List of Doctor Who villains

This is a list of villains from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. For other, related lists, see below.

A

Helen A

Helen A, seen in The Happiness Patrol (1988),^[1] is the ruler of a human colony on Terra Alpha. She was intended to be a caricature of then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In 2010, Sylvester McCoy told the Sunday Times: "Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered."

Abzorbaloff

The Abzorbaloff is a monster designed by nine-year-old William Grantham of Colchester, Essex for a "Design a Doctor Who Monster" competition held by Blue Peter.^[2]

The competition was announced in July 2005, and received 43,920 entries. These were judged by Blue Peter editor Richard Marson, presenter Gethin Jones, Doctor Who producer Russell T Davies and Tenth Doctor David Tennant. The first prize for the competition was to have the monster appear in an episode of Doctor Who. Tennant announced the winner on Blue Peter on 17 August 2005. Conditions of the competition meant that the monster had to be able to be made from prosthetics and not require CGI.

Russell T Davies revealed on the Doctor Who Confidential episode "New World of Who" that Grantham imagined the Abzorbaloff to be the size of a double-decker bus, so was initially disappointed to see the final size of his creation. However, Grantham's design had not included size specifications (though the remains of the monster's victims on and within his body hinted at his being huge) and a larger size would not have fit the criteria of the competition unless the monster were superimposed on footage later on a larger scale. Ultimately, CGI was used for some shots of the talking faces on the Abzorbaloff.

Appearing in the episode "Love & Monsters", the Abzorbaloff, played by Peter Kay, is a creature that absorbs other living beings into his body with a simple touch. In doing so, the Abzorbaloff makes his victims part of himself, adding their memories and knowledge to his own. The victims retain their identity and consciousness for at least several weeks after absorption, during which time their faces can be seen embedded in his flesh, but eventually, those too are eliminated as they are fully absorbed.

Animus

The Animus is an alien intelligence from an unknown planet which lands on the planet Vortis and first appeared in the serial The Web Planet.^[3]

The Animus returns or is mentioned in several spin-off stories. In the Missing Adventure Twilight of the Gods by Christopher Bulis, the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria return to Vortis and encounter a seed of the Animus which had survived. The New Adventure All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane identifies the Animus with the Great Old One Lloigor from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. An article by Russell T Davies in the Doctor Who Annual 2006 says that the "Greater Animus perished" in the Time War, "and its Carsenome [sic] Walls fell into dust." In the 2013 comic book series Prisoners of Time, the First Doctor, Vicki, Ian and Barbara encounter the Animus on Earth, where it has travelled with help from a mysterious figure who kidnaps the Doctor's companions.

Azal

Azal is a Dæmon from the planet Dæmos, who terrorises Devil's End in the Third Doctor story The Dæmons.^[4]

B

Baltazar

Baltazar, Scourge of the Galaxy, serves as the main antagonist of the animated serial The Infinite Quest.

Beast

The Beast^[5] is an ancient being that has been trapped for billions of years in a pit at the centre of the planet orbiting a black hole. Voiced by Gabriel Woolf, he appears in "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit".

Beep the Meep

Bennett

Black Guardian

Margaret Blaine

See: Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen

Bok

Bok is the gargoyle servant of Azal in the Third Doctor story The Dæmons. Made of stone, he is bulletproof. He reverts to his statue form when Azal is defeated.^[4]

Borad

Borusa

BOSS

BOSS, or Biomorphic Organisational Systems Supervisor, is a supercomputer that appears in The Green Death (1973) and voiced by John Dearth.^[6]

C

Signora Rosanna Calvierri

Signora Rosanna Calvierri is a Saturnyne who flees the destruction of her planet along with her offspring, as seen in "The Vampires of Venice".

Taren Capel

Max Capricorn

Max Capricorn appears in the Tenth Doctor story "Voyage of the Damned". He is the owner of a luxury spaceship cruiseliner company and a vengeful cyborg, who survives through a large metallic suit. He planned to crash the Titanic cruise liner into earth, in order to frame his former colleagues and retire in luxury.

