Tenth Doctor faces in whether to alter a fixed point in time. The episode culminates in the Doctor declaring himself the Time Lord Victorious, which one Reddit deemed "scary, devastating and embarrassingly intimate."
What makes the Tenth Doctor's declaration so chilling for viewers is the fact that it shows what a broken Doctor who doesn't care about any rules looks like. He truly embodies the moniker of the man in a blue box, but because of his godlike power, there's an uneasy about what he might do.
Leaving Old Amy Behind To Die
Though the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond have one of the strongest friendships on Doctor Who, that didn't stop the former from "abandoning [Amy] for fifty years, because he didn't bother to check the planet out ahead of time" in "The Girl Who Waited," per the words of hohmeisw. What makes the situation worse is that he deliberately let an old version of Amy die just so he could escape the planet they're trapped on.
While the Doctor attempted to justify his actions by pointing out that two different versions of Amy couldn't exist in the same timestream, the fact that he'd let one of his companions die shows just how terrifying cold the character can be. Leaving Amy to die was possibly one of the cruelest things the character did.
Tricking Ace Into Thinking She Was Going To Die
"The Curse of Fenric" is one of the darker episodes of classic Doctor Who, and one that viewers believe show the Seventh Doctor at his cruelest. Redditor Morhek specifically called out the Doctor for "destroying [Ace's] faith in him to defeat Fenric" be claiming that she was useless and not worth saving.
Though the Seventh Doctor's action isn't as outwardly terrifying as the vampiric monsters in "The Curse of Fenric," the fact that a person as supposedly kind-hearted as the Doctor would trick Ace into thinking no one cared for her is chilling. It's an action no one would want to go through, and would make many nervous of whether the Doctor would actually leave them to die at a later date.
Strangling Peri
The Sixth Doctor's first outing is littered with actions that rubbed Whovians the wrong way. He dismissed his previous incarnation as weak, cowered before intergalactic police officers, and was constantly rude toward Peri.
Though many of the Sixth Doctor's rough edges were sanded down with time, his act of "strangling a scared young woman" per the words of Torranski was something the character could never live down. For a single moment, the Doctor was as terrifying as his worst enemies, acting with such cruelty that many viewers gave up on the program.
Convincing The Human Race To Kill The Silence
"The Impossible Astronaut" is one of Doctor Who's best season premieres, thanks in large part to the blockbuster style events that take place in the story, such as the death of the Doctor, the introduction to a new race of aliens, and a finale involving the launch of Apollo 11. It also features what Redditor Bridgeboy95 calls one of the Doctor's darkest actions, "getting the human race to slaughter the silence."
The Silence might have been villains, but the Doctor's solution is unsettling because he wipes out a whole race of aliens by hypnotizing humanity. A person having the power to commit genocide is scary enough as it is, but the fact that the Doctor doesn't bat an eye about the ethics of such an act makes it that much more terrifying.