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Not every monster has access to the Daleks' talent agent...
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00:00The Doctor has faced a great deal of terrifying foes throughout their travels.
00:04Given the vast expanse of all of time and space, it's incredibly surprising when the Doctor bumps
00:09into those foes again. Looking through the prism of a long-running television drama that has to
00:14attract audiences, it becomes a lot clearer as to why big hitters like the Daleks, Cybermen,
00:19and the Master all regularly return to ruin the Doctor's day. The Daleks practically secured
00:24Doctor Who's longevity the minute they waved a sucker arm in Barbara's face way back in 1963,
00:31and writers and showrunners repeatedly return to the Daleks nearly six decades later.
00:36Some monsters and villains don't get as lucky as the Daleks and the Master, however.
00:41It's not for lack of trying. The Sea Devils, for example, were a huge part of the cultural memory
00:46of 1970s Doctor Who. The Zygons from 1975's Tom Baker serial captured the imagination of a young
00:53David Tennant, but they didn't return to the series until 2013. And then there are monsters
00:58even unluckier than that, those who are clearly brilliant, but have, to date, never returned
01:04to the TV series. So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, here with 10 Doctor Who
01:10villains you're surprised only appeared once.
01:1310. Fenric
01:15Fenric and the Doctor have a long history with each other. First appearing in the seventh Doctor
01:19classic The Curse of Fenric, he was the original evil from the dawn of time.
01:24An earlier incarnation of the Doctor and Fenric first met in 3rd century Constantinople, where the
01:29Doctor defeated the intelligence in a game of chess and imprisoned him in a flask. From his prison,
01:35Fenric manipulated the seventh Doctor's timeline in order to free himself from his prison.
01:39The Doctor and Ace eventually defeated Fenric once more, but the old evil played a big role in
01:44the seventh Doctor's Big Finish series of audios. Fenric was intrinsically linked to the legendary
01:49Cartmall Master Plan that would suggest the Doctor was more than a Time Lord. With that in mind,
01:54it wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility for Fenric to have been defeated by Joe Martin's
01:59Fugitive Doctor in the employ of Division, or by another of the Timeless Doctors. Whichever Doctor
02:05defeated him first, it's surely time for another rematch. If only so the Doctor's last important chess
02:10game wasn't that awful one from Nightmare in Silver. 9. Eternals
02:15Enlightenment is one of the best Peter Davison serials. Taking place during an intergalactic
02:20yacht race, it introduces the Eternals as god-like beings that play games with dispensable human
02:25pawns for prizes. The Doctor is rightly horrified, and his confrontation with Stryker gives Davison
02:32some of his best material in the role. The Eternals have been mentioned in passing throughout the new
02:37series, but haven't yet made a return. Or at least not explicitly. In the 13th Doctor adventure,
02:42Can You Hear Me?, the TARDIS team come up against Zelin, who can manifest people's fears and do weird
02:48things with his fingers. He tricks the Doctor into freeing his lover Rakaia, but is of course
02:52eventually defeated. While not explicitly referenced as Eternals on screen, a tie-in story entitled The Guide
03:00to the Dark Times was published in the official Doctor Who Annual 2021. Written by River Song,
03:06it outlines the history of the mythical Dark Times and suggests that Zelin and Rakaia were Eternals.
03:11Regardless of whether this was the intention of the original script, a Doctor Who story that tackles
03:16gods who treat human beings as toys would be fantastic. I mean, it's a regular fallback plot across
03:21the Star Trek series, so isn't it about time that the Doctor had their own queue?
03:25Number 8. Scarrison The Zygons finally returned to Doctor Who
03:30in the 2010s, but when they did, their pet Scarrison was nowhere to be found. In their original story,
03:37Terror of the Zygons, this terrifying creature was key to the story. The Scarrison was revealed to be
03:42the actual Loch Ness Monster, and the Zygons themselves survived on the creature's milk.
