Doctor Who: 10 Villains The Doctor Couldn't Defeat

3. The Vashta Nerada (Forest Of The Dead)

Doctor Who Vashta Nerada
BBC Studios

There are a few villains in Doctor Who that you can't really fight back against, and the Vashta Nerada are one of the most notable examples.

Daleks and Cybermen can be shot, Sontarans can be blown up, and it's probably possible to beat a Zygon to death if you're out of options, although that doesn't sound too efficient. But how do you kill a shadow?

Well... you don't. All you can do against the Vashta Nerada is run away.

And that's just what the Tenth Doctor and his allies are forced to do in Series 4's Forest of the Dead, the last time we've seen the Vashta Nerada in a televised Whoniverse story. The creatures kill a handful of people and quickly begin to swarm all over the planet-sized library, and in the end, the Doctor just leaves them be while he exits the scene, because that's basically his only option.

As mentioned, we haven't seen the Vashta Nerada in a televised story since, and this might be because they're so difficult to defeat. After all, how do you continue to write stories about a villain that has no real weakness?

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.