6 Do You Mind If I Smoke?
“Pyramids Of Mars” (1975)
Poor old Namin. He's been faithfully doing his duty for his master Sutekh, and what thanks does he get? Sutekh reanimates the corpse of an English explorer, sends it through a time portal and gets it to kill Namin using some smokier version of the Vulcan death grip. It's the details here that make things so scary: the Hammer-esque mansion setting, the organ music, the Edwardian costumes, the smoke, the pulsating mummy casket, the swirling colours of the time portal, the blank-faced mask of Sutekh's servant. Everything adds up to an exquisitely intense moment. But the smoking hand prints - they're the best bit.
Big screen relatives: While the story as a whole clearly has its roots in early Universal and Hammer Horror mummy flicks (before Stephen Sommers turned the genre into a Tex Avery cartoon) , this scene resembles more the "summoning up a demon and then immediately regretting it" scenarios so beloved of Clive Barker in the likes of Hellraiser and Candyman.
5 Mr Sin Comes To Life
"The Talons Of Weng Chiang" (1977)
We've had our suspicions. There was something definitely not right about that ventriloquist's dummy, and not just the fact that it had blood on its hand either. Evil-looking thing, it was. And there was something in its eyes. And then, good grief, it comes alive and starts stalking Leela with a knife. That was no dummy, it was a Peking Homunculus - a 51st Century cyborg toy with the cerebral cortex of a pig. Which seems a bit like giving your kids a robot rottweiller to play with.
Big screen relatives: A direct descendent is the evil ventriloquist dummy that terrorises Anthony Hopkins in 1978's Magic, but Chucky is also from then same lineage.
4 First Glimpse Of A Dalek
"The Dead Planet" (1963)
The scene that got everybody talking about Doctor Who and sealed the show's future. It's still a classic and despite its age remains genuinely hair-raising. As the Dalek advances on Barbara we witness the scene from the Dalek's POV - the monster itself is just a shapeless horror behind the plunger as the camera closes in on Jacqueline Hill's scream. It's a textbook horror movie style of shooting and it's stunning that anyone at the time thought that it was suitable for an early evening family show.
Big screen relatives: The "stalker's eye view" shot is a horror staple, especially in slasher movies, but in an SF setting it was very effectively used in The Creature From The Black Lagoon.
Go to Scariest Moments 3 to 1
More Doctor Who related fun - just click on the links:
The Wafers Of Mars: The Doctor Who Typo Game
The 7 Doctor Who Questions Everyone Is Asking Post-"Waters Of Mars"
Water Cooler Of Mars
