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Incarnations of the Doctor
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Companions and Supporting Cast
Classic Series Companions (K9, Romana) | Revival Series Companions (Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, The Ponds, River Song, Clara Oswald) | Other Supporting Cast (The Paternoster Gang) | UNIT Staff
Villains
Immortals and Eldritch Abominations | The Master (John Simm's Master, Missy, Expanded Universe Masters)
Aliens and Monsters
Daleks (Davros) | Cybermen | Robots | The Silence | Silurians | Sontarans | Time Lords | Weeping Angels | Slitheen

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Ninth Doctor era

Henry van Statten

Henry van Statten (Ninth Doctor)

Played by Corey Johnson

"I am Henry van Statten, now recognise me!"

A self-obsessed billionaire (who reportedly "owns" the internet) Henry van Statten is a collector of all things alien, and has been storing extraterrestrial artifacts in his secret underground bunker in Utah. He thinks he's discovered a life form he calls "The Metaltron", and is obsessed with getting it to talk. Little does he know that he's actually got a Dalek on his hands...

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• Adaptational Nice Guy: While he’s still a Psychopathic Manchild and a Bad Boss, Van Statten’s depravity doesn’t go as deep as his inspiration from Jubilee, and isn’t nearly as uncomfortable to watch.
• Bad Boss: Van Statten keeps control via his army of mooks and by memory-wiping his executives on a whim, keeping them in a state of sycophantic terror. Unfortunately, by insisting the Dalek be captured regardless of casualties he alienates his security force, and by breaking down in fear in front of Goddard he loses her respect. Both quickly join forces to depose him after the crisis is over.
• Collector of the Strange: Van Statten collects and studied alien artefacts. Collecting a live Dalek may not have been the best move...
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The success of his computer company is based on stolen Imported Alien Phlebotinum, including an imprisoned Dalek. While gloating to the Doctor, he admits that his company has already discovered the cure to the common cold, but he refuses to release it since he can still make a profit selling palliatives.
• Dirty Coward: As the Dalek pushes deeper into the compound, van Statten's utter uselessness is brought to bare as he can do nothing but sit in his office and watch his legions of security officers die in vain to defend him. When the Dalek finally breaks in, all he can do is stammer out weak justifications for his actions until the truth comes out.
  Van Statten: I JUST WANTED YOU TO TALK!
  Dalek: Then hear me talk now. EXTERMINATE!
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Van Statten continues to treat the Dalek as the prize of his collection, ignoring the Doctor's warnings.
• Evil Is Petty: Subjects a Dalek to frequent electrical torture because it refused to talk. Yes, seriously.
• Expy: Shares many childish and megalomaniacal traits with his "Jubilee" counterpart, Nigel Rorchester.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Statten's not completely heartless as he does apologise when the 9th Doctor initially thinks Rose Tyler has been exterminated.
• Green-Eyed Monster: After the initial shock of hearing the Dalek's voice for the first time thanks to the Doctor's prompting, van Statten bursts into the room and attempts to provoke the Dalek to talk to him as well, clearly envious of the Doctor being his prize's centre of attention.
• Hate Sink: His sheer narcissism, cowardice and disregard for the lives of his men make him completely unlikeable. It's telling that the Doctor—whose ninth incarnation holds a more personal hatred for the Daleks than ever before—is quicker to compliment a genocidal Dalek than compliment him.
  Ninth Doctor: Do you know what a Dalek is, van Statten? A Dalek is honest. It does what it was born to do for the survival of its species. That creature in your dungeon is better than you!
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Van Statten wasn't killed, but he surely paved the way for his eventual fate. His policy of using torture on his alien captive caused said alien to go on a murdering rampage when it finally got loose, and his fondness for wiping people's memories and dropping them off in a town starting with the same letter as their last name got turned around on him by his newly appointed second-in-command.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Considering that the other antagonist is a genocidal Dalek, you'd better believe that van Statten is one detestable little shit. He's so vile that the Doctor is more willing to compliment the Dalek on its honesty.
• Internet Incorporated:
  Adam: Mr. van Statten owns the Internet.
  Rose: Don't be daft, nobody owns the Internet.
  Van Statten: And let's keep everyone thinking that way, right kids?
• Kick the Dog: Has an aide memory-wiped simply for giving him the wrong answer.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: He subjected staff he fired to this, and ultimately gets the treatment himself.
  Goddard: And by tonight, Henry van Statten will be a homeless, brainless junkie in San Diego, Seattle, Sacramento... Someplace beginning with "S".
• "Not So Different" Remark: The Doctor suggests that van Statten and Davros are very much alike, being two geniuses who were kings of their own little worlds. Van Statten doesn't get that it's certainly not a compliment.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In early script drafts, van Statten was originally named "Will Fences" in a joking allusion to Bill Gates.
• Precision F-Strike: Not a f-word, but American audiences were probably shocked to hear Henry shout "goddamn" at the Dalek, which would have been the first swear word (but far from the last) uttered in the televised show, albeit a mild one.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Overall, van Statten comes across as incredibly immature, spoiled and entitled. His obsession with hearing the Dalek talk, specifically to recognise and address him, brings to mind the "Do the Roar" kid from Shrek Forever After.
• Skewed Priorities:
  The Doctor: (realises that the creature in van Statten's vault is a Dalek) Let me out!
  Goddard: Sir, it's going to kill him!
  Van Statten: It's talking!
• Smug Snake: Van Statten's callous disregard for the lives of his men as the Dalek massacres them, as well as his massive ego, make him completely unsympathetic and detestable. Though ironically, his actor Corey Johnson believes van Statten is misunderstood.
• Withholding the Cure: Van Statten claims to have discovered the cure for the common cold, but isn't letting it out of the labs. "Why sell one cure when I can sell a thousand palliatives?"

Tenth Doctor era debut

Mr. Lucas Finch / Brother Lassar

Lucas Finch / Brother Lassar (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Anthony Head (2006)

The leader of the Krillitanes, who comes off as a charismatic school headmaster with plans to remake reality.

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• Actor Allusion: We have Anthony Head once again working at a creepy school, and using Buffy Speak no less.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Doctor, with the episode painting him as a dark mirror of sorts with the two of them seeing each other as equals. Both are aliens disguised as humans, both serve as the leaders of their respective teams, and both are extremely clever and charismatic. It's no wonder that he is entranced by the Doctor and sees him as a Worthy Opponent.
• Evil Is Hammy: Most of the time he's a restrained Cold Ham, but K9's intervention in their plan drives him into a manic hysteria of batlike screaming.
• Evil Principal: He takes over as the Headmaster but is secretly the leader of the Krillitanes, a race of evil, carnivorous aliens with an Evil Plan that necessitates the children.
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: We get this brief exchange between Mr. Finch and K9 after the robot drenches the Krillitanes with their oil.
  Mr. Finch: [just as the Krillitanes are about to blow up] You bad dog!
  K9: Affirmative.
• Faux Affably Evil: He is nothing but polite, especially towards the Doctor who he seems to hold Villain Respect towards.
• A God Am I: Has the surprisingly ambitious goal to ascend to godhood and rebuild reality in his image using the Skasis Paradigm, which is essentially the universal cheat code that would give complete control over time, space and matter.
• In Their Own Image: His goal is to recreate reality in their own image, though he also wants the Doctor to join them. As the Doctor puts it, reality rebuilt with the face of Mr. Finch doesn't sound overly appealing compared to the status quo.
• Manipulative Bastard: Mr. Finch nearly talks the Doctor into joining him with just a few lines of temptation, and when Sarah Jane steps in, shifts gears at the speed of light and — based off only brief observation and some well informed guesses — almost succeeds in doing the same to her. She, however, snaps out of it and snaps the Doctor out of it too.
• Meaningful Name: Mr. Finch, an alien capable of developing the traits of other conquered species is named after Darwin's finches. The widely known evidence of evolution due to the differing sizes of their beaks.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Brother Lassar has locked himself permanently in human form as Headmaster Finch.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Mr. Finch exploits this in his attempt to recruit the Doctor: how many more people he could save if he were a Reality Warper?
• Villain Respect: Finch has a healthy respect for the Doctor's intellect, and he is the only character that Finch actually treats as an equal, even a superior; as part of his temptation of the Doctor, he says, "The paradigm would give us power, but you could give us wisdom." Of course, Finch is a top class Manipulative Bastard, so he might just be playing on the Doctor's ego. Either way, it almost works.
• We Can Rule Together: He propositions to the Doctor, hoping to use his Time Lord wisdom in exchange for allowing him to become a god at his side. He drives a great sales pitch, however, as the Doctor does seem very nearly swayed by his manipulative words. He extends the offer to Sarah Jane and Rose, offering them eternal life so that they could always be at the Doctor's side.
• Would Hurt a Child: As a carnivorous Krillitane, humans are included on the menu. He and the other Krillitanes sometimes eat the occasional child, though only ones they are certain would go unnoticed.

The Wire

The Wire (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Maureen Lipman (2006)

"Now, are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then we'll begin."

An alien criminal who escaped a death sentence by turning into an Energy Being, losing its original body in the process, it made its way to 1953 London and forced a hapless television salesman to help it steal faces and people's brainwaves in order to try and regain a physical form, planning on doing so while millions of people were watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

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• Ambiguous Gender: It takes the form of a female television announcer, but its actual gender is unknown.
• And I Must Scream:
  • She feeds by stealing the essences and the souls of people watching her TV screens, leaving their bodies as wandering Empty Shells, while their consciousness remain trapped within the Wire.
  • She herself would befall this fate when the Doctor turns her receiver into a transmitter, and sends her essence into a VHS tape.
• Bad Boss: Forces Magpie to work for her by subjecting him to having his essence stolen, then using that as blackmail to stave off any further suffering. Then after subserviently carrying out everything she asked she kills him anyway when he is no longer of any use.
• Character Catchphrase: "FEED ME!"
• Energy Being: It escaped execution by turning into pure electricity.
• Face Stealer: A side effect of it stealing people's bioelectricity, in order to regain strength. It doesn't actually do anything with the faces.
• I'm a Humanitarian: She essentially feeds on humans, only their minds/souls rather than their physical bodies.
• Large Ham: "FEEEED MEEEEEE!"
• Only Known by Their Nickname: "The Wire" is almost certainly a pseudonym it adopted after losing its physical form.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Wire.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After forcing Magpie to carry out her every whim, she grants him the "peace" he was promised by disintegrating him with a bolt of lightning.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: A more sci-fi version, where the Wire absorbs a victim's mind and traps their essence inside a TV screen, while their body goes into neural shutdown and is left an Empty Shell.

Abzorbaloff

The Abzorbaloff, aka Victor Kennedy (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Peter Kay (2006)

"You've dabbled with aliens. Now meet the genuine article!"

A green humanoid hailing from the planet Clom, with the ability to absorb and gain the knowledge of any other lifeform. Under the guise of human businessman Victor Kennedy, he takes over LINDA, a group of fans of the Doctor, in a bid to absorb him and gain control of the TARDIS.

