Nightmare Fuel / Doctor Who Series 5

• "The Eleventh Hour":
  • Kids, see that crack in your wall? It's got a murderous shapeshifting alien behind it which looks like the hybrid of a moray eel and xenomorph. And if you look into the crack there is a giant eye that will look back at you.
  • One night that murderous alien made his way through the crack and into your home. Where it went into hiding, without you knowing, for over ten years.
  • Everything about Prisoner Zero. It's looks scary enough without the Paranoia Fuel linked to it. Anyone you know go into a coma recently? Prisoner Zero might be masquerading as them. In fact, it could be watching you...right now...as you look at this page...and you won't even notice. Thanks to Perception Filters, there could be many horrible things you aren't noticing...
  • "Oh, I'm getting it wrong again, aren't I? So...many...mouths."
  • The teeth of the transformed people are hugely creepy.
  • The mixed up voices were creepier for some, especially when the little girl uses the woman's voice or the man barking instead of the dog.
    • The woman using the girl's voice to taunt the Doctor about the cracks in the Universe, then switching back to the correct voice, as if it did that on purpose. "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know. Doesn't know~ Doesn't know~" It's quite possible Prisoner Zero does know.
  • There might also be hidden rooms in your house which you can't notice and which contain evil shapeshifting monsters. If you just look in the corner of your eye...
  • The sequence where Amy is going into Prisoner Zero's room, and the Doctor — the Doctor! — is absolutely terrified, screaming for her to turn back, and she just keeps going... "Walking down a hallway towards a door that shouldn't be there while someone screams not to open it? Hey, who needs sleep?"
  • Prisoner Zero was in that room for 12 years and had forged a mental link with Amy strong enough to knock her out by the time she was an adult. What would having an alien creature who had done something so awful that it's guards are willing to destroy a planet to stop it do to the mind of a little girl as she grew up? Some fans have even pointed out Amy shows signs of mental illness. From that perspective, she really needed those psychologists.
  • The picture taken by the Hubble Space telescope a few years ago. Looks familiar,◊ doesn't it?◊
• "The Beast Below":
  • This episode has Smilers and their demonic frowns.
  • And the Test Card F girl singing an Ironic Nursery Rhyme to the condemned...
    Girl: A horse and a man, above, below./ One has a plan but both must go./ Mile after mile; above, beneath./ One has a smile, and one has teeth. / Though the man above might say hello, / Expect no love from the beast below! [cue the elevator plummeting, then the floor opening]
  • "This, then, is what has been done to preserve the safety of the British people. May God have mercy on our souls."
  • The end, when it's discovered what's so horribly wrong about the ship having no engines. It's not just that it oughtn't be moving, it's that they're torturing a star whale who volunteered to help, to achieve propulsion.
  • The Doctor's immediate assumption that his only choice is to burn out the star whale's brain in order to save the humans and to spare the whale any further pain. This is a horrible choice—but two things rev it up to eleven: the Doctor knows the creature is sentient, and the Doctor is telepathic. Yet he never once thinks of using his own abilities to communicate with the creature. He just jumps into "I must destroy" mode and never comes out of it. Now think about all the times that the Doctor has decided that there's only one thing he can do...and realize how many innocent sentient creatures may have been destroyed by the Doctor.
    • And if you look closely at the Doctor's monologue in this scene, he caps it off with "And then I'll have to find another name, because I won't be The Doctor anymore..." If Amy hadn't intervened, we could've seen The Doctor become The Valeyard since he was on his last (at the time) regeneration.
    • It must have been a lot, considering it was revealed in the next season that an entire military group is devoted to defeating and killing him. Let's not forget that there was an entire order — The Silence — dedicated to preventing the Doctor from answering a pretty simple question.
  • At the end of the episode Amy points out that the Star Whale was a comparison to the Doctor's own willing nature to help humanity. So why was the Doctor so WILLING to end the creature's pain without consideration for its sentience? How often has the Doctor looked for a "painless way out" for all of his OWN suffering?
    • The Smilers' faces are made of porcelain... And each face takes up 50% of the head... And there's -THREE- faces.
