Everyone has their favourite Doctor Who villains, but there are some who haven’t been seen for decades. Could the time be ripe for a revival? Here are five baddies that we’d love to see again…
1) The Drahvins
As a race, the Drahvins weren’t Doctor Who villains, per se, but they didn’t behave particularly nicely in their debut story ‘Galaxy 4.’ In this 1965 William Hartnell adventure, the Drahvins found themselves stranded on a mysterious planet that was on the brink of disintegration. Their sworn enemies, the Rils, were also stuck, and the Drahvins conspired to steal their spaceship so that they could escape to the safety of their home planet Drahva.
What’s interesting about the Drahvins is that they were an all-female race. On Drahva, women were the dominant gender, although when the Doctor enquired about this, the Drahvins seemed confused. They saw themselves as the only gender worth talking about; their leader Maaga said: “Oh, we have a small number of men, as many as we need. The rest we kill. They consume valuable food and fulfil no particular function.”
Charming. But there’s no denying that the Drahvins were some of the most decorous and mysterious Doctor Who villains of all time, and there is great potential for more stories set on the female-dominated Drahva, perhaps an origin story explaining how their society came to be.
2) The Axons
The Axons are remembered with great fondness, and may be the most famous of the Doctor Who villains on this list. Their debut story of ‘The Claws of Axos‘ from 1971 is highly regarded by many a Doctor Who fan, and indeed many fans cite this as one of their favourite adventures of the Jon Pertwee era.
The Axons were shape-shifting, tentacled creatures, and when we first see them, they take on a beautiful, almost statuesque appearance with chiselled faces. This is only a front for the spaghetti-like monster beneath, however, and it’s not long before the Axons are on a killing spree, zapping the hapless humans with their wire-like protuberances.
That is not their main goal, though. They need to drain the Earth’s energy in order to power their spaceship, which is in itself a living entity. And although there haven’t been too many living spaceships in Doctor Who over the years, Axos must surely be the very first. These Doctor Who villains used biotechnology for just about everything, and after a 50 year absence from our screens, it would be great to see them again.
3) The Movellans
Over the years, writers have constantly struggled to come up with some credible Doctor Who villains to take on the series’ biggest monster, the Daleks. First we had the Mechonoids, then we had the Quarks, and in 1979 the writer Terry Nation came up with the Movellans, debuting in the Season 17 story ‘Destiny of the Daleks.’
And like the aforementioned Axons, the Movellans were quite beautiful in appearance, with long silver hair and form-fitting jumpsuits. They were androids, and although they seemed quite affable when the Doctor first met them, things quickly turned sour. Their dislike of the Daleks was absolute, and the Movellans decided that the only solution was to detonate a nova device that would singe all life on the planet.
Alas, the Movellans haven’t been seen since their 1979 debut, apart from a brief cameo in the Peter Capaldi episode ‘The Pilot.’ But there are more stories to be told here, perhaps about how their relentless battle with the Daleks began, or maybe a story set during the Time War. Let’s introduce these Doctor Who villains to a new generation!
4) Sil
The next of our Doctor Who villains is the slimy, slug-like head of the Galatron Mining Company known as Sil. Wonderfully portrayed by the actor Nabil Shaban, Sil made his first appearance in 1985’s ‘Vengeance on Varos,’ and proved so popular that he was quickly called upon for the following season, returning for the ‘Mindwarp’ section of ‘The Trial of a Time Lord.’
Sil is an outrageous, almost comic book villain with an evil laugh and an obsession with money. He delights in the suffering of others and has a warped perception of beauty, considering himself to be the pinnacle of good looks, whilst others (like the Doctor’s companion Peri) he writes off as “repulsive.” He is also the archetypal greedy businessman; in his first story, he is trying to negotiate a fair price for one of Varos’ rare minerals known as Zeiton 7 – ‘fair’ being a euphemism for ‘as cheap as he can possibly get away with, even if it leads to the suffering of millions.’
And although Sil has returned for other independent Doctor Who productions like Reeltime Pictures’ Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor, he has been largely absent from the Whoniverse since 1986.
5) The Sycorax
These Doctor Who villains were name-checked in the 1988 story ‘The Happiness Patrol,’ but it wasn’t until 2006 that viewers finally got to see the Sycorax in all their glory – if ‘glory’ is the right word. They made their debut in David Tennant’s first full Doctor Who episode ‘The Christmas Invasion,’ where they attempted a full-scale invasion of planet Earth. As a show of strength, and a means of brow-beating the human race into submission, they employed something called blood control, which meant that they could control anyone on the planet who belonged to a particular blood group.
Of course, the Doctor managed to defeat the Sycorax and send them packing. They are an honour-based, war-like set of Doctor Who villains, and they agreed to follow the Doctor’s commands if he could defeat their leader in one-to-one combat, which he did. But the Torchwood Institute has other ideas, and blows the Sycorax to smithereens as they leave the Earth’s orbit.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t more of these Doctor Who villains lurking somewhere in the cosmos…
Tell us, reader: which of these Doctor Who villains would you most like to see again? And which others would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below.
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