From devilish encounters to on-set curses, let's investigate some of the darkest Doctor Who mysteries that remain unsolved.
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Mystery is at the heart of Doctor Who
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From the very beginning, the character of the Doctor was intended to have an air of intrigue
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and the many mysteries of the Doctor have provided so much storytelling fuel over the decades
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The show itself is also full of secrets. Whether it's a real-life mystery or one within the world of the show
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there are several dark corners of the Hooniverse that have yet to be fully explained
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I'm Ellie for Who Culture here with 10 Chilling Doctor Who Unsolved Mysteries
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Number 10. The Nature of the Beast Up until recently, Doctor Who would offer sci-fi explanations for things like ghosts and vampires
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which is what makes the mystery of the Beast so fascinating. The impossible planet and the
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Satan Pit found the Tenth Doctor and Rose stranded on a strange planet orbiting a black hole
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Unbeknownst to them, the planet is actually a prison for the Beast, an enormous and ancient
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creature trapped beneath the surface. The design of the Beast is intentionally similar to the
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traditional depiction of Satan. Red skin, horned head, generally unpleasant attitude. However
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as the Doctor explains, most religions he knows of feature something that looks like this
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implying that the Beast has served as the blueprint for the embodiment of evil across
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the universe. But what exactly is the Beast itself? Is it the actual literal devil or the
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oldest fraud in the universe? And would a singular devil imply the existence of a singular God
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Well, even the Doctor himself is unsure, dismissing the Beast's claims that it existed before the universe was created
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The episode is intentionally ambiguous, which only makes the creature more unsettling
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All that's certain is that the Doctor encountered an immense power in the depths of Croptor
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Number 9. The Wookiee Hole Curse Across the last six decades, Doctor Who has been filmed in countless different locations across the UK
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quite often in and around a quarry or a steel mill. It stands to reason, then, that the show has visited some peculiar places over the years
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including the supposedly cursed Wookiee Hole Caves. This area in the English county of Somerset is most famous for their caves
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which are a major tourist attraction and a site of special scientific interest
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They're also said to be home to a witch, which might sound like a superstitious hokum
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but when the fourth Doctor serial Revenge of the Cybermen was being filmed there
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it felt very, very real indeed. A number of strange things occurred during the shooting of this serial
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Director Michael E. Bryant claims he saw a ghostly apparition late one night
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believed to be a diver who had died in the caves four months prior. A crew member became very unwell while another suffered a panic attack
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An entire scene went missing in the script, and Elizabeth Sladen was almost killed when a small motorboat she was driving
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malfunctioned and smashed into a cavern wall. Was the curse real, or was it just a string of bad luck
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The insane amount of stories from the set would seem to indicate that something must have been plaguing the production Number 8 The Fate of Madame Kavarian Doctor Who meddles with alternate timelines so much that it no wonder these lead to unsolved mysteries from time to time
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The assassin training, baby kidnapping, Madam Kavarian may have been killed in the series 6 finale, The Wedding of River Song
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but what you might not have realised is that due to this timeline being aborted
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by the end of the episode, Kavarian actually doesn't die at all. Steven Moffat himself has said that she's still alive in the main timeline
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which begs the question, where is she? And what kind of horrific scheme might she be plotting
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It's been over a decade since the character last appeared, but with Moffat now back in the Doctor Who fray
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it's not inconceivable that we may revisit the Kavarian or Church of the Silence plotlines in the near future
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After all, Season 1's boom brought back the Anglican marines who worked for Kavarian in Series 6
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There's something unnerving about knowing that the person who went so far as to kidnap a baby is still lurking out there. Let's just hope the Doctor
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keeps on his toes. 7. Rogue Spooky Set Half a century after the Wookiee Hole incident, another Doctor Who episode also suffered some
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creepy goings-on. Season 1's Rogue is set in Regency-era England and was filmed at a number
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of grand locations. According to Millie Gibson, everyone had a run-in with something otherworldly
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during the shoot, and there were reports of doors opening on their own. While nobody nearly died
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this time round, that's hardly what you want when you turn up for work. What Gibson might not have
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been aware of is that one of the main locations used for Rogue, Margham Country Park in Wales
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is said to be haunted. The ghost of a murdered gamekeeper wanders the grounds while staff who
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work there have heard running footsteps and giggling children late at night when nobody
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else is around. Many of these happenings remain unexplained to this day. Fittingly, this location
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was also used for the 11th Doctor episode Hide, which is itself a ghost story. And the show will
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no doubt visit there again in the future, so there might be more paranormal experiences to come
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Number six, the Midnight Entity. In a universe filled with aliens, monsters, robots, and gods
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Midnight proved that the most frightening force of them all is ordinary people. After the 10th
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Doctor boards a bus on the titular planet, he and the other passengers become the playthings
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of an unknown entity. It rips the front of the vehicle off, killing the driver and the mechanic
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then stalks the others by banging on the walls. It eventually finds its way inside by possessing one of the tourists
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Sky Silvestri, before freaking everybody to high heaven by repeating everything they say
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Midnight is a masterpiece of suspense, terror, and self-examination. And it's made even better by the fact that nobody knows
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what the creature at the heart of it is. It's never seen, never heard, and never explained
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Even the Doctor is baffled by how it can exist on such a hostile world full of deadly radiation
