BBC Removes Doctor Who Episode Due to Controversy, but It's No Great Loss

Doctor Who is no stranger to lost episodes, a sizable chunk of stories from the classic era due to mishandling of tapes in the early days of the show, but recently we’ve had a case of the BBC deliberately getting rid of an episode from their library.

The BBC has removed Doctor Who Series 2 episode Fear Her from BBC iPlayer, as it contains cameo scenes from Huw Edwards, a recently disgraced former BBC presenter . The 2006 episode sees David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler visit suburban London during the then-future London 2012 Olympic Games.

The climax of the episode sees the Olympic opening ceremony fall into jeopardy, which is where the disgraced former journalist features in voice only, commentating over the events of the plot in a news broadcast. As he doesn’t appear on-screen at any point it’s possible that the episode will eventually be re-added with his voice dubbed over by someone else, but the BBC is yet to comment.

While some fans are disappointed that the episode is unavailable it doesn’t seem like that great a loss to the show’s overall back-catalogure. We ranked Fear Her as one of the worst Doctor Who episodes of all time due to terrible child acting and a dull plot. It relies entirely on the hype and optimism surrounding the announcement that London would host the 2012 Olympics, and while it was a big cultural moment in the UK, watching it almost two decades removed from that context gives you nothing worthwhile.

The main story focuses on Chloe Webber, a child possessed by a lost alien who has the power to seal people inside drawings. It’s a neat concept that the episode does absolutely nothing interesting with. Instead, it focuses on a few disappearing kids before taking a sharp turn right at the end to reveal it’s actually about the trauma of growing up with an abusive and now absent father that the story does not earn or resolve satisfyingly. They just sing a song and the evil drawing of her dad goes away.

You may realize that the “main plot” actually has nothing to do with the Olympics, and you’d be right, the entire thing feels duct-taped together to capitalize on a cultural moment that Doctor Who had nothing to do with.

To sum up, goodbye and good riddance, Fear Her.