A single 60 minute episode inadvertently paved the way for Doctor Who's bright future.
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00:00 We can all probably name 10 or 15 massively important Doctor Who episodes off the top of
00:05 our head, right? My mind goes straight to Silence in the Library for obvious reasons,
00:10 and stuff like An Unearthly Child and Rose. But there are plenty of more unassuming episodes
00:15 that are very important too. For instance, The Deadly Assassin is considered by many to be the
00:21 first cultural work to use the word "matrix" to refer to a virtual reality, years before
00:26 it was popularised by William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. It's possible to give many episodes
00:33 of Doctor Who a new level of importance by framing them in the context of the time in which they were
00:38 broadcast. Or, in the case of one story, how a repeat viewing changed the course of the show's
00:43 future. I'm Ellie for WhoCulture, and here are 10 Doctor Who episodes more important than you
00:48 realised. Number 10, The Next Doctor. Building on the response to David Tennant's announcement
00:54 that he was leaving Doctor Who, The Next Doctor was a tremendous bit of misdirection from Russell
01:00 T. Davis. David Morrissey was not David Tennant's replacement, but was instead Jackson Lake, a man
01:06 who believed he was the Doctor after an accident with an info stamp. Which brings us to the
01:10 importance of The Next Doctor in the history of Doctor Who. Because while we'd seen sketches of
01:16 previous incarnations in John Smith's Journal of Impossible Things in Human Nature, we'd never
01:22 seen any actual footage. And so it was that upon activating the info stamp, footage of the first
01:28 eight classic Doctors, plus Eccleston and Tennant, appeared on TV on Christmas Day 2008. While we'd
01:34 had it confirmed time and time again that New Who was a continuation, it was thrilling to have the
01:40 lineage displayed for all to see. The Next Doctor was the last episode of Doctor Who to be filmed in
01:45 standard definition. From the Planet of the Dead onwards, it was shot in HD, and now, years later,
01:50 UHD. To fit alongside the other 2009 specials, The Next Doctor was the first Doctor Who episode
01:56 to be upscaled to high definition. Another feather in its cap of importance.
02:00 Number 9, The Rescue. Vicky is technically the third Doctor Who companion, but there's a case
02:07 to be made that she's the one who defines the role in The Rescue. Susan was the Doctor's
02:11 granddaughter, so she doesn't really count, while Ian and Barbara were kidnapped. They became a
02:16 close family unit over the course of their travels, but there were a few teething problems.
02:20 No such problems with Vicky, though, who is the first person to actually be
02:24 invited to travel in the TARDIS by the Doctor. Missing his granddaughter, who departed in the
02:29 previous serial, the Doctor meets and rescues the young orphan, who will become his next companion.
02:35 The Rescue establishes Doctor Who's core ideas of the title character as a lonely god, seeking
02:40 someone to share the universe with. It's far more subtle here, but all the elements are in place
02:45 over 40 years before Russell T. Davis would make it the show's core ethos. This means that The
02:50 Rescue, a diverting enough two-parter involving a murder mystery on a crashed spaceship, is much
02:55 more important to the history of Doctor Who than it initially seems.
02:59 Number 8, Dimensions in Time. Sure, there are doubts over whether 1993's charity sketch
03:06 Dimensions in Time is canon, but what else was the seventh Doctor referring to when he mentioned
03:12 Virani in Tales of the TARDIS? But aside from now being canonically the beginning of Ace's
03:17 final regular adventure, Dimensions in Time represents a notable technological first for
03:22 Doctor Who. That's because it was the first Doctor Who story to be shot in 3D. It's worth
03:27 pointing out that this was part of a wider gimmick deployed by Children in Need in 1993, but Doctor
03:32 Who was the show that best fit the format. On the original broadcast, a little icon would pop up in
03:37 the corner of the screen, instructing viewers to put on the 3D glasses they got from the front of
03:42 the Radio Times, so that they could be dazzled by the nightmarish floating heads of William Hartnell
03:47 and Patrick Troughton. It's obviously far more primitive than the technology used to realise
03:52 the day of the Doctor's eye-popping 3D sequences, but that doesn't stop it being the first Doctor
03:57 Who story to use it. So that's 3D for the 30th anniversary and the 50th anniversary.
