31 Days of Horror: Scariest Doctor Who Episodes

Horror isn’t just a genre; it’s an amalgamation of pop culture, cozy traditions, and things that go bump in the night. This year, we're taking our 31 Days of Horror across the entire cultural spectrum. We’ll be taking a look at movies that scare us, games that kept us paranoid, scary books we cozy up with under blankets, music that sets that spooky tone and seasonal food we’re craving–or strange food you’d have to tie us up and force feed us. Whether you’re looking for something truly terrifying or a cozy autumn haunt, come back every day this month for a new bite-sized review or spooky adjacent list.

Depending on who you talk to or when they last saw it, there are people who will describe Doctor Who in a lot of different ways. Some will call it a low budget British sci-fi show. Some relegate it to a kids' show. Some consider it a legacy sci-fi series that is beloved not only in Britain, but all over the world.

One thing to know about us here at Culture Combine - we LOVE Doctor Who. We're here for Classic Who, NuWho, and everything in between. In fact, we all regularly attend Chicago TARDIS on Black Friday weekend just to soak up the Dalek, Cyberman and Companions of it all (and it's a BLAST.)

But this is Halloween, so what are we doing here? Well, since the very get-go, there's been some seriously scary things that the Doctor's had to face with his companions, and we're looking at the scariest episodes of this sci-fi classic in no particular order. There's both NuWho and Classic in this list, and they're all amazing. Don't take these lightly - some of them literally had us staying up late with the lights on just to recover. And whatever you do, don't blink.

Midnight (Series 4, Episode 10)

Midnight is simultaneously one of my favorite and least favorite episodes of Doctor Who. Not because it's too scary, which it kinda is as the Doctor not only faces an invisible antagonist -a fairly common trope of the series). Nor is it the confined setting that makes it a prime example of a Bottle Episode. Rather my slight disdain for the episode comes from another common plot point/cliche/whatever we're calling it this week: not listening to the smartest person in the room.

The episode takes place on a heavily radiated planet with a top of the line resort. While his companion at the time Donna basks at the resort's spa, the Doctor finds himself on a shuttle tour to see a sapphire waterfall. On the trip a never truly seen entity takes over people on the tram, sending everyone into a panic as they try to survive and oust this invisible, conniving, and alluring threat.

And there's the Doctor doing his damndest to get everyone through the situation...BUT NO ONE LISTENS. The mass frenzy has everyone pushing logic to the brink and while normally this would irritate me to no end, they way Russell T Davies manages to make everything make sense, even within the narrative, is astounding. My annoyance turns to fear as things seem to be at a breaking point, but of course this is an episode of Doctor Who, so everything turns out alright I guess, but nothing is as frightening as the Doctor's look of disappointment at the end of the episode.

Blink (Series 3, episode 10)

“Blink” is one of the most iconic episodes of the David Tennant era and introduces one of Dr Who’s most iconic villains of modern era Who. For me personally, it’s also probably the most frightening.

The episode starts out in an unusually creepy way from most other episodes in the Tennant era. Sally Sparrow (Carey Mulligan), our main companion for the episode (despite only meeting the Doctor once, for just a moment) is exploring an abandoned and disheveled mansion at night when she comes upon a message written under the peeling wallpaper that reads “BEWARE.” As she strips apart the wallpaper, the message is a warning – for her – of the weeping angels.

What follows is a slow burn of well-paced horror and complex timey-wimeyness that defines Doctor Who as a series, despite it being a “Doctor lite” episode. Sparrow is being stalked by the angels – creatures as old as the universe that feed off potential energy – “all the days you might have had, all your stolen moments.” Their greatest strength and weakness is that they exist in the abstract and turn to stone when observed.

Even before I saw “Blink” for the first time, I’ve always felt unsettled by stone statues. They’re near the top of the list of things that creep me out the most, right next to porcelain dolls. What makes the angels one of the most powerful and scary villains in all the Whoverse is that they seem so common. Stone statues are literally everywhere we go, from giant effigies in big cities to tiny lawn ornaments.

Despite The Doctor explaining that they’re “the most malevolent life form evolution has ever produced,” Blink slow rolls that power. They really do just creep up on our heroes at first. We learn very early that they’re responsible for The Doctor being stuck in 1969, but don’t see just how malevolent they are until midway through the episode. They’re also terribly hard to beat. How can anyone defeat an enemy that can grab you from behind before you notice, or even right in front of you should you blink?

