Mood Whiplash / Doctor Who

Mood Whiplash is a staple of Doctor Who storytelling, particularly in the revival series — and at that, especially when it would cause the Doctor the most angst.

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• Almost all of the Doctor's regenerations use this, as it's the death of the old Doctor and the birth of the next Doctor in one episode. For this reason, they usually take place at the end of an episode, serial or season. Quite often, the whiplash is from "sad" to "funny", with some of the more recent regenerations adding "Oh, Crap!" after the funny.
  • "The Caves of Androzani": Five's regeneration into Six, going from his hallucinatory death scene where he's taunted by an apparition of The Master, right to Six snarking at Peri.
  • "The Parting of the Ways" has Nine to Ten: His tearful goodbye to Rose right into a joke about having "new teeth".
  • "The End of Time": Ten himself had one of the saddest regenerations with that look of his horror on his face when he says "I don't want to go." Then Eleven kisses his knees out of joy that he still has legs and then checks if he's ginger this time.
  • "The Time of the Doctor": Eleven has a vision of Amy before he regenerates, and gives a speech about how he will always remember his time as the Doctor, very sad... then he instantly turns into Twelve, who complains about the colour of his kidneys... then he forgets how to fly the TARDIS.
  • "Twice Upon a Time": Twelve gives a magnificent speech, it's all very sad, then the regeneration, then Thirteen cheerfully checks out her reflection... before hitting one button on the console and getting thrown out of the TARDIS into freefall as it explodes and dematerializes. To Be Continued!
• "The Chase" is mostly a ridiculous comedy with Slapstick and a Comic Trio of Daleks who don't seem all that threatening. The atmosphere is very loopy and comfortable. Then Ian and Barbara, two very, very loved companions who'd been there since the beginning of the series, realize they can use the Daleks' timeship to return to their home time and inform the Doctor they're leaving, and he snaps at them both out of selfish grief.
• "The Myth Makers" is a genteel and funny social comedy about the Greeks and Trojans until the Greeks invade Troy, everyone gets slaughtered horribly and Vicki leaves the TARDIS to start a new life.
• "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve" ends with the darkest sequence of events in the entire series thus far. The Doctor forcibly transports his companion Steven to 1960s London to escape an impending 17th Century genocide he'd been powerless to prevent, abandoning Steven's Temporary Love Interest Anne (a member of the group being massacred). He rages at the Doctor about how amoral he is and storms out of the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor behind to perform some Thinking Out Loud about how everyone leaves him and he has no control and nowhere to go. This is suddenly interrupted by a Cloudcuckoolander Manic Pixie Dream Girl named Dodo accidentally walking in on him, deciding to travel with him in about two minutes of conversation, and then Steven returning with no explanation to suggest that Dodo might be one of Anne's descendants.
• Part Six of "The Dalek's Master Plan" closes with the Daleks pursing the Tardis Crew for a component for their doomsday weapon, Part Seven...features a man reporting that his Green House has gone missing, before the Tardis crew go to Hollywood where Steven is mistaken for a Keystone Kop, get chased about the studio, and then talks to Bing Crosby, before the Doctor looks directly at the audience and says "Merry Christmas"! Episode Eight; back to the Daleks!
• "The Pirate Planet" is a goofy, playful, high-Camp Douglas Adams romp with enormously over-the-top Space Pirates as villains, all Played for Laughs. Until the moment when the Doctor finds out how pointlessly, selfishly evil the pirates actually are, and absolutely blows his top in a scene that is played perfectly straight. There is also a scene where Romana is forced to shoot and kill a pursuer, which passes quickly but also doesn't fit the mood of the overall story.
• "Aliens of London" has a rather outrageous example halfway through the episode. There is an entire minute of the Slitheen (disguised as humans) farting and joking around in front of the General inside 10 Downing Street. This moment is then immediately succeeded by the 3 aliens revealing themselves to the General before murdering him in a rather gory and sinister fashion. All of this happens in the same scene.
• "Father's Day" goes from a lonely girl wanting to meet her dead parent to a Class 3a Apocalypse How ending on a Heroic Sacrifice, with some Awful Wedded Life thrown in between.
• "Bad Wolf": The scenes where the Doctor and Rose discover that the future reality and game shows they've wound up on are, in fact, Deadly Games/Immoral Reality Shows use this.
  • When the Doctor sees a Big Brother contestant get "evicted", he's talking about how she'll profit on the outside before she's disintegrated on the TV.
  • Rose spends the first round of The Weakest Link cracking up about being insulted by a robot Anne Robinson... and then comes the first elimination.
• Near the end of "The Christmas Invasion", after defeating the Sycorax leader in a swordfight, he finds a satsuma in his pocket. He then larks on about how, in Christmastime, you can count on finding a satsuma at the bottom of every stocking, but that's when the defeated Sycorax leader gets up to charge at the Doctor. That's when he calmly throws the satsuma at a button, opening a section of the floor beneath the alien's feet, sending him plummeting to his doom far, far below.
