Hey Youtubers it’s Charlie and since it’s been a while since I’ve done a new Doctor
Who video and there was a Horror Channel special coming on April 18th, I wanted to do my Top
10 favorite scary episodes of Classic Who.
The horror channel is airing a bunch of scary episodes as part of a special, but they’re
also all available on the web on either Netflix or Hulu.
Also quick heads up, I have to go to Las Vegas for my brother’s Bachelor Party this weekend.
I’ll be back in time to do all my Sunday Game of Thrones videos, but if I do a Saturday
video it will probably be on my laptop camera or iphone.
So early warning in case it looks weird.
Before we get started with my list in case you didn’t see, there have been a few more
villain cast in series 8 including Ben Miller and Keeley Hawes.
We don’t know if they’ll only appear in one episode or multiple yet.
But they are most definitely evil.
We can talk more about them in a future bonus video.
So let’s talk scary Classic Who.
Most of which was inspired by really scary classic sci fi book stories.
Feel free to add your own favorites as we go along but here we go.
Number 10 - Deadly Assassin.
The image most people associate with this episode is the husk form Master, nightmare
inducing all by itself.
But the episode inovked this really big plot to siphon off regeneration energy from the
Eye of Harmony and this Manchurian Candidate Presidential race.
Just in general a really good meta mashup of other really awesome stories.
Here’s a list of some of the other shows and movies that they paid homage to in the
episode.
North By Northwest, awesome Hitchcock movie, Sherlock Holmes and The Empty House and a
couple of Star Trek Original Series episodes like The Arena and Shore Leave.
Supposedly it was also the only Classic Who episode to not feature a companion.
Number 9 - Robots of Death.
The robots in this story reminded me a little of the Clockwork robots in Girl in the Fireplace.
A human basically gets raised by robots and eventually thinks of them as superior.
Not only do they look super creepy, there’s this really horrible moment when The Doctor
gets stuck inside a storage room that’s slowly filling with Sand.
This episode was inspired by some of my favorite classic sci fi stories like Frank Herbert’s
Dune, because Sandminers, Isaac Asimov’s I Robot.
Not the terrible Will Smith version either.
The original and Arthur C. Clarke’s Fall of Moondust.
I did think it was pretty funny the villain was killed because helium made his voice all
weird.
But it is pretty scary to think robots you’ve been worshipping you’re whole life end up
killing you.
I guess that might scare you off of ever having children too.
Number 8 - Pyramids of Mars
A great Sutekh episode.
I saw a couple of you guys wanted to see the character brought back eventually.
But there’s this really awesome line where Sutekh says You’re evil is my good.
I am Sutekh the destroyer.
Where I tread, I leave nothing but dust and darkness.
Because it’s a mummy story there’s a lot of mythological influences like the classic
Hammer Mummy films, H.G. Wells, Norse Mythology, Loki in prison shout out and Bram Stoker’s
Jewel of the Seven Stars.
One of my favorite parts about classic episodes like this are that because special effects
and action were so much harder to do, they had to rely on amazing dialogue.
Thus you get these crazy awesome Sutekh speeches.
One of the best bad guys ever.
It also involves more evil robots.
I feel like Doctor Who is always trying to tell us not to trust robots.
Other than K-9 let me know which robots you think we can trust in the doctor who universe.
The teselecta is kind of a robot ship.
But it’s operated by people.
It’s not self aware.
Number 7 - Terror Of The Zygons.
If you didn’t know them from Tom Baker’s run, then you’ll definitely know them from
the 50th Anniversary.
Since they’re shape shifters I always think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Which is another great horror sci fi story.
The episode was also inspired by The Private life of Sherlock Holmes.
I always love it when Sherlock and Doctor Who crossover.
If you haven’t seen this episode before, watch it, then watch the 50th Anniversary
again.
There’s a lot of callbacks during the special that make it a lot more fun when you’ve
seen the older story.
Number 6 - Tomb Of The Cybermen.
