10 Best Doctor Who Characters Only In One Episode

Banter Claus FTW!

By Danny Meegan /

During the modern years of Doctor Who, the importance of celebrity guest stars has continued to climb. It's now an expectation for each series to feature a roster of famous faces in supporting appearances, so much so that the Series 11 premiere actually included a post-credits montage showcasing these characters.

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On top of celebrity star power, each episode also usually features a group of other side characters intended to be monster food, to give the Doctor some information, or to get up to some villainous hijinks - or even a combination of the three.

With the twelfth series inbound and years worth of stories under its belt, Doctor Who has had an absolute plethora of one-time characters, friends or foes that appeared in a single episode before vanishing into the show's rather chunky history books.

Sure, not all of these characters are standouts, and in fact, the overwhelming majority tend to be quite forgettable. But the last 15 years of Doctor Who has gifted us some pretty amazing ones, characters who were so good in one single episode that we'll never forget the short amount of time they graced our screens.

10. The Editor (Simon Pegg) - The Long Game

We're so used to seeing Simon Pegg play the good guy that you might have forgotten he once played a villain in an episode of Doctor Who, years before he blew up in Hollywood and became a major blockbuster movie star.

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While The Editor is hardly up there in the pantheon of great Doctor Who villains, the character works because Pegg is having an absolute blast, and that energy radiates through to the screen. Almost every sentence is spoken with a touch of glee, his cheesy grin and dry humour are hard not to smirk at, and his intentionally silly costume (bleached eyebrows? Check!) sufficiently enhances the campiness.

Sure, his evil plan is as predictable and uninteresting as the majority of Who villain schemes tend to be, but The Editor stands out because he's played by a fine comedic actor who was clearly let loose to have as much fun as he liked. And Pegg didn't waste a single ounce of that freedom.

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