Doctor Who: 10 Worst NuWho Villains

7. Krasko (Rosa)

Doctor Who Rosa Krasko
BBC Studios

Rosa is one of the strongest episodes of Series 11, but one of the issues holding it back from greatness is its underwhelming villain, a "space racist" called Krasko.

With unclear motivations and a performance that's so laid back that actor Joshua Bowman almost seems disinterested, the episode loses its momentum whenever his greased-up hair enters the frame.

So, why are those motivations unclear? Well, Krasko is determined to stop Rosa Parks from making her world-changing stand against racial segregation, which is certainly an evil enough plan - but the problem is that he never explains why he wants to do this.

The episode seems to be going for a quick and easy "because he's racist" angle, which might have worked with a better script, but here, this bare-bones motivation just makes Krasko a less compelling character.

Something else that also works against him is that he feels totally superfluous to the story. The bus driver is such a nasty piece of work from start to end that it's honestly unclear why Krasko needed to be here in the first place. He feels shoehorned into the plot, almost like writers Chris Chibnall and Malorie Blackman wrote a pure historical with no sci-fi elements, panicked, then added in Krasko at the last minute.

Based on how under-developed and flat he is... that wouldn't be a surprise.

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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!