It’s that time of year again – when the nights draw in, the leaves fall, and pumpkins are mercilessly scooped out and carved up for the entertainment of children young and old. It’s also the time of year I start making a mental list of all the seasonally-appropriate Doctor Who episodes to recommend to anyone who’ll listen.
Doctor Who has never been a straight-up science-fiction show. Diversity has always been one of its core appeals; a mix of genres spanning adventure, fantasy, myth, action, comedy, historical, war epic, espionage thriller, drama, crime, thriller, fairy tale … and horror … is woven into its very fabric. Science fiction as a genre is itself (more often than not) tinged with at least some element of existential human fear – often of the unknown, the uncanny, and the monstrous. Hiding behind the sofa has been associated with watching ‘scary’ Doctor Who since its very earliest days in the 1960s. But being ‘scary’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘perfect for the Hallowe’en season’ per se. Finding those gems requires searching with a certain lens.
This, then, and in no particular order, is a gift pack of stories to suit the mood of this most autumnal season … and the creatures that lurk therein. There are dank gothic settings, cosy patches of warming firelight, ghouls, vampires, witches, and all manner of things that go bump in your typical October night …
Witchcraft and Devil worship
The Witchfinders
25 November 2018 • Thirteenth Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz
Writer: Joy Wilkinson | Director: Sallie Aprahamian
Written under the working title Daemonologie – a reference to King James VI/I’s dissertation on all things witchy and a massive influence on Macbeth – The Witchfinders sees the saucy monarch and witch-hunting fan in fine form (thanks to a sparkling performance by Alan Cumming) as he meets the Doctor and friends in the middle of 17th Century Lancashire. It’s one of the few times that the Thirteenth Doctor’s gender is played with in the narrative – and it actually serves the plot, as the Doctor is herself accused of witchcraft and dunked. The location photography captures all the mist, cold sunlight, mud and leafless trees you could want at this time of year. And the witch-like alien and reanimated corpse quotient is high.
The Dæmons
22 May – 19 June 1971 • Third Doctor and Jo Grant
Writer: Guy Leopold (pseudonym for Barry Letts and Robert Sloman) | Director: Christopher Barry
After an archaeological dig disturbs an ancient presence in a Bronze Age burial mound, the cavernous crypt beneath the local church plays host to an ancient, horned, devil-like alien straight out of English folklore. The Dæmons has almost everything without actually summoning up the actual Devil – there’s a coven of cloaked locals led by the Master (posing as a harmless vicar by day, and a conniving practitioner of black magic by night), a white witch, occultism, creepy morris dancers, an isolated English village, and even a living gargoyle on the loose.
The Shakespeare Code
7 April 2007 • Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones
Writer: Gareth Roberts | Director: Charles Palmer
No less than three witches with warty noses, brewing trouble over bubbling cauldrons, straight out of a pop culture image of Macbeth’s Weird Sisters – all set in a candle-lit corner of Elizabethan London. The Shakespeare Code makes great use of the modern rebuilding of Shakespeare’s Globe with its location filming.
The Masque of Mandragora
4 – 25 September 1976 • Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith
Writer: Louis Marks | Director: Rodney Bennett
Catacombs, an ancient cult, astrology, hideously-burned corpses, creepy masks at a creepy masque, star-jumping monks … and evil from space. Set in a 15th Century duchy that feels very much like Italy, and filmed in Portmeirion, Mandragora has atmosphere to spare.
Gothic terror
Image of the Fendahl
29 October – 19 November 1977 • Fourth Doctor and Leela
Writer: Chris Boucher | Director: George Spenton-Foster
In the fine tradition of 1970s television creep-fests, Image of the Fendahl delivers the lot: a grand gothic priory, a basement-based cult of otherwise ordinary country folk, atmospheric night scenes, first person perspective camerawork (the old monster’s eye view), a psychic modern-day witch with an arsenal of old-world knowledge (and rock salt), a glowing eight million-year-old skull, pentagrams, existential horror (“… mankind has been used!”) and one of the most skin crawl-inducing monologues in Doctor Who‘s history (Daphne Heard as ‘Mother’ Tyler recounting her meeting with a creature in the woods).
Horror of Fang Rock
3 – 24 September 1977 • Fourth Doctor and Leela
Writer: Terrance Dicks | Director: Paddy Russell
When the Doctor admits he’s made a mistake, and locked the monster in (“with us”) and not out, things don’t look good. Especially as the location in question is a claustrophobic lighthouse in the early 20th Century, and the fact that the story was ultimately inspired by a real-life incident in which three lighthouse keepers mysteriously disappeared from the Flannan Isles in 1900. For most of the story the alien threat is unseen, and we’re left with suspense, uncanny personality changes and lots of inexplicable deaths.
