Today sees the premiere of a new series of Doctor Who on both BBC 1 and BBC America, with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor getting a new companion in Pearl Mackie’s Bill Potts.
Over the years, The Doctor has defeated the Daleks and Cybermen over and over again, but there are also lots of other villains and monsters that he has gotten the better of, which newer fans will not have heard of.
To that end, we thought it would be fun to look at 10 of our favourite monsters and villains from Doctor Who’s 53-year history, which we’d like to see return at some point in the show’s future.
1 The Rani
The Rani was another rival Time Lord or time lady who was played by the late Kate O’ Mara. She was a disgraced scientist with such intense interest in the sciences that morality was low down on her priorities.
Rani has been known to enslave planets such as Miasimia Goria in order to have a ready supply of experimental subjects and a place to carry out her experiments uninterrupted.
Her main scientific interests are bio-chemistry. Rani was banished from the planet Gallifrey when her lab mice grew to an enormous size and ate the President’s cat.
During the original run of the series, Rani was meant as a recurring character in much the same way as the Master, but she only ever made two appearances on the show in The Mark Of The Rani (1985) and Time and The Rani (1987).
She also appeared as the main villain in the 1993 Children In Need Doctor Who short Dimensions In Time.
The Rani was recently given an adventure of her own by Big Finish who have been doing outstanding work with classic Doctor Who and New Doctor Who audio adventures.
We think The Rani would be a good villain to bring back because it was hinted that she and The Doctor had somewhat of a romantic relationship prior to her banishment from Gallifrey.
Although she came to Doctor Who towards the end of the classic series, she made a definite impression and an updated version of her would make for some interesting adventures for the modern series of Doctor Who.
2 The Sea Devils
First introduced in 1972, The Sea Devils made a number of appearances during the Third Doctor’s era and last appeared with the fifth Doctor Who.
Closely related to the Silurians, The Sea Devils are also a race that inhabited ancient earth and were brought out of hibernation. Though unlike the land-dwelling Siluarians, The Sea Devils lived beneath earth’s oceans.
The Sea Devils would be great to bring back and could well be paired up with the redesigned Silurians for a sequel adventure to 1989’s Warriors Of The Deep.
Much like the Silurians, The Sea Devils have many cells in hibernation so they’d be easy for the writers to bring back.
3 Sil
His first and only appearance was in 1985.
Sil was the delegate from the Galatron Mining Corporation. In this role he took great pleasure in extorting the natives of the mining planet Varos. He had them mining Zeiton-7 ore for a rock-bottom price.
A native of Thoros Beta, Sil took great pleasure in watching the torture that was dished out in his punishment cubicles.
Having failed to rig the Ore market Sil moved back to Thoros Beta where he was assumed killed after King Yrcanos’s assault on Crozier’s laboratory.
We never actually saw Sil die, which means he could likely still be around.
Sil was brilliantly played by Nabill Shaban who gave the character a little bit of a Hannibal Lector vibe.
4 The Sensorites
This species of telepaths’ first and only appearance was in a first Doctor adventure back in 1964.
They had apparently kidnapped and brainwashed a crew of Earth scientists, which they eventually drove mad.
The Doctor and his tardis crew visited the Sensorite homeworld and learned that previous Earth expeditions had tried to exploit the Sense-Sphere’s mineral reserves, which is why the Sensorites were doing what they were.
After the Doctor helped them uncover the treachery within their race, The Sensorites agreed to let their remaining human captives go.
The Sensorites haven’t been seen since, but were mentioned once by the Tenth Doctor when he said that the Sense-Sphere was in the same system as the Ood-Sphere — the planet of the telepathic Ood.
It would make for an interesting story if we could see the Sensorites return and share the spotlight with the Ood.
5 The Cheetah People
This race of feline humanoids’ first and only appearance to date was in the story Survival, which was the final Doctor Who story to air before the 17-year break, which was enforced by the BBC’s cancellation of the series.
