Day 146: The Underwater Menace Episode 2

The cliffhanger to the last episode ranks as one of the darker in the series' history, which is odd considering the sheer zaniness of everything that surrounds it. The context is that Polly is thrust into a surgery, where a menacing Doctor hold a hypodermic needle and states that after this tiny little jab, as far as she will be concerned, she will be a fish person. This is a terrifying fate as can be seen in the image to the right. But the transformation itself is not as terrifying as the way in which it is directed and performed, with the cliffhanger itself being placed right near the needle in question, building on the childhood fear of needles. And this is something that we haven't come across in Doctor Who as much over the course of the series so far, but we will do quite a bit over the coming years, and that is the idea of making ordinary things terrifying. In this case, we're building on things like hospitals and needles, things that children already view with a certain amount of unease, but after this they will probably have these things inextricably linked with turning into fish people. Indeed, it was deemed far too terrifying for Australian children, who had the offending scene cut out from the programme to protect their fragile minds, but this means that one of the only surviving sections of this story is this thoroughly disturbing scene, meaning that it's free to give nightmares of fish people for a whole new generation.