The Doctor Who Episode That Ruined My Childhood
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- Опубликовано: 6 май 2020
- We all have that one Doctor Who episode that terrified us as a child. For me, this was Steven Moffat's first episode, the infamous Empty Child two-parter. All these years later, let's revisit it and see how it holds up.
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"Go to your room! I'm very cross! Now go to your room!"
"I'm glad that worked. They would've been terrible last words."
One of my favourite lines from 9
ARE YOU MY MUMMY
David tenant in the sontaran program
I thought “go to your room” was just the best resolution to the cliff hanger. The show was so freaking tense up to that point, and to break the tension like that was pretty clever. They did a great job of rebuilding the tension, too, so it didn’t grind the show to a halt.
(Sorry very late) and it thematically ties in with Nancy being trapped with the transforming soldier, since she saves herself by singing him to sleep
Being five when 'blink' was released, I was afraid of statues for a while after
Me too!
I still check my shadow throughout the day whenever I watch Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead as a teenager and almost an adult.
I don't actually remember being scarred by Doctor Who in any way, though I'm the same age.
I was always weary when my Year 4 teacher would put 42 or Blink on though.
Actually, I remember Night Terrors terrifying me (fittingly.)
@@nightowl8477 why 42?
Yep, "The Empty Child" and "Waters of Mars" were quite scary. But for some reason I also felt freaked out by "The Impossible Planet" where that one guy gets possessed and he turns around and has all those ancients symbols all over his face, and keeps saying "He is awake." I don't know what it was about that . . .
Oh yeah I remember that, the impossible planet really freaked me out too!
Might’ve been the whole demon possession thing. That and they built the tension up perfectly.
Well maybe if you'd watched The Satan Pit you'd have understood The Impossible Planet.
The Impossible Planet is one of my favorites. Also I wrote a joke song involving the title of the second part, Satan Pit
Those all really spooked me same with the episode with the ghost who is actually an astronaut stuck in time or something idk i stopped watching halfway through it was that bad XD
I was already in my late teens when I sat down to watch Doctor Who, so I was never traumatized as a kid, but I definitely remember The Empty Child being *the* creepiest, most disturbing episode of the show.
The ending to The Doctor Dances is of course a delightful reversal of the terror, but it also comes across as darkly ironic - the Doctor's saved everybody, but it's the height of the Blitz, still in the early years of the Second World War, so how likely is it that all of them will make it out the other side? The Doctor can save us from alien invasions and malfunctioning time-traveling medical equipment, but he can't save us from each other.
Amazing comment, I hadn't even thought about that!
Holy fuck... are you ok?
I was scared by blink when I was younger, but a friend convinced me to watch all of it when I was about 13
Yeah, I was 17 when this episode came out, so it didn't really do me like it has others. It is still cool though, in concept it is a scary thing, definitely would be if it was real life but as a T.V. show it isn't really.
For me, I was scared shitless by Midnight. Something about people losing their minds over the mere repeating of sentences really struck me in my core, not to mention that creature's complete anonymity as well as the Doctor being rendered totally helpless...
For me, I was scared shitless by Midnight. Something about people losing their minds over the mere repeating of sentences really struck me in my core, not to mention that creature's complete anonymity as well as the Doctor being rendered totally helpless...
For me, I was scared shitless by Midnight. Something about people losing their minds over the mere repeating of sentences really struck me in my core, not to mention that creature's complete anonymity as well as the Doctor being rendered totally helpless...
You should see this guys video on that episode. Almost as good as the story itself.
I'm a grown man and I've never watched Midnight again 🙂 (But also, as a kid who was terrified of the Daleks (way) back in the day, I'm also pleased not to have seen The Empty Child at a much younger age.)
The Doctor Dances: Just this once! Everybody lives!
Horror of Fang Rock: Just this once! Everybody dies!
Neither quotes aged very well
Are you my mummy
That one scared me as a kid. It was my first dr who episode and my sister hated dr who for years later. Until David Tennant.
Anything with the concept of human conversion into cybermen terrified me. The screaming, the idea of all the surgery happening while you are wide awake, and it just all happened and you wouldn’t really remember it properly.
Same. To this day those scenes in Rise of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel and Doomsday make me feel a bit sick.