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• Achilles' Heel: His cane.
• Acrofatic: His modest claims of being merely a "slow, clumsy beast" are immediately disproved when he leaps over his desk and chases Elton through the streets on foot.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: To prove Elton and Ursula, the Abzorbaloff threatens to absorb Jackie Tyler.
• The Assimilator: He works on an individual level, absorbing individuals into his body.
• Big "NO!": Gives one just before he dissolves.
• Big "YES!": Gives an orgasmic one when he absorbs Ursula.
• Body Horror: His process of absorbing people is both scary and disgusting.
• Evil Plan: He wants to absorb the Doctor in order to gain his vast knowledge and exploits LINDA in order to find him.
• Fantastic Racism: Describes the natives of Raxacoricofallapatorious — Clom's twin planet — as swine and says that he spits on them. He also looks down on humans, describing their body as a "crude pink shape".
• Faster Than They Look: He even exploits this fact by pointing out his size and how slow he must be... and then shocks people by showing just how fast he really is.
• Fat Bastard: Already a prime example of this as Victor Kennedy, who treats the LINDA members like crap while trying to get them to do his bidding, and it gets exaggerated as the Abzorbaloff, who is even fatter still and flat-out murderous.
• Gasshole: The Abzorbaloff, in view of Ursula and Elton, has no problem passing gas through Bliss' mouth just to let her speak, to the discomfort of her as well as Bridget and Mr. Skinner. Justified in that he's a Big Eater, and with that he'll always have people attached to him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: By absorbing Ursula, he gives her access to his mind and his knowledge, which she uses to find out how to kill him.
• Karmic Death: He is killed when all of those he's absorbed start pulling him apart from the inside, causing him to drop his cane. Elton then breaks the cane, cancelling out the limitation field that keeps the Abzorbaloff's powers in check and causing him to be absorbed by the Earth.
• Namedar: He deliberately adopts the name the humans come up with for it because it likes the sound. The Doctor later comes up with the same name on the third try. Captain Jack's Monster File for the Slitheen shows that they are related to the Abzorbalovian Rebels.
• Newspaper-Thin Disguise: After absorbing Mr. Skinner, the Abzorbaloff hides behind a newspaper when Ursula and Elton come back. He is eventually rumbled due to a combination of Skinner crying out for help and Ursula noticing his green claws clutching the newspaper.
• No Name Given: Whatever his actual name is, it's never stated on-screen. It's Elton and then the Doctor who coin the name "Abzorbaloff" for him. The creature takes a liking to the nickname either way.
• Obviously Evil: As Victor, his introduction is accompanied by a power outage, he wears black, and asks to be alone with them one at a time for an unspecified reason.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Was adapted from the winning design of a children's Blue Peter sweepstakes. The childish name was also part of the submission, which was covered in the episode itself as a nickname given to it by humans that the creature took a liking to. As the story goes, the winning child creator was disappointed with how his design was adapted for screen, as he'd imagined it as being the size of a building.
• Oop North: Has a light northern accent as Victor Kennedy, and a full-fat one as the Abzorbaloff.
• Orgasmically Delicious: He practically has an orgasm when he absorbs Ursula. Besides that, he is constant ecstasy from having absorbed multiple victims.
• Power Incontinence: Seems to suffer from this, as he orders the LINDA members never to touch him because of his supposed skin condition, presumably out of fear that he'll unwittingly absorb them and blow his own cover. He then suffers this to fatal levels at the end of the story when Elton breaks his cane, and without the limitation field it generates, he gets absorbed by the Earth itself.
• Take That, Audience!: Not-so-subtly reflects the more unpleasant, obsessive portions of the Doctor Who fanbase.
• Tastes Like Chicken: Says this word-for-word about Ursula after he absorbs her.
• Toilet Humour: After absorbing Bliss, the Abzorbaloff ends up with her face sticking out of his right arsecheek. Inevitably, he ends up farting on her face.
• To Serve Man: He essentially eats people, only not with his mouth, doing so by making physical contact which sucks them into his body, granting him experience and knowledge which he has a taste for.
• Touch of Death: Downplayed. A single touch from the Abzorbaloff begins the irreversible process of absorption which ultimately ends in the death of the victim, though it takes several weeks.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Seems to be this, albeit with some limitations. He can switch between his personas as the Abzorbaloff and Victor Kennedy, and in doing so apparently suppress those that he's already absorbed, but can't switch forms quickly enough to prevent Elton and Ursula discovering his identity.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: After Ursula threatens to assault him with his cane, he initially reacts with genuine terror — likely because such an attack would have broken it, removing the limitation field and killing him — before begging for mercy and claiming to be "such a slow, clumsy beast". Something he definitely proves not to be when he absorbs Ursula and then chases Elton.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Believes from his research that the Doctor will allow himself to be absorbed in order to save Elton's life. While the Doctor is always willing to perform a Heroic Sacrifice as an absolute last resort, that doesn't prove to be the case in this particular encounter, as he's able to have the LINDA members (who are already doomed to eventual full absorption and effective death) perform their own sacrifice to deal with him.

The Racnoss Empress

The Racnoss Empress (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Sarah Parish (2006)

The Empress of a race of Spider People called the Racnoss who used Donna's fiancee as The Mole.

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• Big "NO!": "MYYYYY CHIIIIIIILDREEEEEEEEENNNNN!"
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Empress feeds Lance to her children because she isn't impressed with him readily abandoning his "wife".
• Evil Is Bigger: One of the most physically imposing Doctor Who villains outside of literal Kaiju such as Kroll.
• Evil Is Hammy: The Empress of the Racnoss, bringing Chewing the Scenery to epic levels. One wonders if the Racnoss actually subsisted on scenery that they chewed up, instead of meat, as they insist.
• Extreme Omnivore: The Racnoss can devour whole planets.
• Giant Spider
• Oh, Crap!: She finally realises exactly what she's up against when the Doctor reveals his true planet of origin.
  Empress: Roboforms are not necessary. My children shall feast on Martian flesh.
  The Doctor: Oh, but I'm not from Mars.
  Empress: Then where?
  The Doctor: My home planet is far away and long since gone, but its name lives on: Gallifrey.
  Empress: [gasps dramatically] THEY MURDERED THE RACNOSS!
• Pungeon Master: The Racnoss Empress. Notable in that she deliberately keeps setting up puns, but Lance and Donna don't play along.
• Time Abyss: The Racnoss date from the early days of the universe, and the Empress herself has been in hibernation for billions of years. The Time Lords and other ancient races hunted the Racnoss down to near extinction because of their ravenous nature.
• Villainous Breakdown: When the Doctor reveals his true home, the Racnoss Empress goes from gloating to horrified shrieking.

Richard Lazarus

Professor Richard Lazarus (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Mark Gatiss (2007)

"You're so sentimental, Doctor. Maybe you are older than you look."

A genius yet sociopathic scientist who is obsessed with discovering the secret of eternal youth, no matter what the cost...

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• Body Horror: His alternate form is an utterly horrific aberration resembling a gigantic scorpion with an exposed exoskeleton and an uncannily humanoid face. He always transforms offscreen, but audible bone cracking can be heard whenever it happens. While the slightly dodgy 2007 CGI downplays it somewhat, he's still one of Doctor Who's most viscerally terrifying monsters.
• Dirty Old Man: He very creepily hits on Martha's sister Tish.
• Freudian Excuse: He claims that his desire to cheat death stems from witnessing the Blitz as a child.
• Genre Refugee: His creator Stephen Greenhorn compares him to a classic Marvel Comics supervillain; mad scientist, caught in an awry experiment, turns into a rampaging monster.
• Immortality Seeker: He builds a marvellous machine capable of restoring youth, hoping to use it to live forever.
• It's All About Me: While it can partially be blamed on the degenerative effects of his age reversal machine, Lazarus expresses zero remorse for the many victims he sucked dry over the course of his rampage to maintain his monstrous form. His quest for immortality is entirely selfish and once he regains his youth, he loses any pretence of caring for anyone but himself.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Naively assumes this to be the case, speaking about how he looks forward to eternal life. The Doctor, actually being immortal, tells him what it is truly like to be immortal.
  The Doctor: I'm old enough to know that a longer life isn't always a better one. In the end, you just get tired. Tired of the struggle, tired of losing everyone that matters to you. Tired of watching everything turn to dust. If you live long enough, Lazarus, the only certainty is that you'll be alone.
• Meaningful Name: The Doctor lampshades this after Lazarus revives from apparently being killed.
  The Doctor: Lazarus, back from the dead. Should have known, really.
• Sensory Overload: The Doctor defeats him by blasting a cathedral organ at max volume, amped up by the Sonic Screwdriver. It causes Lazarus's unstable DNA to freak out and he falls to his death from the spire.
• Square-Cube Law: Where exactly does all that extra mass come from when he transforms? Downplayed as Lazarus requires constant sustenance to maintain it, but it's still pretty implausible.

Lucy Saxon

Lucy Saxon (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Alexandra Moen (2007, 2009)

"Dying. Everything dying. The whole of creation was falling apart and I thought there's no point. No point to anything. Not ever."

The Master's wife in "The Sound of Drums", "Last of the Time Lords" and returning for an encore in "The End of Time". She was his "faithful companion" until she shot him, after Francine Jones and Jack Harkness were stopped trying to do so by the Doctor.

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• All for Nothing: Killed herself and managed to wipe out the cult of Saxon in the act of trying to kill "Harry", but he lived on, albeit very damaged.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Lucy is the wife of the Master, the Doctor's Arch-Enemy. How's that for a "bad boy"?
• The Beard: The Tenth Doctor implicitly calls her this, when the Fifth asks him if the Tenth's Master still has a beard, as in actual facial hair.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: In "Last of the Time Lords", she rarely speaks, making it all the more unexpected when she's the one that shoots the Master.
• Blue Blood: Her connections are one of the reasons the Master married her.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In the most literal sense. She starts up as "not too bright", but ends up shooting the Master.
• Despair Event Horizon: Pal around with the Master and he will quickly destroy your will to live/reasons for existing. Which is very dark, considering how eager and totally unhinged Lucy was to kill herself to get rid of the Master for good... which didn't work.
• The Dog Bites Back: Domestic abuse is implied to be the motivation for her Heel–Face Turn.
• Domestic Abuse: After the Master has ruled the Earth for a year, he's stopped pretending to love or care at all about Lucy. He's implied to have hit her, and showed her the end of the universe, driving her over the Despair Event Horizon For the Evulz.
• Evil Counterpart: Of the companions in general, and Rose Tyler in particular, because she is the Master's companion and his wife. It's even stated that the Master took her to see the The End of the World as We Know It much like the Ninth Doctor did to Rose, but whereas the Doctor wanted Rose to appreciate the universe while it existed, the Master did it to Lucy to make her believe that there's "no point in anything, ever."
• Heel–Face Turn: Turns against the Master during "Last of the Time Lords", and then further works against him in "The End of Time".
• Heroic Sacrifice: Her last appearance in "The End of Time" had her sabotaging a cult's attempt to resurrect the Master in an explosion that kills her. The Master returns anyway, but the attempt caused him to Came Back Wrong. It later becomes a Senseless Sacrifice, as "The Doctor Falls" reveals that the Time Lords simply healed the Master's condition without much issue.
• Lady in Red: The opulent red satin dress she wears in "Last of the Time Lords."
• Mad Love: She seemed to be genuinely in love with the Master at the beginning, and it clearly wasn't mutual.
• More than Mind Control: After glimpsing the end of the universe, Lucy went a bit barmy.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Does what the Doctor wouldn't, and kills the Master.
• The Ophelia: She at one point is seen babbling about how the Master showed her The End of the World as We Know It and how it made her believe that there was no point in anything ever.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: She gives a pretty good one before stopping the Master's resurrection, although he ends up surviving and she's the one that dies.
  Lucy: Till death do us part, Harry!
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: She uses her family connections to have an antiserum for the Master's resurrection created.
• Straw Nihilist: The Doctor takes his companion to The End of the World as We Know It to make her appreciate life while it lasts. The Master does so to Break the Cutie.
  Lucy Saxon: Dying. Everything dying. The whole of creation was falling apart and I thought there's no point. No point to anything. Not ever.
• Taking You with Me: Sabotages the Master's attempt at resurrection and causes an explosion that kills her in the process.
• Took a Level in Badass: The "not too bright" Lucy gets a lot smarter once she's free of her husband's influence, nearly foiling his plan to come back from the dead.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Averted. "The End of Time" reveals that for her part in the Master's crimes she was a given a trial in secret with no jury, and then locked up in prison.

