Highlights
- The Doctor has committed some of the worst things in Doctor Who , including abandoning Sarah Jane Smith and torturing a Dalek.
- The Doctor's struggle with fixed points in time is showcased in "The Waters of Mars" when he tries to rewrite history and stops an important event.
- The Doctor's decision to create the Daleks in "Genesis of the Daleks" and destroy Skaro in "Remembrance of the Daleks" showcases his willingness to make difficult choices that have far-reaching consequences.
Doctor Who is a sci-fi show that sees the titular character traveling through time and space to battle evil and save innocent civilians. The Doctor is always portrayed as a quirky, intelligent being who is always on the side of good. However, living for over one thousand years can take its toll.
During the show's sixty-year run, there have been times in Doctor Who when The Doctor has behaved in a less-than-heroic fashion. Whether these acts were intentional or not, it does not stop them from being some of the worst things The Doctor has ever done.
7 Abandoning Sarah Jane Smith
The Hand of Fear (Season 14, Serial 2)
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Sarah Jane Smith first appeared alongside the third Doctor in 1973. She was a determined woman who managed to infiltrate a secret research facility in her first episode, an act that caught The Doctor's attention. He took her on board the TARDIS as his next companion, and Sarah Jane faced off against the Daleks, Cybermen, and The Master in her time. She even got to witness The Doctor regenerate into the fourth incarnation.
All of this history made it seem even stranger that The Doctor would just abandon Sarah Jane Smith when he is called back to Gallifrey by the Time Lords. He did agree to take her home, but accidentally left her in Aberdeen with the promise of returning to her. However, it is revealed later on during the tenth Doctor's run that the two never saw each other after that, and that The Doctor chose to abandon Sarah Jane as he did not want to see her grow old.
6 Torturing A Dalek
Dalek (Series 1, Episode 6)
When fans first meet the ninth Doctor, he is a much more hardened version of the character played by Christopher Eccleston, after the Doctor had witnessed the events of the Time War. However, he is still portrayed as an inherently good person. That all changes, though, when he first comes face to face with a Dalek again in the episode that shares its name with The Doctor's greatest enemy.
The creature is being held captive as a museum piece in an underground base, and The Doctor is asked to help identify the alien. Instead of working to help rescue the trapped Dalek, The Doctor shows his scars from the Time War in an out-of-character moment where he first taunts and then begins to torture the helpless foe. The Dalek does eventually break free and proves why The Doctor was right to fear it, but it still doesn't make it right that he started to act as a torturer at that moment.
5 Trying To Rewrite Time
The Waters of Mars (Autumn Special 2009)
The Doctor lives by one simple mantra when exploring time, and that is the fact that fixed points in time cannot be changed. This is something that the tenth Doctor struggles with when he meets a team of scientists in the episode 'The Waters of Mars'. The Doctor arrives at the planet Mars to find some strange creatures plaguing the team. He knows that the people here are supposed to die mysteriously as a part of history, but he can't help but get in the way.
Instead of letting history play out, The Doctor messes with the timeline and saves the rest of the crew declaring himself the Time Lord Victorious. However, when the captain of the team learns about the consequences of her survival, she takes her own life. Her death on Mars was supposed to encourage generations of other scientists to pursue space travel, and The Doctor knowingly stopped this event.
4 Creating The Daleks
Genesis of the Daleks (Season 12, Serial 4)
During the fourth Doctor's time on Gallifrey, he is tasked by the Time Lords to go back in time to the planet Skaro and prevent the Daleks from ever being created in the serial 'The Genesis of the Daleks'. Since this race of aliens has wiped out millions of people in their time, the idea of stopping their creation makes sense to the audience.
However, such a pivotal move would mean that The Doctor had to commit genocide of an entire species. Plus, anything positive that was done in response to the Daleks would also be wiped out of existence. That is why The Doctor chooses to ignore his instructions and finds himself touching the two wires together that create the Daleks and the threat they pose to life in the universe.
3 Destroying Skaro
Remembrance of the Daleks (Season 2, Serial 1)
The seventh version of The Doctor is portrayed as a silly man with a strange sense of humor on the surface; however, this version is far more calculating than most of his enemies would guess. That fact is most evident in the story 'Remembrance of the Daleks'.
These episodes take place during a Dalek civil war, and it is up to The Doctor and Ace to end the conflict before any more innocent bystanders get hurt. He does this by entering communication with the Dalek emperor Davros, who believes he is in possession of a device that could wipe out Gallifrey. The Doctor secretly knows that firing the weapon would wipe out a nearby sun and destroy Skaro, and so tricks Davros into using it. Skaro is wiped out, and so too are all the Daleks on the planet.
2 Strangling Peri
The Twin Dilemma (Season 21, Serial 7)
Whenever The Doctor regenerates, the character normally goes through an odd period of mismanaged emotions until they settle into their new form. These emotions are normally harmless and silly, but the sixth Doctor took things a step too far during his regeneration in 'The Twin Dilemma' in 1984.
This version of The Doctor had a violent outburst and decided to begin strangling his companion at the time, Peri, in a move that shocked viewers. The companion survived the attack, but fans never really understood why the show went in this direction. It was a terrible way to start this Doctor's run, and that may be why this version of the character is disliked so much by fans.
1 Ending The Time War
The Day of the Doctor (50th Anniversary Special)
The Time War was a narrative device used by the show to explain the differences The Doctor between Classic Who and the revival. This war was between the Time Lords and the Daleks, and fans slowly learned that the war had consequences for races of aliens across the universe.
It is also revealed that The Doctor was the one who eventually brought the war to an end. This sounds like a good move; however, ending the war meant that The Doctor had to choose to wipe out all Daleks and Time Lords at once. This decision left The Doctor traveling alone, although it was revealed that the Time Lords had been saved in a pocket universe during the show's 50th-anniversary episode. However, The Doctor did not know this for a long time and still carried on with the knowledge that he was capable of committing two mass genocides.