Elliot Crossan don’t forget World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls
Yeah if you think about it and get past the action of the scenes the Cybermen are truly fucked up. Same goes for the human daleks in Parting of the Ways.
In the Jungle
@@justinsutton5005 Can't listen to that song lol
The empty children were so creepy that people forget this episode was also the debut of Captain friggin' Jack!
Honestly this is probably as good as NuWho has ever been. To have such wild tonal shifts between the creepy zombie plague, and the hormone-fuelled Doctor/Jack/Rose love triangle, without making it feel at all jarring, is a masterpiece of scriptwriting.
I was extremely young when new who started, and my parents made a point of not letting me watch it, because they didnt want me to get scared, but I guess at this point of the series, my parents decided it wouldnt be too scary for 3 year old me to watch, so they let me watch the empty child, and it scared the shit out of me. what's worse is that after this they didnt let me watch The Doctor Dances, meaning i never saw the solution, or what happened in the first place. it was only a couple years ago when i fully watched the episode
For kids seeing the monster defeated is the best way of curing a fear a child has. Not letting you watch the resolution was the worst thing they could’ve done really
@Voltaic Fire well given that I was much older when I finally went back and watched it, I absolutely loved it. like Harbo said in the video, it's an amazing two parter, and I'm almost in awe of how Moffat was able to take something so innocent, a child in a gas mask, and make it into one of the most iconic monsters in the series to date. Even 15 years after the episode aired, I still get creeped out when I walk past a gas mask in a museum
I got terrified by the Lazarus Experiment and the Waters of Mars
The waters of Mars is an underrated gem
It made scared of touching any water
I can't watch The Waters Of Mars. It's too scary.
@lex mota LOL my bad dawg, I don't really float around the Doctor Who fandom much 😅
Lazarus was a little scary wasnt it?
I watched Silence in the Library when I was 8. Not even the full episode, I just happened to be in the same room where my dad was watching it. Didn’t sleep at all that night and had to genuinely sleep with the lights on for a month. Even now in my 20s a little shiver goes down my spine whenever I spot someone or something with two shadows. I’m very glad the Vashta Nerada were never brought back a second time because I genuinely believe that even now I just wouldn’t be able to watch that episode.
Don’t watch Scooby Doo
“Hey! Who turned out the lights?”
"A scene that puts most horror movies to shame", I like that.
I was 8 when this was on, and while Blink and Silence in the Library scared me for a bit, The Empty Child did so for a time after the others stopped.
It's ironic that Steven Moffat's best stories are from when he's not showrunner.
I wouldn't say that to be honest. The Eleventh Hour, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, A Christmas Carol, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes To War, Asylum of The Daleks, The Angels Take Manhattan, Name/Night/Day/Time of the Doctor, Deep Breath Listen, Dark Water/Death in Heaven, The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar, The Zygon Inversion, Heaven Sent, The Husbands of River Song, World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls and Twice Upon a Time are all Great Episodes, some better than these, most worse but still very good. He's failed, in Let's Kill Hitler, Wedding of River Song, The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe, Hell Bent, Pilot etc, but he's much better than people make out to be. My personal favorites are Heaven Sent and World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls.
@@atharvadeshpande6907 None of those are great episodes, some of them aren't even good - Asylum of the Daleks, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Day of the Doctor, Deep Breath, Listen and Twice Upon a Time for example. The Time of the Doctor only works since series 12.
@@10thdoctor15 listen is one of the highest rated who stories and I personally loveeed Time of the Doctor. Day of the Doctor was Critically Acclaimed. On the others tho, i think we can agree. I was sooo shook by Amy and Rory's exit (which was done soo brilliantly) that i forgot The Episode was not a masterpiece (it was mediocre). But on the others, Heaven Sent, World Enough and Time two parter, The Eleventh Hour, A Christmas Carol and The Impossible Astronaut two parter are better than his RTD era stories for me...
@@atharvadeshpande6907 I think most that you named were good
“He’s pretty much the Doctor if he was American.”
My American self takes no offense to this.
Maybe I’ve been in lockdown for too long, but “I’m not flat Stanley” may be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.
My cousin was terrified out of her wits by this story, to the point where she didn't watch Part 2. Only after we told her it had a happy ending was she convinced, if reluctantly, to give it a shot. Good times.
