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13 Classic Doctor Who Monsters and Villains Due a Comeback


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?The original Doctor Who series ran from 1963 to 1989. Considering that each story tended to feature an alien threat, the Doctor encountered a huge number of would-be conquerors and other troublemakers over the years. Since Doctor Who was revived in 2005, an effort has been made to revive and update many of the Doctor’s classic foes, including ever-popular nemeses the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Master; less iconic but still well-known villains like the Autons and the Sontarans; and even obscure creatures such as the crab-like Macra, whose only previous appearance was in a Second Doctor serial from 1967 that no longer exists. On top of this, the new series has created its own memorable villains, such as the Weeping Angels, the Judoon and the Ood. However, there are scores of monsters and villains from the original Doctor Who that we would like to see brought back in new Doctor Who, and these are the 13 we hope we see the soonest.

Daily List suggested by DCD.


13) The Nimons

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?Now, the Fourth Doctor story “The Horns of Nimon” is not remembered by many fans as one of the shining moments of classic Doctor Who. However, the Minotaur-like Nimons were a cool idea that we’d like to see revisited. Their resemblance to the creature of Greek mythology is explained by the fact that the Nimons would travel through artificial black holes on a never-ending mission they called the “Great Journey of Life” in which they would visit planets and pose as gods. While there, they would create maze-like machines that would create new black holes that would bring forth more Nimons, and together they would drain planets dry of all energy, which enabled them to continue their journey. The Nimons could also use their horns to shoot energy blasts or suck the life force from victims, leaving them as dry husks. Outside of television, the Nimons made an impressive showing in the awesome Eighth Doctor audio adventure, “Seasons of Fear.”


12) The Great Vampires

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?The Doctor has encountered many vampires in his travels, but all of them are a pale threat compared to the Great Vampires of Time Lord lore, gigantic bloodsuckers who could only be defeated by driving metals spaceships through their hearts. The Fourth Doctor encountered a trio of much smaller vampires trying to revive one of the Great Vampires in the serial “State of Decay” and defeated the enormous creature in the same way his people had in ancient times. But it’s hard to imagine that the threat of the Great Vampires isn’t still lurking out there, somewhere. And the better special effects of newer Doctor Who might mean that more than the vampire’s giant hand rising up from the ground could be shown.


11) The Rutan

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?It has long been established in Doctor Who lore that the potato-headed Sontarans have been at war since practically the dawn of time with a hive-minded species called the Rutan. The Rutan may not look like much — they’re glowing, green blobs — but they can shapeshift, making them effective spies, and they have the ability to electrocute their enemies. The Rutan only appeared once in televised Doctor Who, in the Fourth Doctor serial “Horror of Fang Rock,” and they weren’t even up against the Sontarans in that story! It’s about time Doctor Who finally have these mortal enemies face off, and it would make sense since the new series has already re-introduced the Sontarans.


10) The Rani

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?Much like the Doctor and the Master, this fashionable, female mad scientist is a Time Lord outcast. She was also hinted to have had a relationship with the Doctor, but we’ll forgive him that; most of us have a crazy ex! Introduced late in Doctor Who‘s original run, the Rani appeared in some of the show’s most notorious episodes opposing the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, including “Dimensions in Time,” a very short, two-part story done for charity that was technically the last new Doctor Who story until the ill-fated 1996 TV Movie. The Rani was the main villain in “Dimensions in Time,” in which she traveled around with a young man who seemed to be her sex slave and tried to imprison the Doctor’s first seven incarnations, including a very gray Fourth Doctor and the disembodied, distasteful mannequin heads of the Second and First Doctors, as the actors who played them had died by that point. Many fans of Doctor Who like to pretend “Dimensions in Time” doesn’t exist (even though it does feature a huge cast of Doctors, companions and monsters), and that’s not hard to do, since it will likely never see official release. We’d like to see the Rani finally get her due in new Who with some higher-quality storytelling.


