Top 5 Doctor Who Villains

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Dennis, who works for mycollectionshop.com and as such has become somewhat of a collector of figurines and comics. Having watched Doctor Who avidly since its reboot, he’s anxiously waiting Peter Capaldi as the next Doctor. Check out Dennis’ Tumblr here. (Sorry it’s a bit DC orientated, but gotta love that Hulk!)

Doctor Who is one the longest running series ever, and has been a permanent science fiction series since its initial release in 1963. It has seen 12 different doctors grace the screen in both colour and black and white, and the doctor has battled over 400 villains of various persuasions.

Doctor Who is a way of life, with loads of episodes, books, magazines, games, figurines and of course merchandise (including Dalek bags – check out this article), and with so many characters everybody is sure to have their favourites.

With so many monsters, aliens, bad guys and of course titular doctors, there are of course many different characters to keep tabs on. So this article is going to take you through some of the Doctor’s major villains throughout the series, because everybody secretly loves a baddie. So here’s my 5 favourite Doctor Who villains.

Daleks

The Daleks have to be the Doctor’s ultimate enemy, and have been a perennial favourite baddie since way back in 1963, and are widely regarded as his oldest and most deadly enemy. Therefore, it is only fitting that on the list if villainous Dr Who characters that they head the list. Despite looking like huge knobbly upturned buckets, they are an extra-terrestrial race of mutants, hell bent on domination and destruction, and they are the biggest adversaries of the Doctor. Their infamous catchphrase is of course of ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’, which is one thing that will never happen to the Daleks since they are such a perennially favourite foe on the show.

Cybermen

The Cybermen, like the Daleks, appeared in the 60s in the early episodes of Doctor Who (in 1966 to be precise) and have also appeared in the modern series’. They are murderous metal cyborgs that were once humans, but have been ‘upgraded’.  They originated on Earth’s twin planet ‘Mondas’ where they were humanoids. However they began to implant more and more artificial parts into their body in order to live longer, leading them to become cold, ultimately logical with all emotion being deleted from their minds. They are cased in all metal armour – pretty imposing! Their weaknesses include having an aversion to gold and they can be destroyed by explosives and Dalek weapons.

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Weeping Angels

The Weeping Angels first appeared in 2007 against the 10^th Doctor as statues of angels with their faces covered by their hands. That’s not the scary part though; they attack when people aren’t looking at them, and send a person to the past thus draining the potential energy of the years the victim would have lived in the present.  They are some of the most difficult antagonists to fight in a way as they only move when you aren’t looking at them, and it is obviously really difficult to keep your eyes on them the whole time! They were voted the scariest Doctor Who monsters of 2007 by Doctor Who fans, and there is something definitely creepy about them, especially as in their first appearance there are loads of shots of statues covering their eyes in London and elsewhere. Just remember, ‘Don’t blink!’

General Staal

General Staal is a rather stupid yet powerful Doctor Who villain who made his screen debut in 1973. A humanoid extra-terrestrial, short, stocky and very strong, he is a member of the race of Sontarons, who reproduce by cloning and is in a way a bit of a pantomime figure. The race is characterised by their ‘live to kill’ attitude, ruthlessness and fearlessness of death. In fact, they believe that the greatest honour in life is to die in battle in a blaze of glory. General Staal is the fearsome commander of the Sontarons, and looking at his glowering figurine, it’s not hard to see why. Perhaps not one of the more complex antagonists of the Doctor, he is nonetheless tenacious in his will.

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Vashta Nerada

When the name literally means ‘shadows that melt the flesh’, you can understand why I think that these antagonists are up there amongst the best of them, and are definitely one of the more terrifying villains in the Doctor Who universe. They are actually microscopic creatures that when in high enough swarms can take on the appearance of a shadow, and strip a person of their flesh right down to their bones like ‘piranhas of the air’ in mere moments. Nearly impossible to detect, even harder to fight and avoid, these things are terrifying, and one of the reasons that the Doctor gives for most animals being afraid of the dark. Perhaps I find the Vashta Nerada so terrifying as they are one of the few of the Doctor’s adversaries that could be real.

So there you have it, just a few of the Doctor’s many villains, and my favourite ones. What ones would you pick? Is there a villain that you think should definitely have made the list? Let me know in the comments section below.