For me it was the Waters of Mars. I was like 7 when that came out and it scared me so much. When I was like 4 or 5 I saw Aliens of London and World War Three, and I had this water tube thing which would make the same blue light and noise as a Slitheen removing the human skin costume which also scared me.
ReechForTheBleech yes aliens in London scared me too and I feel like the fear has affected me till now as I can’t help but have an extreme hunger for vinegar or I just like vinegar on chips either way the slitheen we’re the scariest things I saw as a kid
The impossible planet/The satan pit. The red eyed ood, the demonic voice and obviously the beast. God that scared the living crap out of me, even after later seasons the ood still make me flinch.
It really is super underrated how the Doctor figures it out and how he realised they (the Chula nano-genes) needed to get a proper look at a human, the closest match being Nancy since shes Jamies mum. It’s pretty touching and is actually a situation where familial hugs can actually solve the problem (Steven universe eat your heart out)
Especially as the machines are like “wait. Hang on a sec. this is the creator? Shit we goofed. Cmon guys time for a factory reset!”
In “Mummy on the Orient Express” Capaldi suddenly says “are you my mummy?” to the mummy. Gotta love the Eccelston reference ;)
10 does it too during the sontaran invasion of earth. I love little callback like that :)
Weird how Jack Harkness lived through some of WW2 twice.
Technically four times, given certain events in Torchwood!
@@elliotcrossan6290I'm trying to think what you're referring to! He lived through once in empty child, then went back with the vortex manipulator to the 19th century didn't he?
I seem to remember something weird about him being buried alive for years.
What am I missing?
@@stevenhale2935 buried alive is one, and the other is when Jack and Tosh get briefly trapped in 1941 Cardiff, in Series 1 episode 12
Steven Hale
1. The empty child
2. Goes to back before the war after he’s left behind in the parting of the ways
3. In TW s1 he gets sucked into the past during the Cardiff blitz and has to be brought back to the present by his team using the Cardiff rift
4. In TW s2 his brother Gray uses a time agent wrist strap to take him a few hundred years back and he gets himself cryogenically frozen so he can sleep thru the 19th and 20th centuries and wake up in the modern day
Ah brilliant! Thank you both, I need to rewatch these bad boys. I'll get the old dodgy dvd-r s out.
You're stars
Even today, I know that I can say "Are you my mummy" and someone in the room will not only get the reference, but yell at me for reminding them of suppressed trauma.
You’re joking.. but I work in HR and a few days back came across an employee with the empty child reaching our picture.. I ended the conversation with him by asking if he’s my mommy.
Probably not the best decision considering my field of work…😂
I can safely say I am not your mother for three reasons:
1- I am a virgin (as far as I know)
2- I am Male
3- you bear no resemblance to me
So leave me alone please
You are scaring me
Are you my step daddy?
Because I'm A Potato
Oh
FUHCK NO
The flat Stanley reference made my inner child go ‘ayyyyyyyyyy’ as in ‘I GET THAT’
When these aired I was 6 years old and I am still traumatised by it to this very day. My family used to make fun of me by whispering 'mummy' when it was quiet and it was the worst. Honestly still cannot rewatch this story even now because it just freaks me out. Doctor Who traumatizing kids for over 50 years
So many episodes scared me, especially the silence ones (11 was my doctor), but the one I remember most vividly was The Doctor Falls, because Bill becoming a mondasian cyber man scared the shit out of me
Same. I was like 24 when I watched it but the most petrified I've ever been at doctor who lol. Nightmare fuel
@@stevenhale2935 Yeah empty child was my childhood scare, but The Doctor Falls was so scary for 20 years old me
Never seen such a relatable title
the waters of mars scarred me for like 6 years after that episode lol
I was terrified of the empty child too, you can not show that to children
It is a child therefore it's child friendly
@@themostbritishpersonalive868 now that's Doctor Who logic 😂
@@TheSilentRoar that's actually RUclips's current policy
The sec scene in daleks in manhattan was leagues worse. That gas mask transformation scene was inspiring as a child, I loved it!