Max Capricorn

Max Capricorn (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: George Costigan (2007)

"Time for me to retire."

The former CEO of Max Capricorn Cruiseliners, the premier luxury starship cruise service on the planet Sto. Betrayed by his board of directors, Capricorn stages an elaborate revenge plot in which he sabotages his company's prized vessel, a spacefaring replica of the RMS Titanic, to make it crash into the Earth, with the hope that the resulting scandal would incriminate the board and cause their shares to plummet in value. His head crudely stitched to a cubic cyborg vehicle, Capricorn is perfectly willing to sacrifice the crew and passengers of the ship as well as all six billion humans on Earth for the sake of his convoluted retirement plan.

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• Berserk Button: The Doctor gets under his skin by calling him a loser.
  "I never lose."
• Character Catchphrase: "And I should know because... my name is Max!", Twinkle Smile.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: His motivation for crashing another Titanic and potentially wiping out all life on Earth? To settle a petty squabble against his board of directors.
• Cyborg: An amusing version, as he's revealed to be little more than a head stitched to a crude rectangular vehicle. However, Sto's discriminatory policies against cyborgs, the same that caused Bannakaffalatta to hide his cyborg modifications, lead to Capricorn's expulsion from his own company.
• Dirty Old Man: He plans to retire to a planet where the ladies are supposedly very fond of... metal.
• Evil Is Hammy: Another supremely hammy Christmas villain.
• Evil Is Petty: Attempts to crash the Titanic into Earth, killing billions (or if Turn Left is any indication, millions) to...frame his board directors and retire to a nice planet. The Doctor immediately lambasts he's committing mass genocide for such a pathetic reason.
• Human Aliens: Like all the unnamed humanoids from Sto (except Bannakaffalatta), Max looks and acts completely human, though his cyborg body gives him a unique shape.
• Lack of Empathy: He's utterly unphased by the enormous collateral damage his plan will cause, on top of the many innocent lives he already has taken. His only reaction to the Doctor chewing him out for it is to suck his lips in like a mischievous child.
• Twinkle Smile: His golden tooth twinkles in the advert reels shown on monitors across the Titanic. The Doctor is surprised that it even happens when they meet in person.

Matron Cofelia / Miss Foster

Matron Cofelia (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Sarah Lancashire (2008)

"I'm advancing the birth plan. We're going into premature labour."

A nanny of the Five-Straighten Classabindi Nursery Fleet (Intergalactic Class) who arrives on Earth under the guise of Miss Foster, CEO of pharmaceutical company Adipose Industries. Designing a drug that can make a person lose weight at an extraordinary rate, she secretly plans to create legions of Adipose babies on behalf of the Adiposian First Family, her unseen alien clients.

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• Babysitter from Hell: On an intergalactic scale!
• Didn't Think This Through: She would've gotten away with everything if she hadn't asked to come with the Adipose babies, who she seems to have grown attached to. She doesn't stop to think that the First Family wouldn't need a nanny anymore now that they have their children.
• Disney Villain Death: While levitating her and the Adipose babies up to their mother ship, the Adiposian First Family decide to terminate their contract with her upon realising that her illegal activities have made her a liability.
• Evil Plan: An especially bizarre one, as she plans to force the human race to be surrogate parents to a new generation of Adipose toddlers on behalf of the Adiposian race.
• Exact Words: She claims in her advertising campaign that her pills will make "the fat just walk away". That banal slogan proves to be horrifyingly accurate.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: After the levitation beam vanishes, she cartoonishly stalls in midair for a few seconds before looking down and falling to her death.
• Human Aliens: She's obviously not human but is indistinguishable from one.
• Lack of Empathy: She knows fullwell that the Adipose birthing process can be lethal to humans, but deceives the population with promises that her pills will help them lose weight.
• Mouth of Sauron: Her employers, the Adiposian First Family, go unseen. She acts as the nanny to their children in the mysterious absence of their original breeding planet.
• The Stoic: She's unflappable in the face of the Doctor's threats, though she does take joy in seeing the Adipose babies flying off to the mother ship.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: She possesses her own sonic probe, the Sonic Pen, to counter the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver.

Luke Rattigan

Luke Rattigan (Tenth Doctor)

Played by: Ryan Sampson

A young genius inventor, self made millionaire, and founder of the Rattigan Academy, a school and think tank with hand picked geniuses. He wanted to use his invention to help the Sontarans kill the human race save his selected members of the Acadamy.

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• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He really thought his friends would be delighted to start a new society with him at the expense of the rest of humanity. They are so utterly disgusted and choose death over his new world.
• Freudian Excuse: Implied to have been bullied through his life, and it's left some severe mental scars. The kind where he sees no problem helping the Sontarans wipe out mankind.
• Grammar Nazi: He gets way too bent up over people calling his invention the ATMOS System. It's apparently a tautology, on account of the "s" being for "system".
• Harem Seeker: Had a breeding initiative as part of his plan to build a new world with his friends.
• Heel–Face Turn: He eventually comes to his senses after learning the Sontarans planned on betraying him.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Takes the Doctor’s place in detonating the Sontaran’s ship while onboard.
• Impossible Genius: He was able to invent pocket-dimension technology in the 21st century, which the Doctor described as being like finding a smartphone in the Stone Age.
• Insufferable Genius: His defining trait, he cannot hide his contempt for those he deems less intelligent than him. Which is everyone.
  Doctor: ... it's been a long time since anyone said "no" to you, isn't it?
  Luke: (sulkily) I'm still right.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Clearly far less emotionally developed than intellectually, throwing tantrums and sulking at the drop of a hat. Notably, all the kids at his academy are far more well adjusted. When they storm out either because of disgust with his plans or to go find their families, he screams that this somehow makes him cleverer than them.
• Teen Genius: He is one of the brightest minds of humanity despite his young age.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: While they don’t kill him, the Sontarans he betrayed humanity for, told him he was just an Unwitting Pawn once he’s done his part. He’s left a bawling mess and eventually sacrifices life to stop them.
• World's Smartest Man: Heavily implied. The Doctor all but states Luke had never met an intellectual equal until meeting the Doctor himself. Luke was able to invent technology that was centuries ahead of its time.

Eleventh Doctor era debut

Prisoner Zero

Prisoner Zero (Eleventh Doctor)

Played by: William Wilde (voice), Olivia Colman, Caitlin Blackwood, Marcello Magni, Eden Monteath, Merin Monteath and Matt Smith (2010)

"Poor Amy Pond. Still dreaming about her magical Doctor."

An alien shape-shifter imprisoned by the Atraxi. The Eleventh Doctor and Amy had to find it when it escaped to Earth.

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• Ambiguous Situation: How Prisoner Zero knows about the Silence and the Pandorica is unclear, especially given it had remained in hiding for years.
• Creepy Child: Takes the form of two girls and their mother and then of the young Amelia Pond.
• Creepy Monotone: Never raises its voice.
• Evil Gloating: Takes great glee in taunting the Doctor over his lack of knowledge.
• Flat Character: Lampshaded in Steven Moffat's own self-adapted novelisation of "The Day of the Doctor", in which the Doctor briefly muses on Prisoner Zero's mysterious plans, and how they were so mysterious that nobody ever found out what they were.
• Glamour Failure: Constantly botches up its shapeshifting if it takes multiple forms, such as when pretending to be a mother and her daughters, or a man and his dog, having the wrong vocalisations.
  Prisoner Zero: Ohhh, I'm getting it wrong again. So many mouths.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: It just so happens to take over Amy's mind when it needs a quick escape; she is the only person who knows what Prisoner Zero actually looks like and Zero can only take the form of what someone is thinking about. So, the Doctor makes Amy think about its true form.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: It can take the form of whatever a dormant mind is dreaming. However, it has no control over that.
• Morphic Resonance: Its big sharp teeth.
• Noodle Incident: We never do learn what it did to get sent to prison, though its escape causes the Atraxi to try to destroy a planet in response.
• Psychic Link: How it is able to use dormant minds to take different forms.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives the Doctor one about how he has affected Amy's life.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Takes on the form of a seven-year-old Amy while taunting the Doctor.
• Starter Villain: For the Eleventh Doctor.
• Taking You with Me: Rather than face capture and possibly execution at the hands of the Atraxi, Prisoner Zero declares it would rather let the Atraxi burn the whole world with it.
• Villainous Breakdown: Is reduced to yelling "no!" repeatedly after realizing the Doctor found a way to stop it.

Solomon the Trader

Solomon the Trader (Eleventh Doctor)

Played by: David Bradley (2012)

A pirate who hijacked a Silurian ark and killed the entire crew in an attempt to claim its cargo, dinosaurs, for himself.

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• Ambiguously Human: The year is 2367, and his robots claim they've been on the ark for 2,000 years, since long before humanity acquired space travel. Even given that the robots aren't the most reliable source, this is a universe with a lot of Human Alien species.
• Cane Fu: Solomon uses one of his crutches, which has a sharpened edge, to subdue Nefertiti.
• Death by Irony: Solomon is all about the money, so the Doctor lets him have several very shiny, very valuable objects all to himself. The missiles.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Solomon assumes the Doctor is only interested in the dinosaurs for their monetary value; the Doctor berates him for assuming everyone lives by the same values as him.
• Evil Cripple: Solomon had a run-in with a raptor when he invaded the ship, and it ate a lot of his leg.
• Evil Old Folks: Solomon, played by the inimitable David Bradley, has been doing this sort of vile act for a long time.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Solomon is not nice to Nefi, and she gets very, very genuinely scared. His implied unsavoury intentions call to mind Sharaz Jek (only without Jek's Jerkass Woobie qualities).
• Karmic Death: Solomon really, REALLY deserved being blown up in that ship by missiles. This whole affair was his fault to begin with.
• Kick the Dog: Solomon has several; he orders one of his robots to injure Brian in order to force the Doctor to heal him, he ejected the Ark's crew from the airlock, and, when he decides he wants to sell her, he has the triceratops killed in an attempt to make the Doctor hand Nefertiti over.
• Knight of Cerebus: When he shows up, it starts getting much more serious, as most scenes with him involve showing off what a Jerkass he is with his various Kick the Dog moments.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Solomon shares his name with an important character from "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks", except that guy was an ally of the Doctor.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Among his various crimes, the barely-euphemistic threat of planning to rape Nefertiti^note at least as much as the ratings could get away with makes him vile enough that the Doctor cold-bloodedly kills him with a most uncharacteristic Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
• Space Pirates: Solomon is the uncomical, seriously nasty kind. He put out a distress signal so he could board this ship and then killed everyone for their cargo.
• Villains Want Mercy: After committing genocide, threatening to kill everyone unless Nefi becomes his slave and subtly alluding that he intends to rape her, Solomon still expects the Doctor to rescue him. The Doctor refuses.

The Gunslinger

Kahler-Tek (Eleventh Doctor)

Played by: Andrew Brooke (2012)

A cyborg Kahler Super-Soldier who went rogue after remembering who he was, seeking revenge against the scientists who turned him into a monster.

