The 10 Best Cliffhangers in Doctor Who

It’s a moment as painful as it is pulse-pounding, the Doctor’s adventure has just reached a roaring climax with an incredible twist or the most exciting part of the episode when suddenly the familiar credits sting kicks in, and you’re hit with “To Be Continued”.

When a story is split over multiple episodes, pacing them both and knowing when to cut them in half is a difficult art. Doing it wrong can leave your audience scratching their heads rather than desperately searching for when the next episode will be available and kill all of the momentum of the story.

Doctor Who typically has a couple of two-part stories every season and this has made for some of the most memorable moments in the show’s history, as we go through the best cliffhangers it’s ever produced.

“Are you my mummy?” – The Empty Child

What you won’t see much of in this list are cliffhangers where the only hook is “How will The Doctor get out of this tricky situation?” Cliffhangers where our heroes are moments away from death aren’t that great, as you know that within 30 seconds of the next episode starting, something will miraculously come along and save them – I don’t know what we’d do for the remaining 44 minutes if they all died there and then.

I’m making an exception for this one though because, while the immediate danger is the main focus, there is a hint of something more interesting there, mainly the revelation that the one “Empty Child” is far from the only Gas Mask Zombie the Doctor has to worry about. Their suddenly becoming active gives the Doctor so much more to deal with in the second part, even if he does get out of the immediate danger pretty quickly.

“Donna Noble has been saved” – Silence in the Library

While immediate danger on its own doesn’t make for the best cliffhanger, it does serve a crucial role in ramping up the intensity as whatever new twist of revelation sets in. Silence in the Library is a master of tension and that all comes to a head in the final moments of the episode. As the suit full of Vashta Nerada bare down on the group, with every shadow surrounding them potentially being deadly, the Doctor isn’t paying attention to any of it as Donna’s face is displayed on an information node – a node that was earlier established to use the faces of dead people.

It immediately raises loads of questions about what on Earth happened to Donna earlier in the episode and the intensity is in full swing as both the node and the Vashta Nerada repeat their haunting phrases, overloading the senses in a memorable moment.

The Daleks Arrive – The Army of Ghosts

It’s very rare that the Daleks appearing is actually a surprise. As has been pointed out many times, almost every episode featuring the Daleks also puts their name in the title, but it pays off for the one time it didn’t happen.

The Army of Ghosts entirely presents itself as a Cyberman episode. The mystery surrounding the ghosts and the sphere seem inherently linked, and when both start going haywire at the same time, you immediately make the assumption that they’re holding the same threat. Once the ghosts are revealed to be Cybermen, you immediately wonder what cyber threat is inside the sphere – aided by the characters doing the same thing.

It all leads to a fantastic moment as the sphere opens and instead, four Daleks come out. Aside from the fact that the Daleks showing up makes any situation more dangerous, you immediately start connecting the dots that now two of the Doctor’s greatest enemies are here at the same time. Are they aware of each other? Are they working together? Are they here to wage war on each other? All of these questions immediately come to mind and make the next episode must-watch.

The Pit Opens – The Impossible Planet

The Impossible Planet is a very creepy episode and that helps this climax hit home in a big way, even if it isn’t necessarily as intense as others on this list. The mysterious beast possessing Toby and the Ood is definitely Series 2’s most well-built mystery, and this cliffhanger gives us just a little taste of answers while raising even more questions.

At this point in the story we still have no idea what this beast actually is or any idea of what it might be able to do at full power, so for this ominous, seemingly bottomless, pit to sliding open as a deep voice declares “I am free” is utterly terrifying.

Sutekh reveals himself – The Legend of Ruby Sunday

The important thing to remember about this list is that it isn’t the pay-off that matters, it’s just the cliffhanger itself. Regardless of how you feel about how The Empire of Death handled the fallout from this reveal, it’s hard to deny that the moment Sutekh arrives on the scene is absolutely thrilling.

After drip-feeding us with mysteries of the TARDIS and heavily teasing the return of Susan, the twist that it’s actually a completely different villain manipulating the Doctor into the right place is such a great idea. Given how heavily Series 14 built up its central mysteries, the answers needed to hit hard, and this one certainly managed to create an epic moment.

A Trap – Time of Angels

If you haven’t watched the Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone two-parter in a while I thoroughly recommend it as it’s one of Moffat’s most exciting stories ever, and this first part ends with a powerful moment.

After quite a slow build, it’s a shocking change of pace when River and the Doctor realize the trap they’ve fallen into. The Doctor says that the Aplans had two heads in a throwaway piece of dialogue at the start – the kind that is often just unimportant filler dialogue – so it's a great move to make that the key piece of information the thing that gives away the fact that they’re surrounded by Weeping Angels.

