10 Huge Doctor Who Moments That Didn't Matter AT ALL

Doctor Who is a show of many iconic and memorable moments. Plot twists, cliffhangers, romance, action, and laughs. Often all in the same episode. But sometimes the show's biggest moments don't always have the impact or payoff that you'd think they would. I'm Ellie for WhoCulture and these are 10 huge Doctor Who moments that didn't matter at all. Number 10. Mavity. No one quite knew what to expect from Wild Blue Yonder. But one thing we definitely didn't expect was a pre-title sequence featuring Isaac Newton and Gravity becoming Mavity? Immediately fans began to wonder what the significance of this scene would be. We'd seen butterfly effect moments before where small changes create big ripples. Was this going to be something similar with the Doctor's mistake coming back to haunt him? Would an unassuming character say Gravity, revealing them to have some sort of greater cosmic awareness? Well, as it happened, no. The show committed to the bit by having characters refer to Gravity as Mavity throughout the Disney era and even in a Big Finish Torchwood audio released just prior. But these references went nowhere and history remained otherwise unchanged. Which begs the question, why bother? Was it just a gag or was it just a way to wind fans up and generate content? Which maybe could be forgiven if Russell T. Davis hadn't hyped up Wild Blue Yonder's big secret cold open so much. Now yes, I can already hear you pointing out that Mavity might still be resolved in the upcoming Christmas special. Though with so much else to wrap up, it does seem doubtful, doesn't it? At this point we might just have to accept that we're never going to fully understand the Mavity of the situation. You get it? You can see what I did there? Anyway. Number 9. The Doctor is President of the Time Lords The Deadly Assassin is a notable story for a number of reasons. It was the first story to feature the Doctor travelling alone with no companion. It was a story that got the show in trouble with what was perceived to be an overly violent, watery cliffhanger. Oh, and it also saw the Doctor casually become president of the Time Lords, a title he's held on and off ever since. Now, in fairness, the Doctor only becomes president by default when it transpires that the only other candidate, Chancellor Goth, conspired to kill Gallifrey's outgoing president. Corrupt politicians? Shock horror. Once the day is saved, the Doctor naturally runs a million miles away, presumably because he doesn't want to spend his days cutting ribbons and speaking in public. However, he does play president again twice, in The Invasion of Time and Hellbent, purely because it suits him. Elsewhere, when the Time Lords try and get him to serve a proper term at the end of The Five Doctors, he's having none of it. So, while this does pop up here and there, it's never actually been properly explored. The Doctor as Lord President is a big deal, but never seems to carry any weight or last beyond a story. It's one of the many examples of how Gallifrey has been somewhat underutilized in Doctor Who history. Although, to be fair, there's a reason the Doctor ran away from it in the first place. Number 8. The Seventh Doctor's Mysterious Backstory 1980s script editor Andrew Cartmel had bold plans to reveal the Doctor as a founding figure from Time Lords society, much of which never actually ended up on screen because of Classic Who's cancellation. Additionally, a line about the Doctor being far more than just another Time Lord was cut from Remembrance of the Daleks by producer John Nathan-Turner. However, some references to this so-called Cartmel master plan did make it into Silver Nemesis via the 17th century aristocrat Lady Painford, who is granted cosmic knowledge by the Nemesis statue. Specifically, she speaks of secrets concerning Gallifrey and the Time of Chaos, threatening to spill them if the Doctor doesn't play ball. Retroactively, we can perhaps read this all as an allusion to the Timeless Child, though the fact that the Doctor seems to know what Lady P is talking about muddies this theory somewhat. In the end, though, it all just amounted to nothing, through no fault of those involved. With Doctor Who taken off the air, there simply wasn't anywhere to develop these ideas further, despite the significance of what they were hinting at clearly being massive. In the end, it's probably for the best that we didn't learn too much about the Doctor's history anyway. Number 7. The Doctor's name is Theta Sigma? Doctor Who? It's a question that fans and disembodied blue heads have been asking for as long as Doctor Who has been around, so it might surprise you to learn that we actually got an answer back in 1979. During the Armageddon Factor, the Fourth Doctor runs into his old classmate Drax, who greets him as Theta Sigma, a name that combines two letters from the Greek alphabet and, according to some sources, means God. In context, we'd no reason to believe this isn't the Doctor's real name, yet it's never been mentioned again. Seriously, Moffat? You