    • That's not the creepy part. The creepy part is that the Smilers were never explained.
  • The fact that the Queen had lived through her 10 year reign many times, each time discovering the secret and being presented with this option:
    (forget) (abdicate)
• "Victory of the Daleks":
  • In your brightest moment, you're told that your inventions are actually planetary exterminators, every single thing about you is a lie, and that you're a bomb that's gonna blow up in a few minutes.
  • Guess why it's called "Victory"? That's right, because the Daleks win.
  • When the "Ironside" is introduced: "I. am. your. sooool-dier." Not again.
    • Watch in hindsight, knowing their plan. That is distinctly a note of smugness in those mechanical tones — it knows they've set it up so that the Doctor will lose this time and it's already rubbing his face in it.
• "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone":
  • "That which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel". And consider, in addition, that while you are watching these episodes, your screen is holding the image of an angel.
  • Look in an Angel's eyes long enough, and it can come out of the image you have of it in your brain. Now think back to how many times there have been close-ups of the Angels' faces, and suddenly those statues are even more terrifying. And this happens to Amy.
  • "If [they] have two heads, then why don't the statues?"
  • Angel Bob delights in providing nightmare fuel:
    • "Bob, keep running but tell me, how did you escape?" "I didn't escape, sir. The angels killed me, too. They broke my neck." Scariest. Conversation. Ever. What makes it really creepy was how emotionless he said it. He was being so scared in the beginning that the monotone makes you KNOW that something's horribly wrong.
    • "And when you say you're coming, you mean..." "That's right sir, the angels are coming.". Scariest part of the episode, hands down.
    • When the Doctor asks Angel Bob why the Angel in Amy's mind is forcing her to count down. "To make her afraid, Sir." "Yes, but why?" "For fun, Sir."
  • The Doctor has to shoot the globe that's keeping an entire horde of Angels at bay.
  • The soldiers shooting at the Angels in the tunnel... not because they actually expect the bullets to work, but to use the muzzle flash to light them up.
  • The Doctor, Amy, River, Father Octavian and the Clerics running through the Byzantium, having to periodically shut the lights off in order to open the doors.
  • The horrible, demonic screeching that passes for the Angels' laughter.
  • The Doctor and River leaving Amy, who must keep her eyes shut at all times or the Angel inside her head will get free, and the Clerics alone with the Angels in the forest. The crack seems to be calling to the Clerics — who walk over and are rewritten out of time, like they never existed. Amy is left completely alone, essentially blind, and must walk through the forest full of Angels as if she can see, because only the illusion that she might be able to see them is keeping the Angels from attacking.
  • The crack beginning to open is terrifying. As the Clerics are keeping tabs on the Angels, a terribly creepy sound echoes through the forest and the time energy gushes out. Immediately after that, the Angels become almost inconsequential.
  • The Doctor explaining what the time energy will do to Amy: "If the time energy catches up with you, you will never have been born. It will erase every moment of your existence. You will never have lived at all."
  • The crack is widening — and it can Ret-Gone people.
  • When just dying is a pretty good outcome (see also "The Big Bang"), things are pretty firmly in NF territory.
  • The Angels move in the most creepy, unsettling way imaginable. Worse, Amy has her eyes closed the entire time, and then she drops her communicator And when the barrier sealing off the forest rises up there's an army of angels just standing there. Who's at the front to greet them? Bob, the one who told the Doctor his neck was snapped and the angels were coming.
    • That nightmarish effect of the moving angels isn't created by CGI; the moving statues are all actual actresses in Uncanny Valley Makeup.
    • Angels moving on-screen seems to take off their Fourth Wall breaking abilities. But they're still stone when they move, which shouldn't be the case as they're only stone when being observed. Then you remember that there are twenty-four frames per second in the episode. A shutter passes over the camera in between each frame. Meaning that there are fractions of a second where we don't see the Angels. Fractions of a second where the Angels are not observed, and thus move.
• "The Vampires of Venice":
  • When the Doctor muses about what would be so bad that it wouldn't mind being thought to be a vampire.
