12 Brilliant Doctor Who Cliffhangers

Any serious fan of Doctor Who has got to love the series’ legendary cliffhangers. A couple of years ago, I listed some of the very worst, my reasoning being that most of us Wholigans could probably name all the best ones from memory with no trouble. Even so, it’s worth recounting them all anyway. As I said in my first post, this show has been around a long, long time and viewers have witnessed probably every type of cliffhanger imaginable: dramatic, horrific, silly, surprising, bizarre, emotional, or confusing. Bad cliffhangers create arbitrary danger that is eye-rollingly contrived or, at worst, completely incomprehensible (OH NO! A TILED FLOOR!). Great cliffhangers, on the other hand, can wake up an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative and inject a much-needed left turn into the proceedings. Some of these have become iconic, and a lot of them are ten times more famous than anything else in the episodes they arise from. It’s relatively easy to put your main characters in harm’s way and call it a day. It takes a little extra oomph to turn that into something really involving and hair-raising. Let’s dive in then, shall we? Spoilers ahead, naturally.

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