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• Anti-Villain: The Gunslinger isn't evil; he just wants revenge on the people who made him a monster. He specifically stays out of the margins of Mercy so that no innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire.
• Arm Cannon: He has a rather impressive one on his right arm as part of his cyborg modifications.
• The Atoner: The Gunslinger decides to become Mercy's protector once his purpose is fulfilled.
• Bait-and-Switch: The episode also opens with a monologue about a "guardian angel who fell from the stars". It turns out to be the Gunslinger, not the Doctor.
• Cyborg: The Gunslinger looks half-man and half-machine, with an Arm Cannon and a robotic Eyepatch of Power balanced out by a more human hand and eye.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Gunslinger, to the people of Mercy.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The Gunslinger has a deep computerized voice and starts off as the antagonist. This is then subverted, as he isn't actually evil.
• The Fettered: The first hint of the Gunslinger's real personality is his refusal to endanger an innocent person. He still sticks to this — or, at least, Wouldn't Hurt a Child — after Isaac takes the shot he meant for Jex.
• Flash Step: The Gunslinger is equipped with a short-range teleporter. He uses it to quickly cover distance without breaking his slow, menacing stride.
• Implacable Man: Nothing will stop him from hunting Jex.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: The Gunslinger spends four generations as sheriff of Mercy and hasn't aged a day. This implies he'll protect it forever. It's also awesome in regards to his religion. Imagine how many souls he'd have to carry to reach the mountain top.
• Mirror Character: To the Doctor; another ordinary man who became a monster in order to save a world ravaged by war.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: His only interest is revenge against specific people who wronged him, and he takes steps to prevent anyone else getting caught in the crossfire.
• No Place for Me There: The Gunslinger believes he has no place in the world once his war is over. The Doctor convinces him otherwise.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "Make peace with your gods."
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: It's mentioned that he hunted down and murdered the other scientists who experimented on him — Jex is the last.
• Shout-Out: The Gunslinger is a cross between the Terminator and Yul Brynner's Gunslinger from Westworld. His Stat-O-Vision even says "TERMINATE". By the end, he has become more like RoboCop once he decides to be Mercy's protector. The writers also intentionally included some similarities to Frankenstein's Monster.
• Was Once a Man: It's shown that he underwent cyborgification in the prequel.
• Weird West: A cyborg alien killing machine posing as a ruthless gunslinger in the Old West.
• What Have I Become?: Implied to be the reason why the Gunslinger went rogue, after battle-damage led him to remember who he was and what Jex and the other scientists had done to him.

Kahler-Jex

Kahler-Jex (Eleventh Doctor)

Played by: Adrian Scarborough (2012)

A member of the Kahler race who took up residence in the Old West town of Mercy, where he acts as a kindly physician and provider of the town's many anachronistic technological utilities. However, Jex hides a very dark secret that ties him to the town's mysterious alien tormentor, the Gunslinger.

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• The American Dream: Despite being a foreigner (from outer space) with a dodgy past, he was taken in by the marshal of Mercy and given a fresh start as a well-loved town doctor.
• Anti-Villain: While the Doctor certainly considers him worse than the Gunslinger, it's specifically pointed out that Jex isn't evil, either. He's a nuanced individual with both good and bad qualities, though he is overall a reasonable, well-intentioned man.
• The Atoner: Jex certainly sees himself as this, as he believes that helping the people of Mercy will absolve him of his past sins. However, as the Doctor points out, Jex's chosen "punishment" barely even counts as one considering the magnitude of his crimes and he shouldn't have the freedom to choose how or when his debt is paid. This speaks to Jex's rather short-sighted view of how atonement really works.
• Be All My Sins Remembered: In Kahler culture, it is believed that in order to pass onto the afterlife, the recently deceased have to carry the souls of everyone they've wronged in their lifetime. Because Jex has hurt and killed countless people, he fears that his penitent journey would be especially arduous.
• The Dead Have Names: Jex claims to remember the names of every Kahler he experimented on, and he can still hear their screams every time he closes his eyes. Kahler-Tek was the only survivor.
• Driven to Suicide: He ultimately decides to blow himself up in his ship to prevent any further bloodshed, as the Gunslinger was never going to stop pursuing him and hurting the people he cared about.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: He gives the townsfolk easy access to electricity and a cure for cholera.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: It's specifically pointed out in the episode that Jex doesn't neatly fit into one category. He is neither a Mad Scientist war criminal nor an innocent local physician. Jex assumes that the Doctor's Black-and-White Morality makes him incapable of understanding this basic level of nuance, but the Doctor understands Jex perfectly. After all, the two are very much alike: two aliens who committed atrocities in the name of the greater good and chose exile as their punishments.
• Human Aliens: Aside from a distinctive tattoo-like face marking that he shares with Kahler-Tek and every other member of the Kahler race, Jex easily passes for a human.
• I Did What I Had to Do: He justifies his past crimes in much the same way as the Doctor: he sacrificed many lives to save millions more.
• Mad Scientist: Averted. Jex may have committed some pretty terrible experiments on his own kind, but he's not the callous monster he expects the Doctor to view him as.
• Mirror Character: More so than the Gunslinger, he fits the bill for the Doctor. The Doctor has an unusually hateful and aggressive reaction to Jex, perhaps disproportionate considering the kinds of irredeemable monsters he faces on a near-daily basis, because Jex mirrors him to such an uncomfortably close extent. They are both men of science who were forced to commit unspeakable atrocities as part of a war effort on their home planets, and they both had to deal with immense survivor's guilt upon narrowly escaping with their lives. They both attempt to hide the truth of their past crimes by performing good deeds for the "little people". The only real difference is that whereas the Doctor never stops running in order to save both himself and the people he cares about, Jex decided to stay in one place and inadvertently risked the lives of the townsfolk by drawing the Gunslinger to their doorstep.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: His storyline bears some resemblance to real life Nazi fugitives who escaped justice at the end of World War II and proceeded to live ordinary lives in other countries, with his horrific experimentation on his own kind making those comparisons even more obvious. The Doctor also indirectly compares Jex's crimes to those of the Daleks during an impassioned rant.
• Nothing Is Scarier: When the Doctor snoops around Jex's ship and discovers all of his personal files, we hear some agonised screams while only seeing the Doctor's subtly horrified reaction to the video footage. The Doctor's subsequent actions against Jex's person make it clear that whatever Jex did was bad.
• Offstage Villainy: While we are frequently told that Jex's war crimes and experiments were depraved and monstrous even by Doctor Who villain standards, we only see the results of them in the form of the Gunslinger. As such, the Doctor's explicit comparisons to the Master and the Daleks may count as an example of Take Our Word for It.
• One-Steve Limit: Invoked. Among the townsfolk, he prefers to simply be called "the Doctor". To prevent confusion, his real name has to be used when the Definitive Article himself arrives.
• This Is Unforgivable!: When the Doctor discovers the extent of Jex's war crimes, he is beyond furious and seriously considers shooting Jex dead on the spot. Even after being talked down by Amy, the Doctor still advocates leaving him to the mercies of the Gunslinger.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: During the war on the Kahler's home planet, Jex justified his experiments as necessary to hasten the end of the conflict.

Mrs. Gillyflower

Winifred Gillyflower (Eleventh Doctor)

Played by: Diana Rigg (2013)

A nutty old woman who runs Sweetville, a factory town in Victorian Yorkshire which only invites the best and brightest prospective employees for permanent residence, alongside her unseen benefactor, Mr. Sweet. She is connected to a slew of murder victims strewn across the city whose bodies are bleached bright red.

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• Abusive Parents: Winifred is monstrously cruel to her daughter Ada, who went her whole life believing that her father blinded her and served her mother loyally in spite of all the emotional abuse she gets from her. Of course, Winifred was also responsible for destroying Ada's eyesight while experimenting on her with Mr. Sweet's venom, which proves to be the last straw that breaks Ada's filial loyalty.
• Adam and Eve Plot: She keeps her chosen survivors in pairs so that they may reproduce after the apocalypse.
• Ax-Crazy: Even the Doctor considers her a lost cause, since any attempt to reason with her proves futile. By the end of the story, she's frantically shooting a loaded gun at the protagonists and even threatening her own daughter with it.
• The Beautiful Elite: Bordering on Master Race. She only allows the most perfect and pure specimens who survive the Red Leech venom's freezing process entry to Sweetville. Clara makes the cut and survives the process. Gillyflower also considers Jenny and the Doctor, though the latter gets rejected due to his Time Lord biology making him react badly to the venom. Gillyflower's enforcers are all similarly pristine, causing the Doctor to nickname them "attack of the supermodels".
• Card-Carrying Villain: She's evil and she knows it. When the Doctor says how devastating Mr. Sweet's poison could be in the wrong hands, she proceeds to grin and open her palms out to him...
  Mrs. Gillyflower: You know what these are?... The wrong hands!
• Cult: What Sweetville really is. Between her ridiculous dogma, sheer insanity, and the creepy singing, the whole operation is an incredibly thinly veiled attempt at creating a Master Race. She even has supermodel mooks!
• The End Is Nigh: She preaches about the coming armageddon like a Sinister Minister, but she is secretly engineering said apocalypse.
• Evil Is Hammy: An elderly Diana Rigg playing a cackling Doctor Who supervillain. It's a sight to behold.
• Evil Laugh: Lets out a belter when she launches her rocket from the secondary firing mechanism.
• Evil Old Folks: One of the Doctor's most decrepit enemies, yet her deeds are no less diabolical.
• Evil Plan: She plots to unleash Mr. Sweet's deadly toxin into the upper atmosphere with a giant rocket, potentially wiping out all humanity, while allowing her perfect human specimens to thrive in the aftermath.
• Eye Scream: She inflicted horrific scars around Ada's eyes, blinding her.
• It's All About Me: Gillyflower experiments on her own daughter, blinding her in the process, all to find an antitoxin that would allow herself to survive the poison outbreak. She bears zero remorse in admitting it when the truth eventually comes out.
• Large Ham: Special props have to go to Diana Rigg's complete commitment to absolute insanity, and as a result Mrs. Gillyflower easily comes off as one of the Doctor's most unhinged enemies, if not the craziest.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Her obsession with eugenic perfection leads to her dismissing her own daughter as an impure specimen, unworthy to live in her new era.
• Never Mess with Granny: You might be surprised that Gillyflower's packing heat!
• People Jars: Sweetville isn't a match factory, it's a giant preservatory for Gillyflower's abductees, who are literally suspended in large glass jars as protection from the coming apocalypse.
• The Symbiote: She has a symbiotic relationship with Mr. Sweet, a gross little parasitic organism from the Jurassic period. He suckles on her chest while she mines his lethal poison for use in her apocalyptic master plan.
• Villainous Breakdown: She has an almighty one when she realises that Jenny and Vastra removed the poison payload from the rocket.
  Mrs. Gillyflower: Very well. If I can't take the world with me... you will have to do. DIE, YOU FREAKS! DIE! DIE!
• You're Insane!: Bless his hearts, the Doctor really does try to reason with her, but eventually he realizes that she is a complete and utter nutjob, and settles for stopping her at any cost. There is no rhyme or reason to be found here.
  The Doctor: I'm the Doctor, you're nuts, and I'm going to stop you.

Twelfth Doctor era debut

Half-Face Man

Half-Face Man (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Peter Ferdinando (2014)

"We will reach the promised land."