spent basically an entire era teasing Doctor Who, even though we'd known for over 30 years at that point. Did you not do your homework? The only other time the Doctor brings it up is when he encounters the similarly named Trevor Sigma in the Happiness Patrol, clarifying that Theta Sigma is his old nickname. There were also symbols referring to Theta Sigma plastered onto the cliff face by River Song, the best character, in the Pandorica Opens. On balance, it's not entirely unsurprising that the show moved on from this so quickly. After all, once you've revealed the Doctor's name, where do you go next? It's a prime example of the question being more exciting than the answer, and no matter how thoughtful an answer the show's writers come up with, it's never going to match the mystery. Nor will said writers get a cheap chuckle whenever they have someone say Doctor Who in the show again. Number six, Mrs. Flood's fourth wall breaks. Due to the Disney era's premature end, many RTD2 plot threads are still unresolved. Who is the boss? Who picked up the master's tooth? And will the Doctor ever be reunited with Susan? One of the few things we did get an answer to is the identity of Mrs. Flood, and even then, we still have questions. Mainly, just what was the deal with all those fourth wall breaks? From her very first appearance, Mrs. Flood seemed to know she was being watched, addressing us directly in The Church on Ruby Road, Empire of Death, and The Robot Revolution. She told a baffled Cherry Sunday about storming down the gates of gold and seizing his kingdom in my true name. In Lux, she playfully referred to the Doctor's adventures as a show. Naturally, this had fans rabidly speculating that she could be the God of Stories, manipulating events as though they were fiction. But in the end, it was all a load of old nonsense. This could have been building to some epic reveal, but instead, Mrs. Flood bi-generated into the Rani, and it all went out the window. What makes it even more frustrating is that Russell T. Davis reportedly has his own explanation, which he has no intention of sharing, though at one point it was going to appear in The Starbeast. Never seen an unanswered Doctor Who plot point before, if only. Number five, Amy and Rory losing Melody. River Song, the best character, turning out to be Melody Pond, was an astonishing cliffhanger with major implications for everyone involved. However, one thing that's never followed up on is Amy and Rory's grief over losing their daughter. Consider how distraught Amy is when she realizes Melody has been swapped out for a flesh avatar in A Good Man Goes to War. That should have continued into Series 6b, with the Ponds struggling to come to terms with the fact that they've missed out on raising their newborn. Instead, Let's Kill Hitler opens with Amy asking the Doctor if he's found Melody, as if he's been searching for the next segment of The Key to Time. Then we're quickly propelled into a whole other adventure, and the mavity of the situation is swiftly forgotten about. Of course, Melody does feature elsewhere in the story, in other, older incarnations, and the reveal that she was under the Ponds' noses all along as Mel's is something of a swept under the rug. Interestingly, this is something Steven Moffat has admitted himself, and is one of the reasons he wanted to write another story focused on grief, which became Heaven Sent. He said, quote, I never found a way to have Amy and Rory grieve over their lost baby, and I still don't know how I would do that. I could never work out how to write that, so I just cut forward several months and rather ducked the issue." Well, at least we got a banger episode out of it. But the original storyline definitely wasn't done justice. 4. The 14th Doctor's Familiar Face From the moment the Doctor regenerated into David Tennant, again, the question on everyone's lips was, why? Also, what? The real-world reason was clear, to draw in a big audience for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary. But we were promised an in-universe explanation as well, with lines like, why did this face come back, featuring prominently in all of the trailers? In a way, this mystery was the thrust of the entire 60th celebrations. But in the end, it was just the Doctor telling himself that he's old and needs to slow down, or something along those lines. Bit of a cheat, really, isn't it? I mean, like it or not, at least with Peter Capaldi, it was woven into the plot in a significant way, by saying 12 chose a face he met in Pompeii as a reminder to hold himself to the mark. Conversely, the answer for the 14th Doctor's face was so throwaway that you could conceivably miss it quite easily. Now, in fairness, this might be one of those things where fans get carried away with speculation. At the time, we were all thinking that this was something to do with the Toymaker's meddling, or perhaps that it would be somehow linked to the Metacrisis Doctor. But then again, when the show presents something as a massive moment and spends a full year hyping