Its not even something tweens should watch. I was about 12 when I watched it. I definitely didn't sleep well that night (I watched it before bed)
I remember that when I was a kid, my older brother warned me that this episode was really scary even by Doctor Who standards, so I avoided it (even though he didn't tell me WHY it was so scary). The thing was, the show itself was already basically the biggest thing that scared me as a kid. The Vashta Nerada's skull face was one thing that really scared me, and there was this episode that I don't know the name of that had a scene with people's skeletons in a room. And it may sound stupid, but the Adipose and Abzorbaloff also scared me really bad.
These things all freaked me out so badly I eventually grew to avoid the show itself despite my dad being a fan. And looking at the Empty Child now, I can see why he warned me, and I actually thank him for that
I remember on my first Fugitive of the Judoon viewing hearing Jack say, “The nanogenes! It’s always the nanogenes!” And I immediately remembered this episode
When I was a kid/young teen I got scared by the episodes:
-The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
-Blink
-Waters of Mars
-The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People
-Night Terrors
-Flatline
I do love all these episodes and think the monsters are great but they each scared me to varying degrees when I was younger 😂
When this two-parter aired, I was 7, and my brother was 4. This episode aired and scared my brother so much that I wasn't allowed to watch the finale (and had to wait until The Christmas Invasion until I was allowed again). Why did it scare my brother so much? His name is Jamie, and he was 4 years old, exactly like the child in the episode.
This is one of those episodes where everything comes together: the writing; the direction; the performances; even the CG still holds up!
*One of my favourite ever stories.* The Empty Child is the perfect atmosphere piece, whilst The Doctor Dances is just perfect Doctor Who.
I love this two parter more every time I watch it. I first saw it in my mid-30s tho. The dance metaphor is one of my favorite things in the entire series.
"ruined my childhood" 15 years ago. The internet loves to make me feel old.
I will forever love New Who for introducing Jack, a bisexual/pansexual character who was more than their sexuality but wasn’t apologetic about it either. Jack was Jack and he really helped me come out almost a decade after the episode.
That's awesome. I hope your coming out was as pain free as possible.
My kids know I've been an ally all my adult life (before then, I barely knew what being gay was - I was born in the 60s, so... 🤷🏻♀️). My youngest decided to come out to me as casually as she could, but I still heard nervousness in her voice. I wanted to go hug her before she said anything, but she'd moved to the room's door, so I reckoned she needed her "escape plan". She told me that she's bi, and I just said, "And?" She understood what I meant. Once she relaxed I said what she pretty much expected of me and that was that it makes no odds to me, it wouldn't to the rest of the family (it hasn't; it's not relevant. Just like my younger son being on the Asperger's spectrum and being asexual doesn't mean a damned thing to us. He's still who he was before he got his belated diagnosis, and said anything about his sexuality), and she's still my baby girl (though she was about 22 at the time!). Nothing will ever change that. She has blossomed since then, as has my son, and I hope that you have too.
Much love to you; always be yourself and love yourself too, because you deserve it. And if you can do that (without being OTT - I'm sure you've met narcissistic people who think they're the dog's bollocks), you'll get more people to love you than you can ever imagine. Take care of yourself; lots of hugs and all good wishes to you ❤
For me its Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. The idea of something hiding in the shadows will always be scary. But the part that really freaked me out was the scene with Miss Evangelista in the veil with the deformed face and the identical children who weren't real is really scary
They made books and libraries scary! Even now, I get a shiver when I go to a library.
I remember watching the Sarah Jane adventures episode where they got trapped in this scary mansion it scared me really hard
thumbs up for being the first youtuber to include a mgrr reference when talking about this episode. also this episode never gave me nightmares but silence in the library did.
Midnight and The Waters of Mars are the scariest for me
I don't know if anybody told you this but your intro is so smooth and iconic that even when I'm not looking and RUclips is auto-playing I know when I'm watching you oh, that's some good branding brother
Really? I LOVE the resolution of the cliffhanger! It's definitely something you don't see coming, and it makes perfect sense because, of course, the Doctor is one step ahead of you, the viewer. And of course, his reaction to this actual working is also funny.
I find myself not being able to choose between Dalek, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Father's Day as to which of these stories is the best. Every time I try to choose, I find a counterargument that another of those 3 is incredibly amazing. They are all very strong emotionally (which Jodie's episodes fail to be). Series 1 was absolutely fantastic!
This episode was terrifying. It’s less terrifying now that I have seen it once and know the twists and turn but at the time it really freaked me out.
