10 Doctor Who Villains Who Should NEVER Return

The Doctor has had many enemies over the years, but the Master towers above them all. The renegade Time Lord and lover of chaos has served as both the Doctor’s friend and enemy across their many portrayals, and has been played by an impressive twelve actors since their first appearance in the 1971 episode, Terror of the Autons. They are the Moriarty to The Doctor's Sherlock Holmes, but similar to Moriarty in BBC’s Sherlock, they need to know when to let go, because like Davros, the Master (more specifically the Missy incarnation) has already had the perfect send-off.

The Series 10 two-part finale titled World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls sees the return of not only the Mondasian Cybermen, but also the 'surprise' return of John Simm’s incarnation of The Master, who's last known appearance was in Series 4’s The End of Time. It was a welcome return, and one that was doubly surprising as Michelle Gomez’s Missy was also there. Two Masters in the same place could only spell more trouble.

But the series had already had an arc that was leading to some sort of redemption for Missy. Capaldi and Gomez had wonderful chemistry in their episodes, arguably the most playful and emotional of the pairings that we have seen before them, and this cultivated in an ending that saw Missy stab her previous incarnation, who in return shot her in the back. Missy was left on the doomed planet with no signs of regeneration, while Simm’s incarnation escapes.

It was then a great surprise that three years later, in the Series 12 episode, Spyfall, The Master was once again back, this time played by Sacha Dhawan to face Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor. However, The Master's inclusion on this list is not a bashing on Dhawan’s performance. Quite the opposite in fact.

We do not know if his incarnation pre-dates or comes after Gomez, but after seeing her redemption at the end of Series 10, his return as a villain felt somewhat undermined. We are of course talking about a show that deals with time travel, and the notion that a previous version of the Master could turn up is not implausible. But in the same way that Chris Chibnall had Gallifrey destroyed, right after Moffat brought it back, Chibnall has brought back the Master right after Moffat gave her a fitting ending.

Like the Cybermen, it feels like the character is becoming over-used, and like Davros, already had a fitting end, and it’s time that the showrunners look to other notorious villains from the Doctor’s past, or create new ones altogether.