Nightmare Fuel / Doctor Who Series 12

GET PEST CONTROL, STAT!

• "Spyfall":
  • The attacked spies had their DNA scrambled, effectively turning them into brain-dead Humanoid Abominations.
  • Pretty much everything about the Kasaavin. They appear less as physical entities and more like jagged, glowing holes in the universe... which, given their powers and their place of origin, may well be exactly what they are. The fact that we barely learn anything about what they really are or how the Master came in contact with them only makes it worse; all we know is that they plan on converting all of humanity into living hard drives and that they took their humanoid forms to mock humanity. Special note has to go to the scene outside O's shack, as the creatures are clearly toying with the soldiers guarding the Doctor and her allies.
  • The Reveal of "O"'s true identity: he's The Master, who ambushed the real O on his first day at work, shrunk him with a Tissue Compression Eliminator, and assumed his identity from there. He then transports the Doctor to the realm of the mysterious creatures and blows up the cockpit of the plane they're in, leaving Graham, Yaz, and Ryan to plummet to their deaths.
    • And after that reveal, O turns from a slightly giddy Doctor fanboy to a cold, calculating villain in seconds. The shift is downright disturbing!
      "O"/The Master: I did say, "look for the spymaster." Or should I say spy...Master? ...Hi.
  • The Master kills several innocent people at an invention fair, many without any pretext at all, and he toys with one poor woman, who has no idea who he is or what's going on, by demanding to know if she moved after he'd said not to, and after she insists frantically that she didn't, he sadistically gives her a Hope Spot by saying cheerfully that it was his mistake, only to spin on his heel and shrink her to death anyway. The Master has never cared much about human life, but as he tells the Doctor, he enjoys the feeling he gets when he kills someone.
  • For the first time, we finally see the Tissue Compression Eliminator in action... and it's terrifying for just how fast it is. There's no beam of light, no flash, one second a person is living and the next, they're a shrunken doll. To go from a living person to a corpse the Master shows off in his hands is jarring.
  • Then there's his motive for doing so: apparently he learned something so horrifying about the origins of Time Lord civilization — something that convinced him that everything he believed about Gallifrey's history was built on lies — that he felt that destroying the entire civilization was the only acceptable option. Considering that what we already know about the Time Lords is pretty damning on its own, the secret of the "Timeless Child" must be pretty damn horrific.
  • There were hints before of Thirteen's dark side in Series 11, but she shows it off in this episode, from the ferally joyful grin while the Master chokes her, to outright using his new ethnicity to get him captured by the Nazis.
• "Orphan 55": The big reveal — Orphan 55 is a future Earth, made uninhabitable by climate change, pollution and nuclear war. The Dregs? They're the descendants of the last humans left on Earth.
• "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror":
  • The giant scorpions crawling along the walls of the alien spaceship are bound to send a chill down the spine of any audience members who are afraid of insects. Their queen — while significantly more humanoid — is almost as creepy, with her constant hissing dialogue and tendency to get alarmingly close to the camera with very little warning.
  • As awesome as it is, the Doctor's retort to the Skithra queen's taunt shows absolute fury behind the Doctor's calm exterior and can be genuinely intimidating.
    Skithra Queen: Tell me, Doctor... have you ever seen a dead planet?
    The Doctor: [beat] ...I've seen more than you can possibly imagine.
• "Fugitive of the Judoon":
  • Prior to the reveal — and even after it, to an extent — Ruth's plight is absolutely horrifying. For as long as she can remember she's lived a normal life, and then in the space of a single day, aliens invade her town, her husband is murdered and turns out to have been an interstellar fugitive, and then she receives a text message which starts causing her to act in ways she herself doesn't understand, forcing her to question whether she even knows who she really is. In particular, the scene in the lighthouse when she sees the "Break Glass" button is chillingly reminiscent of Professor Yana becoming the Master… for fairly similar reasons, it turns out. Fortunately the person Ruth becomes is quite a bit more benevolent (though still with a decidedly Good Is Not Soft edge), but still...
  • Even if the Ruth!Doctor turns out to be the Big Good of the episode, her reveal is still freaky because it weaponizes how you'd do a traditional intro for a new Doctor. She has the confidence, an instantly iconic outfit, knows how to pilot the TARDIS...and all of it feels wrong because no one no one knows where this Doctor came from at all.
• "Praxeus":
  • Praxeus' effect on humans: It causes these really horrible crystalline growths to spread all over their bodies and once the body is fully covered, they disintegrate. Not to mention what it does to the unlucky few it doesn't kill so quickly...
  • The look of sheer absolute panic on Suki's face as the Doctor explains that the cure she created — the cure that Suki just administered to herself — only works on humans. Cue Suki being rapidly consumed by Praxeus.
  • Of course, the fact that Suki's team was willing to use the entirety of Earth as a giant petri dish in the hopes of curing their own planet is pretty chilling on its own.
• "The Haunting of Villa Diodati":
  • Thirteen shows off her Good Is Not Nice side by showing Shelley his death by drowning to release the Cyberium.
  • The Lone Cyberman cradling Mary's baby and gently telling it "you will be like us" is the NF equivalent of an Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene, and it's all the more frightening for it.
• "The Timeless Children":
  • The Doctor finding out that she was experimented on as a child and used to make the Time Lords, including a flashback to herself (covered by a perception filter) having her memories removed by being strapped into some sort of machine and electrocuted.
  • The Master's sheer pettiness is kind of horrifying. He wiped out an entire species — his own species! — just because he couldn't stand the thought that the Doctor was better than him!
• "Revolution Of The Daleks"
  • There's been a lot of "I am the Doctor!" moments in the show, but this time it's not a triumphant moment. The sickly green light and the Thousand-Yard Stare, complete with sneer, as she declares as she's the one who stops the Daleks.
  • During the climax, the Doctor tricks the Daleks into flying into the spare TARDIS she gained in the last episode, trapping them there. It proceeds to fold into itself and fly into the Void, where the Daleks will be erased from existence, just like she programmed it to. Remember, TARDISes are living, sentient creatures, so the Doctor basically sacrificed that one to save humanity, by sending it on a suicide mission.
  • The Dalek creatures going full face hugger on Jack and Yaz as they're investigating the clone farm.
  • See the Jack Robertson example above? He does the switch from comic relief villain to cold schemer again. He is intrigued by the Daleks when the Death Squad lands, and prepares to join forces. When the Doctor rightly admits this is a terrible idea, Robertson only retorts, "I don't answer to you, Doctor." He then offers to be the Daleks' human liaison and sells out the Doctor AND planet Earth. When the TARDIS team rescue him, he IMMEDIATELY changes his tune and says he was acting as a decoy. The worst part of all this, he gets away scot free, with the Earth ''thanking him''.