I have watched season 5-10 and I got 1-4 for christmas. These two episodes are the only episodes of Doctor Who I have gotten chills from.
I'm pretty sure that I had a similar encounter as you;
My dad would constantly be playing something on the TV downstairs and I would try to watch or just be woken up by it. I snuck down the stairs and found this episode on the TV. I sat and watched and as soon as the scary scene happened, I gave my spot away.
This episode became one of my favorite as it fully frightened me and it indirectly introduced me to Doctor Who as my dad decided that I was old enough to watch it with him.
This is one of my favorite Doctor Who stories of all time. I have seen it over and over, it stays good every time. I may watch it again sooner because of this video.
My eleven year old son LOVES to walk through the house asking in a note perfect imitation, "Are you my mummy?"
I only just found them but I definitely need more of your reviews for my favorite DW season, I'm eating them up
Being five, this was easily the scariest Doctor Who episode for me. My parents kept asking if I wanted to turn over the channel. I definitely looked away during the transformations though.
Still find gas masks creepy.
Same here... Those transformation are scary. But the scariest thing for me is that in my school class were gas mask and my friends take those and scared me... That wasn't funny at all... And that i wached this episode at when i were 4 years old. + At the time i cannot read so i didn't understand the point. (Sorry for my bad english)😅
"Are you my mummy?"
"Doctor, could you please take this seriously?"
Fantastic review of a truly great Doctor Who two-parter. I really like this channel 👍🏻
I was so terrified of the empty child that it actually gave me a phobia of gas masks lmao
I stopped being scared of the episode itself when I went to senior school and realised that the prick in my maths class was in fact the same kid who played the empty child. It wasn’t quite the same after that
Now that I have a nephew in my life, this episode hits me even harder. When Nancy tells Jamie that she is his Mummy it destroys me every time. And the everybody lives moment just ties it together beautifully 🙂
My sister was terrified of the space pig from “Aliens of London”, probably because of it being uncanny valley
My childhood
Village in the middle of nowhere, late hours on 2nd floor watching dr.Who and covering my eyes with blanket and freezing ahhh memories
Lol I relate to your trauma of seeing ONE scary clip of a Doctor Who episode and being scared of that image for years, the same thing happened to me with the Waters of Mars. I saw the trailer on telly and vowed to never watch the show and had nightmares about the Flood for years but here I am. When I finally watched the episode I still had my eyes closed for a lot of it.
Alice Bethell I had the same thing but it was with the zygons in day of the doctor
Nah the cliffhanger resolution was brilliant. Quick resolutions are hard to pull off but the whole "go to your room" thing makes so much sense and the possibility of it working had been seeded by the repeating of "are you my mummy" in the first episode.
Also the episode doesn't rely on any twists, loved it even knowing the twist is coming up.
Always great to hear someone else couldnt watch the empty child when it first came out. That preview from the week before was enough to give me nightmares. Now, an episode that absolutely scarred me which i did actually watch? The Satan Pit two parter, and i really wished i hadnt. Forget nightmares, i dont think i slept for a fortnight.
Night terrors terrified me.
When I was little I also remember crying the first time I saw a dalek in person.
Did everyone forget about the Werewolf where Doctor and Rose met Queen Victoria and they have to figure out what happens, like my siblings and I were scared so much by that.
Jeff Brown's book 'Flat Stanley' - now there's a memory of my long lost childhood. Thanks HW for the reminder.
What is better than a new "Harbo Wholmes" video after a long walk? A lot of things actually.
But I have no life and nothing else to do so here I am
That out of nowhere Flat Stanley reference made me so happy!
I was six when it aired in my country. It made such a strong impression that when I saw mentiones of this episode online at 13 I instantly remembered it. that was how I first watched the show through and became a fan
i saw the “next time” clip of the doll house episode (night terrors?) and just a glimpse of the dolls face gave me nightmares for years!!!! still feel like it’s gonna pop up when i turn corners in my house
Long ago, I was in my parent's home in Arizona USA and I stopped on the SciFi(before the name change) channel and see this man and girl talking before she is stick on the rope of a ballon in the 1940s while wearing a Union Jack tee shirt. The story was amazing, haunting, and a cliff hanger. Little did I know, that Scifi was testing out the show and not airing it regularly. I looked for the show and it was never one again. This show stuck with me until 2007 when Doctor Who came on scifi regularly! I finally got to watch this show that still NO ONE knew about. This episode got me and I'm so happy for it!
can't deny that the timing of the "are you my mummy" line with later doctors was impeccable
Love and monsters really scared me.
