Sandbox / Monster: Waking the Dead

DSI (Detective Superintendent) Peter Boyd: Who is he?
Dr. Grace Foley: A sexual sadist. In this case he's one whose psychopathy has mutated from a thirst for autoeroticism. And there will be dead bodies. Sexual sadists enjoy withholding death precisely because they know that the wild crazy hope it inspires in their victims is a vain hope. Ultimately they will kill them because death is the ultimate control. The FBI crime classification manual terms this psychopathy "the black hole at the end of the continuum".

— On Martin Barlow, "Waterloo"

Waking the Dead was one of the darkest British detective shows, and DSI (Detective Superintendent) Peter Boyd and his team faced many a vile villain over the course of their investigations. There were a special few who did their best to be the worst.

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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Recurring

• "Sins" & "Endgame": Linda Cummings, presenting herself as a model prison guard, is truthfully a Serial Killer with a genius level intellect who terrifies even hardened predators. Driven by a love of complex games and viewing people as pawns, Linda bludgeoned her boss—Governor Reading—to death and then secretly murdered one former inmate a year for seven years, while also manipulating Penny Cain into becoming an Angel of Mercy, leading to 13 more murders. Following the police reinvestigating Reading's death, Linda had Doctor Hooper abducted by the sadistic Michael Kelleher, subjecting Hooper to hours of torture and rape to get a False Confession out of him, before burying him up to his neck and leaving him to drown. Caught, Linda decided Peter Boyd was the opponent she had been searching for and enacted a complex gambit to escape, inciting a vulnerable patient to brutally stab someone to death to provide a distraction and engineering her doctors death by disembowelment. Free, Linda enacted her final game, kidnapping Penny and Doctor Grace Foley. She attempted to force Boyd to murder Penny or she would kill Grace, through a method likened to "being burned alive with acid"; revealing as a final incentive that it was Penny, under her direction, who killed Boyd's son Luke.

Season 1

• "Burn Out": Rod Brogan is a former soldier turned mass-murdering mercenary. Joining the infamous Black Wolves squad during The Yugoslav Wars and being connected with several killings targeting dozens of civilians, Brogan massacred 12 nurses in an emergency hospital along with his comrades, and then abandoned everyone else in it to die a lingering death. When a photo of him looting one of the corpses during the massacre and taking a crucifix as a trophy becomes world-famous, Brogan tracks down the photographer and threatens to massacre his whole family unless he gives him thousands of pounds.

Season 3

• "Breaking Glass": "Papa Doc", real name Oliver Gill, poses as a respectable social worker but uses his position to sexually abuse boys under his care. After an orphanage is founded by his colleague, Dr. Hugh Cullen, Gill uses his access to the building to rape dozens of vulnerable boys, some of whom are physically and mentally disabled. When he accidentally kills two of the boys he is abusing, Gill strings up their bodies to make it look like suicide. As rumours begin to circulate regarding his abuse at the home, Gill frames the innocent Dr. Cullen and stirs up a media campaign against him until Cullen is struck off the register, ruining his entire life. When another colleague, Peter Murdoch, raises questions about Gill's conduct, Gill throws him in front of a train and forges a fake suicide note stating that Murdoch is Papa Doc, staining an innocent man's family with his own sexual crimes. In the present day, Gill lures hundreds of innocent young boys, both off the internet and from the street, into his studio flat where he films himself raping and torturing them. After being confronted by the twin brother of one of the boys he killed, Gill's first response is to mock him for the abuse he subjected him to. When his victim attempts to kill him but is thwarted by Boyd and his team, he hurls himself out of a window while Gill looks on emotionlessly, uncaring that his abuse has claimed a final victim.