03:47Loch Ness Monster Milk, a product that even the Scottish tourist board wouldn't even consider
03:52marketing. The realisation of the Scarrison on screen was one of those notoriously ropey
03:57Doctor Who monsters, so it's perhaps unsurprising that the Scarrison hasn't yet made an appearance
04:03in the new series. After all, it hardly fits with the Zygon invasion in version's political allegory
04:08of terrorism and immigration. However, if Legend of the Sea Devils can reinvent the Mirka as a
04:14terrifying sea creature, then they can do the same for the Scarrison. Perhaps a period adventure set
04:19around the time of the first Nessie sighting, where curious scientists accidentally awaken the Zygons
04:24under the loch a few decades early. Scotland is all too rarely visited in Doctor Who, so it is about
04:30time that it paid Nessie the Scarrison a visit. 7. The Axons
04:35The John Pertwee serial, The Claws of Axos, is a bit of an underrated classic. It's the first story by
04:41Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who would go on to co-create K9 and tackle some very timely concerns around
04:47energy. With the world facing an energy crisis, alien visitors land in the English home counties
04:52to offer clean, renewable energy to humanity. Of course, their gift comes at a price, and soon the Doctor
04:58has to team up with the Master to avert their dastardly plans, trapping them inside a time loop.
05:03The Axons are still stuck in that time loop on screen, though they've occasionally escaped to wreak havoc
05:08in two Big Finish audios, the second of which is to be released later this year. As humanity continues
05:14to discuss the financial and environmental costs of fuel, surely the Axons are primed for a comeback.
05:20It would surely be a foolish endeavour for the Axons to try the same grift twice, but humanity's never
05:26been great at learning from their history. It would take the Doctor to pop in and save us from our own
05:30errors once more. They're an incredibly striking-looking creation, though, sort of psychedelic
05:35golden gods. Their true form, all orange tendrils, would later be repainted to become
05:40crinoids, but more on those later. 6. Gods of Ragnarok
05:45In The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the Doctor and Ace visit the Psychic Circus, which has been
05:50taken over by the ancient gods of Ragnarok. These ancient beings crave entertainment and wear those
05:56in their employ down, demanding endless entertainment and new and more exciting and thrilling acts each
06:02time. The gods were clearly a metaphor for those higher up in the BBC at the time, when Doctor Who was
06:07on the way out. However, from a contemporary perspective, aren't they also a metaphor for
06:12the endless stream of TV talent shows? It's so crazy that during Russell T. Davies' first era,
06:17when Doctor Who was regularly pitted against shows like Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor,
06:22that he never considered writing a satire of those shows. Given how willing everyone was to play along
06:27with the reality show satire in Doctor Who's very first season, it's strange that they never attempted
06:32it. But then maybe that's why, the worry that to have a greatest show in the galaxy sequel would
06:36be too similar to Bad Wolf. So it's a good job RTD's coming back then.
06:41Number 5. Rutans
06:43The Sontarans' mortal enemies may look like balls of snot, but they're deadly shapeshifters
06:49with plenty of unrealised potential. While they've been name-checked in the new series,
06:54they've never actually appeared in an episode. However, they have appeared in multiple comic
06:58strips, novels, fan films and even video games. It's perhaps the Rutans' jellyfish-like appearance
07:04that has barred them from returning to the series after the horror of Fang Rock. How to effectively
07:09realise their appearance without being totally embarrassing probably makes Doctor Who's practical
07:13and visual effects team wake up in a cold sweat. However, the Rutans are shapeshifters.
07:19The horror of Fang Rock is essentially John Carpenter's The Thing in a lighthouse. No one's sure
07:24who's who as this deadly alien works their murderous way through the inhabitants of the lighthouse
07:28as they assess the strategic importance of planet Earth. While the Zygon invasion slash
07:34inversion has already done the shapeshifting political thriller, there's surely plenty of
07:38scope for another shapeshifter story in modern Doctor Who. Or perhaps, given Flux's epic space
07:43battles, the time is right to finally see what a Sontaran and Rutan war actually looks like.
07:49Number 4. The Wirren
07:51Stephen Moffat and Russell T Davies have both sang the praises of The Ark in Space over the years,
07:56so it's odd that there's never been a sequel. Perhaps they felt the pressure of following a
08:00story that has such a lauded position in the canon. It's a shame because the Wirren are suitably
08:05horrifying creations that could be realised to great effect with modern visual effects.
08:09The Wirren are human-sized insect creatures that breed by using cattle species to grow their eggs.
