10 Doctor Who Villains With Terrifying Abilities

4. Drill Into Your Head And Dissolve Your Brain (The Dream Crabs)

Doctor Who Last Christmas dream crab
BBC

For a colder, much more hardened take on the Doctor than his predecessor, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi's first festive outing was appropriately dark.

Last Christmas saw the Twelfth Doctor and Clara playing a game of cat-and-mouse with the concept of reality itself, all thanks to the abilities of the episode's main villain: disturbing, Facehugger-esque creatures known as dream crabs.

These monsters are pulled right from the depths of hell, with their slimy, veiny skin, and long claws that wrap around their victims' faces. And while the concept of an alien creature affixing itself to your head is an utterly horrifying one all by itself, it's what comes next that earns the dream crabs their spot on the list.

After selecting an unlucky soul to face-hug, the dream crabs, as the name implies, place them into a comfortable dream state. Then, while their victim is unconscious, the dream crab will drill a hole in their skull, push inside, and slowly dissolve their brain, ready for consumption.

Basically, they turn your mind into milkshake. Tasty.

In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!