The Best Worst Lines In Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a television show with hundreds of episodes and thousands of lines of dialogue. Some of those lines are brilliant, inspiring, profound, they can lift your day and/or understanding of the universe. Some are so dire they drag you down into a very dark hole as you scream at the violence inflicted upon your ears.

And sometimes, there are terrible lines that somehow twist right back round to become delightful. Lines that, initially, make you wonder if the script editor was a crash test dummy, but at some point you realise those lines are actually bringing you joy. The show has gifted you with terrible things that you love. And instead of wincing or headdesking or crying you can bask in the magnificent brilliance of their terribleness. It’s a rare type of line, and mileage will vary. But, frankly, I do judge anyone just a smidge if they can’t delight even a little in “no, not the mind probe!”

“Nothing in ze world can stop me now!”

In The Underwater Menace (1967), villain Zarkov utters these words, displaying an unrealistic degree of self-confidence. It’s the sort of line you can embrace in a story about Atlantis hidden beneath a volcanic island in the modern day, ruled by a mad scientist who turns humans into fish people so they can harvest plankton. What lets it down is the delivery. Or, rather, what lets it down is the reputation its delivery has. I knew about this line long before I watched The Underwater Menace, I was looking forward to this line and it was…considerably saner than it had been in my imagination. Alas. But it still slips into the list.

“I think you need a Doctor”

The cheesiest cheese from The Parting of the Ways (2005). Delivered by the Doctor just before he kisses Rose so he can absorb the glowy Time Vortex TARDIS energy stuff into himself and die. But I can’t be mad at it. Because I cried the first time, so now, yes, cheesy as hell, and yet also beautiful.

“A megabyte modem!”

How fast is your modem these days? I’m not sure about mine. 100 Mbps? Something like that. But this was the nineteen-eighties! And it was Gallifreyan tech! And I’ve still no idea what Mel, utterer of these words in The Ultimate Foe (1986), was talking about! My favourite answer is that when confronted with the Valeyard’s evil MacGuffin, she’s not identifying it, but enthusiastically exclaiming an eighties computer programmer swear.

“Doctor Who? …Doctor Who?…Doc…tor Who?!!”

Imagine the end of the season is a blue head in a box shouting the name of the show over and over again. That’s what happened at the closing The Wedding of River Song (2011). Awful, isn’t it? It should be anyway. But it’s not. Instead it feels vaguely threatening, mysterious, demanding. The line acquires a sort of epicness that’s entirely unwarranted.

“No, what a stupid fool you are!”

Even just typing that makes me laugh. This witty retort is from the Security Chief in The War Games (1969) because sometimes you just can’t think of a good comeback. Its realism! Characterisation! The poor guy has a lot on his mind. It’s also terrible, utterly terrible. It delights me.

Save your breath for the Timelash, Doctor, most people depart with a scream.”

That’s a terrible, terrible line of cheesy villainy, and it would take a true master of cheese-acting to deliver it with success. Luckily, the actor in question is Paul Darrow, who chews exquisitely (this is not any sort of backhanded compliment – I’m of the firm view that scene-chewing acting is a valid choice, and an actor requires real skill to do it in an entertaining way). Darrow lifts the entire story of Timelash (1985) up to proper watchable levels, and this is the pinnacle of his performance.

“Have any arms fallen into Xeron hands?”

Said by a Morok in The Space Museum (1965) What a line! What a magnificently terrible line. I bloody love it. I remember hearing it for the first time, and rewinding the VHS to hear it again. It’s funny, dammit. Nobody try to tell me it isn’t funny.

“My dreams of conquest!”

One of the most belovedly infamous lines in Doctor Who. This was, I believe, delivered in the particularly memorable way it was because the actor playing Soldeed, the villain of The Horns of Nimon (1979), did not know the cameras were on. And thank goodness for that. What could have been a meh line of meh villainy instead becomes a magnificent touchstone between fans of how wonderfully ridiculous our show can be.

“No, not the mind probe.”

Quite possibly the single most…original line delivery in Doctor Who. Which lifts these five humble words into the stratosphere for appallingly great Doctor Who dialogue. The Castellan in The Five Doctors (1983) is about to be interrogated, and he objects with…I don’t know what the emotion is. The syllables he puts emphasis on are very strange. Delightfully strange. I have no idea what he’s trying to do. It’s brilliant. A true classic.

“There’s nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality!”

Ah, the second entry from The Ultimate Foe (1986). These are the words the Valeyard speaks when the Doctor attempts to stop his super high tech bomb thing go off. What does it mean? I have no idea. I have contemplated since December 26th, 1993, and I am still no closer to an answer. I know what the individual words mean, but cannot parse them as a sentence. Did Pip and Jane Baker just flip through a dictionary, stabbing pencils in at random? Or did they have some intention in mind? Some motive or reasoning or idea to convey? We will never know. And just to make it extra delicious, it’s delivered with such *commitment* by Michael Jayston. Sometimes you want an actor to chew it up, and sometimes you want an actor utterly determined to make even the absurd of lines sing.