"I believe a story is only as good as it's villain." - Clive Barker
Without a good villain to fight what does the hero have to do? With that thought in mind, I continue with the Doctor Who theme on the blog until the 50th Anniversary episode, which is just about two months away now. This time I gathered together a list of the 20 best Dr. Who villains.
20. The Flood
The Flood was a virus that was sealed inside a glacier on Mars likely by the Ice Warriors. In 2058 the human colony Bowie Base One used the glacier as a water source. The Flood needed a physical form to take on which due to a broken filter system was able to infect the bio-dome workers in November 2059. After becoming aware of Earth and its abundance of water the virus attempted to infect the entire colony and reach Earth. The colony was destroyed to prevent them escaping Mars. The Flood was capable of controlling water causing it to flow in unnatural directions. Once infected, the individual constantly exuded water, pouring from the body, hands, and mouth. This could be increased to produce high-pressure sprays from both the hands and the mouth. The infection would cause a lot of electrical activity in the hosts brain. Upon mutation, infected victims could deactivate nearby cameras. When infected, the hosts would also develop cracked skin (especially around the mouth and neck), blackened teeth and faded blue eyes. Appeared in The Waters of Mars.
19. Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17
Originally born a male on Earth, Cassandra lived on the edge of the Los Angeles Crevasse. At some point she was biologically altered into a female through advanced genetic engineering. Her life was extended through seven hundred and eight plastic surgery operations, until she was nothing but a piece of skin stretched onto a frame with eyes and a mouth, connected to a brain in a jar. The skin had to be constantly moisturized to keep it from drying out. As the rest of the human race had long since left Earth and had interbred with other species, Cassandra considered herself the last "pure" human and the rest mongrels. Rose Tyler characterized her as a "bitchy trampoline". Cassandra was a guest on Platform One to witness the destruction of Earth by its expanding sun in the year 5,000,000,000. After her plan to extort insurance money from faking a hostage situation on Platform One is foiled by the ninth Doctor she sabotages the space station and teleports away. The Doctor resets the settings that she changed to cause Platform One to speed it's way to the sun and transports Cassandra back where the heat and lack of assistants causes her skin to dry, stretch, and explode, apparently killing her, although her brain was not destroyed. Twenty-three years later, Cassandra was now living on New Earth. Her brain had survived, her eyes had been retrieved "from the bin" and she was "repaired" with extra skin taken from the back of her previous body. She hid in the basement of a hospital run by the Sisters of Plenitude, and was tended to by Chip. When she discovered Rose and the Tenth Doctor were on New Earth, she lured Rose to her hiding spot in the basement of the hospital and used a psycho graph to transfer her consciousness into Rose, taking control of her body. This was in part to gain revenge on Rose and also to further her lifespan, intending to use Rose's body to live on for centuries. Appeared in The End of the World and New Earth.
18. The Clockwork Repair Droids
The Droids were repair robots on board a spaceship in the 51st century their only purpose was to fix the ship. When the ship was damaged in an ion storm they lacked the right parts. They used all the crew members' body parts to make all the repairs except for one. The last part they needed was a brain for their command circuit, and they believed that only a thirty-seven-year-old brain (the same age of their ship) would work. They modified the ships quantum drive to open time windows to 18th century France and passed through them at various moments of Madame de Pompadour's life, attempting to find her in her thirty-seventh year. Dressed in not so normal 18th century costumes, the repair droids were equipped with short range teleporters, scanners, tranquillizers and sharp tools within their wrists for part removal. Whenever they entered a room, they made creepy tick tock noises from their clockwork parts. They broke any clock in the room to avoid raising suspicion. The Tenth Doctor defeated them by disconnecting the time window that led back to their ship. With no purpose they shut down. Appeared in the episode The Girl in the Fireplace
17. The Zygons
Zygons are solidly built humanoids with large, cone-shaped heads. Their heads, arms and torsos are covered in suckers, and they have deeply inset faces. Zygons have dark red blood and speak in a gurgling whisper. They are stronger than humans and apparently more long-lived, their lifespan continuing over Earth centuries. They have the ability to sting people with venomous barbs on their palms. These stings can stun maim or kill. They leave large welts on the affected area. Zygons have a deeply ingrained fear of fire. Zygons are hermaphrodites that can reproduce asexually. At the start of their lives they are an almost white color, have no suckers, and are more feminine as well as graceful. It is through sterilization that they become orange colored, covered in suckers, and more stocky and masculine in appearance. The greatest rank a Zygon can attain is "warrior engineer". To become a warrior engineer a Zygon must undergo sterilization, a process which makes them more aggressive. They came to Stonehenge and helped imprison the Eleventh Doctor in the Pandorica to "save" the universe. A Zygon ship was trapped under where the Savoy Hotel was. During the grand opening in 1890 Zygons replaced half the staff, but the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, and Rory Williams stopped them. In the late 20th century, the Zygons of Devil's Punchbowl decided to take over Earth and physically adapt it to an environment more suited to their species. UNIT and the Fourth Doctor stopped them, freeing the Skarasen. First appeared in Terror of the Zygons featuring the fourth Doctor. After they faced off with the fourth Doctor two more times in Shada and Logopolis, they met the fifth Doctor in Mawdryn Undead. They also appeared in two stories featuring the eleventh Doctor; The Pandorica Opens and The Power of Three. They are slated to return in the 50th anniversary special in November.