04:03 Uh, 4DX screening for the 70th anniversary, anyone?
04:07 7. Fear Her It's easy to miss,
04:11 but the moment in Fear Her when the Tenth Doctor says "I was a dad once" is the first time modern
04:16 Doctor Who confirms that the Doctor was a parent. You could say that it's the first time this fact
04:22 has been confirmed in the entire history of Doctor Who. Despite the Doctor being a confirmed
04:26 grandfather in Doctor Who's very first episode, some fans, and 80s producer John Nathan-Turner,
04:32 were uncomfortable about the idea of the Doctor, um, procreating, shall we say.
04:36 To that end, then-script editor Eric Sayward wrote Birth of a Renegade for the Radio Times
04:42 20th anniversary special in 1983. The non-canon story revealed that Susan was actually a descendant
04:49 of Rassilon, given shelter in the TARDIS by the Doctor during a bloody uprising on Gallifrey.
04:55 Hang on, so, wait, grandfather was just a nickname? What's wrong with offhandedly mentioning that the
05:00 Doctor was once a parent and then quickly moving on before you have to consider William Hartnell
05:04 a sexual being? Uh, huh, you've all got it in your head now too, haven't you? But point being,
05:09 it worked for Fear Her. The Tenth Doctor would once again state that he used to be a father in
05:13 The Doctor's Daughter, confirming his offhand comment in Fear Her and putting any doubt to bed.
05:18 6. The Crotons The Crotons is seen as something of a nadir for
05:24 the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who. But there are two reasons why it's an important
05:28 serial in the overall history of the show. In November 1981, The Crotons were selected
05:33 to represent the second Doctor in The Five Faces of Doctor Who on BBC Two. This series
05:38 of repeat stories was a way to keep fans occupied while they waited for the proper debut of Peter
05:44 Davison's fifth Doctor in January 1982. The reason that The Crotons was chosen was because it was the
05:50 only complete four-part Patrick Troughton serial in the archives at the time. Thankfully, much more
05:55 of his era has resurfaced in the years that followed. The other big reason that The Crotons
06:00 is so important to the history of Doctor Who is that it was the debut serial from Robert Holmes,
06:05 who would go on to bigger and better things. Holmes' tenure as script editor marks an
06:09 undisputed golden age of Doctor Who between 1975 and 1977. Holmes is also responsible for
06:16 much of the Gallifreyan and Time Lord mythology that still defines the show in 2024, and it's
06:21 all thanks to his inauspicious start scripting The Crotons. Number 5. The Power of the Doctor
06:28 The Power of the Doctor regenerated Jodie Whittaker back into David Tennant, celebrated
06:33 100 years of the BBC, and brought back almost all of the surviving classic Doctors, along with
06:39 multiple companions, most notably Tegan and Ace. So it's already a pretty important Doctor Who
06:44 story. However, it was also the very first Doctor Who story to air after the death of Queen Elizabeth
06:50 II, marking a whole new era for the UK. She had reigned for every single bit of Doctor Who up to
06:57 that point, which speaks to both her and the show's incredibly long tenures. Rumoured to be a
07:02 Doctor Who fan herself, the Queen is said to have received pre-released DVD copies of episodes,
07:07 leading to the wild rumour that Prince William is hoarding missing episodes. In just her first
07:12 decade on the throne after her coronation in June 1953, the Queen reigned over one of the UK's most
07:18 culturally important periods in recent memory. As well as Doctor Who, the 1960s saw the birth of
07:24 Bond and The Beatles, cultural powerhouses that still define the United Kingdom's national identity
07:30 to this day. Number 4. Underworld
07:33 As you work your way through the Doctor Who Season 15 box set, it may be tempting to skip
07:39 Underworld. It's long been derided as one of the low points in the Tom Baker era, due to its dreary
07:44 story and over-reliance on green screen. However, the fact that Underworld is the first Doctor Who
07:50 story to use virtual sets is just one of two reasons that it's more important than fans give
07:55 it credit for. Sure, the colour separation overlay in Underworld is a perfect example of why innovations
08:01 like the volume are needed, but it stumbled so that Doctor Who in 2024 could fly. Underworld
08:06 is also a fairly big Time Lord mythology episode, exploring why they established the non-intervention
08:12 policy that the Doctor so regularly flouts. In the time after their war with the great vampires,
08:17 the Time Lords involved themselves in the affairs of the wider galaxy. Opting to help the Minyans,
08:22 they shared advanced technology that accidentally caused a nuclear war. Horrified at the consequences
08:28 of their actions, the Time Lords vowed to merely observe the universe, never involving themselves
08:33 in the affairs of other species. Until the Doctor came along, that is.
