Nightmare Fuel / Doctor Who Series 3

Gone Horribly Wrong at its finest.

• "The Runaway Bride":
  • Millions of giant ancient spiders crawling out of the Earth's core. To eat you. Merry Christmas!
  • The Doctor himself is what made the special scary. For the first time we get a glimpse of what happens when Ten is pushed too close to the edge (which becomes something of a feature of series 3 and 4). The look on his face as he watches the baby Racnoss die is just kind of chilling.
  Donna: That place was flooding and burning and they were dying, and you were stood there like... I don't know. A stranger.
• "Smith and Jones":
  • A little old lady vampire (with a bendy straw, which is simultaneously terrifying and hilarious).
  • A brutal "police force" who can reduce you to atoms just by pulling a trigger!
• "The Shakespeare Code":
  • The opening. A young man serenades a young woman, who invites him inside for a little you know what... and once there she and her mothers tear him to pieces, literally. As he's screaming.
  • An apparently sweet-looking girl, actually a hideous witch who uses voodoo to kill her victims! (And the Doctor shuts her and her mothers up in a pocket dimension for eternity! When we seen them briefly in a Season 4 episode, they're still screaming.)
• "Gridlock":
  • A drug which induces bliss but kills a few minutes later! Space crabs that eat people who venture below the motorway! The fact that there's nobody on the top of the planet anymore, and it takes FOREVER to cross the motorway! It leads around in a giant loop, with all of the exits sealed off, but nobody in the main lanes has a long enough lifespan to realize it!
  • The beginning. Oh my god, the beginning! The way that their hopes are dashed as the car stopped, how terrified they are as the car is being ripped apart! How hysterical their voices are as they scream in fear! And how all through it, the oblivious Sally Calypso on the monitor is just cheerily signing off as the motorway-goers are screaming in terror as they are eaten! The way the lifeless hand slides off the T.V. screen... it all makes an intro so horrifying that it could give the opening for "School Reunion" a run for its money.
  • Apparently, there is a non-existent police force in the Highway. Just how many people realized this and got away with their criminal acts?
• "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks": More Daleks! This time, one Dalek became a tentacled human hybrid just by sucking another human into its armour! The evolved form of the Dalek is Nightmare Fuel in itself. The exposed pink brain of the hybrid, the humanoid posture... Especially, for some reason, the mouth. It's way too small and low for the creature's face, and it's always smiling.
  • The hybridised Dalek Sec begins to feel human emotions, and starts to see the error of his ways and the futility of the Dalek ideology. He tries to work with the Doctor to create a new Dalek-Human species that would live in peace. The other three "pure" Daleks deem this unacceptable, and lead a mutiny against Sec. They chain him up, force him to crawl like an animal, and ultimately kill him for defending the Doctor. It's a big reminder that the Daleks are utterly, irredeemably evil, and will happily murder any of their own kind who dare to seek redemption.
• "The Lazarus Experiment":
  • A machine that turns people into mutant throwbacks! And its user (Mark Gatiss again, this time acting rather than scripting) ends up chasing the main characters through a London cathedral! Oh yeah, and he looks like this◊. And he can drain people's life force with his tail, turning them into dried-out husks.
  • After Lazarus dies, the Doc decides to pay his respects, closing his eyes. In the split second we cut away from Lazarus' younger form and to the Doctor's face as he does so, Lazarus ages back to his older form. It's not clear whether this is metaphorical or if all those changes happened in milliseconds.
  • Lazarus' motivations are creepily realistic. Basically, he's a little like the Cybermen — he wants to avoid death, but it twists him into a life-siphoning, scorpion-esque, unfeeling monster, and he considers it all in the name of progress.
• "42":
  • A living sun, which possesses people and causes them to burn their loved ones until there's nothing left but a shadow on the wall!
  • Oh, man, "42"... Everyone trapped on a hellishly hot and red-lit spaceship that's about to crash into the sun, claustrophobic dark tunnels, getting trapped in disengaged airlocks, people getting burned into dust and possessed by a sentient sun, all of this culminating in a screaming and absolutely terrified Doctor trying to stave off the aforementioned possessions, all while being pushed into a minus 200 deep freeze? The line: "You should've scanned for life!" in particular. This is one of the very, very few times we see the Doctor completely, out-of-control terrified. Just plain disturbing.
  • The Doctor's scream of pure agony as the cryo-pod activates sounds way too real.
  • "Burn with me, Martha!"