it up, is it unreasonable to expect an equally massive answer? I don't think so. Let's face it, when it comes to actors coming back as different characters, it's always a bit of a scramble. Perhaps in the future, we should just treat these cases as the coincidences that they are, and leave it at that. Although in Billy Piper's case, that probably won't be the route they go down. 3. The Timeless Child After all of that fuss, this really wasn't a big deal, was it? It's the controversial law change everyone is still talking about. But years on, did the Timeless Child actually change all that much? It really didn't. Having learned that she was adopted and the progenitor for the Time Lords, the Thirteenth Doctor is fundamentally still the same person. So it's more about the storytelling possibilities on offer, some of which were delivered on in flux, but for the most part, pretty much nothing was done with the Timeless Child after the reveal itself. In Space Babies, the Doctor was back to his old last of the Time Lords spiel, with a handful of throwaway mentions that he was adopted, and most of the stuff that was introduced along with the Timeless Child story, as in Tecteun, the Division, the Fugitive Doctor, were underdeveloped and gone in a flash. Most puzzlingly of all, the whole thing with Tecteun's fob watch turns out to be a bait-and-switch, with the Timeless Child not mentioned at all after the vanquishes, and completely absent from the power of the Doctor. Maybe Chris Chibnall didn't want to double down too much for fear of incurring the fandom's wrath any more than he already had, but either way, the net result is that the whole thing now feels a bit pointless. 2. Destroying Gallifrey Again One of the best choices Russell T. Davis made when he brought back Doctor Who in 2005 was to do away with Gallifrey and make the Doctor the last of their kind, something that defined the character for much of early New Who. The Time War wasn't just an interesting story concept, it drove the Doctor emotionally and gave us so many fantastic character moments as a result. The culmination of this journey was the 50th anniversary, in which the Doctor was able to confront that Time War trauma and save themselves from it, which was an incredibly cathartic moment for both the character and the fans that had been on the journey since 2005. In the aftermath, this opened up new storytelling opportunities, such as the Doctor actually getting to visit Gallifrey in the Series 9 finale. Hellbent may be controversial, but at least with Gallifrey back, the show could now do things that weren't possible during the first eight years of the revival. From here, the natural next step would be to have the Doctor visit Gallifrey every now and then, and to tell new stories with the Time War...oh, wait, what do you mean they blew it up again? Everything we just said about the Time War being an emotional catalyst at the core of the Doctor's character does not apply to Exploded Gallifrey 2. This time, it is pointless. Beyond the actual story that was being told, it didn't affect the Doctor whatsoever, and when it's been brought up in more recent stories, it's felt like a more lightweight version of the original Time War arc. There are interesting possibilities for a universe with or without Gallifrey in it, but going forward, can we please not just blow it up for no reason? 1. The Daleks forgetting the Doctor Having faked his death at the end of Series 6, the Eleventh Doctor continued to lower his profile in Series 7 by inadvertently erasing himself from the Daleks' memory banks, thanks to some computer trickery from Oswin. The Doctor knowing the Daleks, but the Daleks not knowing the Doctor is a fascinating concept, which could have resulted in some cracking stories, but sadly, that's not what we got. Indeed, the only time we get to see the Doctor interact with Daleks that don't know who he is, is at the start of the Time of the Doctor, when he's waving around that Dalek eyestalk. By the time the Pepperpots invade the Papal Mainframe later in the same story, it's business as usual, and they're fully aware of the Doctor again. What a letdown. There is at least a reason given. We're told that the Daleks extracted some intel from Tasha Lem, but it feels like a pretty offhand way to do away with a super major plot point. Perhaps it was considered too confusing for the Doctor's oldest enemies to not know who he is, especially for a Christmas audience. Or maybe we're being too kind. Because let's be honest, when all is said and done, this was basically just a way to have the Daleks say Doctor Who, wasn't it? And you know what? Fair enough. Fair enough. And that concludes our list, but for a huge Doctor Who moment that did matter, don't forget to check out my interview with Alex Kingston on the channel. Was that a bit of a stretch for a segue? Yes it was. But I want to talk about my chat with Alex Kingston, and I will take every opportunity to do so. In the meantime, I've been Ellie for WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye sweeties.