16. Vashta Nerada
The Vashta Nerada are microscopic beings that live in swarms, thousands strong. Individually, Vashta Nerada are not a threat. They are very small; the Tenth Doctor claimed that some of the dust specks visible in bright sunlight are single Vashta Nerada or small swarms, not large enough to be a threat to most life. In large numbers they can strip a creature to its bare bones in milliseconds. In the 50th century one planet suffered a large infestation. The Vashta Nerada usually lived in their forests, but when some of the trees were cut down and made into books to be put in the the library, some of the spores were trapped. The library was attacked by over a "million million" Vashta Nerada; spores inside its books hatched. The 4022 people on the planet could not be evacuated and were 'saved' in a computer hard drive. The computer created a virtual world for them to live in and the planet was empty for a hundred years until an archaeological expedition which invited the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble landed on the planet. Though much of the archaeological team was eaten by the Vashta Nerada, the Doctor convinced the Vashta Nerada to stop and give him a chance to return the people stored in the computer. They agreed to give him a day after reading about him in the library. What they discovered about him intimidated the Vashta Nerada enough to make the swarm temporarily egress. The humans were rescued and left the planet to the Vashta Nerada. Vashta Nerada swarms are sentient and two spacesuit-inhabiting swarms developed the ability to communicate with the Doctor through the spacesuits data chips. On their own, outside of the darkness, a Vashta Nerada swarm looked like a shadow cast by nothing. They mimic the shadows of their prey to get close, which means staying in the light is the only way to escape. If someone had an extra shadow it was already too late. Sonic technology could detect the difference between a Vashta Nerada swarm and an ordinary shadow. The Doctor believed they had no weaknesses other than the light and the only thing to do was to run. Appeared in two episodes Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead.
15. The Empty Child
When Captain Jack planted a Chula ambulance in 1941 London, the Chula nanogenes, who had never previously encountered humans, infected a dying human boy named Jamie caught in the London Blitz. Assuming that the gas mask he was wearing was part of his face, they "healed" him, and unintentionally created the Empty Child, a zombie based on Jamie's characteristics and injuries at death. Everyone affected by the plague inherited a gas mask in place of their faces, severe head trauma on the left side, partial collapse of the chest cavity on the left, and a gash on the back of their right hands. The nanogenes also gave the child the standard abilities of Chula soldiers, specifically super-human strength, telepathic abilities and the ability to communicate using other items. The Empty Child still had a child-like mentality and escaped to search for its mother. The Empty Child contaminated other humans with the nanogenes. Those who were infected did likewise so that the nanogenes spread in a fashion similar to a virus. The child, and all victims of it, were infamous for repeating the phrase "Are you my Mummy?", which freaked me out to no end! The Empty Child plague was finally stopped when the Ninth Doctor reunited the Empty Child with his mother. Appeared in The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances.
14. The Beast
The Beast's physical body resembles a massive humanoid with crimson skin, two large, ram-like horns (one of which was broken half way) projecting from its head and a corpse-like face. Its mind could leave its body and possess a single hive mind of the Ood collectively or a single human individually, though not more than one at one time. It had the power of telepathy and, through a host, telekinesis. Possession of a human subject affected the hosts skin, causing strange markings to appear all over their face and body; and vocal cords, allowing them to speak at different pitches simultaneously. Whether a single human or a hive mind, the eyes of those possessed by the beast glowed red. The Beast could also project fire from his mouth. The Beast claimed to have existed before the Universe, a claim the Tenth Doctor found troubling to accept or consider as he believed nothing could have existed before the universe. It is known that the Beast had been at battle with the Disciples of the Light. The Disciples, who themselves existed before the Universe, bound it in giant chains and confined it to a pit in the centre of Krop Tor, a planet in orbit around K37 Gem 5, a black hole. If it ever tried to escape, the field holding Krop Tor in orbit would collapse and the planet would be sucked into the black hole, taking the Beast with it. Despite this, the Beast claimed that it was the basis of the Devil-figure in all religions. The Doctor believed this to be because the Beast's existence seeped into the subconscious of all sentient beings. Appeared in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit.
