The Ultimate Foe

Recently the BBC Doctor Who site ran a poll to determine the Series Ultimate Villain™. As a man who has spent an excessive amount of time and a whole series of posts thinking about Dr Who monsters this was obviously of some interest to me. Not that there's ever really any doubt about the outcome of such an exercise.

Spoiler Alert?

But it can be a bit of fun anyway. After all, the Daleks Winner is to be announced as part of some special programme (even if it is on BBC 3), so at least we'll get a cool rundown of classic nasties to watch out of it if nothing else.

Then the list of nominees started getting filled out. And I found myself faced with a question: Is this some kind of joke?

No, REALLY. Is it?

Let's take a look at the full list.

#1: The Cybermen
#2: The Daleks
#3: The Silence
#4: The Master
#5: The Silurians
#6: The Ood
#7: The Judoon
#8: The Ice Warriors
#9: The Weeping Angels
#10: The Clockwork Droids

This isn't so much scraping the barrel as digging right through the bottom of it, into the ground, and then keeping going until you've formed some sort of escape tunnel. Which is bizarre because the thing you're escaping from is all the other monsters that might have made sense.

Now, just so we're 100% clear, the Ultimate Villain™ is going to be the Daleks. Of course it is. This isn't even a matter of opinion, it's what's going to happen. Obviously. So having got that out of the way, what about the rest of the list?

Well, the Master and the Cybermen are strong contenders for the number 2 & 3 spots. But we do need to remember that this is a situation in which we're going by a vote. In the general public conciousness are they inherently stronger contenders than the Weeping Angels, or possibly even the Silence? Harder to judge. It's been a while since the Master has graced the screen, and the Cybermen really haven't had any really great episodes until just this year. The Weeping Angels are probably in a slightly stronger position than the Silence having had 2 really strong storylines and one good but flawed. But the Silence themselves are a really strong presence. So far so good. But then we come to the others....

Now, I'm not saying that any of these other options are bad creations. I'm not saying they don't work well in the stories in which they appear. But I am saying that they have no business at all appearing in a list of Ultimate Villains™.

The Silurians? Great fun as antagonists when used correctly, but hardly what you'd describe as villains. The Ood....

Wait, the fuking OOD?!?!?

Would you like fries with that?

The Ood are a race of squid faced hippy pacifists. They are happy and friendly and make you tea, even when you cut their brains off. The problem with an Ood is that it's vulnerable to psychic possession by baffling extra dimensional god-like beings. You know, like pretty much EVERYONE ELSE. Especially Tegan, and I don't see her on the list.

I certainly know which one I'm more afraid of.

Then we have the Judoon. Again, they work fine in context But honestly, how are they either ultimate OR villainous? They're the cocking POLICE for fucks sake. They might be heavy handed, brutal and not especially intelligent police, but the point remains valid. One episode in which they're not actually even the villain and a couple of cameos does not an ultimate villain make. At best it makes you Adric.

I certainly know which one I'm more afraid of: The fanfiction this scene inspired.

Then there's the Ice Warriors. A monster I personally enjoy, but hardly ultimate. I mean, the whole impetus behind my previous series of posts on Dr Who monsters was the need to point out that they were really not nearly as big a deal as was being hyped at the time. I'm not sure there's much I can add to that other than to point out that a race the Doctor has actually willingly allied with on more than one occasion is hardly the worst of the worst.

And then, bringing up the final position we have the Clockwork Droids from the Girl In The Fireplace.

Somehow.

I mean, do the words even EXIST to express just how inappropriate this is? It's not like we even score them above the Ood for being hostile of their own volition, since it was all from a rather massive malfunction in their logic.  There's a distinct sense that someone decided to have list of 10 monsters for this poll, got halfway through compiling it and ran out of ideas. And then started pulling stuff out of their arse, probably to fulfill some mandate that at least half the options had to come from the new series exclusively. I mean, how else do we have the bloody Judoon, Ood, and Clockwork Droids over the Sontarans?

Is the new era of Doctor Who REALLY so lacking in original iconic villains? It seems quite telling that the only serious contenders from the list are both creations of Steven Moffat. Not to mention one of the least serious. I somehow doubt there's any politics to the selections. I mean, how much dubious ego stroking does a man need when he has to build an extra shed to hold all his awards? And he builds THAT shed out of awards?

Steven "Two-Sheds" Moffat.

Were there really no better choices? This warrants further investigation....