One of my few Second Doctor stories on this list, but another egyptian mythology, mummy
story.
I’m sensing another pattern.
Don’t trust robots, don’t trust pyramids.
And maybe riddles too.
What is it about uncovering ancient knowledge that always makes things go so horribly wrong.
A scientist just want to learn a little bit about the Cybermen and all the crazies come
out of the woodwork to join the expedition.
I guess in situations like this you would really just complain to you’re human resources
officer for hiring such sketching people to join your team.
If you want to get really meta, you should check out The Curse of The Mummy’s Tomb.
It was the primary inspiration for this episode.
Number 5 - The Daemons.
Into John Pertwee’s years.
There’s actually a ton of scary stories during his run.
But this one kind of reminds me of the Weeping Angels and The Beast just visually.
Other big red flags for the Doctor in this episode.
There’s a town called Devil’s End.
The Master gets involved with Black Magic and tries to take these demonic powers.
The character Azal was actually really interesting and tragic.
I don’t know how they’d bring him back, just based on the way the episode ended.
But he really stands out as one of the better classic who monsters.
Here’s a couple other stories that inspired the episode.
Village of the Damned, Star Trek Who Mourn’s For Adonis and there’s even another Sherlock
shout out.
Elementary my dear Benton.
Number 4 - Genesis Of The Daleks.
Early Tom Baker meets Davros, you can’t go wrong.
A really awesome Skaro based episode in case you’ve never seen the homeworld of the Daleks.
I feel like most people today just associate the Daleks with their current form.
But in this episode you learn about the humanoid race they descended from.
Or evolved from, depending on how you look at it.
It’s also another one of those stories, where an evil scientist is killed by his creation.
It really reminds me of Frankenstein.
Only there’s like millions of monsters running around instead of just one monster.
Here’s a big question, if Classic Who had ever done a straight up Bride of The Daleks
story just to push the Frankestein mythos further.
What would have played the role of the monster Bride.
Like an Elsa Lanchester Dalek or something?
Number 3 - Terror Of The Autons.
Another great Unit story that was also a Master story.
And it also involves a Bomb inside UNIT headquarters, just like the 50th Anniversary.
You know how some people are afraid of clowns.
Well this really gives circuses a bad name too.
I did love how the Doctor and The Master were forced to work together for a little while.
There’s something so interesting about enemies forgetting their enemies for a little while.
So big takeaways from this episode are don’t trust Carnivale folk and robots are still
evil.
There was even a later John Pertwee episode called Carnivale of Monsters.
Number 2 - The Curse of Fenric.
My only seventh Doctor story but a really awesome mashup of a zombie story and a vampire
story.
It ends up turning into this classic situation where scientists get to clever and a super
computer they design let’s ancient evil loose making everything go crazy.
I think that’s why the Doctor always tells people not to touch buttons when they’re
in the TARDIS.
Something always goes wrong when you turn on mysterious machines or read ancient runes.
Lesson learned.
If you ever wake up in a Doctor Who story, just don’t touch or read anything.
And my number one favorite Scary Classic Who episode - Caves of Androzani.
Just one of the best episodes of Classic Who in general, but every time I see Jek I think
about Scorpius from Farscape.
Just visually so scary to look at, and on top of that, Jek is this really put upon tragic
villain who forces the Doctor to sacrifice himself to save his companion.
It was the final Peter Davison episode and featured his regeneration into Colin Baker’s
Sixth Doctor.
So now it’s you’re turn.
Let me know what your favorite scary episode of Doctor Who is.
It doesn’t have to be a classic episode.
Just one that you think is really really scary.
Like I said, I’m out of town on Saturday, I might post a bonus video using my iphone
just for fun.
But I’ll be instagramming the shit out of Las Vegas.
So you can folllow me there or on Twitter for fun stuff.
Right now you can click here to learn more about The Master coming back for series 8
and click here to learn more about Danny Pink, the new character.
Thanks for watching, see you guys this weekend.
High Fives!