Doctor Who is a science fiction show with a long legacy, full of adventures through time and space, with clever Time Lords, charming companions, interesting creatures, and terrifying monsters. Many people have fond memories of watching the show as children, feeling fright and delight as the Doctor outwits aliens and monsters. Even though Doctor Who is a family show, the monsters are memorable and sometimes downright horrifying. Let’s revisit some of the scariest monsters to appear in Doctor Who’s decades-long history.
The Beast
The Beast, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
The Beast appeared on Season 2 Episodes 8 and 9 of the Doctor Who reboot. The Beast is so terrifying a creature that we aren’t even sure if he’s an alien or a demon. Trapped on a planet called Krop Tor, The Beast takes a serious mental toll on the Tenth Doctor. The Beast says he was born before the universe began and makes the bold claim to be the Devil of every major religion. The Doctor struggles to believe the Beast’s claims, but he also can’t determine what the Beast is. While much about the Beast is shrouded in mystery, there’s no doubt that his red eyes, mysteriously marked face, and menacing voice (when possessing the archaeologist Toby) stuck in fans’ minds just as much as his horrifying true demonic form did.
The Empty Child Creatures
The Empty Child, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
“The Empty Child” was Season 1, episode 9 of the Doctor Who reboot. This episode is a fan favorite full of chills and mystery. The story includes a series of zombie-like creatures reanimated with alien tech, their faces hidden behind antique gas masks. The most iconic creature is a little boy who walks around repeating, “Are you my mummy?” What makes him so scary? It’s not just the gas mask and eerie voice: it’s also the fact that a single touch from the child will turn someone into another gas-mask clad creature asking after their mummy. Luckily, the story ends on a happy note as Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor cures the victims after two episodes.
The Vashta Nerada
The Vashta Nerada, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
The Vashta Nerada appeared in episodes eight and nine in season 4 of the Doctor Who reboot. These creatures are microscopic and found on nearly every planet, living only in shadows and darkness. David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor encounters them in a massive, dark library. The true terror of the Vashta Nerada appears when we find out that if they seize a target, they will strip the flesh off the victim’s bones, leaving nothing but a skeleton in a suit asking, “Hey, who turned out the lights?” The encounter leaves viewers with a feeling that maybe we really should be afraid of the dark.
The Silence
The Silence, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
The Silence was a regular occurring villain during the tenure of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor. These aliens have a terrifying appearance based on classic depictions of a bulb-headed alien full of cranial-like folds and no discernible mouth, mixed with Men in Black-style suits. The Silence is a religious order rather than a race, and they are master manipulators of the universe. Once you see them, you immediately forget you ever met them. The Doctor finds that while they helped thwart the Daleks, the Silence created massive cracks in space and time. These creatures are mostly frightening for their ominous appearance, but the depth of their power and potential can’t be forgotten (at least by the fans watching at home) as it caused a ripple effect through the Whoniverse.
The Weeping Angels
The Weeping Angels, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
The Weeping Angels are fan favorites and often appear on lists of the scariest Who villains. They’re an alien species that appear as the stone angels we’ve all seen in cemeteries, turning something commonplace, if a little spooky, into an all-out terror. The Weeping Angels terrorized several iterations of the Doctor and a few companions during their time on the show. When we first meet them, the Doctor reveals the only way to survive these murderous creatures: “Don’t blink.” They move so quickly that their prey can be captured in the space of a blink, then dropped into a distance timeline where their prey will have to live out their natural life estranged from their true timeline. Talk about terrifying! Weeping Angel episodes are some of the tensest in the entire series.