08:36 Number 3. The War Machines In the War Machines,
08:40 the First Doctor finally returns to 1960s London, only to find strange things going on at the
08:45 post office tower. It's the blueprint for the Unit Era and RTD's own take on Doctor Who.
08:51 But that's not the most important thing about the War Machines. As with a lot of 1960s Doctor Who,
08:56 the War Machines were sent out to Commonwealth nations, including New Zealand, Australia,
09:01 and Nigeria. Many of these prints became the only existing copies when the BBC began junking their
09:06 film cans. Over the years, many Doctor Who stories have been recovered from old broadcast stations in
09:11 Commonwealth nations by people like Philip Morris. Before all of that, however, an Australian
09:17 collector had acquired a print of the War Machines Episode 2 at some point in the late 1960s to the
09:22 early 1970s. This was years before the complete serial was discovered in Nigeria in 1984. That
09:28 Australian print was returned to the BBC archives in the late 1970s, making the War Machines Episode
09:34 2 the first of Doctor Who's many missing episodes to be returned from overseas.
09:40 2. The Runaway Bride
09:42 On Christmas Day 2006, The Runaway Bride proved that Doctor Who could survive without Billie
09:48 Piper's Rose by introducing Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, an important moment in the history
09:53 of the modern era. The Runaway Bride took on added significance in 2020 when it was the subject of
09:59 one of Emily Cook's lockdown tweet-alongs. Rewatching her debut story had a real impact
10:04 on Catherine Tate, who mentioned to Russell T. Davis how marvellous it would be to do more episodes
10:09 as Donna. Tate then spoke to David Tennant, who predictably voiced a similar desire to return to
10:14 Doctor Who. Russell T. Davis dutifully reported this news to the BBC, who were struggling to
10:19 find a way to keep the show going. In fact, Chris Chibnall was so sure that the BBC would rest Doctor
10:24 Who for a bit that he left the ending of The Power of the Doctor open-ended. To be clear,
10:29 the Chibnall era did not kill Doctor Who. It was more that the BBC were out of options for a viable
10:34 replacement showrunner. That was until a giant Welshman kicked open the doors of the BBC,
10:39 offering them the way forward. If it hadn't been for a 15-year-old bit of television,
10:44 then we may not have a brand new season of Doctor Who to come in 2024.
10:48 1. The Chase
10:50 With the Beatles appearing in Doctor Who in Season 1, it's a good time to remind ourselves
10:55 of their earliest connection with the show. In an incredible bit of irony, a clip of the Beatles
11:00 performing "Ticket to Ride" on top of the Pops only exists because it's preserved in a bit of
11:05 1960s Doctor Who, one of the biggest victims of the BBC's notorious junking policy. The opening
11:11 scenes of 1965's The Chase see the First Doctor introduce his companions to the time-space
11:17 visualiser, which allows them to view moments from history like they were a TV programme.
11:22 Basically Rick and Morty's interdimensional cable before it was a thing. One of the sequences was
11:27 some classical music, the Beatles performing live. The sequence was lifted from an episode
11:32 of the BBC's Top of the Pops, which no longer exists in the archive, meaning that this little
11:37 snippet is all that remains of the performance. However, if writer Terry Nation had his way,
11:42 the clip wouldn't have been included at all. The original script for The Chase would have
11:45 shown the Beatles in old man make-up performing at a 50th anniversary concert in the 21st century.
11:51 Keen for the Beatles' young fans not to be put off by middle-aged versions of their idols,
11:56 manager Brian Epstein turned down the offer, and the Top of the Pops clip was used instead.
12:01 And there you have it. But while we're on the topic of importance,
12:04 why not check out 10 Doctor Who characters more important than you realised? In the meantime,
12:09 I've been Ellie for WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye, sweeties.