Murder

Murder was a criminal offence involving the killing of one or more individuals.

Murdering a being could result in numerous penalties. Common ones were life imprisonment and execution. Killing beings on a battlefield did not usually count as murder. A killing classified as murder usually meant it was a targeted attack on a single individual. Murder on a larger scale could be genocide. It was one of the most serious crimes in the universe.

Morality

The Seventh Doctor felt that, fundamentally, the only argument against murder that could stand up was utilitarian: "we don't [ourselves] want to get murdered." (PROSE: Original Sin)

""In the end, Pryce was right. There is no reason why one person should not kill another. No argument against murder stands up to scrutiny. For every religious prohibition saying, "Thou shalt not kill", there's another one that allows killing under certain special circumstances – sinners are fair game, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live", and so on. Moral codes are no better; they're just formalised opinions, without any logical backup. The sociological history of almost every race is riddled with examples of laws against murder standing beside legalized examples of murder, be they executions, wars or euthanasia. Ultimately, every single argument that we can come up with, stripped of its pretty words, boils down to a fundamental truth: we disagree with murder because we don't want to be murdered. No more and no less than that.""Seventh Doctor

The Doctor

File:Do I Have The Right? - Genesis of the Daleks - Doctor Who - BBC

"Do I have the right?" (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

The Doctor himself often battled over whether he "had the right", to take another person's life, even toward altruistic ends. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, The Parting of the Ways, The Witch's Familiar) In some cases, he took this option. (TV: The Wheel in Space, State of Decay, The Two Doctors, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Deep Breath, COMIC: Terrorformer)

By his twelfth incarnation, the Doctor did not keep track of how many people he had killed, as he felt the need to move on and save other people's lives outweighed an obligation to honour those he had failed. (TV: Thin Ice)

""There are situations when the options available are limited. Sometimes the choices are very ...""Twelfth Doctor

Earlier in his life, the Doctor did count the number of children on Gallifrey that died at the end of the Time War, when he destroyed the planet. The Tenth Doctor knew this number well, as 2.47 billion, but by his eleventh incarnation, he had forgotten this. Much like the Twelfth Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor expressed that "I moved on." (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

Examples of murder

In 1893, the serial killer Clarence DeMarco was due to be executed for murdering fourteen women. He was spared due to his information on the Doctor's secret (TV: The Name of the Doctor)

In December 1916, the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin was murdered by Prince Felix Yusupov and his co-conspirators Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Vladimir Purishkevich in the Moika Palace, Prince Felix's residence, in St Petersburg in St Petersburg. (PROSE: The Wages of Sin)

On 11 June 1925, George Cranleigh murdered several servants at Cranleigh Hall in Oxfordshire. The Fifth Doctor was accused of having committed these murders. (TV: Black Orchid)

In June 1926, Professor Gerald Peach, Miss Chandrakala and Roger Curbishley were murdered by the Vespiform Reverend Arnold Golightly. He did so in the style of Agatha Christie's novels. (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp)

The Master murdered many people. His victims included Tegan Jovanka's aunt Vanessa and a policeman when they found his TARDIS in London on 28 February 1981. (TV: Logopolis) Another of the Master's victims was Thomas Milligan, whom he murdered with his laser screwdriver in an alternative timeline in 2008. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)

In 1985, Shockeye of the Quawncing Grig murdered Oscar Botcherby when he wouldn't accept a twenty narg note for payment of his restaurant bill. The Sixth Doctor later murdered Shockeye with cyanide. (TV: The Two Doctors)

Oswald Danes was a convicted murderer, rapist and paedophile. In 2006, he raped and murdered 12-year-old Susie Cabina. (TV: The New World)

On 25 December 2006, the Tenth Doctor accused Harriet Jones of mass murder when she ordered Torchwood to shoot down the escaping ship full of Sycorax. (TV: The Christmas Invasion)

In 2008, Lucy Saxon murdered the Master with a gun. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)

River Song was convicted in the 52nd century of murdering the Eleventh Doctor at Lake Silencio on 22 April 2011, but the Doctor faked his death using a Teselecta double, of which she was aware. She was sentenced to twelve thousand consecutive life sentences for the crime, but was later pardoned after the Doctor removed himself from all databases in the universe, erasing all evidence of his existence. (TV: Flesh and Stone, The Wedding of River Song, The Angels Take Manhattan)

The Fourth Doctor murdered Mehendri Solon by injecting cyanide gas into his laboratory. (TV: The Brain of Morbius)

In 2367, the Eleventh Doctor murdered Solomon by placing a beacon (being tracked by missiles) on Solomon's spaceship. The missiles made contact with his spaceship moments later, killing Solomon. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)

In 2472, Captain Dent murdered Eric and Jane Leeson using an IMC robot while using a visual trick to shift the blame on a giant lizard. (TV: Colony in Space)

In 4126, Klineman Halpen murdered Dr Ryder by throwing him into the Ood Brain. (TV: Planet of the Ood)

A Dalek, pretending to help humans of the Dalek Foundation, murdered some survivors of a train crash and the medics tending to them while there were no witnesses. (PROSE: The Dalek Generation)

In 50,000, the bounty hunter Ahab murdered Zanthus Pia. He tried shifting the blame on K9. (TV: The Bounty Hunter)

In the far future, Sarah Jane Smith declared Styre a murderer after he shot down a retreating Roth. (TV: The Sontaran Experiment)