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Doctor Who: How The Show Fell Down Its Own Rabbit Hole of Plot Twists

Doctor Who has become so known for its twists that it sometimes feels like the show gets stuck falling down a rabbit hole of its own making.

The BBC has compiled a 90-minute video compilation of the plot twists in Doctor Who, and there are a lot of them, particularly in the 21st Century revival. Genre stories are dependent on twists to surprise audiences and keep them interested. The series has always been pulp storytelling, throwing in all kinds of twists whenever possible, but in the current version, the twists are increasingly about pulling details from the Doctor and the series lore. The best twists should shock audiences with something they weren't expecting or something that was lurking all along and just revealed themselves as hiding in plain sight.

Doctor Who Twists Became Snakes Eating Their Own Tails

For longtime fans, the first twist came at the start of the 2005 return of Doctor Who, where Russell T. Davies revealed that the Doctor was the last Time Lord and Gallifrey had been destroyed. Hardcore fans are still upset about that to this day, but the choice was made to streamline the Doctor and the series to avoid getting bogged down on past continuity lore. From that point on, twists were always about the characters turning out to be something unexpected: Rose (Billie Piper) turned out to be Bad Wolf. The kindly Doctor Yana (Derek Jacobi) turned out to be The Master. The most convoluted twists on the series were during Steven Moffat's term as showrunner, where he furiously came up with more and more contrived twists: River Song (Alex Kingston) turned out to be The Doctor's (Matt Smith) wife, then turned out to be his murderer, But The Doctor wasn't dead but was in fact hiding inside a robot version of himself, and River turned out to be Amy and Rory's daughter all along. Then, to save all Space and Time, The Doctor and River had to become husband and wife in the most headache-inducing timey-wimey twist in the series. Glad that's over.

The Doctor Was Always Their Own Biggest Twist

Of course, the writers decided that in a show called Doctor Who, the Doctor should always be the biggest twist of all. Even in the classic series, the Valeyard turned out to be an evil future version of The Doctor (Colin Baker) in a lame twist that many hardcore fans still like and keep hoping will return. We don't need an evil Doctor – that's what The Master is for. And the mystery supporting character who turns out to be a new Master has been a big twist as well, with Missy (Michelle Gomez), the return of a previous incarnation (John Simm), who kills Missy, then later showing up in a new version (Sacha Dhawan). Then the Doctor got in on the act with the War Doctor (John Hurt) revealed as an incarnation who fought the Time War because Christopher Eccleston decided not to return for the 50th Anniversary Special. Chris Chibnall pulled a good one with the surprise reveal of another "lost" previous Doctor (Jo Martin), then didn't do anything interesting with her after that introduction. Then, in the most meta-series of twists of all, Russell T. Davies returned as showrunner, and the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) regenerated back into David Tennant, which shocked more viewers than you know – not all of them live on the internet after all. Davies then pulled the biggest twist of all – The Doctor bi-generated into Ncuti Gatwa without Tennant's Doctor needing to die and vanish. You might think there's some kind of pattern here.

The Last Twist Is About All Twists

You can luxuriate in these twists and more and debate whether they're earned or not. That's always the question about twists. Viewers mostly love them, but some are hated, like Ruby's (Millie Gibson) mother turning out to be… just an ordinary person as Davies' final commentary on twists and how much we place on them, but only after he's spent his entire run on Doctor Who making us expecting big twists. In some ways, that's the biggest twist in the end, that there's no twist.

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