  • Their true forms are aquatic beings with horrifying teeth, and you can become one if you survive the blood transfusion.
  • The creepy room where they actually do the "transfusion". Not only is it creepily lit and stone, but they also strap you to a chair.
  • There's the end. Notice how all the people have disappeared, and it's silent? Sweet dreams.
    • If you look at the cloud line right near the very end you can see the reason for the silence: the crack in time and space that becomes the main plotline is hidden there.
• "Amy's Choice":
  • When the Doctor and Rory leave Amy with the Dream Lord. It becomes ten times creepier when you find out that it's really the Doctor who's leering at her and saying these things and this means that he now considers romance with his companions to be part of his dark side.
    "And now he's left you with me. Spooky old not-to-be-trusted me... Anything could happen."
  • The scene where the Doctor falls asleep for a few seconds, and then wakes up just long enough for him to run a few feet, and then put him back to sleep again...
  • Birdsong. That's right, Doctor Who has now made birdsong scary. Pay close attention. It first appeared in "The Eleventh Hour" when the newly regenerated Doctor wakes from being smacked in the head by Amy with a cricket bat, but if you pay close attention to the birdsong, it follows the same pattern of the twittering chirping noise that the TARDIS makes during dematerialization.
    "Cold can burn, sofas can read."
• "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood":
  • This exchange:
    Moe: They did it to me. While I was conscious.
    Amy: Okay, you're really freaking me out. Did what?
    Moe: Dissected me.
  • Amy waking up in a glass coffin.
  • Amy getting sucked into the Earth, convinced she is going to die. Somewhat scarier when you realize from watching Confidential that Karen really is claustrophobic and those tears and screams are real.
  • The people getting Retgoned in "Flesh and Stone" was bad enough, but it gets even worse when it happens to an actual main character that we'd gotten to know over several episodes. And who was already dead, so the crack just stole the one kind of existence he had left.
  • If that's not bad enough, in "Cold Blood" the Doctor actually reaches into the crack and pulls something out, which we're not shown for several minutes. IT'S A PIECE OF THE TARDIS.
  • First it's statues, then it's darkness, then water, now the ground beneath our feet. Is anything safe?!
• "Vincent and the Doctor":
  • You can't even see the Monster of the Week. More Paranoia Fuel.
  • This is not an isolated occurrence. These vicious and invisible creatures drop out of their pack whenever they can't keep up. This could happen again.
• "The Lodger":
  • It begins around 2:30 of this clip: [1]. Nothing bad really happens, but Eleven seems to perceive a threat.
  • "HELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPME"
  • The silhouettes of the "people" at the top of the stairs... Luring victims up the stairs, where we hear them screaming as they are consumed by a creepy, hungry, half-sentient machine. And their burnt remains seeping down into the room below... yeesh.
  • After having a "will they or won't they" dilemma all episode, Craig and Sophie have finally decided to act on their feelings and become more than just friends, warmly thanking the Doctor for all that he's done for them as he departs. However, in a rather cruel last minute twist, they won't get to enjoy their relationship upgrade for long. Because there's a crack in the wall of Craig's kitchen and it's rapidly expanding - its eerie, unnatural light filling the room. "Flesh and Stone" and "Cold Blood" have made it very clear what the cracks do to anyone who get near them, so it's not hard to imagine Craig and Sophie were killed and erased soon after the episode ended. Thankfully, if that was case, rebooting the universe restored them, since we see them again in "Closing Time".
• "The Pandorica Opens":
  • The whole idea of the Alliance: Daleks, Cybus Cybermen, Sycorax, Silurians, Hoix, the Weevils out of Torchwood, Autons...
    • Even worse. All of the Doctor's enemies (and some other aliens) gang up on him and lock him in the Pandorica, which was built to prevent him apparently blowing up the universe. It didn't work.
  • "There was a goblin, or a trickster... Or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world." This is the description of the monster in the Pandorica, and it's the Doctor. This is a description of the Doctor as he is seen by his enemies. Think about that.