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Now some fans believe the entity can be glimpsed ever so briefly as the shield on the windscreen goes down But whether or not the production team did leave us something to find the reality is that the truth about the entity will never be revealed and nor should it Its power lies in its mystery
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Number 5. The Curse of Chameleon. 1983 serial The King's Demons is best known for introducing
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Chameleon, a shapeshifting robot who, after being rescued from the clutches of the master
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joins the fifth Doctor as a new companion. Chameleon was a nightmare to work with behind
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the scenes and would constantly break down, resulting in the character being dropped from
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the show after just two stories. Over the years, fans have jokingly suggested that the prop might
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have been cursed. But when you look at the sheer number of unfortunate incidents surrounding it
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it actually might not be a joke at all. Pretty much everyone involved with the creation of
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Chameleon died within 10 years of his introduction. The King's Demon's writer Terence Dudley passed
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away in 1988, five years after it aired. Peter Grimwade, the writer of Chameleon's second and
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final story, Planet of Fire, died in 1990, while Chameleon actors Gerald Flood and Dallas Adams
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died in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Even creepier is the fact that Chameleon's software designer
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Mike Power, died in a boating accident shortly after the prop was signed for the show. Bizarrely
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he was the only person who knew how to operate Chameleon, which is why it was such a problem
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for the production. Some accounts claim that the prop was found in an old warehouse or junkyard
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which is exactly the type of place you'd expect to find a cursed item. Even if that's not true
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though, something was clearly wrong with Chameleon from the off. Number four, The Watcher. Tom Baker's fourth Doctor was on a great run of form in the 1970s
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and early 80s, but then he had to go and ruin it by falling off a big telescope. What a silly
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Billy. The 1981 serial Logopolis famously marked the end of the long, popular tenure of Baker. I
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had also saw the one and only appearance of the Watcher. An unsettling figure cloaked entirely in
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white, the Watcher appears to various characters throughout Logopolis and seems to know a lot more
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than it's letting on. This strange being then reappears at the moment of the Doctor's death
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merging with him to aid his transition into his next life. It's widely believed that the Watcher
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is an incarnation of the Doctor, perhaps one who appears to them when they need help regenerating
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But that doesn't explain his absence at other regenerations, like when Twelve flat out refused to change
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So what was it about the fourth Doctor that required the presence of this spectral force
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Like the Midnight Entity and the Beast, it's the lack of answers that actually makes the Watcher such a chilling mystery
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Number 3. The Murder of Peter Arne The fifth Doctor serial Frontios features a character called Range
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the chief scientist of a remote human colony. The role was played by William Lucas
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but it was originally earmarked for British character actor Peter Arne, perhaps best known for his appearances in the Pink Panther films and the Avengers TV series Arne attended a costume fitting for the role on the 1st of August 1983 before returning to his home in London Soon after neighbours
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reported hearing a loud argument in his flat. When his home was searched, Arne was found dead
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having been bludgeoned by a stool and a log of wood from his fireplace. A police investigation
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concluded that the perpetrator was Giuseppe Peruzzi, an Italian schoolteacher. However, but they had no idea why he'd done it
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Peruzzi and Arne did know each other, but nobody knew why they were arguing
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or what drove Peruzzi to commit murder. This aspect of the case remains unsolved to this day
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Number two, the woman's words. The mark of a good scary story
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is when it makes something seemingly mundane feel absolutely terrifying. 73 Yards did this by transforming an old woman
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into one of the most feared creatures in the world. There are several chilling things about this woman
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Chief among them being the fact that she can send people running scared with a few simple words
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But what could those words possibly be? The incredible power that must be needed to get Ruby's own mother to abandon her is crazy to think about
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There's clearly some magic or other higher force involved. But it's also likely that the words themselves are just as grave and terrible
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Perhaps the woman speaks some deep dark secret that should never be uttered
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Perhaps there's something unnatural about Ruby that's yet to be revealed and the woman exposes this
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Or perhaps the woman embodies fear itself and can speak to the things that scare people the most
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Russell T. Davis has remained tight-lipped on this aspect of 73 yards
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and he will no doubt continue to do so. It's unlikely the real answer would be as unsettling as whatever your imagination can conjure up
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Number 1. The Max Headroom Incident On the 22nd of November 1987
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Chicago-based TV station WTTW was airing a rerun of the fourth Doctor serial Horror of Fang Rock
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And while the fourth doctor was dealing with the usual monstrous goings-on off the south coast of England
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a real-life interloper was about to make themselves known. The broadcast was hijacked by a person wearing a mask of the TV character Max Hedrum
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a computer-generated TV host. Nobody was on duty at the station at the time
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so this wannabe pirate had a decent chunk of time to warble on about New Coke
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a local sportscaster, and a pair of dirty gloves. He was then spanked on the bottom by a woman holding a flyswatter
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before the regularly scheduled Doctor Who episode started back up again. This is one of the weirdest and most disturbing things you will ever see
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And the worst part is, the perpetrators were never caught. To this day, nobody knows who was under the mask or why they did what they did
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It's one of the strangest moments in TV history. And a pretty freaky unsolved mystery to boot
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Well, there are some of the unsolved mysteries, but some of them have been answered
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So why not check out 10 Doctor Who Mysteries You Didn't Know Were Answered
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In the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties


