Apart from times that the Doctor is mortally wounded and needs to regenerate, what were the incidents when the Doctor has experienced his most life threatening enemy. I've just watched 42, tennant was fighting to control his body and mind being consumed by the Torajii, he couldn't fight it and eventually gave in, resulting in his glowing eyes and him uttering the phrase "burn with me".

Can anyone think of other overwhelming scenarios where we almost lost the Doctor. By this I distinguish where he faced an enemy, tackled them then won. I mean where basically he virtually lost!

Victory of the Daleks.


The name kind of gives it away

The Doctor's Wife after the Tardis dematerialised he just didn't know what to do. Had it not been for Idris it might have been defeat.

I love 42 for exactly that and feel it is very underrated (it's the only Chibnall episode I've actually liked) - it pushes The Doctor to the absolute limit and comes down to his companion to save his life.

I'd say Journey's End kept teasing a very close demise for The Doctor and his "Children of Time". And then we suddenly had The Metacrisis Doctor running in to save the day, and then Donna as well. The 'possessive' stream of companions are all that saved The Doctor and the universe that day.

Midnight. Although it wasn't the enemy that nearly killed him, it was the humans and their reaction to the events that were taking place.

That one immediately sprang to mind. I'll come back if I think of anymore.

You could include human nature/ family of blood. If John smith had refused to change back and had instead Just given the family the watch with the doctor's timelord consciousness as he was tempted to do, then the doctor would have been dead forever. Worse it would technically have been his own doing

Clearly, Adric and Kristina's deaths were pretty big failures / defeats for the Doctor.

Caves of Androzani and 100,000 BC both yielded more or less 0% good achieved by the Doctor.

Genesis of the Daleks saw him fail his Timelord assigned mission to prevent the creation of the Daleks through deliberation and non-action.

In the War Games he decided the War Lord's scheme was too big for him to handle alone and he resorted to calling in the Time Lords for assistance - ultimately at the cost of his freedom and one of his regenerations.

In both the Massacre and The Fires of Pompeii he 'failed' to save people from terrible tragedies, although his inaction was an ethical choice and the 'defeat' debatable.

In The Waters of Mars he failed to prevent Adelaide Brook's fate.

Perhaps his greatest ongoing defeat is in failing to protect the Silurian species. In the Silurians he is left powerless as the Brigadeer orders their destruction. In The Hungry Earth he is able to negotiate only the most tentative agreement between the human and Silurian races. In Dinosaurs on a Spaceship he fails to prevent a whole colony of them being massacred by Solomon the trader.

I'm willing to let him off Dinosaurs on a Spaceship because that all happened before he arrived, but in The Hungry Earth I'm not sure if he even managed that! The only humans who were party to the negotiation were Amy and Nasreen, of whom Amy jetted off about the universe, and Nasreen stayed underground with the silurians.

I think he's worse with the ood. He's never lifted a finger for the ood - they all died in The Satan Pit and The Doctor's Wife, and he didn't really do anything in Planet of the Ood.

Back to silurians - why are all of these silurian episodes set in the present day? You know how the negotiation's gonna end in the present day: we don't have lizard-people, so the world has to remain human. Set it in the year 100,060 AD, and you can do what you want. "This negotiation has always failed, the silurians are always banished back underground... but, I've just realised. It's not a fixed point! We can change it!" Doesn't have to pan out, but you get the jeopardy, and the possibility.