Nightmare Fuel / Doctor Who Series 6

Hate Amy. Kill Amy. DIE AMY.

• "A Christmas Carol":
  • The Sky Shark.
  • According to Steven Moffat, said Sky Shark was inspired by his own childhood nightmares that sharks would be able to leave the sea and eat him, possibly as a result of evolution.
• The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon"
• Series 6 gets kick-started with the Silence◊ — a race of aliens where you turn to run, and instantly forget there's anything there to run from.
  • "Run, get out of this room right now!" A reminder from Amy to herself.
  • Also, they look like a cross between Slender Man, the Gentlemen from Buffy, and Edvard Munch's "The Scream". Not quite seeing the "Scream" inspiration? Wait 'til it opens its mouth...◊
    • And then it absorbs all the local electricity to blast you into... mostly unrecognizable bits.
• "The Impossible Astronaut": Somebody killed the Doctor. And by killed, it doesn't mean a regeneration. It means actual death. The question is, who the hell would do such a thing!?
  • An Astronaut.
• "Day of the Moon":
  • According to this episode, we have all probably killed a Silence at one point or another and we don't remember it. That's some serious nightmare fuel, taking a life without even realizing it.
  • Dr. Renfrew, the insane children's home director. And the fact that the Silence have memory wiped him so many times there's just nothing left... His mannerisms, voice patterns and vague stare just make it worse.
    • The children's home itself! An Abandoned Hospital / Orphanage of Fear / Room Full of Crazy hat trick, for God's sake! It's full of writings. There is only one person who could've written it, since it's also written on his hand. AND HE CALMLY WIPES IT AWAY:
      Amy Pond: It's the kids, yeah? They did that?
      Dr. Renfrew: Yes, the children! It must be, yes.
  • Amy sees a whole bunch of Silence sleeping on the ceiling like bats...◊ and one of them starts moving.
• "The Curse of the Black Spot": Don't get hurt. Something might crawl out of the water and take you away. And then we discover it extends to reflective surfaces, too.
• "The Doctor's Wife":
  • They let Neil Gaiman write an episode, and its antagonist is a creature with the same level of evil as A.M. itself. It eats TARDISes. Oh, and that voice and the fact that Auntie and Uncle are stitched together from slain Time Lords and who-knows-what-else.
  • The short scene where Amy and Rory are running around in the TARDIS' corridors. The scenes where they get stuck on opposite sides of a door. Where Amy keeps going (three times!) and finds Rory increasingly older and more insane until she finds a dead corpse and hell-curse-you writing all over the walls. Imagine seeing the moldering remains of someone you love. Now imagine seeing that and knowing full well that they died hating you more than anything else in the world.
  • Insane!Rory was stuck in the TARDIS for a long time waiting for Amy and he hates her for it. Before he dies again, he writes on the wall, HATE AMY, KILL AMY, KILL ME AMY HATE AMY, KILL AMY over and over again. Seeing Rory, who is normally the level headed one, shout and scream like that is extremely unnerving.
    • "They come for me at night. Every single night, they come for me and they hurt me. Amy, they hurt me over, and over, and over and over..."
  • TARDISes can mess with time and space. If it could do that internally then it's entirely possible some version of Rory really did live that life and House has been mind raping him for decades before wiping it all out and starting over. Even if it actually wasn't him there's a good chance that scene was created based on Amy's own fears; we learned early on in the reboot that the TARDIS gets inside her head), thus making that scene the product of her guilt at his having to wait for her for so long and her absolute terror of losing him. Imagine watching your loved ones die several times, knowing it could happen again, permanently, any second...
  • After House takes controls of the TARDIS and leaves, the way Auntie and Uncle talk about their impending deaths as if they were just going out somewhere and then dying in mid sentence, their nonchalant tones never changing through the end, is chillingly unnatural. Imagine that you're just talking to somebody and then after a while they cheerfully announce that they're going to die in a few seconds and then suddenly just dropping dead just like that.