The Captain

The Captain is a space pirate who appears in the serial The Pirate Planet. He is a cyborg, with half of his body covered in robotic prosthetics, and has a pet robot parrot, named Polyphase Avitron.

Matron Casp

See: Sisters of Plenitude

Lady Cassandra

Lady Cassandra was voiced by Zoë Wanamaker, and was largely computer-generated,^[7] although a physical prop was also used on set.

The Ninth Doctor first encountered Cassandra in the episode "The End of the World". She returned in "New Earth", which took place 23 years after "The End of the World". In the year 5 billion, Cassandra is the last full-blooded human alive - over millions of years the rest of humanity's descendants gradually interbred with various other alien races. Like celebrities who try to maintain their appearances with plastic surgery, but taken to a ridiculous extreme, by the time of Earth's destruction Cassandra is little more than a flat piece of skin stretched across a frame, with eyes and a mouth in the middle (her brain is in a jar at the base of the frame).

Caven

Caven is the ruthless leader of the titular gang in the Second Doctor story The Space Pirates.

Celestial Toymaker

Cessair of Diplos

Cessair was a notorious criminal on her home planet, having been convicted of several murders and the theft of the Great Seal of Diplos, and appears in The Stones of Blood.

Harrison Chase

Harrison Chase is an eccentric millionaire with an obsession for botany who appears in The Seeds of Doom.

Mavic Chen

See: The Daleks' Master Plan

Mavic Chen is the Guardian of the Solar System in the year 4000 AD and a collaborator with the Daleks.

Matron Cofelia

Matron Cofelia is a nanny of the Five-Straighten, Classabindi Nursery Fleet, Intergalactic Class, given the task of looking after babies of the Adipose, after their breeding planet was lost, in "Partners in Crime". Matron Cofelia is portrayed by Sarah Lancashire.

Chief Caretaker

The Chief Caretaker, featured in Paradise Towers (1987), serves the intelligence Kroagnon. He sanctions the robotic Cleaners' killings, but loses control of the situation and is killed by Kroagnon for his body.

The Collector

The Collector, in The Sun Makers (1977), played by Henry Woolf, is the finance-obsessed Usurian overlord of the humans on Pluto.

George Cranleigh

D

Davros

De Flores

De Flores is a Neo-Nazi, based in South America, who aims to establish a Fourth Reich, aided by a powerful Time Lord weapon, known as the Nemesis, as seen in Silver Nemesis (1988).

Destroyer

The Destroyer is an other dimensional entity summoned by the sorceress Morgaine in Battlefield (1989) to aid her in defeating the Seventh Doctor.

The design for the Destroyer is based on a theatrical devil's mask, modified so that an actor could speak through it. The cloak that covers its chainmail armour disguises the mechanical parts needed for the costume's special effects. Script writer Ben Aaronovitch originally intended the Destroyer to start off as a businessman who gradually became more demonic as he fell under Morgaine's spell, but this was time-consuming and expensive, so he stays in one form throughout.

Lucius Petrus Dextrus

Lucius Petrus Dextrus was the chief Augur of Pompeii, who took charge of a Pyrovile invasion during the time of Versuvius' eruption. He, like many others of the Pyrovile's victims was given the ability to see into the future. However unlike the rest of the victims he knew about the Pyrovile's intentions and intended to help them. He appears in "The Fires of Pompeii"

John Lumic

John Lumic is a physically disabled genius and megalomaniac who was the head of Cybus Industries on a parallel Earth. Lumic first appears in "Rise of the Cybermen" and was played by actor Roger Lloyd-Pack.

Dream Lord

Appearing in the episode "Amy's Choice", an individual calling himself the Dream Lord (Toby Jones) claims to offer the Doctor and his companions a choice between two life-threatening scenarios, for them to determine which is real. After realising that both realities were false, the Doctor reveals that the 'Dream Lord' was a manifestation of his own dark impulses, manifested by a psychic projection.^[8]

E

Editor

The Editor (Simon Pegg) is the mysterious manager of Satellite 5, an orbital news station around Earth broadcasting across the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire in 200,000. He appears in "The Long Game".