  • "I'LL SAVE YOU"
• "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood":
  • Like the previous episode, David Tennant's agonized, hellish screams when the Doctor activates the Chameleon Arch are just a little... too convincing. Counts in-universe too, since poor Martha has to watch.
  • The punishment inflicted on the Family of Blood. Immortality... spent in various horrific prisons. The punishments all narrated calmly by the teenage son was the icing on the cake. Hell, the Family of Blood themselves. They were pretty creepy.
    • This is just one instance of what's truly the scariest thing in the series: what our Technical Pacifist hero, the Doctor, is capable of when he's had enough. Don't cross him. Just don't.
  • And now every time you look in the mirror...
  • Listen carefully as he describes the fate of Daughter of Mine: He doesn't say that the Doctor trapped her in a mirror, he says the Doctor trapped her in every mirror. If even your subconscious takes this the least bit seriously, you are now trapped in an eternal, incredibly creepy game of I Spy that you can never win.
  • Son of Mine makes killers out of the scarecrows in farm fields. No voice, relentless, they just want to kill you.
  • The inhuman scream of Father of Mine as he gets sent down to the mine is just terrifying.
• "Blink":
  • This is the episode that made people realise that, if he wanted to scare people, Steven Moffat could scare someone to death.
  • When it first aired, the episode had a special warning telling parents that the episode was scarier than normal and should be watched during the day instead of at night. Only Doctor Who could make an episode about statues the most terrifying thing in the world.
  • The Weeping Angels don't actually kill you. In fact, they're the nicest psychopaths in the universe because: "No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death. The rest of your life? Used up and blown away in the blink of an eye. You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had. All your stolen moments. They’re creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy.” Kathy Nightingale and Billy Shipton both lived out happy, full lives before dying of natural causes. The Weeping Angels don't kill you, but they still caused the most hardened horror fans to wet themselves!
  • The scene where Sally takes the TARDIS key. While most other scenes use flickering light or camera cuts to show that the Angels have moved, this time the Angels change poses as Sally passes between them and the camera, watching her as she steps in front of them and covering their eyes as she moves away. Even the one in the background. The implication? The viewers are the ones keeping the statues from moving, since they move when the VIEWERS can't see them.
  • The way the Doctor ends his easter egg during the proper context. He says "I don't know what stopped you talking, but I can guess. They're coming. The angels are coming for you." while an increasingly loud heartbeat plays over a shot of an angel. The scene has the same energy as when the grace period ends in Slender.
  • "You're not looking at the statue." "Neither are you." Cue Oh, Crap! and a Jump Scare.
  • "Why's [the statue] pointing at the... light?"
  • Larry has to keep his eyes on the statue while Sally tries to save them. He looks away for one second... ONLY A SECOND... and when he turns back around, the Angel is RIGHT THERE, mere inches away from him.
  • The montage of statues, narrated by David Tennant's "don't blink speech". It's almost as though the episode is planting the idea that somehow, any ordinary statue in our world can be a Weeping Angel...
  • Just the sounds used when the Angels are on screen. It's deeply unsettling.
• "Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords":
  • The last three episodes include humanoid wildmen, the end of the universe looming, a kindly old man who, when he gets his memory back, turns out to be a genocidal monster who immediately murders his gentle assistant, the utterly eerie pleasure the human Lucy (whose mind the Master destroyed) takes in decimating the global population (she dances to pop music while he does it) and, last but certainly not least, the revelation that the robotic killing machines with childlike voices are actually powered by human brains - those of the last humans in the universe, no less, who cannibalized themselves and went back in time to avoid the end of the universe. And they share minds with one another, though that means out there is the little boy who back on the spaceship gleefully told Martha that his mother had told him in Utopia "the sky was made of diamonds".
  • Listen carefully when Professor Yana opens the fob watch: amongst the miscellaneous "flashback" sound effects, you can clearly hear the Master's voice saying, "Step aside human, and release my majesty." When John Smith opened his fob watch, the Doctor's essence allowed him to choose whether he wanted to resume his life as a Time Lord; Yana, by contrast, was allowed no such luxury. A sweet, innocent old man had the vile mind of a thousand-year old maniac literally forced upon him.
    • The most horrifying thing about Professor Yana is that, according to the Doctor in "Human Nature / The Family of Blood", a Time Lord's chameleon arched self is actually made from a part of their personality. If not for Rassilon, the Master could've been a kindly old Doctor figure rather than the viciously evil person he became instead.
    • The Master's shrieking during the regeneration is downright demonic, with him sporting Glowing Eyes of Doom and seemingly staring directly at the viewer.
