Of course, The Doctor survived, and even if he hadn’t, he had regenerations to spare!
That wasn’t the issue to British activist Mary Whitehouse, however, who frequently mentioned the episode in her campaign to clean up television for British children.
The master copy of the episode was ultimately edited to change up the controversial scene, but copies of the original sequence have survived via other means.
In her eyes, the scene was one of the most frightening in Doctor Who’s history, mainly because children were forced to wait and learn of the Doctor’s fate while being stuck with the image of him drowning in the meantime.