It took me 20 years to realise how horrifying this David Tennant TV episode is

David Tennant has made some pretty horrifying television in his storied career.

Who could forget his terrifying turn as Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, his ruthlessness as Rivals’ Tony Baddingham, or when he played mild-mannered murderer Dennis Nilsen in Des. 

Yet arguably the scariest TV show he ever did was Doctor Who, which sent a generation of school kids (and adults) scuttling behind the sofa for safety.

And of the 53 stories Tennant starred in (including his quick return as the Fourteenth Doctor), there’s one episode in particular that I consider truly horrifying.

So which one is it? Waters of Mars? The Impossible Planet? Blink? 

No. It’s Love & Monsters. 

Now, if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’re probably unravelling your Tom Baker scarf in a rage now.

After all, the episode has the ignominy – along with Fear Her, The Lazarus Experiment, and Planet of the Dead – of being considered one of the worst stories in Tennant’s run. 

And yes, on first watch, it’s easy to think the episode sucks more than a high-powered hoover. 

In part, that’s because the Doctor is barely in it – the episode follows Elton Pope (Marc Warren) and a group of people who have a shared interest in Time Lords – and it has one of the lamest villains in Doctor Who history.

The Abzorbaloff played by Peter Kay sounds terrifying on paper – it’s a creature who survives by absorbing other beings – but in practise the gurning green glutton ended up being as intimidating as a knock-off Shrek teddy bear.

(Note: I know a child designed the Abzorbaloff, please don’t @ me.)

I actually remember sitting down to watch this episode with my parents and being embarrassed that I’d made the family watch it, and for the longest time, that was the episode’s legacy in my house. 

It was the episode I’d skip when doing a rewatch, a punchline when talking to fellow fans, and a brutal Yardstick against which I’d measure other terrible episodes.

Still, it’s been 20 years since the episode first aired, and my tastes have changed a lot since then. So I rewatched it recently to see if I’d been too harsh on the episode.

So is Love & Monsters a misunderstood masterpiece? 

Well, no… but it’s better than people gave it credit for. 

The notion of a group bonded by shared trauma of encounters with the Doctor is a fascinating one, Elton is a strangely compelling character, and the Abzorbaloff is a good idea that’s just a bit poorly executed

That said, though, that’s not what horrifies me about this episode. 

You see, at the end of the episode, Elton’s Doctor Who club have all been gobbled up by the Abzorbaloff, and all seems lost. 

However, with a bit of encouragement from the Doctor, the absorbed manage to buy Elton the time he needs to destroy the Absorbaloff’s cane, killing the creature.

Sadly, Elton’s friends seem to die in the process, thankfully the Doctor is here to save the day, though. 

Using some scientific jiggery-pokery, the Doctor manages to reconstitute one member of the group.

Specifically, he saves Ursula (Shirley Henderson), who was Elton’s love interest. Sounds like a happy ending, right?

Well, you’d be wrong. 

Poor Urusula doesn’t get a new body; she’s instead fused permanently with a paving slab, making her some ageless (her words) cement homonculus (my words).

To make matters worse, Elton explains that despite Ursula’s condition, they have ‘a bit of a love life’ before she cuts him off with a quick ‘don’t get into that’.

The horrors of imagined oral sex with a sheet of stone aside, though, I found myself flabbergasted at the idea that this was a happy ending of any sort. 

Ursula ends the episode completely robbed of her agency, unable to move or make decisions for herself.

And even if we choose to believe that she and Elton are happy together, it won’t last. She’s immortal, and he’s not.

One day, he’ll die, and she’ll be left heartbroken and alone, possibly forever.

And the idea of unending life being a fate worse than death is a common one in the show. 

In David Tennant’s next series, he punished the Family of Blood by making them immortal, while the villain in The Five Doctors was turned to living stone as penance for seeking immortality. 

It’s the type of thing you honestly miss as a kid, but you catch as an adult and realise quite how messed up Who can be. 

Worst of all, Ursula’s terrible fate isn’t treated as a tragedy. It’s presented as a happy ending.

That’s what makes Love & Monsters so unsettling all these years later. 

It’s a bizarrely bleak and cruel conclusion hiding beneath the veneer of silliness, and that’s far scarier than a Dalek or a Weeping Angel.

Doctor Who is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.