9) The Zygons

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?The Zygons looked like undersea nightmare creatures; they were covered in squid-like suckers, had big conical heads, and venomous stingers in their palms. By the standards of classic Doctor Who‘s small budget, the costumes were pretty impressive. After their planet was destroyed, a small group of Zygons came to Earth in their biological ships and attempted to slowly infiltrate human society using their shape-shifting abilities, as seen in the Fourth Doctor story “Terror of the Zygons.” They had to keep the subjects of their shape-shifting alive in order to maintain the charade. They also survived off of breast milk from the Loch Ness Monster, which is… really weird. Nevertheless, the Zygons are one of the Doctor’s more well-received enemies and they’re due for a return.


8) Sutekh

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?The Fourth Doctor serial “Pyramids of Mars” played with ancient astronaut theories by depicting the ancient Egyptian gods as aliens from the planet Osiris who had visited Earth and imprisoned one of their own, the genocidal Sutekh, in a pyramid (ugh, bad flashbacks to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen). After Sutekh was freed by an archaeologist, he created an army of robot mummies and took control of the Doctor’s will. He forced the Time Lord to take an army of minions to Mars to destroy the Eye of Horus, a device which was keeping Sutekh on Earth. Although the Doctor was ultimately able to break free and trap Sutekh in a time tunnel, it’s hard to believe this powerful being would not find a way to eventually escape. Sutekh was said to be the basis for Satan and other similar evil deities across the galaxy, although the Tenth Doctor encountered a Beast that claimed the same thing in “The Satan Pit.” Interestingly, both Sutekh and the Beast in “The Satan Pit” were voiced by the same actor, Gabriel Woolf. Could they have in some way been the same character, especially since the essence of the Beast in the latter story survived despite its body being destroyed?

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7) The Black Guardian

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?The Black Guardian is the personification of universal chaos and destruction, and the yin to his yang is the White Guardian, who represents order. While the White Guardian wants to keep the universe in balance, the Black Guardian wants to tip the scales in his own direction. The Guardians tend to pursue their goals through intermediaries instead of act directly. (Hmm, this sound familiar to anybody else?) After the White Guardian sent the Doctor to travel around the universe and collect the powerful Key to Time, the Black Guardian tried to trick the Doctor into giving it to him instead. The Doctor dispersed the key through the universe again instead of letting the Black Guardian become too powerful, and the Black Guardian vowed vengeance. After the Fifth Doctor bested the Black Guardian yet again in the serial “Mawdryn Undead,” the White Guardian warned that his opposite would surely try again to even the score with the Doctor. This hasn’t happened yet, and we’d love to see it take place in the new series.


6) The Celestial Toymaker

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?The Toymaker is a powerful immortal being who dresses like a mandarin and has grown so bored that he has built an entire fantasy world dedicated to his love of playing games (it’s probably what would happen to most of here if we could live forever). But he’s also a very poor sport. Anyone that enters into his world is forced to play games with the Toymaker; if they lose they become his playthings. And if they win, they are destroyed along with the Toymaker’s world, although the Toymaker survives and can just rebuild it. He’d fit right in a classic Star Trek episode. In the serial named after the villain, he brings the First Doctor into his world, as the two have apparently met before and the Toymaker wants a rematch. Meanwhile, the Doctor’s companions compete against the strange characters already made into the Toymaker’s playthings in twisted games such as Exploding Musical Chairs and Deadly Hopscotch. The prize is the TARDIS, of which the Toymaker has created several false copies. Sadly, only the final of the four episodes in this serial still exists. The Toymaker was supposed to be brought back in a Sixth Doctor story from 1986 called “The Nightmare Fair,” but it was never filmed after the show went on a temporary hiatus that season. The Toymaker’s twisted realm would be a disturbing yet immensely entertaining place to finally revisit in the new Doctor Who series, and it would be interesting to see the Doctor face off against a villain who has been his nemesis even longer than the Daleks. It’s even possible that the original actor could play him; 92-year old Michael Gough (who you’d probably recognize as Alfred in 1989-1997 Batman film series) is still working, most recently playing the Dodo in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.


5) The Yeti/Great Intelligence

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?The Great Intelligence was a formless being from another dimension who was encountered on the astral plane by a Tibetan monk and then began possessing humans in a bid to take over the Earth. Its plan included creating an army of big, furry robot Yeti (perhaps based on the real cryptozoological creatures) that were powered by silver orbs and carried guns that sprayed deadly webbing. The Yeti, especially the first version, are also quite adorable! They were featured in two classic and highly-regarded Second Doctor serials, “The Abominable Snowmen” and “The Web of Fear;” but sadly, aside from one episode each, these serials no longer exist in the BBC archives. It would be awesome to see the Great Intelligence and the Yeti return, especially if an episode could create the eeriness of a deserted London and Yeti stalking its subway tunnels as was shown in “The Web of Fear.”


