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Doctor Who meets Sherlock? Yep, that actually happened.
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00:00There are hundreds of monsters the Doctor has fought with throughout Doctor Who's run.
00:04Some are brilliant, some miss the mark, but some have the potential to be great,
00:08but fall victim to lousy story writing or running out of airtime for the episode.
00:13While most of the monsters the Doctor battles are all great in their own unique way,
00:17there are some that just seem to be wasted.
00:20So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Who Culture,
00:22here with 10 times Doctor Who wasted great villains.
00:26Number 10. The Whispermen
00:30The Whispermen were a group of featureless, human-like beings that appeared to serve the great intelligence.
00:36After kidnapping the Doctor's friends, they forced the 11th Doctor to travel to Trenzalore,
00:40the planet that lies as the Doctor's final grave.
00:43While the Whispermen looked amazing and sent chills down your spine every time they said one of their sinister rhymes or hissing,
00:49they didn't actually do a lot in the name of the Doctor.
00:52Having creatures as scary as them, it was expected that they would have a bigger role,
00:56especially after bringing the Doctor to his own grave.
00:59However, they were only there for pure plot convenience and tension between the Doctor and the other characters surrounding him.
01:05The biggest plot point they had in the episode was forcing the Doctor to say his own name in order to be able to open his own grave.
01:11As the Doctor panics, explaining why he cannot say his name,
01:14the Whispermen threaten him by stopping the hearts of Clara, Strax, Vastra and Jenny until he says his name.
01:20However, in a little disappointing plot twist, it was a psychic echo of River Song who said his name,
01:25causing the doors to open.
01:27Number 9. Davros
01:29The Daleks have always been the Doctor's greatest enemy,
01:33constantly coming back to cause havoc and trauma in the Doctor's life.
01:37It was expected that the man who created the killer machines would be the ultimate final showdown for the Doctor,
01:43as Davros single-handedly ruined the lives of many people throughout the universe with his creations.
01:48Davros makes his first appearance in New Who during the Stolen Earth and Journey's end.
01:54However, disappointingly, Davros was reduced to being the Dalek's pet,
01:57having no power or control over his creations.
02:00Throughout the episodes, he belittled the Doctor,
02:03claiming how he turned his companions into weapons and talking about a prophecy which would never come true.
02:08All it took was an overpowered Donner to flick a few switches to destroy him,
02:12an extremely disappointing end to what could have been the best villain that came out of Doctor Who.
02:17We meet Davros again during Peter Capaldi's reign,
02:20as he realises it was he who created Davros to become the evil genius he became.
02:26The episode had potential and sees Davros manipulate the Doctor into using his regeneration energy to heal him,
02:32extending his own life all while infusing every Dalek on Skaro with energy.
02:36It's not until the Doctor figures out the Daleks have a concept of mercy that Davros somehow put a tiny bit of compassion into the Daleks.
02:44Davros has always been said to be a crazy madman and believes that removing emotions makes you stronger.
02:50So to have the character become easily beatable and compassionate
02:54wastes the great potential we could have gotten from the character.
02:58Number 8. Henry Van Staten
03:00We were introduced to Henry Van Staten when the Doctor and Rose found themselves in an alien museum.
03:06As a billionaire, Van Staten was intelligent but very arrogant and selfish,
03:11constantly treating his staff horribly and seeing them as expendable,
03:15to the point of mind-wiping them when they are fired or resigned so they could not share his secrets.
03:20Van Staten was obsessed with collecting all things alien,
03:24finding himself in the presence of a broken Dalek.
03:26When he realises the Doctor himself was an alien, he quickly tortured and examined him,
03:31making plans to use his binary vascular system in a marketing venture.
03:36Despite the Doctor's pleas about the dangers of a Dalek,
03:39Van Staten continued to ignore this and ordered his staff not to shoot it,
03:43as he saw the Dalek more important than the lives of his staff.
03:46Eventually, he agreed for the Doctor to stop the Dalek, but only for his own protection.
03:51Henry Van Staten could have been a brilliant villain in the show with a much bigger impact.
03:56If he wasn't such a coward at the end.