08:15In the Ark in Space, this is the crew of the Nerva beacon and is portrayed to horrifying effect
08:20with some of the most creative use of green bubble wrap that you'll ever see.
08:23It's so effective that a recent Bruce Willis film called Breach has practically the same plot,
08:29but couldn't come close to matching the horror, despite the slightly more advanced effects work
08:33and a higher age rating. Maybe this is key to why the Wirren haven't yet returned to the series,
08:39as any Doctor Who production team is wary of recreating the alchemy of those early Tom Baker
08:43stories. Regardless, these creepy-crawlies are long overdue a return.
08:48Number 3. Sutek
08:50Everyone forgets that the fourth episode is actually a bit rubbish, but Pyramids of Mars
08:54is a stone-cold Doctor Who classic. It pits the Doctor against an Egyptian god imprisoned on Mars
09:01and introduces the Assyrians, god-like aliens in the Doctor Who universe. There had been demonic
09:06aliens introduced in the Third Doctor era, but here was the show tackling the gods themselves.
09:11Sutek has never returned to the TV series, but one of his relations travelled with the Tenth Doctor in
09:17the comics. Gabriel Wolfe, who played Sutek in Pyramids of Mars, has returned to the series,
09:22playing the voice of the Beast in the Impossible Planet slash the Satan Pit. To date, however,
09:27no Sutek. Having the Doctor take on an Egyptian god would be an epic season finale, so it's strange
09:32that it's not happened yet. Now that the MCU is making Egyptology cool again with their Moon Knight
09:38series, maybe the Fourteenth Doctor will be taking on the Assyrians in a future episode. It would certainly
09:45push the show in a much-needed new direction, away from the alien invasion plots that have become
09:49overly familiar. Number 2, The Dream Lord. Arguably, The Dream Lord is the Valiard, the embodiment of
09:57the Doctor's worst impulses. However, his genesis is different, the product of spores that find their
10:02way into the TARDIS systems. The Dark Doctor is an incredibly compelling concept, so much so that the
10:08Matt Smith era tried it again with much less success in Neil Gaiman's difficult second story,
10:13Nightmare in Silver. It's odd that the Dream Lord hasn't returned in the series. There certainly appeared
10:18to be unfinished business at the end of Amy's Choice. The availability of Toby Jones needn't be a problem
10:23either, as you could have a different Dream Lord for each Doctor actor. We've had opportunities for
10:28the Doctor actors to play darker versions of themselves over the years since Amy's Choice, but nothing that's
10:34captured the Doctor's self-loathing and anxiety. It's strange that a story like Can You Hear Me,
10:39which was all about mental health, didn't reintroduce the Dream Lord as the embodiment of the Doctor's
10:44own anxieties and mental health concerns. Perhaps the introduction of the Fugitive Doctor put Paige to
10:50that idea, so for now the Dream Lord is still out there, waiting. Number 1, The Crinoid.
10:56The Seeds of Doom is an absolute cracker of a Tom Baker story. It begins by riffing on The Thing
11:01from Another World, long before John Carpenter and Kurt Russell did to great acclaim in 1982.
11:07After the Doctor and Sarah's Antarctic sojourn, they return to the UK to stop unhinged millionaire
11:12Harrison Chase from playing in his green cathedral and unleashing the terrifying crinoid upon the world.
11:19The crinoid are a great creation by Zygon creator Robert Banks-Stewart, carnivorous plant life that
11:25consume animal life. Their pods can transform other beings into plant life too, prompting the Doctor to
11:30recall that on planets where the crinoid take root, all animal life cease to exist.
11:35The crinoid have dug their tendrils into various bits of Doctor Who spin-off media,
11:40but haven't yet returned to the series. As plant-based diets have become increasingly popular
11:45in recent years, and with the return of Russell T Davies to the show, the time is surely right for
11:50a crinoid return. It's in RTD's wheelhouse to use an old Doctor Who monster to comment on our
11:55contemporary society, and a story about plants that eat humans feels relevant at a time where
12:00we're all questioning our impact on nature. And that concludes our list. If you have any
12:05other suggestions, then do let us know in the comments below, and while you're there,
12:09don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter
12:13and follow us there, at WhoCulture, and I can be found across various social medias just by
12:18searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself,
12:22goodbye, sweeties.
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