Season 4

• "Shadowplay": Adam Duke, aka "The Shepherd", is a "psychopathic, Machiavellian, grandiose narcissist" out to beat the rap for murdering his parents. Growing up as an irresponsible hedonist, Duke stabbed his father to death for catching him having an affair with Faye Harding, sending Faye to finish off his stepmother when she tried to flee. Concerned only with his own self-preservation, Adam manipulated Faye into taking the fall for the killings, devising a scheme to claim she was incited into murder by a mysterious third party called "The Shepherd". To sell the narrative, Adam began psychologically torturing vulnerable women to carry out multiple murders. Targeting Judy Walsh, Adam gradually worsened her schizophrenia and forced her into massacring a car dealership, resulting in Judy killing herself. Enlisting the help of Dr David Carney's vindictive brother Matt to don The Shepherd guise, Adam used him to make Natasha Bloom burn her home down with her whole family inside. Knowing Boyd and his team were closing in, Adam manipulated another girl into assassinating Matt Carney to tie up any loose ends, resulting in the deaths of Matt Carney, the girl, and DS Mel Silver. When Faye is freed, Adam stabs her to death as soon as she becomes an inconvenience, framing it as an attack on himself whilst gloating that Faye "now has nothing to say".

Season 5

• "Towers Of Silence": Mr Irani is a powerful, vicious Indian businessman who deals internationally in counterfeit medicine. Already culpable for the deaths of potentially thousands of men, women, and children throughout the world, including over 30 children in Gujarat, Irani moved to expand his drugs market into Europe by setting up a base in London, with his fake drugs killing numerous local children due to containing poison. Upon his efforts being thwarted, the enraged Irani personally tortures a police officer investigating him to death and forced the brother of one of the victims of his fake medicine to take the fall by threatening to murder his entire family. Getting word of Boyd's investigation, Irani personally strangled to death his victim's widow to eliminate the last person who could expose him, content to kill any number of people to protect his profits.

Season 6

• "Yahrzeit": Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi war criminal, was the chief SS Doctor and official of Kalisz Children's Concentration Camp, ensuring those who were deemed insufficiently Aryan were either sent to the gas chambers or taken for his monstrous human experiments. Mengele also oversaw the Lebensborn program within Poland, where to produce the progeny Hitler desired, women were raped by SS soldiers and Polish children were kidnapped to be indoctrinated with the Nazi ideology, their parents murdered. As well as overseeing the tests, such as children being forced to choose random prisoners to executed, Mengele also personally involving himself in the indoctrination of some of the children, leaving victims traumatised for their entire lives.

Season 7

• "Sins": Governor James Reading, pretending to be the firm but fair head of a rehabilitation unit for sex offenders, is in truth far more depraved than many of the inmates. An utterly sociopathic Serial Rapist, Reading had his head guard, Pike, isolate and then brutally beat inmates for the most minor of offenses and would himself sexually torture them for hours on end. At least 8 men were subjected to Reading's depravity, with the implication being that nearly all the prisoners he housed fell victim to him. Not content with simply victimizing the prison's inmates, Reading also subjected his own daughter to years of rape, and upon her telling him she was pregnant attempted to bully her into getting an abortion before trying to rape her again, eventually proving to be so evil that Boyd lets her get off scot-free for murdering him in retaliation.
• "Duty and Honour":
  • Mushrat Badawi is an opportunistic war criminal out to rule the Basra Province. Already wanted by the UN for crimes against humanity during his time as a torturer for the Saddam Hussein regime, Badawi struck a deal with the ambitious Lieutenant Colonel John Garrett for arms to aid him in his conquest. Knowing the men under Garrett would be forced to turn a blind eye to his crimes, Badawi began to massacre the wives and children of suspected dissidents, killing 12 in front of Garrett's horrified men and bringing the region under his full control. Continuing to be supplied with funding, Badawi kept murdering anyone opposed to him and routinely massacring civilian targets, succeeding in becoming head of the Basra Council and facing no justice for his crimes.
  • Lieutenant Colonel John Garrett, despite presenting himself as a charming and protective leader, is truthfully a smug, smarmy silver-tongued weasel. When stabilising the situation in Northern Basra, proved beyond his capabilities, Garrett enabled Badawi to rise to power by allowing him to terrorise the province into submission, all while forcing his men to turn a blind eye to the massacres, only caring about his career. Capitalising on his now-glowing reputation, Garrett left the army to found APX Solutions, making himself very wealthy. Discovering his former soldier Mark Bennet was going to expose him, Garrett decapitated him with a cavalry sabre, then later had Francis Duggan sniped to ensure he also couldn't talk, convincing the vulnerable Colonel Malham to kill himself so as to pin the murders on him, happy to betray or murder anyone to protect himself.
• "Pietà": Radovan Sredinic is a Serbian war criminal and avid genocidaire. In collaboration with several others, Radovan poses as a jihadi fighter to lure innocent Muslim women, children and men in with the promise of safety before taking them deep into the woods and massacring them. Being tasked with rescuing friends of his commander, Radovan fulfills his end of the bargain but leads more Muslims to their deaths while doing so. When the boy he rescued attempts to save several of his Muslim friends and is shot dead by the Serbs, Radovan, in an attempt to cover his tracks, massacres many of the Muslims he "rescued" and then attempts to murder the boy's mother. Escaping the war with his collaborators, Radovan sets up a cafe with the money he amassed from his genocidal campaign and then decides to sell pure heroin on the street in order to make more cash. When the plan fails and he comes under suspicion from the police, Radovan sells out all of his former comrades and holds them at gunpoint in his cafe, fully intending to kill them should they try to escape, despite the fact they were attempting to save him from the police. Even after being arrested and charged, Radovan continues to deny all responsibility for his crimes.

