Doctor Who: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Pantheon Of The Gods
From Toymakers to Tricksters to big bad dogs, here are some epic facts about Doctor Who's god tier.
The Pantheon of the Gods has really shaken up the Doctor Who rogues gallery. As if alien invaders, mad scientists and evil tyrants weren't bad enough, the Doctor now has to contend with a collection of godlike beings. In episodes like The Devil's Chord and Empire of Death, we've seen how the Pantheon has pushed the Doctor to his very limits.
Russell T Davies has also stated that the Pantheon is here to stay, so what do we know about this recent addition to the canon of Doctor Who antagonists? Well, we know that they started life as the Pantheon of Discord, of whom the Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures was a member.
And now, RTD has made them a big deal, causing all types of chaos for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors. The Pantheon has also upturned our understanding of classic villains like the Toymaker, Sutekh, and the Mara. What we thought we knew about those godlike beings has been challenged by their membership of a seemingly exclusive club.
But just because they're an exclusive group of gods, it doesn't mean we can't dig out some key facts about them!
10. The Pantheon Is A Time Lord Fairytale
Time Lords have pretty messed-up childhoods. Typical bedtime reading on Gallifrey includes works like Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, stories about sentient universes in the shape of frogs, and most fun of all, stories of the Pantheon of Discord.
In The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, the Tenth Doctor reveals that he's known "the legends of the Pantheon" since he was a little boy. These stories must have been like the myths and legends we hear when we're growing up, and if we look back at Doctor Who, this actually checks out.
In The Celestial Toymaker, the Doctor reveals that he's heard rumours of the titular trickster, and then in Kinda, the Fifth Doctor tells Panna that he too has heard the legends of the Mara. The Doctor's knowledge of Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars is a weird mish-mash of Egyptian and Osiran mythology, but we could probably chalk that up to his childhood stories too.
Judging by the Doctor's bewildered reaction to Maestro in The Devil's Chord, some of those stories clearly had more of an impact than others!