Eldrad

Eldrad (Stephen Thorne) is a silicon-based lifeform from the planet Kastria.

Empress of the Racnoss

The Empress of the Racnoss featured in "The Runaway Bride". (2006)^[9] Her appearance resembles that of a huge red humanoid spider. She was portrayed by Sarah Parish.^[9]

Eve

Eve is an android resembling a woman built by Hr'oln, last of the Cirranins in the novel The Last Dodo.

F

Family of Blood

The Family of Blood are a family who appear in the episodes "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" (2007) in which they are the titular entity. They are incorporeal, green telepathic creatures and refer to each other by their relationship followed by "of Mine"; "Father/Husband of Mine", "Mother/Wife of Mine", "Son/Brother of Mine" (who appears to assume leadership) and "Sister/Daughter of Mine".

Fendahl

The Fendahl is an entity that devoured life itself. It appears in the Fourth Doctor serial "Image of the Fendahl". It originated on the fifth planet of Earth's solar system, which the ancient Time Lords placed in a time loop in an attempt to imprison the creature. However, the Fendahl escaped and, in the form of a humanoid skull, was buried under volcanic rock on prehistoric.

The Fendahl has also appeared in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Taking of Planet 5 by Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham, where a group of Time Lords from the Eighth Doctor's future attempt to release it from the time loop trapping Planet Five, only to learn that an even deadlier life-form had evolved inside the loop; the Maemovore, a devourer of concept itself. The Fendahl also returns in the Kaldor City series of audio plays and the Time Hunter novella Deus Le Volt by Jon de Burgh Miller.

Fenric

Fenric is a being described by the Seventh Doctor as "evil from the dawn of time", a malevolent force that survived the clash of energies present at the birth of the universe.

The Virgin New Adventures novel All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane equates Fenric with the Cthulhu Mythos entity Hastur the Unspeakable and claims him to be a Great Old One. Fenric and his Haemovores also appear in the 2012 Big Finish Productions audio story, Gods and Monsters.

Mr Finch

Mr Finch (Anthony Head) as seen in "School Reunion", is an alias for Brother Lassar, the leader of a group of Krillitanes.

In issues #3-#6 the IDW ongoing Doctor Who comic by Tony Lee, Finch reappears as the prosecution in a Shadow Proclamation case against the Doctor, where he has infiltrated the Shadow Proclamation as part of a plan to make the Krillitane Empire stronger.

His first name of "Lucas" is given on the Deffry Vale School website. According to an on-line interview with Head, Finch's original name in the script was "Hector", but this had to be changed when a check found a real headmaster named "Hector Finch".

Florence Finnegan

Florence Finnegan (played by Anne Reid) is the name assumed by the Plasmavore who is hiding from the Judoon in the Royal Hope Hospital in London when it is transported to the Moon in "Smith and Jones".

Miss Foster

See Matron Cofelia.

G

Gods of Ragnarok

The three Gods of Ragnarok appear in the 1988 story The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Apparently a trio of beings of godly power, they use lesser beings for sport in their Dark Circus, allowing them to live as long as they fulfill the Gods' need to be amused.

The Virgin New Adventures novel Conundrum by Steve Lyons reveals that the Gods of Ragnarok created the Land of Fiction.

The Great Intelligence

Count Grendel

Count Grendel of Gracht is a Knight of the nobility of the planet Tara and the Lord of Castle Gracht, his sole on-screen appearance is in the Fourth Doctor serial, The Androids of Tara, part of the Season 16 quest for the Key to Time. The character was played by Peter Jeffrey.

He also appears in the spin-off short story The Trials of Tara by Paul Cornell.

