10 Most Insanely Powerful Doctor Who Villains
Doctor Who has fought literal gods, but how do the Daleks measure up to the Pantheon?
It was during Patrick Troughton's second season that Doctor Who established itself as a monster show. Cybermen, Yetis, and Ice Warriors all menaced the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria in various bases under siege. However it was that season's Great Intelligence who hinted at the great cosmic and elemental forces the Doctor would also occasionally cross paths with.
The Great Intelligence was an intangible force that carried out its plans through placing its influence within physical beings, be it the Yeti or the Snowmen. Before the Great Intelligence was the Toymaker, whose confrontation with the First Doctor also paved the way for other powerful villains from realms beyond the Whoniverse.
When he returned to the show in 2021, Russell T Davies turned his attention to these other realms, pitting Ncuti Gatwa against gods of games, music, death, and light. Indeed, Doctor Who's RTD2 era has less in common with the kitchen sink realism of his original run and more in common with ancient myths and legends.
But while the Doctor may now be facing off against the Pantheon of the Gods instead of Cybermen and Ice Warriors, there are still some traditional Doctor Who monsters that are more than capable of giving the Toymaker, Maestro, and Sutekh a run for their money!
10. The Silence
The Silence, and the wider religious sect led by Madame Kovarian, were incredibly powerful foes of the Eleventh Doctor. Hell bent on preventing the Doctor from reaching Trenzalore and restarting the Time War, they travelled back through time, manipulating human development along the way. This basically means that everything humanity achieved technologically until 1969 was due to the influence of the Silence.
It's also highly likely that a Silent saboteur was responsible for blowing up the TARDIS in The Pandorica Opens. Not even Genghis Khan's horde could make it through the doors of the TARDIS, so the Silence must be pretty damned powerful to get inside. We don't know how the TARDIS blew up, mind you, but maybe the sheer power of the Silence's sabotage is too much for our tiny human brains to comprehend.
On top of all this, they have the ability to make you forget that you ever met them, which would conceivably allow them to out-manouvre every other being in the Doctor Who universe. And with a flick of their spindly fingers they can make human beings burst like party balloons.
All in all, they make for a pretty formidable foe!