The main antagonist of "Deep Breath", the Half-Face Man is a robotic drone using human skin and organs to rebuild himself and his race. His ship, the SS Marie Antoinette, crashed into Earth millions of years ago, leaving him and his crew stranded on the planet. His business, Mancini's Family Restaurant, is a front for his organ harvesting, and his ultimate goal is to make it to The Promised Land.

Strangely enough for such an important character, he isn't even named in the episode, but the name "Half-Face Man" is used for him in the credits and behind-the-scenes video.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: As with the S.S. Madame de Pompadour droids, the Half-Face Man has taken a cannibalistic approach to repairing his ship but over his millions of years of existence he has become considerably more ambitious and desperate to embrace humanity.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • A striking example for the show is the purposefully ambiguous fate of the Half-Face Man: did he kill himself voluntarily or was he pushed by the Doctor? A reader poll was even conducted by Doctor Who Magazine which asked this question and the response was a near halfway split, with viewers who believed he committed suicide barely edging out with 53% of the votes. The fact that the question has to be asked at all is a huge part of the Twelfth Doctor's character arc.
  • He made it to Missy's "Heaven", but was he then converted into a Cyberman afterwards like most other dead souls uploaded to the Nethersphere despite being a robot already? Steven Moffat theorises that Missy likely "threw him away" once she realised his incompatibility.
• Back from the Dead: Despite falling to his death, he wakes up at the end of the episode to meet Missy in a garden that she tells him is The Promised Land. Actually averted, given The Reveal about Missy and the Promised Land.
• Badass Boast: He attempts to intimidate the Doctor by gloating about how he murdered a Tyrannosaurus rex for an extremely petty reason.
  Half-Face Man: I burned an ancient, beautiful creature for just one inch of optic nerve. What do you think you can accomplish, little man?
• Call-Back: His ship is the sister ship of the SS Madame de Pompadour from "The Girl in the Fireplace", and he's a variant of the clockwork robots from that episode.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: What he threatens to inflict on Clara. Thankfully, the Doctor stops him.
• Cyborg: Using human flesh and organs to become more humanoid.
• Determinator: 65 million years after his ship's crash on Earth and he's still determined to repair it at any cost.
• Disney Villain Death: He falls to his death out of the escape pod, but he has apparently ascended to his coveted 'Promised Land' at the end.
• Driven to Suicide: Possibly. He falls to his death, but whether he jumped or was pushed is left ambiguous.
• Emergent Human: The Half-Face Man harvests human body parts and grafts them onto himself so that he can become human enough to make it to The Promised Land. As a result, he is the only one of his kind to express emotion and sentiment, albeit in a very limited and mechanical way. The Doctor points out how he's far more human than machine at this point.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: He's a man (by a lenient definition) with half of a face.
• Evil Is Petty: While he killed the dinosaur for a practical purpose, the fact that he gloats about only doing so to procure a tiny shred of optic nerve from its corpse hints that he has picked up some petty sadism during his slow embrace of humanity. The T. rex died scared, confused, alone and in pain, having only been transported to Victorian London because of the Doctor's mistake.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He has an extremely deep, rumbling voice for a mostly monotone machine.
• Eye Awaken: At the end of the episode, after his supposed death.
• Face Stealer: Just about any organic part is appreciated, actually.
• Facial Horror: The left side of his face is missing, leaving the metal framework and a suspended eye completely visible.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: Has a blowtorch built into his arm.
• Foil: The thematic parallels between the Half-Face Man and the Twelfth Doctor are palpable. They are usually positioned opposite to each other in various shots throughout the episode to reinforce this.
  • Both are ancient, nigh-immortal beings that have worn many faces and struggle to grapple with their identities as a result, especially in regards to reconciling their humanity and alien/robotic natures. While the Doctor tries to "patch the holes" in his new persona after his regenerative trauma by contemplating who he truly is, the Half-Face Man does so more literally. The Doctor would later embrace his status as a "half" thing by claiming to be the Hybrid.
  • Madame Vastra speculates that the Doctor's regeneration into an older body is an attempt to reveal his true self, whereas his previous young and handsome bodies were merely a façade he wore to feel accepted by the world. The Half-Face Man, in turn, tries to conceal his robotic nature in public, but has a gaping hole in the side of his head that exposes the clockwork mechanisms within.
  • After many years of reinventing themselves, they no longer have anything of their "original" selves left and struggle to find reasons to keep going. Twelve finds motivation in protecting humanity, but he has several existential crises throughout his tenure and, like the Half-Face Man, really doesn't want to keep going indefinitely.
  • As they note to each other, they both have "basic programming" that they shouldn't go against (self-destruction for the Half-Face Man, murder for the Doctor) but one ultimately goes against it depending on your interpretation of the scene.
  • The Half-Face Man is obsessed with reaching the Promised Land as a reward for his eons of dedication. The allure of a reward has crossed the Doctor's mind many times, but by the time of the episode he has given up any expectation of getting one.
  • Lastly, whenever the Half-Face Man has to use his blowtorch weapon, he severs his face and places it on his jacket's lapel, a distortion of the First Doctor's iconic character tic of clutching his lapels. The Twelfth Doctor is technically the "first" of his new regeneration cycle and also frequently mimics the behaviours of his own past incarnations during his journey of self-discovery.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: He claims that self-destruction goes against his basic programming, but he may have been lying.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He winds up like this, on Big Ben no less.
• Keystone Army: He is the "control node" of all the Marie Antoinette droids. When he dies, they shut down.
• Kill It with Fire: His calling card is incinerating his victims after he's taken what he's needed. Most impressively (and horrifically), he does it to a time-displaced T. rex just to procure a tiny piece of its optic nerve.
• Literal-Minded: When a random bystander says that his eyes are his greatest gift, the Half-Face Man takes it as a charitable offering.
• Mix-and-Match Man: He is a Frankenstein-esque patchwork of both human organs and mechanical parts that have been constantly degraded and replaced over millions of years. The Doctor notices that his hands don't match and that he has some Ancient Roman metalwork still in his head.
• No Name Given: His nickname is only given in the credits and behind-the-scenes content. He may not even have a true name or designation, and if he does he probably can't remember it.
• Oh, Crap!: He has one when he realises that either he or the Doctor are lying about their "basic programming". Considering that the Doctor already made his intentions to protect humanity clear and has a body count in the millions, it was likely the first time the Half-Face Man ever experienced fear.
• The Promised Land: His ultimate goal for his race. He gets there in the end. Supposedly.
• Starter Villain: The first villain of the Twelfth Doctor's era. He was purposefully created to be a very "simple" baddie for the newly regenerated Doctor to face, but Moffat purposefully gave the droid leader many rich parallels to the Doctor to keep him interesting.
• Suddenly Shouting: His voice has a characteristic monotonous quality to it, but he furiously shouts at Clara during her interrogation, which is as jarring as it is terrifying.
• Theseus' Ship Paradox: Alongside the rest of the Marie Antoinette's crew, the Half-Face Man has constantly replaced his degrading clockwork parts with new ones for millions of years until the original parts have been outstripped countless times over. The Doctor even references this conundrum while trying to get through to him.
• Time Abyss: It's indicated that the Marie Antoinette was flung into the past and crash-landed on Earth before the K-T extinction event, over 65 million years ago, making the Half-Face Man truly ancient. Of course, the original command node droid ceased to exist eons ago. The Half-Face Man we see in the episode is merely the result of the Theseus' Ship Paradox mentioned above; after years of replacing every part of himself, nothing of his original self remains.
• Uncanny Valley: Invoked, as he's a very ancient machine trying — and very badly failing — to be human. His movements are very mechanical and stilted, and he rarely emotes with either his face or voice.
• Villain of the Week: Of "Deep Breath".
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Were it not for his unwavering determination to reach the Promised Land, he would likely have given up trying to repair his ship centuries ago.

Skovox Blitzer

The Skovox Blitzer (Twelfth Doctor)

Voiced by: Jimmy Vee (2014)

An alien battle robot that wound up in London, in the vicinity of Coal Hill School, with the potential to kill everyone on Earth.

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• Calling Your Attacks: The Skovox Blitzer calls out everything it does, not just its attacks.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Its origin, motivation and reason for being on Earth are never given. It's justified as the Blitzer's presence in the plot is secondary to the Love Triangle between the Doctor, Clara and Danny.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: For a supposedly advanced killing machine, Skovox takes the phrase "spray n' pray" to a great extreme. The only person he manages to shoot is a stationary police officer.
• Informed Ability: The Skovox Blitzer is described as having enough firepower to destroy a planet. In practice, it can't even hit Clara.
• Killer Robot: Can't go wrong with one, can ya?
• Thrown Out the Airlock: The Doctor pitches the deactivated Skovox out the TARDIS doors and into space.

Gus

Gus (Twelfth Doctor)

Voiced by: John Sessions (2014)

"Isn't this exciting?"

Gus is the AI aboard the Orient Express in Space, and was programmed to collect data on the Foretold.

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• Affably Evil: Always polite and cheerful, even as he sucks the air out of the Orient Express to asphyxiate everyone aboard.
• Expy: He's quite similar to Ash from Alien. He has an ulterior motive unknown to the rest of the crew that involves harnessing the power of a dangerous being to be used as a weapon, the difference being that Gus actually succeeds in his mission.
• High-Class Glass: See the picture. His digital avatar has a monocle.
• Karma Houdini: Gus' creator goes unseen and unpunished, a rarity amongst Who villains (for a time it seemed like he could become an Arc Villain, but after a couple of seasons and a new showrunner that's not the case any longer). This isn't the case with Gus himself, who blows himself up in order to ensure his creator's status as one.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Gus kills a whole train car full of people to get the Doctor to cooperate. And when the Doctor tries to track the signal back to the source, it just blows up the whole train.
• The Team: He (or his unseen creator) lures a perfect research crew of assorted historians, scientists and mythology specialists, and of course the Doctor^note of intestinal parasites, onto a luxururious Orient Express space cruise, only to reveal that the space-train is actually a large laboratory. Gus blackmails them all into working together to find a way to stop the Foretold. Ironically, Captain Quell and Chief Engineer Perkins prove to be much more useful in solving the mystery than the scientists.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Pulls this when the Doctor solves the mystery of the Foretold.

The Foretold

The Foretold (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Jamie Hill (2014)

The Foretold is a creature of ancient legend; those who see it are marked for death, and those who see it have only 66 seconds left to live. It always appears in the vicinity of an ancient scroll, a scroll left on the Orient Express where the Doctor and Clara decided to board. The monster is impossible to kill, impossible to run away from and it is impossible to say who is the next victim. The truth of it turns out to be far more bizarre; it's actually a soldier who has been alive for a while, and the malfunctioning technology it's attached to is keeping it alive and forcing it to fight for a war that's been over for several millennia.