There are some fantastic moments of levity as well. Sally seeing the other video store clerk yelling at a movie saying “go to the police! Why doesn’t anyone go to the police” is a nice little meta moment for everyone who’s yelled at the obviously bad decisions characters make in pretty much any horror media. Larry Nightengale, the nerdy introverted video store clerk, provides good comic relief in his interactions with Sparrow.

Since “Blink,” Doctor Who has brought the angels back multiple times and while in all of those episodes they’re still scary, their initial introduction remains one of the scariest moments in all the Whoverse.

The God Complex (Series 6, episode 11)

We open the episode with a policewoman named Lucy wandering the halls of a truly creepy old hotel worthy of comparison to The Overlook in The Shining. Lucy is terrified, opening doors seemingly at random. “You don’t know what’s going to be in your room until you see it. Then you realize it could never have been anything else,” she says internally while scribbling in a notebook. She adds that the moments of her “worship” are getting closer together and notes that she’s the last person left.

The hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end in just those first two minutes of the episode, and they didn’t recede until the very end.

The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amy and Rory Williams (Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill) end up arriving to the hotel where they’re met by several other humans and an alien. The hotel is just a façade. Our characters are rather stuck inside an automated prison with an ancient alien minotaur that feeds off the faith they’re brainwashed into developing for the creature to cope with being trapped inside their greatest fears.

There’s a lot in this episode that’s downright terrifying. Plenty of jumpscares, a room full of ventriloquist dolls and a guest appearance by a weeping angel, and lots of long shots of liminal space and odd angles. But the most horrific thing about The God Complex is being forced to watch characters lose their mind and will and giving themselves over completely to the creature with a maddened smile on their faces.

It’s not just about being immersed in whatever frightens you the most, but the possibility of being so terrified that you’ll give up the very essence of who you are – your core beliefs, your faith – to escape.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (Series 1, Episode 9 and 10)

Let’s start with one I bet you’d find on a lot of lists - no, not Blink – The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. I watched this again with my husband back at Chicago TARDIS this past year. Aside from the very visceral fears brought about by a London under siege in a world war, and the introduction of a very impish and important character in Jack Harkness, you have the supremely terrifying phenomenon that is the empty child.

This child never ceases his search for his Mummy, dressed in a schoolboy’s uniform with a gas mask secured to his face. He’s able to call on phones, come through in radio signals…and it’s terrifying.

“Are you my Mummy?” 

This two-parter is full of twists and turns, including that there isn’t just one “empty child” and they may not be children at all.  And though it’s also one of the sadder episodes, it’s also one of the episodes with the most hopeful ending, and that’s the kind of thing Doctor Who does best.

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (Series 4, Episode 8/9)

A giant library the size of a planet sounds like a vacation more than a nightmare to me. Unfortunately, that's not the way it goes for the Tenth Doctor when he goes there with none other than his best companion Donna Noble (obvi)

This is a very important episode in the canon of the show as a whole, as it's the first time we meet (and the first time the Doctor meets) River Song. Why is that such a big deal? Spoilers, sweetie! For the time being, the Doctor's here because of a psychic message, and on arrival finds it quite empty, having been sealed for 100 years. But there's a warning: "others are coming"

River's an archaeologist leading a team who is exploring the library, but she seems almost intimately familiar with him - just one eerie thing in this episode.This is also where we meet the Vashta Nerada, an alien species that acts as a collective (kind of like the Borg) and swarms people in an instant, leaving only their empty shell of bone behind.

Yet there are those who remain, and echoes of the people they used to be. It turns out that the patrons of the library have been trapped somehow?What's even happening here? The answer is a lot more complicated than you'd expect, and when microscopic aliens who can reduce you to bare bones are lurking in the darkness, it's not gonna be a good time.

Wild Blue Yonder, 60th Anniversary Special (2023)

It feels like just yesterday I got freaked out thoroughly by this one, and I mean thoroughly enough I had to find something pleasant to do before I went to bed after this one. This was the second of the 60th anniversary specials, after "The Star Beast" which was...ok. Still, though I daren't admit it around the fandom at the time, I was excited to see Tennant again, because he's my Doctor. And Donna? Well, icing on the cake. I love the way she challenges him, and doesn't take any shit from him, but is also kinda best friends with him. It's such a great relationship.

Anyway, the Doctor and Donna get stranded on an abandoned spaceship because TARDIS malfunction. The spaceship was already giving Event Horizon vibes, but then they find an old robot moving extremely slowly around the ship and almost nothing else. No signs of life, and only some unintelligible announcements that are followed by a reconfiguration of the ship.