  • We are starting to be quite familiar with now a very pissed off Doctor. Suffice to say we have seen on numerous occasions that the Doctor has displayed signs that he could be heading to a darker path, events in "The Family of Blood", "The Waters of Mars", etc. have shown what the Doctor is capable of when his patience is pushed to the limits. Knowing this, the pain and anger he showed when talking to Auntie and Uncle after his discovery makes for a very tense moment.
    • "You gave me hope and then took it away. That's enough to make anyone dangerous, God knows what it'll do to me!" Indeed.
  • One line that seems to be a typical Doctor Badass Boast can be taken in a completely different and terrifying light.
    House: Fear me, I've killed hundreds of Timelords.
    The Doctor: Fear me. I've killed all of them.
  • The glib way he says this once again showcases how easily he can become the Timelord Victorious.
  • Think about it. House did that using only the TARDIS herself. She could do that to anyone, at any time, if she chose. ^note And she has done — see "Zagreus" in the Expanded Universe section below. We know she's alive, and sentient, and loves the Doctor. That leads us to the conclusion that she can probably get angry. She consciously controls herself if she needs to. Imagine being trapped in the TARDIS being Mind Raped again and again and again, indefinitely, and not being able to escape, because no one knows you're there. No one ever will know. Don't upset the TARDIS.
    • We already know that the TARDIS takes care of her Doctor and his companions. It's repeatedly indicated that the TARDIS is also protective of established timelines, said in "The Doctor's Wife" to be why she always lands where and when the Doctor is needed. Does anyone care to wonder what she's been doing all this time with the Carrionites the Doctor kept as a souvenir in "The Shakespeare Code"?
  • Nephew's fate is disturbing. The Doctor and Idris materialise a TARDIS on top of him.
    The Doctor: He's been... 'redistributed.'
    Amy: Meaning...?
    The Doctor: You're breathing him.
  • From Idris' POV, the Doctor's brilliant plan to escape the bubble universe is, "let's stitch the body parts of all my sisters' corpses together into a skinless Frankenstein's Monster and take it for a jog."
• "The Rebel Flesh":
  • The Gangers once they undergo Glamour Failure are creepy. This is especially the case the first time the audience is shown it during the second solar tsunami, where they flash between their human and Ganger faces - with their Ganger face locked in a screaming expression.
  • The scene in the toilets where Ganger!Jennifer attacks Rory by punching him in the face, her arm stretching like rubber through the door to do so, then she stretches her head through the hole and speaks to him with the Voice of the Legion.
  • The ending, where the Doctor is confronted by his own Ganger.
  • The disembodied mouth floating in a pool of living goop, whispering "Trust me."
  • This episode is showing once again just how terrifyingly paranoid un-cloned humanity loves to be. Cleaves rigs up a lethal taser based on her fears alone.
  • The scene where one of the Gangers gets dissolved in a pool of acid, which is treated with completed nonchalance by the other crewmembers.
• "The Almost People":
  • The pile of rotting Gangers who are both alive and fully conscious.
  • The freakish elongated monster that Jennifer turns into, which got lost on its way to a casting call for the next Resident Evil game.
  • The hallway with eyes in the walls.
  • The fact that Ganger!Jenny deliberately kills another, sentient Ganger of herself to convince Rory she's not a ganger. Because, as the Doctor repeatedly tells us, the sentient Gangers are just like real humans.
  • "Push, Amy, but only when she tells you to."
  • The cliffhanger of the episode. "Amy" is revealed to be another Ganger, and is dissolved by the Doctor. The real Amy awakens, and finds herself imprisoned in...well, a metal drawer in a morgue is an apt comparison, heavily pregnant — and going into labor. While the creepy lady in the eye patch stares in at her.
    "Well, dear. You're ready to pop, aren't you? Little one's on its way. Here it comes. Puuuuuusssssh..."
    [the most blood-curdling scream in the series' history follows]
• "A Good Man Goes to War":
  • The Headless Monks' Attack Chant. Heck, the Headless Monks in general!
  • When it turns out that Melody Pond is a flesh avatar that almost immediately dissolves. Doubles as Tear Jerker.
