While classic Doctor Who was famously romance-free for the most part, 21st century Who – and its associated productions – seems to have had as many weddings as a soap opera.
And if you live in the Whoniverse, you are just as unlikely to have a trouble-free nuptials as if you lived in Walford or Weatherfield. Except the problem wouldn’t be your fiancé’s long-lost never-before-mentioned ex interrupting the wedding but something like reality warping around you or maybe finding yourself impregnated by an alien.
Here are five of the worst weddings in the Whoniverse – and, as it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, one which actually turned out fine…
Stuart Hoskins and Sarah Clarke in ‘Father’s Day’
Sometimes you don’t even have to know the Doctor to have your special day messed up, as poor Stuart and Sarah found out in ‘Father’s Day’. Due to Rose going back in time and saving her father Pete’s life, their wedding was besieged by the Reapers, great big bat monsters that had come to sterilise the wound in time.
Stuart and Sarah are particularly unlucky, as the Reapers have never bothered to show up for any other instance of time-meddling in Doctor Who history.
Maybe they were just annoyed they didn’t get an invite?
Donna and Lance in ‘The Runaway Bride’
The ever-oblivious Donna should have known not to schedule her wedding on Christmas Day, the one day that alien business is guaranteed to go down in Doctor Who. She was asking to be whisked off from the aisle to the inside of the TARDIS, really.
Of course, it all turned out for the best in the end as Donna’s hubby-to-be Lance was revealed to be working with the Empress of the Racnoss. Eventually, Donna tied the knot properly this time, with a much nicer bloke named Shaun in ‘The End of Time’. Good on her.
Gwen and Rhys in ‘Something Borrowed’
Being Doctor Who’s naughtier, more-adult sibling, Torchwood took the ‘wedding gone wrong’ idea and mixed in an unwanted pregnancy.
Having been bitten by a shape-shifting alien the night before, Gwen wakes up on her wedding day looking nine-months pregnant – the alien having transferred its eggs into her with the bite. To make matters worse, an unwanted guest turns up (there’s always one, isn’t there?) – the mother wanting to collect her children…
Thankfully, the Torchwood team are on hand with Owen’s singularity scalpel and some memory-wiping drugs to ensure the day eventually runs smoothly.
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