When Doctor Who returned in 2005, it wasn’t David Tennant who brought the Doctor into the 21st century. Instead, viewers had the pleasure of watching Christopher Ecclestone play the Ninth Doctor for the whole of Season 1. Ecclestone absolutely nailed the role and is one of the (mostly) unsung heroes of Doctor Who today.
The Ninth Doctor was an extremely intriguing incarnation of the Doctor as he remained jaded for a long while thanks to the events of the Time War. While Rose Tyler certainly helped mellow the Time Lord to an extent, in hindsight, the Ninth Doctor was quite a dark individual, and this list proves it.
He Competed Against Jack Harkness For Rose’s Attention
We’ll start off light, as this is still the Doctor we’re talking about. Just after halfway through the first season, the Doctor and Rose encountered a charming, handsome stranger during World War II. Rose in particular found herself rather drawn to him, while the Doctor basically pouted on the sidelines.
This stranger was Captain Jack Harkness, who was also a time traveller and a salesperson. It later transpired that Jack was actually a con artist, trying to sell Rose a bit of space junk before it got destroyed by a bomb. In the meantime, though, Jack and the Doctor tried to outsmart each other several times over.
He Picked On Mickey Relentlessly
The Doctor is famous for being a champion of the human race, highlighting their successes and helping them improve on their failures. He hates it when they are mocked or underestimated by more advanced alien races, but sometimes, it’s a little hard to take him at his word, especially when he acts like a spoilt child.
For all his righteous beliefs, the Ninth Doctor seemed to think it was okay to treat some humans like garbage. In this case, it was Rose’s boyfriend, Mickey Smith. The Doctor constantly put him down, deliberately calling him the wrong name and even awarding him the unflattering title of ‘Mickey the Idiot’.
Rose’s Disappearance Was His Fault
When Rose first agreed to travel with the Doctor, she was promised all of Time and Space to explore. Who could resist? However, when it was time for them to go back to Earth so that Rose could see her family and friends again, the Doctor somehow overshot the moment they left by about a year.
“Aliens In London” touched upon the affects of Rose’s prolonged absence but failed to make a point of it. Jackie, Rose’s mom, had been through Hell thinking that her daughter was dead and poor Mickey had been accused of murdering Rose, alienating him from all of his friends. The Doctor didn’t even look as though he cared.
He Dragged Rose Into Danger
To be fair, this is a problem that every single Doctor and their companions are guilty of, but the first season of the new series really drove the point across. When you’re promised everything and everywhere, you don’t stop to think of the consequences or the potential danger. You just take a leap of faith (into the TARDIS).
However, the fact of the matter is that travelling with the Doctor is dangerous and people get killed just by being near him. The human race are children compared to the age span of Time Lords, and so it is up to the Doctor to show some responsibility, and warn Rose (and other companions) of the risks of being with him.
He Abandoned Rose After An Argument
While there are plenty of instances within Doctor Who that show that the Ninth Doctor was both hilarious and charming, there are other moments that demonstrate his impatience and abrupt mood swings. Case in point; when Rose breaks the laws of time and saves her dad from dying, the Doctor angrily leaves her.
In fairness, the Doctor told Rose multiple times that they could not interfere with events. He even took her back in time again so that Rose could have a second chance at saying goodbye, a very risky move. As soon as she messes up, though, the Doctor gives up on her, declaring her an ape and stalks off back to the TARDIS.
He Left Adam Behind With A Chip In His Head
Firstly, we’re not defending Adam here because he was the worst semi-companion ever and used his first and only trip into the future for his own gain. In “The Long Game”, Adam was responsible for almost allowing the Editor access to the TARDIS and he also had futuristic technology inserted into his brain.
He then phoned his home in the past (our present), transferring knowledge that was way beyond that time period. The Doctor obviously had to cast him out of the TARDIS but to leave him with a chip in his head was a bit much. Adam was greedy and selfish but the Doctor surely could have easily removed the chip.
He Volunteered To Take Margaret Blaine To Be Executed
The Slitheen appeared to be a polarizing villain during Season 1. They made their first debut in modern Doctor Who’s first ever two-part serial, to mixed success. Adult fans of the show denounced the Slitheen as too comedic in tone, what with their pantomime giggling and frequent farting sound effects.
However, Margaret Blaine got another outing later on in the season, and this one was considerably darker. Upon discovering her survival, Team TARDIS captured Margaret, who claimed that if they took her home, she would be executed. Although he looked very uncomfortable, the Doctor still vowed to take her back.
He Built A Delta Wave That Would Wipe Out Humanity
The Ninth Doctor’s only season finale was a fantastic couple of episodes that pitted the Doctor against the Daleks once more, only this time the Dalek Emperor was back in the fold. After having (temporarily) lost Rose, and Jack busy valiantly defending the Game Station from the Daleks, the Doctor was desperate.
He had no good way to stop an entire army of Daleks but he had to do something. So the Doctor built a delta wave generator that would wipe out every living life form nearby. Unfortunately, this included not only the Daleks, but the whole human race as well. Thankfully, the Doctor didn’t follow through.
He Let Cassandra ‘Die’
In only the Ninth Doctor’s second on screen outing, he and Rose visited Platform One in the future to watch the Earth die. Forgetting for a moment that making Rose watch her planet die is cruel in of itself, the Doctor really revealed his true colors in this episode, especially when his friend, Jabe, died.
Thanks to Cassandra, the last human, sabotaging Platform One during Earth death, many aliens onboard the space station died over the course of the episode. While Cassandra initially escaped retribution, the Doctor brought her back and watched coldly as she began to dry out until she exploded.
He Tortured The Dalek
The Daleks are almost as synonymous with Doctor Who as the TARDIS, and so it was no surprise then, that the production crew brought them back fairly early on in the new series. In the episode imaginatively titled “Dalek”, the Doctor and Rose arrive in an underground base, where they discover a captive Dalek.
The head of the base, Henry Van Statten, tortured the Dalek for information and, honestly, it was kind of horrific. What was totally shocking, however, was when the Doctor entered the Dalek’s cage and, after a very brief catch up, he began to torture the Dalek himself. Viewers had never seen the Doctor so angry before.
