Top 10 Doctor Who Storylines That Could Actually Happen

He may be one of the Doctor’s oldest and greatest enemies, but there is reason for his madness. The Master looked into the Time Vortex as a child, and was left with a constant, sanity-shattering drum beat inside his head. As it goes, our own history includes various reports of a phenomenon called ‘The Hum’, where sufferers hear a never-ending, low-frequency sound - in what some theorise is an extreme form of Tinnitus. So, ‘the sound of the drums’ is a real-world condition - but no one has yet been subjected to it for centuries, like the Master.

The Ood themselves are classic characters, introduced during the Tenth Doctor’s TARDIS reign. And, while their alien appearance is difficult to scientifically speculate on, there is ongoing progress toward turning telepathy - similar to the Ood’s own abilities - into an actual reality. Experiments with brainwave tech and electroencephalography mean we’re inching ever closer to wordless communication, AKA mind-reading. But, if that all sounds a little ominous to you, don’t worry - we’re supposedly still decades away from anything even close to practical.

Even casual “Who” fans will recognise these guys. Cybernetically augmented humanoids, Cybermen have lost their capacity for emotion, and are hell bent on converting everyone else to continue their species. But, on regular old Earth, cybernetics is already a thing! The futuristic tech is most prominently seen in advanced prosthetics, with some designs allowing the user to control artificial limbs through their own thoughts. So, it’s a much more positive application than in the Doctor’s world!

It’s no secret that scientists have dedicated a lot of time to the process of aging, and what we can do about it - so Mark Gatiss’ Dr. Lazarus stands as an eventual end goal. Sort of. “The Lazarus Experiment” sees the title character successfully anti-age, before mutating into a monster. Forgetting that last part, contemporary science has made some advancements in reverse aging. Today’s researchers have already found how to chemically control an older mouse to look young, with onlookers awaiting a human equivalent product. Let's hope for less severe side effects though.

What if millions of small, inexplicable, apparently aimless cubes suddenly appeared all over the world? What would you do? In “The Power of Three”, the mysterious blocks are taken in by most humans, who see them as a publicity stunt. But, when they activate a year later, the consequences are catastrophic! While the whole ‘mass heart attack’ scenario is unlikely, the episode does play on the human impulses to fit in, to blindly accept what we’re told, and to rely on gadgets. Switch the cubes for our smartphones, and the Slow Invasion is on!

It’s 1983, and a ship accidentally releases an alien warrior frozen in ice - which promptly attacks! The “Who” version is a very crude form, but Cryonics is the science of freezing the dead to bring them back to life in the future, to cure them of whatever killed them in the first place. In reality, the insanely complicated procedure boils down to removing the blood, injecting a cryoprotectant solution and then cooling the body to sub, sub zero temperatures. So, swap the Ice Warrior for a human being, and imagine accidentally waking them - they’d be tetchy, too!

Lots of people are scared of the dark, but it’s something else entirely to be scared of your own shadow. In “Silence in the Library”, microscopic, cannibalistic beings called Vashta Nerada swarm together to harvest their prey. And, while the monster itself is straight up sci-fi, Swarm Intelligence isn’t. Some creatures, including ants and birds, possess this kind of collective intuition, where an entire group reacts simultaneously to the same stimuli, like they share the same mind. It’s pretty interesting stuff, until it’s applied to flesh eating mini monsters.

The Doctor’s views on war have shaped many an episode or story arc, but never more so than here - and with one, epic speech in particular. “The Zygon Inversion” ends with a human and a Zygon stood in front of (ultimately empty) boxes, deciding which button to press, and not knowing for sure the outcome of their actions. As Twelve passionately observes, it’s a scale model of war - and an increasingly probable glimpse of how large scale conflict could be fought in the future.

We humans are always striving to make our own lives, easier, happier and more efficient. But “Smile” offers a glimpse of what could go wrong. Our heroes travel to a human colonised planet, only to find it empty, because everyone’s been killed by their AI helpers, the Emojibots. AI promises to improve our existence, but how dangerous is it? In 2017, Google created an AI, which created its own AI that was superior to any made by man. So, if that’s already possible, how can we possibly keep them under control? Insert ‘sad and confused’ face here.

The second episode of the long-awaited revival, and they go straight to the end of the world. It’s certainly one way to capture your audience, as The Doctor and Rose travel to the year five billion to watch the apocalyptic action - from the comfort of a well-positioned space station. And ‘Earth Death’ is an inevitability in real life too - but not for a while yet. Scientists have theorised that in a few billion years, the sun will expand into a red giant, consuming our planet in the process. Fingers crossed we’ve migrated by then, hey!