H

Yvonne Hartman

Yvonne Hartman
Doctor Who character
First appearance	Army of Ghosts (2006)
Last appearance	Before the Fall (2017)
Portrayed by	Tracy-Ann Oberman
Information
Affiliated	Torchwood
Species	Human
Home planet	Earth
Home era	20th-21st centuries

Yvonne Hartman, seen in "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday", was the director and CEO of Torchwood One, the London branch of the Torchwood Institute, located in Canary Wharf. She is portrayed by the actress Tracy-Ann Oberman. In September 2015, it was announced that Oberman had agreed to reprise her role as Yvonne for the Big Finish Torchwood audio drama One Rule, which was released in December 2015. In September 2016, it was announced Oberman would be reprising her role once more for another audio drama, Before the Fall.

Appearances

• Army of Ghosts
• Doomsday
• One Rule
• Before the Fall

J

Jagrafess

The Jagrafess, or The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe, is a gigantic, gelatinous creature similar to a slug in shape. It appears in the episode "The Long Game". The Jagrafess was the supervisor of the mysterious and sinister Editor on board Satellite 5, a space station that broadcast news across the whole of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire of the year 200,000.

In the episode "Bad Wolf", taking place on Satellite 5 a century after "The Long Game", it was revealed that the Badwolf Corporation was behind the Jagrafess, and that its masters were the Daleks.

Sharaz Jek

Sharaz Jek is a genius robotocist and partner of businessman Trau Morgus. He appears in "The Caves of Androzani".

K

Victor Kennedy

Lord Kiv

Madame Kovarian

Madame Kovarian (played by Frances Barber) is a woman who wears a patch over her right eye, and repeatedly appears before Amy Pond through 'hatches' throughout the first half of Series 6. Until her name is revealed in "A Good Man Goes to War" she is credited as "Eye Patch Lady".

L

Professor Richard Lazarus

Professor Richard Lazarus, as seen in "The Lazarus Experiment" (2007), is a 76-year-old human scientist using sonic technology to enable rejuvenation funded by Harold Saxon. He is obsessed with immortality.

Light

Light is an extremely powerful, mentally unstable, almost God-like alien being in Ghost Light (1989).

Lilith

Lilith leads the Carrionite witches in "The Shakespeare Code" (2007).

Linx

Linx is a Sontaran Commander in the Fifth Sontaran Battle Fleet, appearing in The Time Warrior.

M

Malus

The Malus appears in the Fifth Doctor story The Awakening (1984). At one point the Doctor describes this demonic entity as "a living being re-engineered as an instrument of war."

Mara

The Master

Master of the Land of Fiction

The Master of the Land of Fiction in the Second Doctor serial The Mind Robber, is a human writer from the year 1926 who was drawn to the Land of Fiction and forced to continuously write stories which were enacted within that realm. The Master's name is never revealed, but he does identify himself as the writer of "The Adventures of Captain Jack Harkaway" in The Ensign, a magazine for boys; whether he invented the name after an encounter with Captain Jack Harkness has never been addressed.

The Master of the Land of Fiction should not be confused with the Doctor's nemesis, The Master

Mawdryn

Meddling Monk

Meglos

Morbius

In The Brain of Morbius, Morbius is a renegade Time Lord from Gallifrey. Morbius was eventually executed by his fellow Time Lords for his crimes and his body was dispersed. However, his brain was taken away by the fanatical scientist, Solon, who is planning the resurrection of Morbius.

Morgaine

Morgaine, seen in Battlefield (1989), is a legendary Arthurian sorceress from another dimension, who recognises the Seventh Doctor as Merlin, whom she previously battled in his personal future.

N

Nimrod

Nobody No-One

O

Omega

P

Lady Peinforte

Lady Peinforte, from the Stuart era, sought to gain control of the Nemesis, a powerful Time Lord weapon, as seen in Silver Nemesis (1988).

Pied Piper

The Pied Piper is based on the Pied Piper of Hamelin legends. The Pied Piper first appears in the comic strip Challenge of the Piper. Another Pied Piper appears in The Sarah Jane Adventures serial The Day of the Clown.

Prisoner Zero

Prisoner Zero is the designation of a shape-shifting alien resembling a giant viperfish in its natural form, which appears in the Doctor Who episode "The Eleventh Hour".

