Most people's first thought when you tell them "scariest Doctor Who episode" is always either Blink (which I do not get, because to me, it is an INCREDIBLE episode, yes, but Cybermen are way scarier than Weeping Angels), or Midnight (this I do get, as it seems to be a metaphor for rape, showcasing the loss of bodily autonomy), or The Empty Child (classic case of body horror, and ON A CHILD, moreover).
But there's one episode a lot of us (me included) often fail to remember in terms of horror as a genre in Doctor Who... and it's The Waters of Mars.
I've recently rewatched Listen, which is SUCH an underrated episode in this genre, and it prompted me to start this Scariest Doctor Who episode poll, in which I've included at most one episode per series, from series 1 to 10, which was a mistake because several of those series contain more than one episode deserving a feature on the list.
Series 4 is one of them: we have Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, obviously. Then Midnight, which goes without saying. Some would say Turn Left as well, and I'm one of them because this episode tells us what would happen were the Doctor not around to save us, and it's pretty horrible, dystopian, and if you think about it... that's the world that we live in: in real life, the Doctor's not here to save us, so I'd say, Turn Left deserves a spot as well.
But then, we have The Waters of Mars, which I've seen a few people talk about as one of Doctor Who's masterpiece episodes, but not nearly enough people talk about just how fucking terrifying this episode is!
It's the third of the specials that take place between series 4 and 5, meaning it is an hour long, and we're delt a hopeless Doctor, who at this point, after what he did to Donna, after almost losing her several times in the series 4 finale, and after Rose and Martha and everyone he's got left nearly died because of his lifestyle, refuses to travel with anyone else.
So he spends the first 30 minutes of that episode trying his hardest not to get attached, not to get involved, because if he does, he knows he won't be able to stop himself from trying to fix things, and he's convinced that his presence always invites even more tragedy.
Unfortunately, the Doctor loves us humans too much, and in The Waters of Mars, those are not just ordinary humans: they're brilliant. They all have a story, a family, a life that is constantly referred to throughout the first half of the episode, something that has always fascinated him and appealed to his emotions.
And there's Adelaide Brooke, and she is challenging. She's a piece of work, even for him, and whether she knows it or not, she's reading him like an open book, and whatever decision he makes (to leave them to die or to save them) she fights him and questions him, like Donna did. She's so smart and down-to-earth, like Martha was.
All this, added to the fact that there's a mystery to solve in the water, makes it impossible for the Doctor to resist seeing things through.
Until he comes to his senses and finally starts to leave. But even then, he knows they are still struggling inside of that base. He's made it very clear to Adelaide that they were supposed to die, that it was a fixed point in time, and yet, he can hear them, still fighting, still hoping, and that's one other thing the Doctor can't resist.
The episode should have stopped at around 40 minutes, as do most Doctor Who episodes: the mystery is solved, the solution is found (in this case, there is none), the Doctor is set to walk back to his TARDIS and go away. Which he doesn't, and the second part of the episode takes place.
His trauma and loneliness turn him into a mad and terrifying thing. He's just lost Donna, the one who'd keep him in line, who, not unlike Adelaide, would fight him when he was wrong, and who would remind him that he should always try, whenever that was possible, to save someone.
In this moment, though, because the Tenth incarnation of the Doctor was born of Rose's humanity and her adoration, Donna's plea gets twisted in his mind and he makes a horrible mistake: he forgets that he can sometimes, like he said, makes things so much worse.
When he's in the booth, about to leave, and Adelaide is begging him to do something, and he says to her "Anything I do, just makes it happen": you're tempted to defend him, in this moment. You are, because you know better. Or you THINK you know better, but then, he does save them, in the end, and you realise his words were a warning, not just to Adelaide, but a warning to himself.
The Doctor breaks the laws of Time and in doing so, realises that they are not enslaved to him, HE is enslaved to them.
When Rose saved her dad in Father's Day, she created a rip in Time, which attracted Reapers, which would have destroyed everything if not for the Doctor and Pete's actions.
Meanwhile, when the DOCTOR went against a fixed point in Time, there was no rip, no Reapers. No panic or chaos: just silence, and the snow that kept falling in total indifference. The knowledge that before anyone could notice, before anyone or anything knew what the Doctor had done, Adelaide Brooke would go back to her house, lock the door and shoot herself in the head. The Doctor's actions would be undone.
Had he chosen to walk away, like he initially had, Adelaide would have been able to keep her dignity, dying with the certainty that it couldn't have been any other way. Mia and Yuri, the ones he did manage to save, probably had to lead a quiet life to avoid any butterfly effect from their prolonged existence on Earth (it is implied that they ended up together, when I don't remember any other part of the episode showing anything more that friendship between them, which tells us a lot).
The Doctor realises, too late, that he's gone too far. There's this eerie bit of dialogue between him and Adelaide, when she realises what he's done, right before she kills herself...
The Doctor: For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious.
Adelaide: And there's no one to stop you.
The Doctor: No.
...which is disturbingly reminiscent of the last scene between him and Donna in The Runaway Bride, in which it is also snowing:
Donna: Find someone.
The Doctor: I don't need anyone.
Donna: Yes you do. Because, sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you.
Once again, the memory of Donna rots inside of him and twists his character into a monster.
The Doctor and his TARDIS have, until then, been showcased as a source of wonder and comfort, but as the four characters exit the TARDIS, Mia is shown to be terrified and confused, exclaiming "It's bigger on the inside!" and "Who the hell are you?" in abject horror before running away. And the Doctor is unfazed.
He remains unfazed until the gunshot.
So, yes, this episode is horrible, on so many disturbing levels. Wild Blue Yonder scares some of us because it physically turns the Doctor and Donna, both characters we rely on as a source of comfort and security, into monsters. But those twisted versions of them are just a mirage: they're not real.
Whereas The Waters of Mars merely puts the Doctor in a situation that reveals to us a part of him that was always there but that he fooled us, the audience, and his many companions, into thinking that it wasn't there.
It is a lesson, and a question: is there really such a thing as good and evil when someone with intentions as good as the Doctor's is capable of such atrocities in the name of "good"?