Same bro had nightmares that the absorbaloff was chasing me 😂
Random hand-me-down doctor who DVD’s are what ruined my childhood
I remember when I was 7 and my friend first introduced me to doctor who the first episode she mainly talked about was the empty child, since it had terrified her so much. When I actually watched it I remember being pretty ok with it. For me the scariest episode was Blink, I couldn’t even finish watching it and I think I ended up finishing it when I was 13.
I remember being in the room for a few minutes of my father watching "The Unquiet Dead" when I was quite young and it haunted me for a while (specifically the beginning where the corpses wake up).
I remember getting freaked out when my grandpa was watching "Silence in the Library"
I hear you. I’m twelve and I still have nightmares about it today (first saw this when I was 5). This was the first doctor who episode I ever saw and it put me off for 6 years.
Oh and I’m so scared I still haven’t watched it to this day
For me the Waters of Mars, silence in the library, and the empty child were completely terrifying. My parents let me watch silence in the library, but stopped me from watching the second part which, at the time, really did not help to alleviate my fear. Now these have become some of my favourite episodes, since some of the best characters (at least for me), namely River and Jack, were introduced. However still can’t watch the waters of mars, as I am still terrified
this episode scared me so much that years later watching this video I viewed with my head tilted away incase you played any audio
(edit) and.. you did, thanks for the nightmares!
those booth guys from the beast below terrified me so much that i couldn't watch it until a few years ago
I first saw this episode when I was around 19 and I had seen some disconnected Doctor Who episodes on TV before then, but didn't know anything about the show. When I saw The Empty Child, I simply HAD TO find the second part, because AXN was showing them randomly and not in order, so I went online and started watching the series.
Been a whovian ever since.
being 6 at the time of the empty child’s release, this episode scared me shitless when I first watched it. Seeing the transformation into gas mask people was completely nightmare inducing but watching it back now it’s such an emotional storyline
I had a strange time with Dr. Who as a child because I never seemed to be able to get all the episodes to watch when I was maybe nine or ten, but the Impossible Planet/Demon pit with the lettering all over his face sent a chill down my spine. I only got to watch the Empty Child by age 16, and seeing Gaius from Merlin grow a gas mask out of his face was horrific even with a hardened teenage heart.
This episode helps me remember the rough timeline of when I first got into Doctor Who. Not because it's scared me, but because I actually thought it was so good I couldn't stop making references to it during class when I should've been working on a project with some of my classmates, instead I just sat there repeating "Are you my mummy?" and then one of my future friends ended up getting into the show because of that. This was all in the Sixth Grade.
Although, on the topic of an episode that scared me, I don't know if I was scared by it specifically, but I know I somehow skipped over it because I went to rewatch the series a few years after my initial watch, and had zero memory of the episodes existing, so my assumption is that the Devil two-parter was too scary for me, even though I never once batted an eye at the living plastic, or creepy child with a gas mask, or moving statues, Poor cgi Satan was apparently the thing that got me, lol.
THIS EPISODE RUINED YOUR CHILDHOOD?
The thing about this episode is that it shows Moffat in his prime, when he is not using the "wibbly-wobbly timey wimey," stuff that he basically makes his fingerprint in DR who when he becomes the showrunner. In this two-parter Moffat displays his creative genius, his capacity for exploring the doctor's deductive reasoning brilliance, his talent for plot twists that the viewer finds funny because of how obvious it is that it didn;'t seem earlier, the introduction of new characters like Jack, gave the doctor some epic speeches about human greatness.
But best of all it gave the doctor joy for saving the day with "EVERYBODY LIVES!" demonstrating that in that moment he was what he genuinely was underneath all his frivloity, sadness and idiocy: not an "oncoming storm", not a "lonely god", not some "romantic lost prince", just a man who wants to be kind to everyone and hates it when he is put in positions where he cannot save everyone and tragically needs to hate or else he dooms other people to suffer for his mercy.
