Getting To The Bottom Of The Bottle: 25 Best Bottle Episodes

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Doctor Who – “Midnight”

In earlier series, the powers that be at Doctor Who would often create bottle episodes as a way to free up money for their Christmas specials. In the fourth series of the revived show, David Tennant’s Doctor becomes trapped with a handful of folks who are slowly going mad. At least one of the crazies is probably possessed by an ancient evil that no one can see.

The entire episode takes place on a train of some sort – although they keep saying “truck” – and hits on all the annoyances of public transportation. Any good bottle episode will quickly drill down on the tensions and shoot them to the surface, but only a Doctor Who episode will infuse the tension with supernatural undercurrents and psychological complications.

Writer Russell T. Davies masterfully uses implication and suggestion to relay each person’s ailment, using their madness to reduce them to their basest instincts. Not even the Doctor is immune, as the monster mimics his speech patterns to unnerve him. It’s not unusual to see the Doctor bewildered, but it is strange to see him distressed, and the magic of the episode lives in resolving those feelings. Tennant leans into this feeling, and the result is less like a bottle episode of TV and more like a one-act play or novella.