12 Years Ago, 'Doctor Who's Most Unhinged Episode Revealed the Doctor at His Worst

'Humans. I never learn.'

12 years ago, Doctor Who showed the Doctor at his ugliest

Doctor Who has never shied away from showing the Doctor at his worst. In “A Good Man Goes to War,” Eleven (Matt Smith) realizes that his choices have made him nearly as monstrous as his enemies. In “The Waters of Mars,” Ten (David Tennant) is still reeling from the loss of his most recent companion, Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), and determined to win for once. He uses his power over time to save people whose deaths are fixed points in history, consequences be damned. It’s a genuinely shocking, villainous moment for the Time Lord.

But one episode rarely gets the recognition it deserves for portraying the Doctor at his most unhinged and hypocritical.

“The Caretaker,” which aired in 2014, is hardly a memorable monster-of-the-week episode. Twelve (Peter Capaldi) goes undercover as a janitor at companion Clara Oswald’s (Jenna Coleman) school, Coal Hill, to deal with an alien robot called the Skovox Blitzer.

The robot can destroy Earth, and it looks cool, but it’s the episode’s least interesting element. Instead, writer Gareth Roberts turns “The Caretaker” into a character drama about the meeting between Twelve and Clara’s boyfriend, Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson).

We see the Doctor at his ugliest in “The Caretaker”

Throughout most of the season, Clara has been juggling two very different lives: her “normie” life as an English teacher, where she’s dating fellow teacher Danny, and her life-changing adventures with the Doctor across time and space. In “The Caretaker,” those worlds finally collide, making for an uncomfortable encounter all around.

The most agonizing part of the episode is the Doctor himself. Since his introduction in season 8, this version of the Time Lord has been blunt and critical — a sharp change from the more sentimental, silly alien Clara knew as the Eleventh Doctor. That attitude comes to a head when Twelve meets Danny, who is also a former soldier. The Doctor can’t see Danny as anything but a soldier. He dismisses his intelligence and reduces him to “a PE teacher.”

The Doctor’s opinion of Danny only gets worse when he realizes Danny is Clara’s boyfriend. Earlier in the episode, he assumed Clara was dating Adrian, another teacher at Coal Hill. To the Doctor, Adrian makes sense: He resembles Eleven, right down to his bow tie and elaborate hair, and seems more emotionally stable because he’s a teacher. Danny is a teacher, too, but that doesn’t fit the Doctor’s assumptions.

Roberts plays the mix-up between Adrian and Danny for laughs. It’s funny to watch the Doctor trip over something so obvious, but the misunderstanding also offers a window into his psyche — and the way he sees Clara’s feelings for him. In the first episode of season 8, the Doctor accuses Clara of not really “seeing” him and of wanting Eleven back. So Clara’s apparent interest in someone who looks like his previous incarnation is an ego boost, and seems to confirm his suspicion that she’s still attached to his past self.

When the Doctor learns that Clara is with Danny instead, it unsettles his view of her and their relationship. To him, the person Clara dates reflects on him. Danny becomes a dark mirror: Though the Doctor repeatedly says he abhors violence, it has shaped his existence so deeply that one of his incarnations is known as the “War Doctor.” As Davros, the creator of the Daleks and the Doctor’s most hated enemy, tells him in the season 4 finale: “The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun, but this is the truth, Doctor: You take ordinary people and fashion them into weapons... behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers.”

Clara knows Danny used to be a soldier and loves him anyway, making her the audience’s clearest lens on the similarities between the two men. Unintentionally, she ends up caught between the two most important men in her life, who are more alike than either would like to admit. Danny even asks Clara whether she loves the Doctor. She says she does, but “not in that way.” When Danny presses her to explain what that means, she struggles to find an answer.

The Doctor and Danny have enough in common that watching the Doctor mistreat him is hard. It’s especially jarring when you remember how many soldiers the Time Lord has befriended over the years, including members of active military organizations like UNIT. Still, the episode offers a poignant reminder that, for all the good he does, the Doctor has an ugly — even monstrous — side.

The Doctor and Danny don’t resolve their differences by the end of “The Caretaker,” but they reach a grudging understanding, united by their love for Clara and the terrible things they’ve both done — and regret.

Gareth Roberts shows that, despite all the good the Doctor accomplishes, he can also be jealous, petty, and unwilling to face those parts of himself until he’s forced to. That’s what makes the Time Lord such a compelling protagonist in the first place. Who wants a perfect hero?

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Doctor Who’s seasons from 2005 to 2025 are available to buy via Amazon or Apple. They can also be streamed on AMC+. The two most recent seasons and some specials are available on Disney Plus.