  "No second chances. I'm that sort of a man."
• "Rise of the Cybermen": The TARDIS has crashed, completely dead and gone. The Doctor says they could have crashed anywhere, completely outside time and space... and then Mickey sticks his head out the door. "Otherwise known as London!"
• "Army of Ghosts":
  • Rose is caught by a Torchwood scientist while sneaking around. Dr. Singh tells his assistant to call security... and Mickey Smith replies that he'll get on it, before giving Rose a smile and thumbs-up behind Singh's back.
  • The amusing moment when Yvonne finds out that the Doctor has dragged along his companion's mother on this adventure ends when several mind-controlled employees start up another ghost shift.
  • The Doctor being told by the Cybermen that "The Sphere is not ours." It was made by the Daleks, so the whiplash is from "This is bad" to "We're all gonna die."
• "Doomsday" goes from a tearful farewell between Rose and the Doctor to the Doctor and a bridal gown-clad Donna shouting "What?!" at each other at increasing volume when she suddenly appears in the TARDIS.
• "Utopia": There's a bittersweet scene where poor old Professor Yana tearfully ruminates on his past and the stories about time travel he used to hear... and then he pulls out his pocket watch... hey, why'd the Background Music suddenly turn scary?
• "The Sound of Drums": It cuts from the Doctor, Martha, and Jack running down an alleyway to televised news reports about the first contact with the Toclafane to... the Master watching the Teletubbies, which he marvels at the concept of television "in their stomachs". Even better, right before the Teletubbies, we had "This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home" playing in the background. And then, bluegrass-type music.
• "Partners in Crime": Donna and the Doctor are both spying on the head of Adipose and her hostage. Donna is watching through the door window, and the Doctor is watching through the window in the wall across from the door. There's a very serious questioning going on. Then the Doctor and Donna catch sight of each other. Hilarity Ensues. Then, mid-word, Donna realizes that they've been noticed. Cue chase scene.
• "Forest of the Dead" has a four-fold one: First, River decides to get the Doctor to trust her by whispering something to him that leaves him absolutely dumbstruck for a moment (later revealed to be his real name). After a Beat, he suddenly starts talking about the interference messing with his sonic screwdriver. Then, a bit later, Anita realizes she has two shadows. Then the Doctor points out that Proper Dave has caught up with them.
• "Turn Left": Donna and Sylvia are having a depressing conversation about their current situation, then Donna hears singing from the next room and goes over to yell at them, only to find out her grandfather Wilf is participating. Smash Cut to the entire family singing along with their housemates, the first time they've been happy in a long time — then they hear gunfire from outside.
• "The Stolen Earth": There's a beautiful reunion scene where the Doctor and Rose notice each other and start running into each other's arms when suddenly, out of the blue, a Dalek rolls up and shoots the Doctor.
• "Journey's End" has triumph, reunion, and celebration, followed by the Doctor being forced to erase the memory of one of his companions to prevent her from dying and being all alone again as a result. The whiplash occurs in mid-scene, as Donna is babbling her newfound Time Lord knowledge in a rapid-fire manner and just generally being hilarious as the Doctor starts to look sadder and sadder, and then, in mid-babble, Donna starts to repeat the same word over and over in a stuck-record fashion and you start to realize that something is very, very not right.
• "Planet of the Dead": At the end, everyone's gotten back to Earth, everyone's happy, Christina has successfully avoided jail... and then the Doctor is told that his song is ending. The jubilant music stops dead, replaced by something more serious.
• Both "The End of Time" and "The Time of the Doctor" are fairly grim stories which see the end of their respective Doctors and the conclusion of many long-running story arcs. They're immediately followed by "The Eleventh Hour" and "Deep Breath", which, while not without some scary moments, are generally very light-hearted romps.
• "The Time of Angels": One particularly memorable scene goes from Bizarre Alien Biology jokes about the extinct two-headed Aplans to the Doctor realizing that the statues in the maze don't have two heads, meaning none of them are really statues...
• "The Vampires of Venice" ends on Amy, Rory and the Doctor joking about and then... silence. Utter silence. Not even the water is making any noise, and everyone in the area has vanished. The Doctor wisely gets inside the TARDIS as the episode ends.
• "Amy's Choice": A conversation between Amy and Rory about how Amy thinks Upper Leadworth's amateur dramatic society is very bad takes a turn for the worse when the Doctor reveals the schoolchildren exploring the ruins have been turned into piles of dust.
• "Cold Blood": Amy Pond goes through one by herself. Her fiancé Rory is killed, causing her to become inconsolable from grief. But then he is absorbed by a crack in time and is made to have never existed, so she doesn't remember him or his death, leading to her cheerfully continuing despite the huge loss which just happened (or not). It's disconcerting, to say the least.
