It was pretty refreshing to see the Eleventh Doctor punching some bloke’s lights clean out on the new series trailer than showed back in January, following a few years of sanctimonious stuff from RTD and Ten about how ‘violence is bad, m’kay?’.
So much so that it stirred my mind back to a simpler time when The Doctor would casually dispatch villains in a variety of ways, including blasting them with guns, pushing them into acid baths and gassing them with cyanide. The good old days, as I like to call them.
So, I’ve compiled a list of ten moments of shocking violence in Doctor Who – perpetrated by the Time Lord himself.
1. An Unearthly Child
The original and the best. The First Doctor is stopped by Ian, seconds before he stoves in the head of a wounded caveman with a rock.
2. The Dominators
The Second Doctor places a nuclear device on the Dominators’ ship, blowing them out of the sky.
3. Inferno
The Third Doctor smilingly explains to the Brigadier than the Venusian grip he has applied to Stahlman will soon paralyse him for life. Similar venusian chops, kicks and jabs pepper the Third Doctor’s era.
4. Day of the Daleks
The Doctor casually blasts an approaching Ogron, blowing Ten’s ‘be the man who never would’ speech out of the water.
5. The Brain of Morbius
The Fourth Doctor gasses Solon with cyanide, in a move that could easily have left him and Sarah sealed in a crypt forever.
6. The Seeds of Doom
Four punches out a henchman with a thinly-disguised relish. Later on he twists Scorby’s neck, as if to break it, after punching him in the gut.
7. Arc of Infinity
The Fifth Doctor simply shoots Omega.
8. The Twin Dilemma
The Sixth Doctor tries to strangle Peri to death.
9. Vengeance on Varos
Take your pick. Doc Six maneuvers two guards into a BATH OF ACID and leaves two different booby traps involving stinging plants and a laser to kill two cannibals and a guard.
10. The Two Doctors
The Sixth Doctor chloroforms Shockeye to death.
I’ve got nothing on the rest, barring the Seventh Doctor’s disabling of Patterson in Survival and the Ninth Doctor’s knocking out a guard in the one where Rose turns into the Time Vortex, or whatever the hell it is that happens in that episode.
Have I missed any obvious ones? It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Hartnell stabbed someone in the neck in one of his less obvious stories.