03:58Although the greater villain in the episode was the Dalek itself,
04:01having an episode centred around Van Staten and his obsession with alien technology,
04:06hunting down the Doctor would have been an excellent episode to air on the show.
04:11Number 7. The Sontarans.
04:14The Season 4 two-parter reintroduced the Sontarans into the Doctor Who universe,
04:19and was an incredible disappointment.
04:21The classic Who monster was used as comedy relief throughout the episodes,
04:24with the Doctor throwing many unfunny one-liners at them,
04:28and how their only personality trait is that they love to die in the name of war.
04:32The Sontarans used to be a fearsome threat in the 80s,
04:35but now they're just being used as dumb comedy relief,
04:38with no added value to any storyline they have been thrown into.
04:42When the Sontarans were reintroduced in the Sontaran stratagem and the poison sky,
04:46we see their master plan as they intend to poison Earth with Atmos,
04:50in order to create the perfect breeding ground for clones to fight in wars.
04:54This would have been a great storyline for the classic monsters if it was done right.
04:58It felt very underwhelming when a random scientific genius was the one who ended up
05:03defeating the entire Sontaran race,
05:06as he conveniently figured out how to transfer the Doctor off the Sontaran ship,
05:10while simultaneously switching places with him before blowing up the entire fleet.
05:14The Sontarans deserved a better storyline and reintroduction
05:18after being so loved during the classic Who era.
05:22Number 6. Lucy Saxon
05:25Lucy Saxon was the wife of Harold Saxon, who was revealed to be the master.
05:29Saxon had the same sadistic and sinister ideology as the master showed,
05:33as he appreciated his power and sense of morality, or lack of.
05:37Even when Lucy witnessed the master killing the American president,
05:41she showed no signs of fear or shock and remained calm throughout the master's reign
05:45of destroying and taking over the planet.
05:48She even enjoyed watching the chocolate fane kill one-tenth of the human race
05:52as part of the master's sadistic plan.
05:54However, during the year that never was,
05:56Lucy Saxon had a change of heart due to the abuse that she received from the master himself.
06:01This prompted her character to join the world when they started to chant the word Doctor,
06:06and she fatally shot the master.
06:07The change Lucy experienced felt out of character at the time,
06:11as she witnessed the master murder and abuse the people who surrounded them both,
06:15plus take over the entire planet.
06:17It's no surprise that someone as sadistic as the master turns out to be an abusive person,
06:22but the team-up between Lucy and the master could have been Doctor Who's version of Bonnie and Clyde.
06:27Number 5. Sycorax
06:29The Sycorax attempts to invade Earth on Christmas Day,
06:33while a very newly regenerated doctor is out of action.
06:36Rose and her family are forced to fight the aliens,
06:39with the help of Harriet Jones, who was the Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time.
06:43With the Doctor out of action,
06:44the Sycorax should have been able to easily take over the planet,
06:47though they seem to have procrastinated until the Doctor felt better to fight the leader in a sword fight,
06:53ultimately defeating him by throwing a satsuma to a button,
06:56which caused the leader to fall off his ship.
06:58As the first villains in the Tenth Doctor era,
07:01they seem to be very easy to defeat,
07:03with the Doctor literally besting them in under five minutes.
07:07Even without the Doctor,
07:08Rose and her family seem to easily dodge the attacks the Sycorax planned,
07:12causing them to be one of the weaker villains we've been introduced to in the Who universe.
07:16There could have been a fully-fleshed alien invasion of the Sycorax,
07:20but instead they were watered down to easily beatable villains.
07:24Number 4. The Beast
07:26Doctor Who introduced one of the most feared monsters in human history onto the show,
07:31the Devil himself.
07:33The Beast claimed to have existed at the very beginning of time,
07:36taking on the classic image of a red entity with horns.
07:39After his encounter with the Beast,
07:41even the Doctor struggled to acknowledge the idea of the Beast truly being the Devil,
07:45showing that the Doctor also fears some sort of religious devilish creature.
07:49The Beast could control the minds of victims,
07:51possessing Toby and the Ood through a hive mind,
07:54causing them to do all the dirty work for him,
07:57freeing him from the pit he was imprisoned in.