The Brain of Morbius
3 – 24 January 1976 • Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith
Writer: Robin Bland (pseudonym for Terrance Dicks, with heavy re-writes by Robert Holmes) | Director: Christopher Barry
One of those early Tom Baker stories that evoke the Hammer Horror vibe perfectly. Present and correct are: a mad Frankenstein-like scientist, an Ygor-esque assistant, a talking brain in a jar, and a creepy gothic castle. Hanging out in a cave nearby are a sisterhood of fire-worshippers, who don bright red robes and creepy make-up in a fever dream of an atmosphere that’s perfect for watching in the dead of night.
Vampires
The Vampires of Venice
8 May 2010 • Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory
Writer: Toby Whithouse | Director: Jonny Campbell
Venice, 1580: residents are being told that the Black Death is almost at their doors, there’s something hungry in the canals, and a girls’ school with a fishy secret appears to be a front for the conversion of young women into vampires. These ‘vampires’ are not actually vampires – but for all intents and purposes for the majority of the running time, they’re vampires.
The Curse of Fenric
25 October – 15 November 1989 • Seventh Doctor and Ace
Writer: Ian Briggs | Director: Nicholas Mallett
The Haemovores are not your typical bloodsuckers, although there are also a couple of freshly-turned vampire girls that wouldn’t be out of place in Salem’s Lot. A sadistic ancient evil is released from a jar, people get possessed, eyes glow, creatures rise from the sea, Viking runes write themselves onto church walls, and the horrors of war rear their ugly heads. There are three versions of The Curse of Fenric out there, but whichever you watch it will never be a good idea to go swimming in the sea off Maiden’s Point.
State of Decay
22 November – 13 December 1980 • Fourth Doctor, Romana, Adric and K9
Writer: Terrance Dicks | Director: Peter Moffatt
Despite being set on another planet, State of Decay is a classic gothic vampire tale featuring three devilish lords with a taste for blood, and one huge feral vampire buried deep under their castle-like tower. It has every trapping of a classic vampire tale – a feudal society oppressed by the its parasitic lords, who demand offerings of the villagers’ children to be taken to the tower, never to be seen again. The vamps themselves are a combination of livid red makeup, dark hair, pale skin, and rich medieval garb. There are also bats. Lots of bats.
Haunted houses
Ghost Light
4 – 18 October 1989 • Seventh Doctor and Ace
Writer: Marc Platt | Director: Alan Wareing
A dark Victorian house full of stern maids, taxidermy and a Dracula-like host who may not be all he seems. There is something strange and monstrous trapped in the basement, and everything is very, very weird.
Hide
20 April 2013 • Eleventh Doctor and Clara
Writer: Neil Cross | Director: Jamie Payne
A classic haunted house tale with a sci-fi spin. Set in 1974, a professor and his psychic assistant (and love interest) conduct a paranormal investigation into ghostly goings-on at Caliburn House. Writer Neil Cross wanted Hide to be “a really old-fashioned scary episode of Doctor Who” driven by tension and suspense. And that’s exactly what it is.
The Haunting of Villa Diodati
16 February 2020 • Thirteenth Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz
Writer: Maxine Alderton | Director: Emma Sullivan
The Doctor takes Graham, Ryan and Yaz to Lake Geneva in 1816 to witness Mary Shelley gain the inspiration to write Frankenstein. There’s some nonsense about Cybermen towards the end, but for the Hallowe’en ride before we get to that there are strange occurrences aplenty, objects moving by themselves, and spacial anomalies. The colour palette is very season-appropriate throughout – midnight purples and blues tinged with pink, greens, warm glowing fires and candlelight.
Creature features
The Stones of Blood
28 October – 18 November 1978 • Fourth Doctor, Romana and K9
Writer: David Fisher | Director: Darrol Blake
Huge standing stones called the Nine Travellers in the middle of a Cornish moor are actually alien beings that feed on blood. I know, right? And because it’s the 70s, we also have a sect of druids that worships the Cailleach, goddess of war and magic. The science fiction elements of this story take over long before the end, but the more traditional Earthly elements are atmospheric and shudder-inducing.
Mummy on the Orient Express
11 October 2014 • Twelfth Doctor and Clara
Writer: Jamie Mathieson | Director: Paul Wilmshurst
Doctor Who has done mummies before, but this one is the most traditional Hallowe’en costume-esque of them all. Of course, it isn’t actually a mummy per se (it isn’t even the Orient Express) but the atmosphere is present and correct all the same.
Tooth and Claw
22 April 2006 • Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler
Writer: Russell T Davies | Director: Euros Lyn
It’s a werewolf story set in a dark Victorian house in the Scottish Highlands in 1879. A group of wayward monks attempt to turn Queen Victoria into a werewolf. If that doesn’t say Hallowe’en, I don’t know what does.
Special mention
Forever Autumn
This Tenth Doctor and Martha novel by Mark Morris is the ultimate expression of Doctor Who at Hallowe’en. Set in contemporary New England with all the trappings of an American town at the height of the season, a book is discovered in the tangled roots of an ancient tree as something ominous rises from a nearby churchyard in the dead of night.