13. The Rani
The Rani was a renegade Time Lady. She knew the Doctor and the Master when all three were young. The Rani (formerly known as Ushas) belonged to the Deca, the same Academy clique as the First Doctor. Ushas was exiled from Gallifrey after some of her lab mice, as a result of an experiment, grew to enormous size and ate the Lord Presidents pet cat, and bit the President himself. The Rani often used Earth as her base of operation as well as using humans in her research. She visited Earth during the age of the dinosaurs to gather several Tyrannosaur embryos. The Master and the Sixth Doctor interrupted her work. The Doctor sabotaged the navigational system of the Rani's TARDIS, trapping the Master and the Rani inside as time spillage caused the Tyrannosaur embryos to grow at a dangerous rate. Later, The Rani abducted eleven scientific geniuses from across time and space, including Albert Einstein. She then turned her attention on the Doctor and attacked his TARDIS, causing the ship to go through turbulence. The Doctor was knocked unconscious as a result somehow triggering the regeneration into his seventh incarnation. Eventually The Rani was placed under house arrest in her TARDIS on Tetrapyriarbus. The Rani was not necessarily evil as she felt The Master was truly evil but also stupid. She did do things that were wrong but he main goal was always her research and not for the normal evil mastermind reasons of ruling the world or destroying it as everything was secondary to her scientific studies. However she was willing to kill her test subjects in order to stop them from killing the Doctor. Portrayed by Kate O'Mara, The Rani appeared in The Mark of the Rani and Time and the Rani.
12. The Greater Intelligence
The Great Intelligence, originally known as Yog-Sothoth, was a disembodied sentience who attempted to find a body and physical existence. Originating from the universe before this one, Yog-Sothoth and his brethren survived the end of their universe by passing through to a parallel universe that ended one second after theirs. The exact nature of The Great Intelligence is a mystery. Both Lethbridge-Stewart and the Eleventh Doctor identified it as a mind parasite. The Intelligence possessed several people as its main instruments, namely Padmasambhava, Staff Sgt. Arnold, and Walter Simeon, using the latter as a reoccurring avatar, speaking in the guise of Simeon to its operative Kizlet through a large wall mounted video screen. When not using a living being, it maintained a basic manifestation as a pyramid composed of control spheres. The Great Intelligence consumed the mental energy (the "soul") of humans, growing from the minds it feasted on. In its many attempts to achieve form, the Intelligence tried to manifest as ice people based on the human form and a slime that glowed brightly with a piercing light. It also manifested as a dense fog that consumed anything entering it, and a poisonous web/fungus which spread through the London Underground and trapped the Doctor's TARDIS, incapable of being destroyed by chemicals, explosives, or flamethrowers. The Intelligence took its defeats by the Doctor as unforgivable wounds to its pride. It tended to hold grudges for a very long time. Although once stating that it had no need for revenge, it developed such a hatred for the Doctor after several encounters with him that it was willing to sacrifice itself to destroy him. Most recently, the Intelligence having never found substance, used the creepy ass Whisper Men to manifest in empty bodies. Whether they were part of the Intelligence or just allies is unknown. Their bodies were free for the Intelligence to manifest in, their blank face changing into that of Simeon's. He could easily take another Whisper Man should his current body be destroyed. The other Whisper Men seemed indestructible as they dissolved upon being struck only to reform. They can reach into peoples hearts and stop them. Originally appeared in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear facing the second Doctor then appeared in The Snowmen, The Bells of Saint John, and The Name of the Doctor against the eleventh Doctor.
11. The Silence
The Silence is a religious order who considered themselves the "Sentinels of History". They tried to kill the Doctor to prevent the fruition of a specific prophecy, which stated: "On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered." This question was "The First Question, the oldest question in the Universe, that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight." Dorium Maldovar told the Eleventh Doctor that the question was: "Doctor Who?", which was a question the Doctor had been apparently running from his entire life. The Silence was led by a race of aliens who would be erased from your memory after you looked away from them (known as Silents) who used post-hypnotic suggestion to manipulate other species into doing their bidding. The Silents also employed human or humanoid agents to carry out specific tasks. These agents were often fitted with Eye Drives which allowed them to remember the Silents. They were behind the Battle of Demon's Run and the kidnapping and brainwashing of the infant River Song, then known as Melody Pond. It was implied they were responsible for the moon landing because they needed a special spacesuit for Melody Pond. The Silence's occupation of Earth was broken when the Doctor issued a post-hypnotic command via the Apollo 11 footage to the entire human race, instructing them to kill the Silents on sight. The Silence tracked down River Song to the Luna University, where they kidnapped her and forced her into an astronaut suit as part of their plan to kill the Doctor. One Silent was present near Lake Silencio in Utah to observe the Doctor, River, Amy and Rory during the events of the Doctor's death. Their plan was foiled when the Doctor convinced the crew of the Teselecta to disguise their ship as him and take his place, tricking the Silence into believing they had killed the Doctor at a fixed point in time. The fixed point was instead the Teselecta's destruction and the deception itself. Ultimately, the prophecy that the Silence were attempting to prevent came to pass, when The Great Intelligence asked the Question at Trenzalore. Answering the question allowed the Intelligence to gain access to the Doctor's tomb and rewrite his entire timeline, although the damage caused by the Intelligence was later undone by Clara Oswald, who sacrificed herself by following the Great Intelligence into the timeline. Appeared in The Big Bang, The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War, Let's Kill Hitler, Closing Time, and The Wedding of River Song all featuring the eleventh Doctor.