07:59All the Beast does during the episode is play with the Doctor's mind,
08:02making him believe that his friends and Rose will be killed.
08:05Although religion is a complicated subject to delve into,
08:08especially in the world of Who,
08:10where many religions happen all at once,
08:12witnessing the Beast at full power would have been one of the biggest stories in Doctor Who history,
08:17as the Doctor would have found himself face to face against the greatest enemy in the universe.
08:22In the end, it all came down to dumb luck in how the Doctor defeated the Beast.
08:26By destroying the Jars,
08:28it was only the Beast's physical form that was defeated,
08:30but not his mind.
08:32So the Beast could still be out there,
08:33manipulating and torturing people.
08:35We could have seen some great episodes of the Doctor having to fight the Beast
08:39due to it only being alive through the power of storytelling and an idea.
08:43Number 3.
08:45The Boneless.
08:46The Boneless were a unique monster that were introduced in Season 8,
08:50that had the ability to make three-dimensional things into two-dimensional,
08:54including people.
08:55The creatures were able to shrink the TARDIS,
08:58trapping the Doctor in there and giving a prime example of how powerful a threat they could be.
09:02Although there was a lot of potential for these monsters,
09:05they didn't do much during the episode,
09:07apart from stealing energy from the TARDIS and killing some innocent bystanders.
09:11These monsters had the potential to be as interesting as the Weeping Angels or the Silence,
09:16due to their unique creation and backstory,
09:19but it sadly wasn't meant to be.
09:21In order to defeat these monsters,
09:22the Doctor used the Boneless' power against them,
09:25managing to power the TARDIS and causing him to cast them back into their own universe.
09:30Although it sounds complicated,
09:31all the Doctor needed was his trusty sonic screwdriver to cast an energy field,
09:35a way that seemed all too easy for the powerful creatures that they are.
09:40Number 2.
09:41The Shakri.
09:42There are not many villains we come across that the Doctor fears,
09:46but when we do, they're usually the best ones.
09:49The Shakri were a race that the Doctor believed to be the stuff of legends.
09:53He was taught at a young age that these monsters were the ruthless pest controllers of the universe.
09:58In a great lead-up, the episode The Power of Three spent its time setting up the Shakri's plan
10:03by slowly invading Earth for over a year with mysterious cubes that came out of nowhere.
10:08Their plan was to stop the hearts of all humans in order to wipe them out of existence.
10:12Not only is it massively disappointing when we finally saw the Shakri,
10:17but their plan fell apart when the Doctor did some easy magic with the screwdriver
10:20and reversed the attack on Earth.
10:22The Shakri were a cameo in their own episode,
10:25as we saw them for all of about 5 or 10 minutes before they disappeared into thin air.
10:30These could have been one of the most complicated and biggest threats in Matt Smith's era,
10:35but they were wasted by what felt like lazy writing just to show how powerful and mighty the Doctor is.
10:41Number 1.
10:42The Wire.
10:44The Wire was an energy-based being that took the essences and souls of people in Great Britain
10:49in 1953 during the time of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.
10:54The Doctor was never able to know what the Wire's true form was,
10:57as its physical body had been destroyed before he arrived.
11:00But what did The Wire actually do?
11:02It sucked off people's faces, causing them to become faceless and mindless,
11:06with their real faces appearing on TV screens yelling out for help.
11:10The Wire was hoping to use the energy it sucked from people to manifest itself into a physical form once more.
11:16We learned at one point in the episode that The Wire was sentenced to death,
11:19but survived its execution, escaping to Earth and preserving itself through television.
11:24With its catchphrase, I'm hungry, The Wire doesn't do much throughout the episode,
11:29apart from suck people's faces off and traumatise a poor man who was forced to help in order for him to survive.
11:34There seems to be a theme throughout Doctor Who that very complex villains have a very simple way of being defeated.
11:40The Doctor ends up trapping The Wire on a Betamax and taping over it so it would remain trapped for all eternity.
11:46And that concludes our list.
11:49If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know in the comments below.
11:52And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
11:56Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there at WhoCulture,
11:59and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:03I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of Riversong herself,
12:07goodbye, sweeties.
12:08I'll see you next time.
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