As they're trying to figure this out, they split up. Or do they? Because soon after the pair splits, they find...other versions of themselves. These versions are not anyone's friend, and they seem to have no concept of size and shape, and therefore warp their forms into hideous long limbed versions of the Doctor and Donna. But it's not enough that they're copying their physical form - they're also stealing their thoughts.

The stakes are high, and it's hard to figure out who's who (or a Not-Thing, as the dopplegangers call themselves). But the Doctor and Donna are close enough to actually work it out and even lay a trap for the Not-Things, and they figure out the secrets of the ship and the Not-Things in time to stop back by Camden Market, where we get a last goodbye to NuWho favorite Wilfred Mott.

Dalek (Series 1, Episode 6)

This episode hails from the very first series of "NuWho" with Christopher Eccleston, someone we still wish had a lot longer playing The Doctor. And I suppose if you can read titles, you know some of what'll happen.

The Doctor and Rose go to Utah for this one, where they meet a collector of alien artifacts who has some truly interesting things in the massive bunker deep beneath the soil.

But it's not just dusty phasers. It turns out, he has a live alien in captivity. Naturally, as this is one of his most prized possessions, he goes to show it off, but it doesn't go as he planned. You see, the Dalek were all destroyed in the Time War, so they're no longer a threat. Or that's what even The Doctor thought. And even though he's weakened and being held captive, you can see the horror cross the Doctor's face as he immediately tries to destroy it.

Not so fast though, because he's restrained and then also held captive by our collector and his friends, so he can be invasively studied and prodded. Meanwhile, Rose gets some one on one time with one of the most terrifying enemies the Doctor has ever faced. Only she doesn't know that. She takes pity on it, but when she touches its casing, it's able to absorb her DNA, re-energize and go on a killing spree, escaping its chains, repairing itself, and causing enough damage and mayhem to force our evil collector to release the Doctor to help stop it.

There's a lot of reasons this return of the Daleks is scary, but one thing that struck me is the fear in the Doctor's eyes when he realizes the Daleks aren't all dead. There's also the insane abilities of the thing, though, and the way it manipulates Rose, overpowers her and immediately carries out its prime directive: to exterminate any life form that is not Dalek.

I used to laugh at Dalek in the OG series as a kid. Why would anyone fear a monster that looks like a pepper grinder with plungers attached to it? But this episode, and this series in particular, start to strike that fear in your heart - the familiar dread of a foe that even the Doctor has nightmares about.

Now let's turn our attention to Classic Who and some of its scariest episodes. We've got three picks for you here, but remember, these are serialized differently and so each episode is usually several hours long.

Tomb of the Cybermen - Second Doctor, 1967

This classic episode was the third to feature the Cybermen and the first to show how scary they can be. I contend that even though they may look silly here, the Cybermen are at their absolute scariest. But as with most horror, the monsters aren't always the most monstrous entity, as the Brotherhood of Logicians (seriously) have plans to use the Cybermen for their own means.

The first three episodes of this four-parter are tight and tense with the fourth falling off a bit—but if you've watched Classic Who, this happens sometimes. You have some great classic characters like Roy Stewart as the mute but massive Toberman. You also have Cybermen ready to assimilate people while saying “to struggle is futile” before the Borg were even a twinkle in Maurice Hurley’s eye.

Terror of the Autons - Third Doctor, 1971

Come for the return of the Autons, stay for the Master. This serial features everyone’s favorite plastic-come-alive aliens: the Autons. Featured in this episode are killer chairs, faceless mannequins with guns for hands, and a murderous, Chucky-sized troll doll.

The story is also notable for being the very first appearance of the Master (in a commanding performance by Roger Delgado), and it introduces companion Jo Grant. Coincidentally, Roy Stewart makes an appearance here, too—though he’s no Toberman this time around. 

The Ark in Space - Fourth Doctor, 1975

This 1975 serial is jokingly referred to by fans as the inspiration for Alien (1979). And while the atmosphere building in “The Ark in Space” is lacking, the threat itself sounds a lot like what would be in Ridley Scott’s film: an alien gets on board a ship and lays its eggs in a sleeping crew

. Tom Baker is brilliant in this, along with a great performance by Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. And despite the effect being bubble wrap painted green, seeing the parasite take over Commander Noah’s body is effective body horror.