  • The Cyberman's helmet springing open to reveal the rotting human skull inside. It's attempting to acquire a new body by sealing Amy's head inside it! "You will be assimilated".
  • After listening to the Doctor begging and pleading to his enemies to be let out of the Pandorica to save the universe, then panning out to see every single star exploding and darkness and silence covering everything, THE FUCKING BACKGROUND MUSIC SHUTS OFF and the scene fades to black in silence.
  • The outcome of a a Total Event Collapse. The Earth and the Moon are the only things left. Not just that it's the only planet left, but it's the only planet to have ''ever existed.'' Every single alien race, good or bad, never came to be. Earth is utterly alone, with the only intelligence left being the Silurians. Thing get worse when what's left starts suffering the same fate.
  • Oh, and here's something you may like. The Cyberman said that "all universes" will be deleted. That's right, a Class Z. And if The Multiverse truly exists, this means all of creation was wiped out during "The Big Bang". That includes our reality. WE NEVER EXISTED.
  • The Doctor hinting what he thinks happened to Amy's family: That they were erased by the crack, and judging by the number of rooms, that could easily include siblings she has no clue (n)ever existed.
  • One more: Vincent van Gogh's painting of the TARDIS exploding, with imagery eerily reminiscent of his magnum opus "The Starry Night".
  • "I'm sorry, my love."
  • The "outside force" landing the TARDIS... with it's door facing a rock wall. On a place in space that is likely about as far from the Earth as the Sun. Thus probably Mars. Also, apparently at least the rock wall's edge was included in the TARDIS' time loop, since it remains even after the erasure of it's the universe's existance. Special design, or Hand Wave?
  • The Doctor screaming: "PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!!!" when the Pandorica closes. The Doctor has never sounded so desperately scared in his life.
  • The Pandorica itself is terrifying when you think about it. It's a very small box where you can't move, not even your head. And it won't let you die, because that would be "escaping". Now imagine what would've happened if Rory hadn't freed the Doctor.
  • "Lucky" Amy; she was "dead" the whole time. Lucky it didn't heal her upon entry... if you imagined what the Doctor would have gone through, what about Amy? Look what an apparition of an ancient and tortured Rory was like; and he wasn't immobile.
  • Imagine you died. Killed. Gone forever. Then, suddenly, you're alive again, in an entirely different place, in an entirely different time, with everything that you've known being as distant as a dream. As if your entire life never happened... And then, you run into someone you thought didn't exist, someone you loved and they don't remember who you are. You desperately try to get them to remember, but before you can, your body, moving on its own, kills them. Not only do you have to live with killing the one person you can recover from your old life, but you are a false machine copy of who you think you are, and you're working for the bad guys.
    • Oh, Rory.
• "The Big Bang":
  • A half dead/half alive fossilized Dalek screaming "RESTORE! RESTORE! RESTORE!" as it tries to reboot itself.
    • It also shoots the Doctor but fails to quite kill him instantly, leaving him wincing in pain for a good chunk of the episode.
  • River Song is pretty scary now. She made a Dalek beg for mercy. A freakin' Dalek. She didn't just get it to beg - she got it to metaphorically roll over and scream for mama. You can actually hear in each iteration of the word 'mercy' its progression from 'Oh, Crap!' to 'please don't kill me' to 'OHMYGODI'MABOUTTODIE!' And all in the same emotionless tone. Just be glad she's on our side. We believe...
  • River Song. It's a combination of the fact that she not only killed a man, she killed "a good man. The best man I ever knew" and the fact that the last time she sees the Doctor in The Big Bang she tells him that soon he'll find out who she is and then "I'm sorry, but everything will change." Neither of those sound good.
  • The question is, WHAT DID SHE DO TO THAT DALEK?!
  • "It died."
  • Rory gets about as close to And I Must Scream as you can get while still fully mobile, standing guard over Amy for almost 2000 years, and not even being able to sleep through any of it. Of course, the fact that he takes this on willingly (and it's even his idea in the first place) also means it's a killer Moment of Awesome, Heartwarming, and Tearjerker as well.