Doctor Who Symbolism: What 10 Famous Villains Really Mean

6. Autons Represented Seventies Paranoia

One of the greatest Doctor Who villains wasn't actually introduced until Jon Pertwee took the near-eponymous role in 1970. Debuting alongside the Third Doctor in the serial Spearhead From Space, the Autons tapped into the classic Who trope of turning an everyday item or object into something to fear. In this case it was the ubiquitous mannequins seen in every high street clothes shop. Except - shock! - they aren't just those nice, immobile mannequins. They're actually automated killing machines whose hands drop away to reveal machine guns. In fact they're not showroom dummies at all but animated by the Nestene Consciousness, an extraterrestrial, disembodied gestalt intelligence which first arrived on Earth in hollow plastic meteorites. No idea what the gestalt intelligence is supposed to be, but the Autons are clearly drawing from the paranoid feeling in the air throughout much of the seventies. After the swinging sixties everyone began questioning the accepted realities: Watergate revealed that the US President was a crook, the rubbish men went on strike, and mannequins could kill you.