The interesting thing about the Cheetah People is that the feline features that they have are not their true form. They were genetically modified by a malevolent planet, which was about to explode.
They generally do everything a big cat would do and when we meet them they are hunting humans for food.
We think it would be interesting to bring these beings back and perhaps learn a little bit about their society.
6 The Osirian Sutekh
Also known as Sutekh The Destroyer, Sutekh’s first and only appearance on television was in the Tom Baker gothic horror adventure the Pyramids Of Mars.
In the story, The Doctor encounters Sutekh as he sets about investigating the Scarman home, which is filled with ancient Egyptian artefacts.
The story ends with a battle of wits between the Doctor and the Osirian God Sutekh who really pushes the Doctor to his limits.
Eventually the Doctor defeats Sutekh by sending him 10,000 years into the future, where it is hoped that Sutekh will die of old age.
Big Finish recently revived Sutekh in one of their many Doctor Who audio adventures, with another on the way.
We think it would be great to have Sutekh return to the TV show given that much like the Master and The Rani he is every bit the Doctor’s intellectual equal and will always pose a very real challenge for the Time Lord.
7 The Celestial Toymaker
This First Doctor villain could arguably have been one of the prototypes for The Master and the Time Lords in general.
His sole appearance saw him causing no end of problems for the Doctor and his companions.
The Celestial Toymaker got his kicks from creating and playing games with his captives.
He separates the Doctor from his companions, and all are forced to win a series of games before they can be reunited and return to the Tardis. Only one episode of this story survives in the BBC archives.
We think the Toymaker would be a brilliant villain to bring back and challenge the Doctor to some deadly cerebral-style games.
8 Omega
This villain made his first appearance in The Three Doctors, which was made to celebrate the first ten years of Doctor Who back in 1973.
Omega was the architect of Time Lord society on the Doctor’s home-world of Gallifrey.
After a period of time, events drove Omega insane to the point where he posed not only a threat to the Time Lords, but to the entire universe.
He was the only person ever to exist in the Anti-Matter Universe, which is where he ruled with the permission of the Anti-Matter Creature.
His existence in this realm robbed Omega of his physical form, which left only his consciousness intact. The realisation of this drove Omega into murderous insanity.
We think Omega would be a good villain to resurrect to do battle with the modern incarnation of the Doctor, especially given that it took the minds of three incarnations of the Doctor to defeat him the first time out.
9 Morgana Le Fay
Best known as the evil sorceress from King Arthur, the very same Morgana Le Fay popped up in the Doctor Who story Battlefield in which she had defeated Merlin The Doctor from her universe, but saw him escape.
She then waited centuries to face him again, but ran into Doctor number seven who was aided or hindered depending on your point of view by UNIT, which was still under the leadership of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart.
We think it would be great to see Arthurian legends and Morgana brought back for the new series of Doctor Who.
10 The Meddling Monk
Although it was never officially revealed in any of his stories, The Meddling Monk is another renegade Time Lord who proved to be a thorn in the side of the first Doctor.
We first encounter the Monk in the First Doctor adventure The Time Meddler. In the story the Monk is altering events in Earth’s history for his own amusement.
The Doctor stops the Monk by imprisoning him in his Tardis, which he shrinks down to the size of a child’s toy.
Eventually the Monk gets away and causes trouble for the Doctor in The Daleks Master Plan, which is another story that the BBC lost. All that exists of it now is the audio tracks.
The Monk has since been revived in the Big Finish Audio adventures where he has provided many challenges for the Doctor.
Much like the Master, The Monk was once a friend of the Doctor’s.
The Meddling Monk’s return would be great because like the Master he is someone that really knows how to push the Doctor’s buttons, which is always entertaining to see.
But to do this right, the producers would have to bring in a veteran stage actor to be able to fully pull it off. One suggestion would be someone like Patrick Stewart — if only to see him play a more villainous type of role.
Are there any other villains and monsters you’d like to see return to Doctor Who? Please feel free to let us know if we missed any good ones in the comments section below!