R

Rani

Rassilon

Luke Rattigan

Luke Rattigan is one of the main antagonists from "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky". Luke worked in league with the Sontarans to conquer Earth. He is played by the actor Ryan Sampson.

Restac

Restac is a Silurian general first appearing in "The Hungry Earth".

S

Sabbath

Salamander

Ramón Salamander (portrayed by Patrick Troughton) is a ruthless Mexican-born politician who attempts to take control of the United Zones Organisation, a supranational World government that exists in 2030. He appeared in The Enemy of the World.

Scaroth

Scaroth is the last of the Jagaroth appearing in the serial City of Death.

Shadow

The Shadow appears in the 1979 Fourth Doctor story The Armageddon Factor; he is a servant of the Black Guardian, and at least partially responsible for a war between the planets Atrios and Zeos.

Sheriff of Nottingham

The Sheriff of Nottingham is based on the Sheriff from the Robin Hood legends and appears in "Robot of Sherwood".

Sil

Sisters of Plenitude

The Sisters of Plenitude are humanoid cats, also known as Catkind, who dressed like nuns in white and worked in the New Earth Hospital and bred living humans that they tested on to find cures for ever more deadly diseases. The Sisters appeared in "New Earth" (2006). In the episode "Gridlock" (2007), the last surviving Sister, Novice Hame, reappears, having received penance for her sins.

Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen

Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen is a member of the nefarious Slitheen crime family from Raxicoricofallapatorius. She appropriated the identity and appearance of Margaret Blaine. She first appears in "Aliens of London".

Jocrassa Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen

Jocrassa Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen, a relative of Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day and Sip Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen, poses as Joseph Green, MP for Hartley Dale and Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on the Monitoring of Sugar Standards in Exported Confectionery in "Aliens of London" and "World War Three" (2005).

Josiah Samuel Smith

Before the events of Ghost Light a being called Light launched a survey expedition to catalogue all forms on the planet Earth. Josiah Samuel Smith was a member of the crew of Light's ship and mutinied against Light after he went into hibernation.

Solomon

Solomon is a humanoid pirate who appears in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship".

Mehendri Solon

Mehendri Solon is a human physician and scientist of great renown, and a follower of the Time Lord tyrant Morbius in The Brain of Morbius. The Past Doctor Adventures novel Warmonger by Terrance Dicks depicts Solon's earlier life as a follower of Morbius, and shows how he saved his brain.

Henry van Statten

Henry van Statten is an American villain who appeared in the Ninth Doctor episode "Dalek", played by Corey Johnson. Van Statten has been collecting extraterrestrial artifacts, which he keeps inside a privately owned bunker called the Vault below ground in Utah near Salt Lake City. Van Statten was directly responsible for the deaths of approximately 200 personnel after he found a Dalek, which killed all said personnel. Van Statten's assistant, Diana Goddard (Anna-Louise Plowman), turned against him and staged a coup by firing him from owning his company and erasing his memory so he can't recollect what happened.

Sutekh

Sutekh, played by Gabriel Woolf, is a member of an alien race called the Osirans and first appears in Pyramids of Mars. Sutekh has also appeared in two Faction Paradox audio dramas from Magic Bullet Productions. Sutekh returns in the second volume of The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield.

Skagra

Skagra is the main antagonist of the unfinished story "Shada". Played by Christopher Neame in the original version and voiced by Andrew Sachs in its later remake as a Big Finish audio play, he is a scientific genius who plans to forcefully merge every mind in the Universe into a single omnipotent entity, with the aid of a machine known as the Sphere. Although very little is known about his identity, K-9 does reveal at the end of the Big Finish version that he is from the planet Dronid.

T

Tegana

Tegana the Warlord, seen in Marco Polo, accompanies Marco Polo on his caravan to Peking in 1289.

The Trickster

Timewyrm

U

The Unicorn

The Unicorn is the titular pseudonym of a jewel thief in "The Unicorn and the Wasp", who masqueraded as an invited guest, Robina Redmond, in order to steal the Firestone from Lady Clemency Eddison.