The Flood
Andy Stone, played by Alan Ruscoe, infected by The Flood, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
The Tenth Doctor faces the Flood during the “Waters of Mars” episodes. The Flood is not a species, but a virus frozen in glaciers by an ancient race. The effects of this virus are really what make the Flood such a horror. They’re a hive mind that infects and controls humans with gruesome effects like flaking skin and pale eyes. Worse, the Flood controls the minds of the infected. One touch of the infected waters means you’re a goner. The Doctor has to save the day when the Flood controls a spaceship crew bound for Earth with the aim of taking over the entire human race. A consistent theme of the scariest Doctor Who monsters seems to be the terror of something simple and ordinary, like a puddle of water, hiding something sinister. The story arc ended with the Doctor having to make a tragic decision to detonate a nuclear weapon to eliminate all Flood-infected beings, a decision that weighed heavily on a character so committed to saving lives.
The Master
Sacha Dhawan as The Master, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
As the Doctor’s number one nemesis, The Master can’t be left off a Doctor Who scariest villains list. The show has made it clear to us how very powerful the Time Lords were. With their mastery of time travel and advanced technology, they can shape the entire universe’s past, present, and future. When we meet the Master over and over throughout years of classic and rebooted Doctor Who episodes, we’re reminded why we put so much faith in the Doctor’s compassion and level judgement. Because the Master is the opposite, a mad Time Lord and a threat to life everywhere (and everywhen). The Master is hell-bent on destroying the Doctor as revenge for the destruction of the Time Lords and their home planet, Gallifrey. The Master knows more about the Doctor’s history, secrets, and fears than any other character in the series, making them more dangerous than any other villain we meet throughout the series. In every iteration, the Master can switch from a cold demeanor to a hint of humanity to gleeful in the face of chaos. We can never predict the Master’s plans which is precisely why they’re so scary.
The Midnight Entity
The Midnight Entity, possessing Sky Silvestry, played by Lesley Sharp, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
The entity from the episode “Midnight” strikes fear through total mystery. It is one of the few villains in Doctor Who whose true nature is never quite uncovered. What we do know is that this lurking threat can appear as a brief flitting shadow or a dark silhouette before possessing its victims, leaving them blank, soulless, repeating the words of those around them. The episode earns chills and ratchets up the tension, in part thanks to the setting of the planet Midnight, a place unable to support life. The fright begins when there’s a knock on the outside of the vessel coming from an environment that should be uninhabitable. While Doctor Who loves to celebrate the impossible becoming possible, sometimes it loves to show us the terror of the impossible as well.
Yeti
Yeti, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
While many of the monsters of the classic era of Doctor Who might seem outdated and not intimidating to modern audiences, we’d be remiss to skip over that era. In its time, many of the monsters terrified audiences and relied on practical effects to create unique creatures like the Yeti. While these hairy creatures resembled the mythical cryptid of the Himalayas, they’re actually robots created by the Great Intelligence and are notoriously difficult to destroy. The First Doctor, portrayed by William Hartnell, faced off against them and they became a re-occurring villain whose shaggy body and glowing eyes gave many young fans nightmares starting as far back as the 1960s.
Cybermen
Cybermen, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
The Cybermen are an iconic Doctor Who villain appearing over and over throughout the years. They may have a clunky old-school robot appearance, but they’re still deadly. As they march about announcing “delete,” they try to take down enemies with deadly lasers. Perhaps the true horror of the Cybermen lies in their nature. They were once humans, transformed into inorganic husks of a life. Sometimes they express pain, reminding us of or prompting us to question how much of their humanity remains. Their mission is to turn all life into Cybermen, a fate worse than death.
Daleks
Daleks, Doctor Who, Image credit: BBC / Disney Plus
Without a doubt, the most famous villains in Doctor Who are the Daleks. These robot-like creatures with plunger arms have been around since the classic era of Doctor Who and play a big role for multiple Doctors in the reboot. The Daleks hate other species and seek to “exterminate” at all costs. The Daleks have remained the Time Lords’ greatest foes since the two races destroyed eachother during the Last Great Time War. The Daleks have a small organic lifeform inside their metal suits, but show little sign of empathy. Their singular mission seems to be destroying the Doctor and ending the Time Lords for good. While the Daleks may not be the scariest villains for all viewers, it’s clear they’ve left the deepest scars of any monster on the Doctor.
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