10 Terrifying Doctor Who Monsters That Had Us Hiding Behind The Sofa
Classic Who had a reputation for frightening younger viewers, but how does NuWho match up?
It’s fair to say that Doctor Who doesn’t always hit the mark in terms of fear factor, with a great many dud villains in its long run - it is a pre-watershed family show, to its credit. Every now and then, though, a story comes along that puts the jimmies up us. Daleks may not be as scary as they once were, but NuWho has its own villains that had us hiding behind the sofa.
More often than not, the best scares in Who lean more on the psychological side, with eerie concepts and good direction building the tension rather than leaning into physical horror - the latter can sometimes be difficult to do on the BBC’s costume and CGI budget (but that isn't to say we haven't seen some creepy designs over the years)...
Lets take a look at the spookiest of NuWho’s rogues gallery…
11. Honourable Mentions
The Veil - Heaven Sent
Moffat takes that schoolyard debate: “You get a million pounds, but you’re chased forever by an immortal tortoise that kills you if it touches you” and says “what if, instead of the tortoise, it was the decaying walking corpse of an old lady?” - cheers, Steven. Easy Top 10 material if the monster wasn’t 90% blanket.
Son of Mine - Human Nature / The Family Of Blood
One of the best humanoid villains of the revived era. Harry Lloyd puts in an excellent performance that is so hammed up that it goes past cheesy and into unnerving. This guy feels more alien than most prosthetic monsters, honestly.
The Vespaform - The Unicorn And The Wasp
Not remotely scary, unless you happen to happen to have a fear of buzzing insects. For those of us who do, that sound of 6-foot wings fluttering is deeply uncomfortable to listen to, rest assured. We can rest easy knowing there’s no planet of the 6-foot moths... yet.
The Clockwork Droids - Deep Breath
These lads are much more frightening in Deep Breath than their first appearance in The Girl In The Fireplace. The iconic ticking is still there, but the pre-revolutionary French get-up is traded out for patchwork clothing and incomplete masks made from harvested human skin. Forcing The Doctor and company to hold their breath around the clockwork droids was also an inspired way to create tension, and be honest, you always hold your breath along with them, don’t you?
The Silents - Various Appearances
The Silents (we’re referring to the species, not the religious cult), whilst used to great effect in the Smith era, are a wasted opportunity in terms of fear factor. These creatures, which have a fantastically creepy memory-loss gimmick and a design inspired heavily by Slenderman (a horror legend), weirdly never get much in the way of a full on horror episode. For shame.