V

Valeyard

Tobias Vaughn

Tobias Vaughn appears in The Invasion (1968). He is the head of International Electromatics, and he aids the Cybermen invasion of Earth, although he plans to double-cross the Cybermen.

Vaughn returns in a completely artificial body in the New Adventure Original Sin.

Graff Vynda-K

The Graff Vynda-K appears in The Ribos Operation (1978). He is a deposed, tyrannical ruler whose brother overthrew him from the Levithian throne whilst he was fighting with the Cyrrhenic Empire.

W

WOTAN

An acronym for Will Operating Thought ANalogue (the W was pronounced as a V), this malevolent supercomputer resides in the Post Office Tower in London and appears in the 1966 First Doctor story The War Machines by Ian Stuart Black (based upon an idea by Dr Kit Pedler).

For the first three episodes of the serial, the voice of WOTAN was uncredited, with the cast listing merely adding "and WOTAN". This was the only time a character was credited and not its operator or actor. WOTAN is the only character in the programme's history to refer to the main character as "Doctor Who" rather than the more conventional "Doctor".

War Chief

The War Chief is a renegade Time Lord who assists a group of alien warriors in the 1969 serial The War Games.

The book Legions of Death posits an explanation for the War Chief's survival after his apparent execution whereby, although mortally wounded, he fled and regenerated.^[10]

Terrance Dicks, co-writer of The War Games continued the story of the War Chief in the 1991 Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Exodus and also used the character in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Players.

Weng-Chiang

Weng-Chiang, whose real name is Magnus Greel, is the former Minister of Justice of the 51st century Supreme Alliance, responsible for the deaths of 100,000 enemies of the state, earning him the epithet "the Butcher of Brisbane". He appears in the 1977 serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Greel fled to 19th century China by means of time cabinet, taking The Peking Homunculus with him.

Consequences of Greel's time travel are explored in the spin-off Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Shadow of Weng-Chiang by David A. McIntee. Greel is also mentioned in Simon A. Forward's Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Emotional Chemistry, which is partly set in the 51st century.

Greel's days as The Minister of Justice are explored in the 2012 prequel audio story The Butcher of Brisbane.

X

Queen Xanxia

Xoanon

Xoanon is a malevolent artificial intelligence encountered by the Fourth Doctor in The Face of Evil (1977). Xoanon was inadvertently created by the Doctor on a previous visit to its unnamed planet centuries prior, when he had programmed the computer belonging to an expedition that had crashed on the planet. The Doctor forgot to wipe his personality print from the computer's data core, and as a result the computer developed multiple personalities, half of them based on the Doctor himself.

Y

Professor Yana

Z

Professor Zaroff

Professor Zaroff is a mad scientist who plans to destroy the world in the 1967 Second Doctor story The Underwater Menace.

He is fondly recalled by Doctor Who fans as one of the most over-the-top villains in the entire history of the show. Particularly well remembered is his cry of "Nothing in the world can stop me now!", which (due to actor Joseph Furst's German accent) was pronounced as "Nuzzing in Ze vurld can ztop me now!" Only two of the four episodes from this story survive, but the surviving material includes that infamous line.^[11]

Zodin (the Terrible)

The Doctor encountered the Terrible Zodin on a number of untelevised occasions. She is mentioned in The Five Doctors. Iris Wildthyme also claims to have met her.

The novel Cold Fusion mentions Zodin being involved in an adventure which caused the Doctor to interact with multiple incarnations of himself. Zodin is also mentioned in the novels Legacy, The Colony of Lies and Millennial Rites.

See also

• List of Doctor Who supporting characters
• List of Doctor Who henchmen
• List of Doctor Who monsters and aliens
• List of Doctor Who robots
• List of Doctor Who historical characters
• List of Torchwood minor characters
• List of Torchwood monsters and aliens
• List of The Sarah Jane Adventures minor characters
• List of The Sarah Jane Adventures monsters and aliens

References

External links

• The Bumper Book of Doctor Who Monsters, Villains & Alien Species