4) The Cybermen

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?This entry will pinpoint anyone who just reads the headers and not the article itself before unleashing nerd rage in the comments. Yes, I know the Cybermen have been well-represented in new Who, but those Cybermen are from a parallel universe. The only original Cyberman seen in the new era of Doctor Who was a deactivated head within Henry van Statten’s underground museum in the Ninth Doctor episode “Dalek.” In the original Doctor Who series, the Cybermen started out as creepy, dangerous cyborgs and devolved by the end into bumbling oafs who were severely allergic to gold and could be killed by throwing a wedding ring in their general direction. And if you examine the timeline of the Cybermen as presented out of order in the original series, they were pretty much beaten and destroyed by the 26th Century, although one of their ships did crash back through time and kill the dinosaurs. Maybe it’s better that those Cybermen stay dead and gone, but I strongly disagree. They need redemption, and what better way to do that than bring them back more wicked and stronger in the new series, even more so that their counterparts from a parallel dimension? Maybe the real Cybermen could even put up a fight against the Daleks!


3) Omega

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?Omega is a legend among the Doctor’s race, the Time Lords. Omega’s scientific expertise enabled his people to turn suns into black holes at will, which is what allowed them to become Lords of Time in the first place! However, Omega was thought killed in a supernova before he could see the fruits of his labor. In reality, he was trapped in an antimatter universe and became insane, wanting revenge on his own people because he thought they had abandoned him. He has tried to come back into the positive matter universe twice, once by trapping the first three Doctors in the antimatter universe, and then by using the Fifth Doctor’s bio-data to create a new body, which would have turned back into antimatter and destroyed Earth in the process. Although Omega failed and seemingly met his demise both times, this has rarely stopped anyone in Doctor Who from making a comeback. There’s great tragedy in Omega’s story, that of a legendary hero who has in reality turned into one of his people’s greatest enemies. It would be great to see it dramatically tackled in modern Who.


2) The Silurians and the Sea Devils

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?The reptilian Silurians and their amphibious cousins the Sea Devils (who at one point took to wearing badass samurai armor) were Earth’s original sentient inhabitants that went into hibernation to avoid a geological catastrophe. They awoke in recent times to find that primates had evolved into a new sentient species and overtaken the planet. None too pleased with this turn of events, they twice attempted to take back their world by destroying humanity, only to be thwarted by the Third Doctor and Fifth Doctor, respectively. It’d be interesting to see them return and resume what is basically a civil war on Earth between its dominant species, past and present.

1) The Ice Warriors

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?The Ice Warriors (named so because they were first found by humans frozen in ice) were lumbering reptilian soldiers who wore scaly green armor, spoke in an unsettling hiss and were the natural inhabitants of Mars. They were regularly featured during the Second and Third Doctor eras, but disappeared after that and have been missed by long-time fans ever since. Uniquely for Doctor Who, the Ice Warriors started out as the latest alien threat to try and colonize Earth but eventually became Earth’s allies. This opens the door for either version of the Ice Warriors to appear in new Who; the Doctor could meet up with more militant Ice Warriors from earlier in Earth’s history (which would be our present time or near future) or the more human-friendly race from further down the line. What’s tantalizing is that the current Doctor Who series has already directly referenced the Ice Warriors on two separate occasions, even if newer viewers might not have realized it. In David Tennant’s first full episode as the Tenth Doctor, a high-ranking member of the military nixes the idea that the invading Sycorax are natives of Mars, as the real Martians look “completely different.” And then in one of the Tenth Doctor’s final episodes, “The Waters of Mars,” the Doctor states that the water-based entity encountered by the human astronauts were referenced in the legends of the Martian natives “who built an empire out of snow” and theorizes that the Ice Warriors had imprisoned the water entity in an underground glacier. The Ice Warriors were totally teased by former showrunner Russell T. Davies, so let’s hope his replacement Steven Moffat carries through and brings them back!