• "The Lodger" is a very lighthearted and comedic episode, but at the end, as the day is saved and Craig and Sophie have a Relationship Upgrade, it cuts to the Doctor and Amy getting ready to set up elements of the episode's Stable Time Loop, and as Amy compliments the Doctor on his matchmaking skills, she asks "Why can't you find me a man?" ...unaware of her retgoned fiancé Rory. Then Amy finds her engagement ring in the pocket of the Doctor's jacket. Then it cuts back to Craig's flat, where there's a crack in time behind the fridge... and it's growing.
• "The Big Bang" does this so much, it'll leave your head spinning that is if your head isn't already spinning from all the timey-wimey bits. Seriously, the episode starts with the universe in shambles and Rory holding Amy's body, begging her to laugh when the Doctor pops out of midair holding a mop and wearing a fez. He pops in and out three times while explaining that Amy is actually not entirely dead, it's the end of the universe, and Rory needs to go down to the Pandorica to let the Doctor out. The rest of the episode consists of the Doctor getting killed in the future, the TARDIS exploding with River in it, River getting rescued, more fez jokes, the Doctor getting killed, the Doctor actually not being dead, but he's going to be erased from time instead, the actual process of being erased from time, and then the Doctor gets unerased from time and gets to come to Amy's wedding and dance really extremely badly. It's hard work, this show is.
• "The Doctor's Wife" cuts from the Doctor in tears (and Amy and Rory nearly so) as the TARDIS loses her human form, to the Doctor working on the TARDIS's machinery, chatting with Amy and Rory about bunk beds, and asking the ship, "What do you think, dear? Where should we take the kids this time?"
• "The Almost People", despite being somewhat dark, wraps things up on a fairly hopeful note... and then the Doctor unexpectedly melts Amy into a pile of goo, and she wakes up in prison about to give birth...
• "A Good Man Goes to War", the Series 6 midseason finale, ends with (among other things) everyone finally learning just who River is. Cut to a card telling us the Doctor will return in Autumn with "LET'S KILL HITLER".
• "The God Complex": Not only do the viewers experience it at every turn, but so do the characters when they are possessed.
• "The Angels Take Manhattan" ... hoo BOY! Rory has decided to jump off the hotel to kill himself and create a paradox that will ruin the Weeping Angels' food supply, and Amy decides to go with him, not being able to bear to live without him. The paradox resets the events of the story, taking them all back to present day New York, ready to embark with the Doctor and River on a family voyage. Rory, however, gets distracted by his own gravestone and is transported back to 1938 by a surviving Angel. Despondent, Amy allows herself to be sent back with him, leaving the Doctor and River helpless to save them.
• "Kill the Moon" proceeds as a "base under siege" tale until it pivots twice: first when the Doctor unexpectedly abandons Clara, forcing her to make a difficult decision on behalf of Earth and again at the end when Clara becomes the first companion to have a full-scale blow-up at the Doctor since the mid-1960s.
• "The Girl Who Died" is a comedic episode up until its final 10 minutes when the title comes into play and the Doctor bares his soul to Clara about it before coming up with a fix that he almost instantly regrets.
• "Face the Raven" is very much an uber-example. The episode begins on a lighthearted note and (despite the jeopardy involved) continues as a relatively standard light-hearted story based on a cool premise until without warning it pivots to full out tragedy as longstanding character Clara Oswald learns that she only has minutes to live and spends the remainder of her time giving an emotional goodbye to the Doctor before dying, screaming in agony leaving the Doctor struck monotone with anger.
  • "Heaven Sent": Near the end, the Doctor is faced with a wall twenty feet thick made of material four hundred times stronger than diamond, with a monster bearing down on him. He futilely punches it until his hands are bloody and the monster catches him and kills him. But it takes Time Lords a while to die, so he spends a day and a half dragging himself back up to the teleporter room, where he burns his own body as fuel to recreate the last teleport stored in the hard drive: Himself. Since the castle resets when he leaves a room for long enough, the new Doctor does the exact same things as the previous one, all the way up to punching the wall and dying and creating a new Doctor. This happens countless times, and the audience thinks he's trapped in a never-ending hell... and then it turns out that he's actually making progress through the wall. Suddenly one of the most horrifying moments of the series becomes the most awesome.
    The Doctor: There's this emperor, and he asks this shepherd's boy... "How many seconds in eternity?" And the shepherd's boy says... "There's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it. Every hundred years, a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed." You must think that's a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that's a hell of a bird.
  • "Hell Bent" begins with the Doctor seemingly seeking revenge for the death of Clara and the events of "Heaven Sent", but soon it becomes clear that everything in "Heaven Sent" and the opening of "Hell Bent" was simply a gambit by the Doctor to get Clara pulled out of time just before her death. The moment this occurs, the episode changes tone completely and focuses exclusively on the relationship between the Doctor and Clara, effectively becoming a two-hander for its second half.
• "Rosa": After Graham recalls how he learned about James Blake from Grace the day they met, he wishes she were there. There's a moment of somber recollection, and then Ryan says he's glad she isn't because she'd probably start a riot, which causes everyone to have a good laugh.

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