It turns this cliffhanger from a standard “immediate danger” affair into one that turns the whole second part on its head. We thought we were just dealing with one Angel – already an incredible threat – but now we’ve got an army on our hands. Plus, the Doctor gives a great speech as he stalls the Angels, telling them about the “one thing you should never ever put in a trap.”

It’s one of the Eleventh Doctor’s best moments and it’s understandable why everyone got so outraged about an advert for Graham Norton ruining it when it first aired on BBC One.

“I’m coming to get you” – Bad Wolf

Bad Wolf is generally remembered as a fairly whimsical episode, but moments like this cliffhanger are a reminder that it could really pull out the intensity when it needed to, giving us what is easily a top-two moment for the Ninth Doctor.

This whole scene builds to perfection. From the moment the Daleks are revealed you can see The Doctor’s expression drop into pure spite and hatred. After seeing the havoc that just one Dalek could do earlier in the season, revealing an army of them like this raises the stakes immensely. Then the Daleks talk to the Doctor and directly threaten Rose’s life.

In just a few moments, the Doctor goes from trying to deflect with jokes to being completely outraged. Yet this doesn’t come out in a declaration of hatred, it comes out in one of the most heroic speeches he’s ever given. Simply standing up and declaring “no” when the Daleks explain how they’ll kill Rose if he doesn’t do what they want. The Daleks still try to tell him he doesn’t stand a chance, but he just brushes it all aside, then ends it all showing his kind side, reassuring Rose that she’s going to be alright with “I’m coming to get you.”

“Listen to me!” – The Pandorica Opens

After several series where the finale centered around Dalek armies of maniacal Masters, it was a really clever idea for Moffat to focus his finale around a more abstract threat – a tear in the fabric of space-time slowly unmaking the entire universe. That’s not really the focus of this first part though, as we instead deal with the mystery of “the most dangerous thing in the universe” that awaits inside the slowly opening Pandorica.

It’s a really interesting mystery that only gets more tantalizing as every foe the Doctor’s ever faced appears in the sky to try and get a piece of it. The Doctor waves them all away with an epic speech that makes him seem like a great hero, but little does he know it’s all a trap, as this cliffhanger reveals.

In what stands as one of Doctor Who’s greatest-ever twists, the Pandorica is empty, because it’s a prison designed to hold the Doctor for all eternity, with all of his foes luring him to it with the one thing he could never resist – a tantalizing mystery. We know that the Doctor’s the only one who can stop the crack from consuming the universe, but everyone else believes it’s his fault and it makes for a heartbreaking scene as he is dragged to the chair, while Amy dies upstairs, and River seemingly causes the very thing the Doctor is being blamed for.

The Doctor Regenerates – The Stolen Earth

Talk about a cliffhanger that got everyone talking. The idea that David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor would suddenly regenerate out of nowhere before the end of his current season was obviously never going to happen, but there was something about the way this played out that got everybody to doubt every pre-conception they had about how the show works.

It’s got such a beautiful tragedy to it. Seconds after going through the tear-jerking joy of the Doctor and Rose reuniting at long last, it all gets ripped away from us as now he bursts into the flames of regeneration right before our eyes. No one had worked out yet how he was going to avoid changing his face, and the resulting discussion among fans was incredible.

All of these cliffhangers are epic, but this is one that truly had every Who fan up in arms in shock and confusion about what would happen next, pushing hype to an all-time high for Journey’s End.

The Master Regenerates – Utopia

When the series was rebooted in 2005, it gave us an opportunity the show hadn’t had before, which was to reintroduce the show’s biggest villains in the most epic way possible, and that’s exactly what Utopia pulled off. After three seasons of being told that Gallifrey was destroyed and the Doctor was the last of the Time Lords, seeing the Master unveiled for the first time was an awesome moment.

The entirety of Utopia is built around carefully crafting this reveal and that work pays off, as the fantastic Derek Jacobi turns from a sweet old professor into a menacing monster of a man. Even after that reveal, things get insanely intense as the Futurekind break into the base, and the Doctor rushes to confront his greatest rival.

While this would’ve been a top-tier cliffhanger already, it turns things up a notch by having the Master regenerate right before our eyes, reminding us that he really is like the Doctor in so many ways, especially as he steals the TARDIS right before our eyes.

It has a bit of everything that makes cliffhangers great, with a huge reveal that leaves us with so many questions about where things will go, both in terms of the immediate future and long-term for the show. What will the Master do with the ability to travel all of time and space? How will the Doctor escape now he’s stuck at the end of the universe? If the Master survived the Time War, who else might still be alive?

It has you on the edge of your seat for an entire week waiting for the next episode, which is exactly what a cliffhanger is supposed to do.