Moffat really did make this two-parter a memorable one for me because of how uniquely...sincere everything felt. It was spooky yeah, it was scary and haunting, yeah, but it was also very deep, very relatable, and it was very multi-dimensional. I like episodes that explore many different themes and concepts: it shows expansive creativity.
I’m on the younger end of the fandom because I was probably about 10 when the last christmas spécial came out, I had actually just discovered Doctor Who a couple days ago, and The Who idea of the dream crabs and what they could do was so terrifying for me I wasn’t able to come back to the show for a while, it didn’t help that several months later as I was getting over it I somehow ended up watching this exact set of episodes and leaving for even longer, fun times
My scary episode is the one with the peg dolls or The Waters Of Mars.
This Story is so brilliantly pieced together, and so damn eerie. Of course, The Weeping Angels terrified me. I had to have one of my family members sit at the top of the stairs while I peed because I was so deeply disturbed by them. When Donna was teleported into the TARDIS by the Doctor in Silence In The Library and when she was screaming and glitched out of the Console room... LITERALLY TRAUMATISED ME. Also, when the Computer World she was in started to malfunction and turn Red and the piercing sounds of alarms blasted throughout the scene freaked me out so much, and when her children disappeared... I can’t even express the sheer terror that encompassed my body. Midnight also scared the sh** out of me, such a brilliant portrayal of terror portrayed by the Actors. Not many Stories after Series 4 scared me, other than the Water Creatures from The Waters Of Mars... but The Sarah Jane Adventures Story from Series 3, The Eternity Trap absolutely traumatised me... and the Film roll of the travelling Circus from the Torchwood Story From Out Of The Rain gave me nightmares.
- I’ll always love this story, nothing negative to say... just pure fantastic Doctor Who.
3 or 4 years after this episode scared the living daylight out of me I had a nightmare where I heard the four words are you my mummy and I looked at my hands and a scar appeared and then I said the words it was bloody awful
There were 2 episodes that terrified me as a kid, the first being the empty child and the second being the new earth story, in the hospital when those people had every disease in the universe, both those episodes gave me nightmares for weeks.
Even as a teenager, I refuse to watch Blink. It's just an incredibly tense story that builds up until the third act.
You have to watch it...... don't look away. Don't even blink.
My favourite part is the bit of the end when the woman talks about getting her leg back because it is just unexpected and somewhat wholesome
The empty child and a song by pink floyed made me terrified of gas’s masks to this day. I can’t take the sight of them. It makes me feel very sort of hopeless and in a state of despair tbh!
Same with me
I watched it on my 8th birthday and then in the night was violently ill and I had nightmares for years. I never watched part 2 and I still haven't got round to it.
There's also sad irony in Doctor declaring "Everybody lives" in mids second world war
My favourite Doctor Who story. Interesting that the line "just this once, everybody lives" was written by Steven Moffat, who went on write many stories where either nodoby died or they died and then came back.
It's strange i found in the Davies era the second 2 parter story of the first 4 series were the better two parters in those series and are the ones i enjoy more.
Series 1: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Series 2: The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit
Series 3: Human Nature/The Family Of Blood
Series 4: Silence In The Library/The Forest Of The Dead
All stellar stories and all the second two part story in each series with me having mixed feelings on the first 2 part stories in each series the ones i listed above are the ones i always genuinely enjoy and like to show people who are new to the show. these is something about these stories that make them perfect in their own ways for me. I could watch them over and over and over and not be tired of them.
I was five when new who started and I watched it all as it aired. Despite being (maybe too) young I never had an issue with the daleks, empty child, weeping angels etc., the episode that got me was the waters of Mars. I'm not sure what about it scared me so much but it's the only episode I've had to turn off part way through. I only watched all the way through for the first time last year when I was 19 haha
Tooth and claw, rise of the cybermen two parter and the satan pit two parter always scared me as a kid.
Funny that you mention flat Stanley. Scared to this day of something falling on me in the night. Permanently scarred!
Mine was the waters of Mars and it scared me so much that I've only seen the episode 2 times
For some reason when I was little, the episode that scared me was The Eleventh Hour. Prisoner zero and the door out of the corner of your eye just freaked me out.
When I watched the Weeping Angels episodes (earlier ones)
I had nightmares about them, and even envisioned them in my room when I slept.
Those scares sometimes make the best episodes.
This was the episode(s) that really cemented my love of Who!