Thirty-five years, twenty-six seasons, seven series and a TV film, about an alien troubleshooter travelling through space and time and getting into mischief and jeopardy with a selection of increasingly toothsome companions. Thats a whole lot of oddball adventures, more than any other sci-fi or fantasy show in history. Since 1963 (taking a short break from 1989 to 2005), weve seen an assortment of some of the most weird and wonderful aliens, monsters, demons, robots, entities and assorted creatures ever to grace the television. The mission of this article is to select the ten strangest antagonists for the Doctor across the history of Doctor Who on TV (leaving the vast number of books and audio adventures well alone, theres enough to deal with as it is). As there are so many to select from, a couple of rules needed to be applied. No crying foul and claiming that someone was just misunderstood articles like this are entitled to play fast and loose with the definition of the word villain. Not fast and loose enough, however, to justify the inclusion of the sinister kid in the gas mask from The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two part episode little Jamies just a dead boy haphazardly reanimated by clueless space medicine. In addition to that, characters that were just variations on men in evening dress with headdresses out of some Lovecraftian nightmare dont make the cut. No one disputes that The Silence were unnerving bad guys for a whole host of reasons, but men in masks dont count as legitimately strange for the purposes of this article. And if youre wondering why this selection is so Nu Who heavy, thats because the strangest villains seem to have appeared following the reboot probably because, in the 21st century, theyre no longer limited to stuntmen in rubber suits Are we good? Then lets begin
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