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• Absurdly Dedicated Worker: It's obliged to keep killing those it sees as enemies until whatever mission it was programmed with is completed, and looks visibly relieved when the Doctor figures out how to disable it.
• Anti-Villain: It's really just a soldier that doesn't know it's fighting a war that has been over for centuries.
• Cyborg: The Doctor deduced that it's being kept alive by malfunctioning medical implants.
• The Dreaded: It's basically death personified.
• Foil: The sole surviving soldier of a forgotten war, forced to stay alive and keep fighting long after the conflict's conclusion thousands of years ago. Parallels can be drawn to the Doctor himself, and his arc throughout Series 8 dealing with his resentment toward other soldiers. Notably, the Doctor acts quite respectful towards the Foretold after successfully deducing its true identity.
• Implacable Man: The creature is nigh impossible to kill, much less fight against. It's Immune to Bullets, any sort of weapon thrown at it just passes right through it, and it's impossible to run away from. The Foretold will chase after you no matter what you do and it will kill you.
• Intangible Man: Weapons can't touch it.
• Invisible to Normals: Only shows up for people it has marked for death.
• Just Following Orders: The Foretold is a soldier just doing what it's told.
• Life Drinker: How it kills its victims. It sucks all their bodily energy, such as those that their cells produce, and leaves them completely lifeless.
• Mummy: Being chased down by an indestructible Super-Soldier is bad enough; it's even worse when it looks like a rotting, wheezing corpse wrapped in bandages.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: An alien soldier from an ancient civilisation, kept alive by Cyborg technology, it looks like a Mummy, and it kills by leeching energy from its victim's body like a vampire.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: It's merely a soldier doing its duty.
• Our Monsters Are Different: For one thing, it's a millennia-old soldier being kept alive by malfunctioning tech.
• Super-Soldier: Described as such by the Doctor. The Foretold is indestructible, Immune to Bullets, and can follow its victim no matter where they go. Also there's the fact that it's a soldier that fought in a war that ended long ago.
• Tragic Villain: The Doctor implies this, given that he's forced to remain alive for centuries after the war ended.
• Touch of Death: Its modus operandi.
• Villain Teleportation: Its victim can run as much as they like, the Foretold will always appear next to them and kill them.
• Zombie Gait: Slowly shambles towards its victim, which makes it all the more scary.

Seb

Seb (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Chris Addison (2014)

"iPads? We have Steve Jobs!"

Seb is Missy's right-hand man, often meeting new deceased people when she's too busy. He's known to be sarcastic, affable and enjoys cracking jokes; often at inopportune times. He greets the officer from "The Caretaker" and Danny Pink after they both die and "helps" them get acquainted to the "Afterlife", aka the Nethersphere.

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• Affably Evil: He does help Missy create her Cybermen army and even seems to enjoy what he does, but he's still polite, charitable and upbeat. He helps the deceased, offers Danny a coffee and when he gives Danny his iPad to delete his emotions and thus turn him into a Cyberman he doesn't pressure or threaten him, instead giving him a choice. He even does it in a way that makes it seem like a favour. Heck, even Chris Addison himself has called him "polite and charming". It seems that Missy created him to be affable to lull deceased people into a false sense of security so that they would delete their emotions.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted, as he does exactly what he's programmed to do and doesn't revolt against his master. But he's still working for a bad guy.
• Ambiguously Evil: It could be argued that he's not actually a bad guy as he was created with "evil" intentions, kind of like how a computer virus isn't evil, only its programmer.
• Bearer of Bad News: You suddenly wake up at a desk in a blank room with this guy smiling warmly back at you. Your last memory is some deadly scenario you can't remember escaping from. Then Seb has to explain that, indeed, you didn't escape.
• Deadpan Snarker: His quote above? That's just one of many of his sarcastic quips, jokes and affable demeanour.
• I Can See My House from Here: Says this when Danny looks out his office window and sees the inside of the Nethersphere. Then he apologizes since it probably wasn't helping.
• Squee: What ultimately gets him killed by Missy, since he was already annoying her and that was just the final straw.

Fisher King

Fisher King (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Neil Fingleton (2015)

Voiced by: Peter Serafinowicz (speaking voice); Corey Taylor (roar) (2015)

The Fisher King is a brutal alien warlord that conquered the planet Tivoli until he was overthrown. He's the mastermind behind the ghosts in "Under the Lake"/"Before the Flood".

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• Arc Villain: Of "Under the Lake" and "Before the Flood".
• Dead All Along: Due to the Timey-Wimey Ball nature of his two-part episode, the Doctor and Clara arrive on Earth in 2119 to be attacked by his ghostly minions, which prompts the Doctor to go back to 1980 and fight and kill him in that timeline, then hide in the Fisher King's own coffin when he is buried at sea and come back in 2119 the long way; the ghosts were accidentally activated by the humans who found said coffin but the Fisher King was never truly a threat because he had been killed long ago... in a Metaphorically True way.
• Defiant to the End: When the Fisher King sees the incoming flood that's about to crush him, he stands and roars at it until it crushes him.
• Evil Is Bigger: He's an imposing alien warlord that stands at about 8 feet tall.
• Evil Plan: The Fisher King's plan was to use the hijacked souls of the dead to transmit a message to his people so they would come and invade Earth.
• Faking the Dead: It was believed that he had been killed by the Arcateenians when they liberated Tivoli from his tyrannical rule. However when his body was transported to Earth to be buried, it turns out he was still alive and was using the opportunity to set another invasion plot in motion.
• Fisher King: It's in the name. He intended to summon his armada so they would drain the planet of its oceans and subjugate humanity. According to this behind-the-scenes featurette, the Fisher King originally hails from an arid, desert-like place, which helps explain the meaning behind his name.
• Necromancer: He possesses technology to restore the souls of the recently deceased as ghosts and enslave them to his will.
• Spikes of Villainy: His armour and body have several curved spikes on them.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: His race may not be Time Lords, but they have the technology to manipulate souls, something even the Doctor thought was impossible.

Bonnie the Zygon

Bonnie the Zygon (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Jenna Coleman and Ingrid Oliver (2015)

"It's not fair!"

A radical Zygon who, unhappy with the treaty between Zygons and UNIT, seeks to start a war so that Zygons will have the "right" to exist as "themselves". As the commander of the rebels she infiltrates and undermines UNIT by kidnapping Clara and assuming her appearance.

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• Arc Villain: Of "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion".
• The Atoner: She becomes the new second Osgood to make amends for disrupting the peace between humans and Zygons.
• Didn't Think This Through: As Twelve points out, she didn't put a lot of thought into her "revolution".
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: She has a lot of analogies in her characterisation to ISIS.
• Easily Forgiven: Twelve forgives her for all the mayhem she causes. Having been responsible for far, far worse atrocities as the War Doctor in the Last Great Time War, he understands her way of thinking. (Not for nothing do the Osgood Boxes resemble the Moment.) This is an invoked trope, as he deliberately forgave her to break the cycle of vengeance.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Yes, the leader of a Zygon uprising is named... Bonnie!
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Is quick to anger when something does not go her way.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the end, though she takes a lot of convincing from Twelve to get there.
• Hypocrite: She despises humans for making Zygons hide their true form, but she spends her entire arc disguised as Clara even in the presence of other Zygons. Not to mention, she has a human name!
• I Did What I Had to Do: Claims this, though the Doctor isn't taking it.
• It's All About Me: She says at one point that all Zygons who do not share her views should not be allowed to have that option.
• I've Come Too Far: She believes she's come too far to repent — until Twelve convinces her otherwise.
• Karma Houdini: Despite being responsible for the deaths of a lot of Zygons and UNIT personnel, she receives no punishment.
• Living Lie Detector: The mental link with Clara syncs their heartbeats which in turn allows her to know when Clara is lying to her.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Twelve calls her a tantrum-throwing child who doesn't know what she wants; indeed, she throws a lot of actual tantrums when things don't go her way in "The Zygon Inversion".
• The Reveal: It's only in the final minutes of "The Zygon Invasion" that the audience and other characters even learn of her existence, as she has been most convincingly impersonating Clara for the bulk of the episode!
• Tom the Dark Lord: The leader of the rebel Zygons who wants freedom for her species at any price has the very human name "Bonnie".
• Villainous Breakdown: She loses it when she finds out the Osgoods and later the Doctor have tricked her with regards to the Osgood Boxes.

The Veil

The Veil (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Jamie Reid-Quarrell (2015)

A cloaked and hooded figure, the Veil is a representation of the Doctor's deepest, most intimate fears. Based on a childhood memory the Doctor had of a dead Gallifreyan woman, who died on a hot day and despite being covered by a veil began to attract flies before she could be buried. This unstoppable figure hunts the Doctor relentlessly through the clockwork castle he finds himself trapped in during the events of "Heaven Sent", and it has only one purpose: to kill the Doctor. It was created by the Time Lords to scare the Doctor into revealing the truth about a creature called "the Hybrid." However, other truths can be used to stall it, like when the Doctor tells it that he ran from Gallifrey because he was scared.

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• Anthropomorphic Personification: It has been interpreted to represent several things, but it most pressingly embodies the concept of death and the Doctor's immense grief over Clara's death. Word of God states that it is the nightmares from the Doctor's mind given physical form.
• Bedsheet Ghost: The Veil resembles one due to wearing veils, as it's based on the Doctor's memories of a veiled corpse he saw while young.
• Clockwork Creature: It turns out to be this, matching with the rest of the castle's nature.
• Critical Existence Failure: When the Doctor does the impossible by escaping the confessional dial, the Veil crumbles into a pile of cogs and gears.
• The Grim Reaper: Thematically, the Veil is Death itself.
• Hell Is That Noise: Its thumping footsteps are a constant reminder of its presence, but the sound of buzzing flies serves as a sign that it is very close.
• In the Hood: The Veil wears a dusty robe that conceals virtually its entire body, including its face — the key visible parts of it teased in the trailers are its grey, mottled, clawed hands. It bears a strong resemblance to the Grim Reaper. It's inspired by a bad memory from the Doctor's childhood of seeing a dead, veiled woman surrounded by flies, and is effectively an embodiment of his fear of death.
• Ominous Walk: The Veil constantly walks at the same pace towards the Doctor. It has a limp, meaning every step is a thump.
• Robotic Reveal: When the Doctor finally breaches the wall, the Veil is revealed to be a clockwork, falling into a pile of gears.
• The Speechless: It never says a word.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Like Death himself, it's slow, predictable and can even be paused for brief moments, but it will always catch up to its victim in the end.
• Threshold Guardian: The Veil serves as the Doctor's opponent in the Belly of the Whale. It is something he must overcome to reach the outside world.
• Time Stands Still: The Doctor confessing a sufficiently juicy secret causes it and even the flies buzzing around it to completely freeze momentarily.
• Touch of Death: If it touches you, you will die, but not immediately.
• We Have Ways of Making You Talk: The Veil is the Time Lords' personal interrogator for the Doctor, designed from his very nightmares to scare the living shit out of him until he spills the beans about the Hybrid prophecy and any other useful confessions. The Doctor is shocked at how effective it is at terrifying him, though its primary weapon is its unwavering persistence.
• Why Won't You Die?: Averted as the Veil is seemingly not sentient, simply doing what it's programmed to do. However, over several billion years, it fatally wounds the Doctor countless times only for him to summon a fresh copy of himself from the teleporter to start the cycle over again.

King Hydroflax

King Hydroflax (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Greg Davies (2015)

Suit voiced by: Nonso Anozie (2015)

A ruthless intergalactic tyrant who holds dominion over several races and planets. He has a fearsome reputation and an intimidating visage thanks to a giant suit of armour, but his actual biomass is his disembodied head, and his armour has a mind of its own. River Song seduced him into marrying her as part of a ruse to extract a precious diamond that was driven into his skull during a raid on the Halassi Vaults.