    • Maybe. It's possible that the Master was just a deranged megalomaniac to begin with, as the drumbeats were never mentioned in the Classic Series, and that said drumbeats were just something Rassilon retroactively added on to the Master in the last days of the Time War in order to enact his Evil Plan. Which is horrifying in its own right, because that would mean Rassilon knowingly made an already established genocidal maniac even more of a genocidal maniac.
  • There's also Chantho's fate to think about. The kind, generous, quirky genius with whom she's worked (and developed other feelings) for the last seventeen years suddenly undergoes a total shift in personality and begins opening up their base to invasion by the Futurekind. When she tries to stop him, he electrocutes her without a second thought. Viewers know what the Master's deal is, but Chantho dies having no idea what's going on or why she's being murdered by her best friend.
  • While many fans count the Master's gleeful reaction to killing Jack ("And the best part is...I get to kill him again!") as a Moment of Awesome, it's equally horrific. For perspective, consider the many, many ways a human being can be tortured, maimed, and killed (if you need help, consult Wikipedia); now imagine that knowledge in the hands of a man who is utterly batshit insane, with unlimited resources and a test subject who can't die. Oh, Jack....
  • The Master getting ready to turn the Doctor's TARDIS into the Paradox Machine. It's just a brief shot of the Master standing at the console... with a blowtorch and one of the most psychotic grins ever seen on a face. The sheer malicious pleasure he shows, knowing that he's going to take what is essentially the Doctor's best and oldest friend, and he's going to break her, and twist her, and hurt her...
  • The description (delivered alternately by the Master and the captured Toclafane) of what humans found at Project Utopia, at the end of the universe. "Furnaces, burning... the last of humanity screaming at the dark. There was no solution. No diamonds. Just the dark, and the cold. All that human invention that had sustained them across the eons... it all turned inward. They cannibalized themselves—regressing into children. We made ourselves so pretty! But it didn't work. The universe was collapsing around them. But then the Master came, with his wonderful time machine, to bring us back home!"
  • Even worst, when the human from the future is asked why they kill their ancestor despite being of the same species. Its answer? "Because it's fun!" followed by a very, very, very creepy child-like laugh.
  • And the Master was the Doctor's childhood friend. Which makes everything so much worse, because in a way they're still friends.
  • The grotesque, emaciated Doctor after being aged by 100 years. When aged again, he looks much worse.
    • Actually, he wasn't even aged the second time. He was just given a physical appearance to match how old all of his regenerations combined were. Which makes it even more terrifying and grotesque.
    • The specific way they blurred his features and distorted his voice made the Painful Transformation downright unsettling to watch on broadcast.
  • After the Master unleashes the Toclafane, Martha uses Jack's vortex manipulator to escape. She lands on a hill overlooking London, where we see a horrifying scene of a colossal horde of Toclafane (almost filling the entire sky) descending upon the city and destroying it. The sound of explosions and screams fill the air, and Martha can only look on helplessly before running in the opposite direction as fast as she can.
  • Consider this: John Simm thought his own children shouldn't see what he did as the Master due to it being too disturbing.
  • Not enough people talk about the Doctor during Utopia. David Tennant is downright chilling as the Doctor in regards to how he treats his companions. His blatant disregard of Captain Jack's existance for being a fact of the universe, admitting that he couldn't tolerate him due to his Time Lord instincts, causing Captain Jack to live at least an entire century without visiting him once. The Doctor being furious at Martha for pointing out Professor Yana's fob watch. These interactions aren't the focus of the story but they shed some extra light on the Tenth Doctor as a character.
  • The Master's reign over Earth. The fact that he starts by ordering the execution of 10% of the world's population is just icing on the cake. The episode and The Story of Martha make it clear that, in less than a year, the Master freezes the Nile River, poisons the Caspian Sea, destroys New York City, creates radiation pits across Europe and, in a bid to kill Martha, burns the islands of Japan to the ground, killing everyone but her. Untold billions have died directly or indirectly by his actions, all while he forces people into slavery, building monuments of him (even carving his face into Mt. Rushmore) and creating vast shipyards. The Master is not stopping at Earth, and aims to wage war on the rest of the universe, creating a New Time Lord Empire.
• The Master believes a gun in four parts that is capable of killing a Time Lord exists - while Martha admits it was not her reason for traversing the Earth at no point does the Doctor deny that one actually does exist. The question is this: When and, perhaps more importantly, why do both the Doctor the Master know of it? Did someone use it during the Time War? Did they (attempt to) use it on each other? Did they team up to stop it being used on the Time Lords by the Daleks? We get no answer, but evidently it exists.