Season 8

• "Substitute":
  • Michael Devlin is the head of a horrific international organ trafficking network. Sending his men out to multiple countries around the world to look for victims, Devlin has them abducted and vivisected alive before selling the organs for profit, with potentially thousands falling victim to Devlin's scheme. After losing an entire cargo of girls bar one in a ferry disaster, Devlin had the survivor drowned in a vat purely for his amusement. Upon being informed that his girlfriend Briony was having second thoughts, Devlin sent one of his men to kill her and frame his main surgeon, Ivan Shapko, for the crime so the man could not escape Devlin's operation. After Ivan's girlfriend, Dr. Eve Lockhart, stumbled upon his body farm, Devlin attempted to force Ivan to vivisect her alive with no anaesthetic. When Ivan escaped with Eve, Devlin hunted them both down and shot Ivan dead, escaping to continue his operation untouched.
  • Ivan Shapko aka Stefan Koscinski, presenting himself as a charming and compassionate aid worker, is actually Devlin's surgeon and key player in his organ harvesting operation. Already involved in illegal organ harvesting before he met Devlin, Ivan lost his medical licence when tried to perform an illegal transplant using a fifteen-year-old boy. Working as Devlin's agent, Ivan travelled to countries hit by disaster or poverty to source victims, convincing or forcing them to donate their organs. Upon transporting them back to the UK Ivan would perform each and every vivisection. Realising Briony was having second thoughts, Ivan sold her out to Devlin. In the present, sick of being under Devlin's thumb, Ivan seduced Eve posing as her loving boyfriend and victim of Devlin's influence to gain legal immunity and taint the evidence against him. Upon realising Eve had figured out the truth, Ivan attempted to murder her.

Season 9

• "Waterloo": Martin Barlow is the sadistic son of local crime lord George. Discovering that he has a deep love of torture after raping an innocent schoolboy, Martin decides to further explore his nightmarish sexual fantasies by kidnapping young homeless boys, knowing that no one will miss them. To that end, he purchases an abandoned pub and constructs his own personal torture chamber, using it to sexually assault and torment his victims for months, all whilst cruelly giving them hope that he'll let them go. When Martin is done using them, he kills them by strapping them to a chair and pointing a gun in their face whilst masturbating, finishing when his victims realize they now have no hope of escaping. After their death, he keeps their heads as macabre trophies. When his sixteenth victim escapes and is run over by a car, Martin becomes enraged and immediately attempts to abduct another homeless boy and when stopped by his adopted brother, Nicholson, Martin retaliates by beating him bloody and then escaping. Knowing that the police are closing in, George, Nicholson and Martin all agree that Martin will move to a farm in Zimbabwe to evade the police. But instead of stopping his activities as he promised, Martin instead rebuilds his torture den and abducts, tortures and murders over 50 children, only stopped when Nicholson executes him in order to prevent further investigation.

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