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• Ambiguous Robots: The armour is quite clearly robotic, but the TARDIS's Real Time Envelope protocols classify it as Hydroflax's body, implying that there is organic stuff in there somehow. The TARDIS cannot take off if a person is simultaneously inside (Hydroflax's head) and outside (the armour) the console room, which prevents the possibility of a nasty and impolite Portal Cut.
• Animated Armor: His armour has a mind and voice of its own, but in contrast to Hydroflax's highly emotional head, it operates on cold, robotic logic.
• Bad Santa: In grand Christmas special tradition, Hydroflax's design bears a twisted resemblance to Santa. Except instead of a fat, jolly old man in red, it's a monstrous old tyrant's head on an oversized red Powered Armor.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Seems to be one of his favourite kinds of death threat, the other being variations of "CRUSH! KILL! DESTROY!"
• Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted. He claims that he doesn't endanger his subjects for no reason, but threatens to destroy an entire star system with the stabilised black hole in his armour, on the grounds that he's cross.
• Evil Is Hammy: Holy crap, yes. Greg Davies has a blast in the role. Even the design of his suit is hammy and extravagant, resembling something out of a Super Sentai show.
• I Am a Humanitarian: He is said to devour his defeated enemies in battle, which presumably includes the human colonists of Mendorax Dellora.
• Laughably Evil: Hydroflax himself is so ridiculous that neither the Doctor or River can take him seriously (he is played by Greg Davies, after all). When allowed to act autonomously, his armour manages to be quite a bit more menacing.
• Living MacGuffin: The precious diamond lodged in his skull.
• Losing Your Head: The reveal that Hydroflax is little more than a living, disembodied head on top of a giant robot lessens his intimidating reputation quite substantially. River and the Doctor stealing his head (and the diamond lodged within it) causes Hydroflax's armour to chase after them with a vengeance.
• Off with His Head!: In the absence of Hydroflax's head, the Powered Armor takes other people's heads as temporary replacements. Nardole and Ramone become its victims, and it threatens to do the same to the Doctor and the treacherous passengers of the Harmony and Redemption.
  • Fortunately, Nardole's head was extracted and his body rebuilt, but it's unknown what became of Ramone. He may have been freed as well, or he remained in control of the armour and continued working as a waiter at the restaurant on Darillium. A semi-official fan story submitted for the Doctor Who: Lockdown! event speculates that Ramone's body became the founding member of the Order of the Headless, rallying Hydroflax's Warrior Monks to his side.
• Powered Armor: His armour is several times larger than humans, extremely powerful, and capable of self-propelled flight.
• Tin Tyrant: Hydroflax is a quintessential Evil Overlord who flies into battle wearing a giant suit of armour.
• Unholy Matrimony: The Doctor is disturbed to find that River married a monster like him, even if it was all a ploy, especially since she is supposed to be the Doctor's (and Ramone's) wife as well. River insists she married the diamond, not Hydroflax.
• Warrior Monk: Employs a group of Warrior Monks who wield sentient laser swords and are genetically engineered to have anger issues as his personal bodyguards.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Because nobody actually arrived to perform surgery to remove the diamond from Hydroflax's head, combined with the fact that the head was being tossed around in a burlap bag for several minutes, the diamond caused irreparably fatal damage. When the armour discovers this, it declares this trope and performs a Mercy Kill on Hydroflax. It updates its mission parameters to instead take any suitable head as a host.

Lord Sutcliffe

Lord Sutcliffe (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Nicholas Burns (2017)

A wealthy noble and businessman of the Regency era who plans to use the tourist-attracting Frost Fair to feed attendants to a massive serpent located beneath the ice of the Thames to sell it's excrements as fuel.

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• Aristocrats Are Evil: An incredibly unpleasant nobleman who embodies the absolute worst impulses of his social class.
• Blue Is Heroic: Inverted. He wears a bright blue jacket but is completely reprehensible.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Sutcliffe embodies this trope so much the only thing missing is a classic mustache twirl.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: He profits off feeding people to a serpent and has no moral qualms with doing so.
• Dead Hat Shot: His hat flies off him as he's pulled under by the serpent-fish himself.
• Hate Sink: Sutcliffe is a racist, sexist, and greedy slimeball who has people (including kids) fed to a sea monster so then he can profit off their remains. There is nothing remotely likable about him.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Despite the Doctor and Bill's original belief that Sutcliffe is an alien, he turns out to be completely human; the giant serpent in the Thames is his prisoner and not openly malicious, just an animal eating the food that comes its way.
• Karmic Death: Devoured by the creature he's been feeding people to.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The very first thing he does is start racially abusing Bill the instant he sees her.

The Landlord and The Wooden Lady

John and Eliza (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: David Suchet and Mariah Gale (2017)

While looking for student accommodation, Bill and her uni friends find a great offer for a large, luxurious property and decide to move in together. Of course, the offer is too good to be true, and the creepy Landlord appears to be responsible for the house's long history of vanishing tenants. Hidden and isolated in the tower attic of the house is the mysterious Wooden Lady, whose existence is kept secret from everyone but the Landlord.

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• Armor-Piercing Question: The Landlord asks the Doctor if he would go to similar length to save the life of someone he loved. The Doctor has no answer, which the Landlord takes as confirmation. Of course, the Doctor had almost went to much worse lengths to save Clara only one series (and a handful of Christmas specials) prior.
  • Cut dialogue from "Knock Knock" would have made the parallels to the aforementioned events of "Hell Bent" more explicit, with the Doctor instead admitting that he would torch the universe to a cinder to save a loved one and only hope that someone would be able to stop him.
• Driven to Suicide: The Doctor helps Eliza to realise that she has been kept alive by the Landlord, but in isolating her completely from the outside world, she hasn't been allowed to truly live. The fact that her son transformed into a dangerous serial killer to preserve her life makes the situation all the more unbearable, so she embraces John one last time before allowing the Dryads to disintegrate them.
• Evil Old Folks: From the offset, the Landlord an undeniably creepy and suspicious character, and while his motivations are revealed to be sympathetic, he has become too bitter and callous to care about the consequences of his actions.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: Initially, we are led to believe that the Wooden Lady is the Landlord's daughter, but the opposite is true; Eliza is John's mother. He naturally aged into an old man while she was steadily transformed by the Dryads into an immortal wooden creature. As her memory deteriorated, he lied about his true relationship to her to keep her docile.
• Genre Refugee: The Landlord would be quite at home in a pulpy Gothic Horror short story set in a dark old mansion on a hill. People in such stories don't tend to question the weird anachronisms, but the Doctor is Genre Savvy enough to catch the Landlord out with questions about the modern world that he doesn't know the answers to.
• Load-Bearing Boss: When Eliza dies, the Dryads dissipate and the house collapses.
• Mood-Swinger: He swings from calm and polite when first interacting with the students, to sharp and authoritative when ordering Harry to stay away from the tower. More disturbingly, he regresses to a mewling, childlike personality when in the presence of his mother.
• No Name Given: Narrowly Averted, but the Landlord's given name of John is only revealed in an almost inaudible line of dialogue from Eliza that we only see in subtitles. Their surname goes unrevealed, though.
• Plant Person: Eliza has slowly transformed into a bark-skinned creature after many years of unwittingly feeding on the house's unfortunate tenants.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Deep down, the Landlord is a little boy who refused to grow up and spent his entire adult life protecting his terminally-ill mother with the help of the Dryads. When the Doctor and Bill reveal the horrible truth to Eliza and help her find peace, but John orders the Dryads to kill them both out of spite. Eliza thankfully overrides the bugs to instead disintegrate both John and herself.
• Trapped in the Past: The Landlord has distinctly old-fashioned mannerisms and seems to be completely out of touch with the modern world beyond the walls of his old house. When the Doctor playfully interrogates him, John can't name the current prime minister.

Queen Iraxxa

Queen Iraxxa (Twelfth Doctor)

Played by: Adele Lynch (2017)

The ruling matriarch over the Ice Warrior colonies hibernating beneath Mars' North Pole, she and her troops are awakened after her sentinel, "Friday", returns to the planet with a group of Victorian soldiers sent to search for her tomb with the promise of gold and riches.

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• Anti-Villain: She only antagonises the heroes to protect her own people.
• Fold-Spindle Mutilation: Her armour, as well as those of her troops, are equipped with laser cannons that cause the victim's body to contort around itself.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Subverted: She is menacing and not above killing her enemies, but has the same sense of honour and duty as any other Ice Warrior. Moreover, she is trying to protect her people from hostile Earthlings. In the end, the message left on the surface of Mars really refers to her rather than Queen Victoria!
• Honour Before Reason: One of the reasons she is so quick to want to kill the humans is because they made one of her warriors their servant, even declaring "Ice Warriors do not serve". This is despite the fact that, as Friday points out, it was a necessary arrangement to free her, and overall he himself doesn't seem to care.
  • However, it's her honourable nature that ultimately makes her spare the commanding officer, previously disgraced for cowardice, after he offers his own life in exchange for the lives of his men.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Girl, in her case. It works both negatively and positively.
• The Smurfette Principle: She's the first female Ice Warrior ever shown on screen in fifty years. About time, huh? And what better way to commemorate the anniversary of their debut by finally reintroducing them in the form of the fairer sex?

Thirteenth Doctor era debut

Tzim-Sha

Tzim-Sha (Thirteenth Doctor)

Played by: Samuel Oatley

A hunter from a race called the Stenza, who comes to Earth hunting a specific trophy to make himself the next leader of his people.

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• Battle Trophy: He takes a tooth from every person that he kills and implants it in his face.
• Big Bad: He ultimately serves as the main threat of the Series 11 opener and closer, as his actions, mostly his part in Grace's death, provide the overall arc.
• Dirty Coward: A Stenza seeking leadership must make the hunt with no assistance or tools. He uses both. The Doctor even calls him out on it.
• Enclosed Extraterrestrials: Downplayed. His species, the Stenza, have a naturally lower body temperature than humans, and it's implied his armour was designed to help him cope with the temperature of earth and planets with similar climates. However, unlike most examples of this trope, he can expose his face and hands without any ill effect.
• Facial Horror: His face is covered with the teeth of people he's killed.
• A God Am I: After millennia of pretending to be the Ux's "Creator", the power at his disposal caused him to believe he really was a god, at least functionally.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Doctor tricks him into absorbing the DNA bombs he'd had his data coil implant in the Doctor and her friends. The data coil he was using to cheat on his ritual hunt. It's likely that had he not used the coil, he wouldn't have been caught at all.
• An Ice Person: The Stenza are a low-temperature species, and he can freeze humans to death with his touch.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Those he takes alive he puts in stasis pods, preserved in a state of something between life and death, and well-aware of their fate as trophies. This is ultimately his own fate.
• Malicious Misnaming: The Doctor mishears his name as "Tim Shaw" and continues calling him as such for the rest of the episode. Even the credits refer to him as such, and he's called such by the group in later episodes.
• Starter Villain: The first enemy of the Thirteenth Doctor.

Krasko

Krasko (Thirteenth Doctor)

Played by: Josh Bowman

A racist time criminal and mass murderer who was imprisoned in Stormcage.

