Published as Who Cliffhangers – Good and Bad, Infinity #6, 2017.
This looks a little sparse without the photos, but if you know your Who you’ll have no trouble picturing the relevant scenes. This was adapted from a piece I wrote for a friend’s birthday. Aren’t I nice?
A good Doctor Who cliffhanger is a thing of beauty. It can scare, entice, bewilder or excite like little else. It can leave you in almost unbearable tension as you are forced to wait a whole week for the resolution. Or it could just have someone pointing a gun at the Doctor. So in no particular order here are 20 of the best and worst cliffhangers. Can you tell which is which?
1) Utopia. The Master has stolen the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor and friends with a pack of baying Futurekind.
Truly jaw-dropping, this is a rare instance of a cliffhanger where you genuinely have no idea how they’re going to get out alive. To maintain the tension the ‘Next Time’ trailer avoids showing the regulars, something Aliens of London rather slipped up on. It’s resolved in a somewhat pat fashion, in fact some people say the better the cliffhanger the triter the resolution must be. Not true, see –
2) The Caves of Androzani, Part One. The Doctor and Peri are facing a firing squad. Armed with machine guns. Who open fire…
Outstanding stuff. Anyone who claims that they knew how it was going to be resolved is a filthy liar.
3) The Stolen Earth. The Doctor starts to regenerate.
Alright, the resolution here was a bit of a let-down. But that didn’t stop me starting to believe that we’d have a new Doctor next week. Despite having seen production photos of David Tennant from The Next Doctor. Ah, the power of television. And hope.
4) Planet of the Spiders, Part Four. The Doctor walks into a cell and points at his guards.
You’d think they would have made a little more effort for Jon’s final story (no, I’m not going to say “swansong”).
5) Planet of the Spiders, Part Five. Bearded men fire lightning bolts at Tommy.
And he’s not even in this one! What’s going on?
6) Vengeance on Varos, Part One. “And cut it…now.”
Everyone else always mentions this, so I suppose I’d better. It is great though.
7) The War Machines, Episode. One. “Doctor Who is required…”
Just because it really, really pisses off the fanboys.
8) Destiny of the Daleks, Episode. One. The Daleks take Romana prisoner.
It’s an odd one this, the Daleks smashing through the wall is cool, but once they’ve made their big entrance they simply screech “Do Not Move” repeatedly, despite Romana making no attempt to go anywhere. They’ve got previous for this, many a Dalek campaign has been lost due to their propensity for shouting about what they’re going to do rather than actually doing it, like a randy drunk on the phone to his girlfriend. Although the one time they actually opened fire on the Doctor without warning their guns had been disabled by the Exillon City, so maybe they’re playing it safe to avoid looking so stupid again. Either way, this marks the point where the production team realised they really, really couldn’t pull this “surprise Dalek reveal” trick any more.
9) The End of Time Part One. Rassillon gives one hell of a motivational talk to the Time Lords.
This is pretty exciting. Shame about all the crap either side of it.
10) The Time Monster, Episode Three. The UNIT convoy is hit by a bomb.
In the same way that a Doctor doesn’t feel “official” until he meets the Daleks, a companion needs their own cliffhanger to confirm their standing. So it is strange that only one of the UNIT regulars gets a cliffhanger, and it is even stranger that this accolade was bestowed not upon the Brigadier or stalwart Sergeant Benton but Captain Yates, surely the UNIT equivalent of The Tomorrow People’s Kenny. As if this wasn’t glory enough, the Brigadier even calls him “Mike”! And how does Yates repay this kindness? He condemns everyone to death during Operation Golden Age. Terrible man.
11) Terror of the Zygons, Part One. Sarah’s phone call is interrupted.
The obvious cliffhanger should be when Harry gets shot in the head with a real gun. However, what we get is genuinely scary, the Zygon’s open mouth still disturbing to this day. That DWM advert about bedwetting came far, far too late.
12) The Face of Evil, Part Three. Huge Tom Baker faces shouting and screaming.
There’s any number of jokes to be made here, all of which I am going to rise above
13) The Underwater Menace, Episode One. Polly is prepared for fishification.
Terrifying because you realise there’s another three episodes of this shit to sit through.
14) Dragonfire Part One. The Doctor hangs off a cliff.
Some call it “metatextual”. Some call it “self-referential”. Some call it “toss”.
15) The Sontaran Experiment, Part One. The story’s monster is revealed as…a Sontaran.
Proving that Terry Nation didn’t have the monopoly on lame cliffhangers.
16) Daleks in Manhattan. The human Dalek hybrid is revealed.
Slightly spoiled by the Radio Times putting Sec on the previous week’s cover. As if there wasn’t enough already wrong with this story.
17) Genesis of the Daleks, Part Two. Sarah falls off the rocket straight into a freeze-frame.
I know this is about cliff-hangers but the resolution to this episode of The Fan’s Favourite Story™ really, really blows. We see that she’s only fallen about 12 feet, so she gets up and starts climbing again. Hold on. Only 12 feet? Yet despite landing on her back she’s completely unharmed and climbing up that rocket in seconds. Never mind moaning about the drowning stuff, Mary Whitehouse should have used this in her “what if the children copy what they see on Doctor Who” campaign. The show would have been cancelled within days.
18) The Time of Angels. The Doctor makes a speech about traps and fires his gun.
Matt Smith’s wonderful performance was totally ruined in the UK by a CGI Graham Norton prancing around at the bottom of the screen. After the Rose debacle, it seems that Norton is determined to appear in Who one way or the other. Probably best to give him a cameo to avoid this sort of thing happening again. Because one thing is clear – he will never, never stop.
19) Earthshock, Part One. OH MY GOD IT’S THE CYBERMEN!
I was ten when Earthshock was broadcast, which meant that I had no real memories of the Cybermen. Oh, sure, I’d read about them, seen pictures, even seen the blob in a snowstorm from last year’s Carnival of Monsters repeat. So when they slammed into view I was slightly nonplussed, leading to a lifetime of envy and resentment towards those who did experience the collective thrill. Don’t know what it’s doing on this list really.
20) Underworld, Part One. The R1C plunges towards certain doom.
Except we don’t get to see that. We get to see the main cast. Sitting on a couch. What’s even more shocking is that this is by far the story’s most exciting cliffhanger .