  • This exchange:
    Madame Kovorian: The anger of a good man is nothing to fear. Good men have two many rules.
    The Doctor, his face framed partially in shadow: Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.
• "Let's Kill Hitler": The Teselecta itself is pretty damn creepy, being a shapeshifting time-travelling self-appointed "punishers of crimes against humanity" ship staffed by callous Knight Templars.
• "Night Terrors".
  • The landlord's involuntary transformation into a doll in. It's scary because at first you think they're going to fake you out, but they don't. It's made to look like it's going to be offscreen... but it isn't.
  • Or Amy's transformation.
  • The dolls and their creepy laughter.
  • The landlord getting sucked down through his carpet while his dog just watches, not reacting in the slightest.
  • The dolls' nursery rhyme, playing over the closing scene on the TARDIS.
    "Tick tock goes the clock, he cradled and he rocked her / Tick tock goes the clock, even for the Doctor"
  • The soundtrack (spoilers, sweetie).
• "The Girl Who Waited":
  • Amy spends 37 years completely alone, constantly on the run from robots who will inadvertently kill her. Is it any wonder that she hates the Doctor more than anyone else by the time she gets to talk to him again?
  • "This is a kindness" spoken by an army of faceless robots with projectile syringes.
• "The God Complex":
  • A Hell Hotel that contains everyone's worst fears, with a room for everyone. A great big Minotaur wanders the halls, forced to eat the inhabitants. And Room 11 holds The Worst Thing In The Universe.
  • The Doctor is describing the Minotaur and how it wanted to die. The Minotaur apparently thinks he's talking about himself. The Doctor swears he's not saying he wants to die, but he seems to have trouble convincing himself.
    • You misunderstood. The Doctor is translating what the Minotaur is saying. He thinks the Minotaur's talking about himself, only to be corrected.
  • Are you praying yet? 'cause that's about the worst thing you could pos... Praise him.
  • The scene where the Doctor finds his room (11) to be most unnerving. He opens the door, and in the dark room, the Cloister Bell of the TARDIS is tolling in low, dark tones. His eyes widen, and then, with a profound sigh, he says, in response to his greatest fear and in resignation, "Of course. Who else?" and we never get to see what it is. The implication is that it is himself.
  • There's the fridge horror. The hotel keeps showing Rory an exit, and we find out later that this is because Rory lacks both fear and faith. But we also find out that the Hotel is a spaceship. Where do exits go on spaceships?
  • The core plot element, how each of the taken's faith is broken by being exposed to their worst fears that are generally otherwise mundane and non-threatening to anyone else.
• "Closing Time":
  • At the end, River Song is trapped underwater in a spacesuit (by Madame Kovarian and the Silence to be exact), drugged and forced to kill :the Doctor. Enhanced by Kovarian's taunting, and the Silence simply standing there and making no sound.
    • River, freshly Doctor Song, is reading up on the Doctor, when guess who comes out of the shadows. Also, this:
      Kovarian: You never escaped us. We were always coming for you.
    • Plus that terrifying nursery rhyme from "Night Terrors" is back with a vengeance.
      Tick tock goes the clock, he cradled and he rocked her
      Tick tock goes the clock, 'till River kills the Doctor.
    • If you think about it, River's situation at the end of Closing Time comes pretty close to And I Must Scream. River knows that she is about to be forced to kill the man she loves. She will be completely conscious for this, but unable to do anything to stop it. You gotta wonder just how messed up she was after this...
  • From the main story, Craig's Cyber-conversion. Made oh-so-much worse by Alfie's (aka Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All) plaintive wailing, as if he knows what's happening to his father.
• "The Wedding of River Song":
  • The prequel to this episode sees numerous Silence being held in stasis tubes, with yet another version of Tick Tock Goes the Clock played over it:
    Doctor, brave and good, he turned away from violence
    when he understood the falling of the Silence.
  • Then there's the episode itself. A creepy catacomb full of living carnivorous skulls that eat someone.
  • While it is a moment of awesome, Amy killing Madame Kovarian is genuinely creepy.
    Amy: River Song didn't get it all from you, sweetie.