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• Allegorical Character: He ultimately represents racism by being a white supremacist and how it may never truly disappear by being from the 79th century.
• Badass Normal: A thug with a clever brain and dangerous technology makes for a very bad combination.
• Flat Character: He exists to push the plot because he's racist and that's it. No Freudian Excuse, no sympathetic backstory, just a thug with access to time travel and a racist agenda. Justified as the true villain of his episode were racism and bigotry, he's just another mouthpiece for it.
• Greaser Delinquents: He dresses like one and sabotages cars in the story. He's also a white supremacist who hates non-whites and possibly non-humans.
• Hate Sink: Really has to be one of the most despicable villains in all of Doctor Who. He's not a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur like the Master or Davros, or genetically modified like the Cybermen or Daleks. He's just a thug who hates anybody who isn't white and decides to meddle in the events of history to undo any progress any people of colour make towards equality.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He's a white supremacist from the 79th century, who gets sent into the distant past with his own time-displacement weapon by Ryan, a black man from the 21st century, which would be the past to Krasko.
• Manipulative Bastard: His whole shtick since he can't kill anybody, just manipulate time in subtle ways to get what he wants — in this case, make sure Rosa Parks never inspires the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• Noodle Incident:
  • He was imprisoned in Stormcage for an incident which killed 2,000 people.
  • It's never explained how he knows what a TARDIS is, but it's implied it may have something to do with the time machine black market.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He's a racist who's trying to prevent non-white people from gaining equality.
• Restraining Bolt: Before he was released from Stormcage he was fitted with one to stop him from hurting anybody. This doesn't make him any less dangerous.
• Ripped from the Headlines: It's no coincidence that his episode coincides with a global uptake in public bigotry and hate crimes.
• Smug Snake: Even when he realizes a Time Lord is on his trail, figures out his Evil Plan and wipes out most of his equipment he still acts like a cocky thug convinced he can still win, even as Ryan sends him into the distant past with his own weapon.
• Tattooed Crook: He has a tattoo on his left wrist identifying him as a former Stormcage inmate.
• Trapped in the Past: First, the Doctor destroys his vortex manipulator while he's in 1955. Then Ryan zaps him even farther into the past with his own temporal displacement weapon.

Jack Robertson

Jack Robertson (Thirteenth Doctor)

Played by: Chris Noth

A sketchy real estate mogul with a chain of resorts and eyes on a presidential bid.

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• Corrupt Corporate Executive: In "Arachnids in the UK", he's a shady businessman who hides a landfill under a luxury hotel. "Revolution of the Daleks" further cements this by showing him to be a tax dodger in cahoots with a Corrupt Politician.
• Flanderization: He was somewhat comical and stereotypical in his debut, but his second appearance exaggerates his "slimy right-wing politician" persona even more, to the point that he can barely go a few sentences without talking about money or his political ambitions.
• Genre Refugee: Robertson is a recurring human villain in a sci fi show where other members of the Rogues Gallery are aliens. He doesn't even know what the TARDIS is, and is just a Corrupt Corporate Executive that is better fitted in a show with political intrigue.
• Genre Savvy: He's greedy, corrupt and short-sighted, but even he realizes that cloning an unknown alien creature is a horrible mistake.
• Hate Sink: He's a Bad Boss and Dirty Coward who will happily throw even people loyal to him under the bus to save himself, and is ultimately responsible for all of the deaths related to the spiders because his shady business practices created them in the first place.
• Karma Houdini: Both of the episodes he appears in end with him facing no on-screen consequences for his actions or role in the events (though the start of "Revolution of the Daleks" does claim that the toxic waste dump scandal from "Arachnids in the UK" soured his first attempt at becoming U.S. president). However at the end of "Revolution", it is implied he might try again.
• Never My Fault: The very epitome of a blame-foisting politician.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: For most of the two episodes he appears in, he is presented as a comic relief villain, but this guy shoots a spider creature with no remorse, and sides with the Daleks. This guy can switch from Large Ham to cold schemer in moments, and he is one person who repeatedly says that he doesn't answer the Doctor.
• The Quisling: He has no problem working with a Dalek death squad, or selling out the rest of the human race and the Doctor to get them on his side.
• Trumplica: One big poke at President Trump. Though funnily enough, he hates the guy.

Daniel Barton

Daniel Barton (Thirteenth Doctor)

Played by: Sir Lenny Henry

A powerful tech mogul who heads the MegaCorp VOR, and is in league with two powerful allies for unknown purposes. He was previously an MI6 agent.

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• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Heads a powerful technology company that's sucking up everyone's data as part of his plan to take over the world.
• Double Agent: Used to work for MI6 before he stopped cooperating with them, and the agency's head suspects he's turned double agent. He has, now working with the Master.
• Karma Houdini: Escapes and phones for an extraction team after the Doctor wrecks his plans.
• Professor Guinea Pig: His DNA reads as only 93% human. He wants to rule the world by turning the majority of humanity into living hard drives, and he had the Kasaavin rewrite part of his DNA as a proof of concept.
• Rags to Riches: Grew up living on a council estate before he became rich and powerful.
• Self-Made Man: Seems to have cultivated his wealth himself.
• Self-Made Orphan: He has his mother, whom he has a strained relationship with, killed by the Kasaavin via lethal rewriting of her DNA.
• Take Over the World: His goal.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Is last seen in "Spyfall" fleeing his tech demo phoning for an extraction team due to the Doctor thwarting everyone's plans.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He has a very strained relationship with his mother, who is not impressed by his wealth and power at all. When he asks her what it's going to take to get her to say "Well done", she says the phrase very sarcastically.

The Grand Serpent

The Grand Serpent (Thirteenth Doctor)

Played by: Craig Parkinson

A scheming, paranoid intergalactic dictator whom Vinder once served under. He later interferes in Earth's history under the pseudonym of Prentis.

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• Ambiguous Situation: The Grand Serpent appears at various points in UNIT's history from 1958 to 2021, always looking the same, but since he obviously has access to time travel it's unclear whether he really is The Ageless, or is simply skipping around the timeline to the pivotal moments he requires for his scheme.
• Arch-Enemy: For being the only person in UNIT to successfully defy him, Kate Stewart has earned a special enmity from him, to the point that he wanted to personally hunt her down.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He's one of the major antagonists of Flux, orchestrating the Sontaran conquest of Earth while planning to backstab his allies to assume total control. However, his petty vendetta against Kate Stewart sidetracks him from accomplishing this goal, and the Sontarans remain dismissive of his contributions before ultimately abandoning him to be destroyed by the Flux.
• Corrupt Politician: Back when Vinder was working for him, he had arranged for the deaths of relatives of a political opponent as part of a deal.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The fate inflicted on his victims with his psychic worm parasite is gruesome even by this show's standards, as it spawns inside their bodies before burrowing its way out through their mouth, causing them to die in agony. It doesn’t help that the worm creature itself looks hideous.
• Hate Sink: While we don’t know much about him, the Grand Serpent manages to be one of the pettiest, most despicable megalomaniacs that the show has featured in quite some time. He takes advantage of the chaos and confusion caused by the Flux wave to make a deal with the Sontarans, whose victory he ensures by interfering with the history of UNIT via time travel, cold-bloodedly murdering every poor soul who opposes him along the way. His smarmy, accusatory personality hardly wins him any favours in the charm department, either.
• The Man Behind the Man: He travels throughout Earth's past to influence the creation of UNIT, becoming an elusive yet high-ranking figurehead in the process. Creating UNIT turns out to be part of an elaborate scheme to lower Earth's defences at the right moment during the Sontaran invasion going on in the present.
• Mysterious Past: Very little is known about him yet.
• The Paranoiac: His Establishing Character Moment sees Vinder casually voice his agreement to some innocuous statement the Grand Serpent makes, only for the Grand Serpent to immediately begin accusing Vinder of wanting to usurp him. He’s incredibly insecure about the possibility of losing his position of power, which ironically leads to his eventual removal from office.

Fourteenth Doctor era debut

The Most High (SPOILERS)

The Meep (Fourteenth Doctor)

Voiced by: Miriam Margolyes

A Meep, a furry creature that was hunted by the Wrarth Warriors, which leads to a meeting with the newly-regenerated Fourteenth Doctor.

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• Adaptation Name Change: Outside of declaring itself "the Beep of all the Meeps" at one point, the Meep is never referred to as "Beep" or "Beep the Meep" in The Star Beast. Interestingly enough, this seems to be the case in the Meep's debut comic. Beyond the "Beep of all the Meeps" title, which was also in the original comic, the name Beep the Meep seems to have come from later appearances.
• Atrocious Alias: One assumes "the Beep of all the Meeps" is a more intimidating title on Meepkind's home planet. The episode’s novelisation reveals that the name originally meant “Glorious leader whose job is to be most perfectly round, like planets, moon, suns, pseudanthium and cake.”, though by the time the Meeps began the Meep's conquests, it had come to mean “vicious warlord”.
• Ax-Crazy: All Meeps are utterly violent and insane, and this one is no exception. The Meep's plan is to get off Earth via a dagger drive, which will turn London into a molten crater. The Doctor even points out and offers to build the Meep a more humane form of getting off planet, but is rebuffed, because the Meep wants to kill people.
  The Meep: No stun guns for me! Just die!
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: On first sighting, the Meep tells Rose a story about being a fugitive from hunters after Meepkind for their adorably soft fur. The Doctor soon notices some anomalies in the story, such as how the "hunters"s guns aren't actually hurting anyone; the Meep is a fugitive running from the police for the Meep's many, many crimes. Of course, to anyone familiar with Beep from the Doctor Who Magazine stories, this isn't much of a surprise.
• The Caligula: Was the tyrannical ruler of Meepkind before they all killed each other.
• Canon Immigrant: From the pages of Doctor Who Magazine to the silver screen for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary.
• Cute Is Evil: The Meep is a very adorable looking creature... but, again, psychopathically evil.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Only referred to as "The Meep" onscreen.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Gratitude to the Doctor and the Nobles for trying to help what they thought was an innocent fuzzball? None. The Most High has them brought along as potential snacks.
• Large Ham: Once the Meep's true colors are revealed, "over the top" doesn't even begin to cover the unabashed evil this psychotic little Meep marinates every second of the first special with. Only, maybe, Mrs. Gillyflower comes closest in terms of Card Carrying Villainy. And sure enough, the one thing they both have in common is that they are both weapons-grade levels of crazy.
• Last of Their Kind: All the other Meeps were killed for their evil and insanity, not that the Meep gives a damn.
• Longer-Than-Life Sentence: On being caught, the Meep is sentenced to a ten thousand year stretch in prison. That said, it isn't clear if the Meep is Long-Lived or not.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The Meep initially put on a childlike act complete with Baby Talk that suits the Meep's appearance. Once the Meep drops the act the Meep speaks far more eloquently and sinister.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Mocks Donna and Rose as a "stupid woman and her weird child" after dropping the Meep's act.
• Precision F-Strike: Them cursing in anger is the first thing the Meep does after getting found out.
  The Meep: Oh, to hell with this!
• Pronoun Trouble: The Doctor is brought up when Rose Noble calls him on assuming the Meep (voiced by Miriam Margolyes) is necessarily he or she. The Meep's preferred pronoun is "The".
• Retcon: The show occasionally canonises events depicted in the expanded universe and Big Finish audio stories, which have both previously featured appearances by Beep the Meep . However (Beep) the Meep’s debut TV episode makes in clear that in this case, they have never encountered the Doctor before.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Meep's preferred pronoun is "the" meaning the Meep's literal name is "the Meep".
• Tom the Dark Lord: A vicious tyrant named... the Meep.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Before being taken off for trial, the Meep assures the Doctor the Meep have a boss, who'll be interested to hear about him. At this point, he's more irritated than anything.
• Verbal Tic: "Meep Meep." The Meep keeps this up even after the Meep drops the cutesy act.

The One Who Waits

The One Who Waits (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctor)

A mysterious as of yet seen figure who’s been mentioned to the Doctor.

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• The Dreaded: The Toymaker who spent the better part of “The Giggle” bragging about his victories over powerful opponents such as The Master, and bending reality to his will plunging earth into chaos, says he absolutely fears The One Who Waits.
• The Ghost: Mentioned first by the Meep and then by the Toymaker.

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