Complete Monster/Doctor Who

Complete Monsters in the universe of Doctor Who.


 * This trope at work is what makes the Daleks pure Nightmare Fuel despite being squawking giant pepper pots. Ruthless, pitiless, inhuman in every sense, they literally exist for nothing aside from the complete extermination of every other organism in the universe; entire species and planets are enslaved to provide "raw materials", if not simply immolated. Their crimes are far too long to list. Just to give you a hint, though: for them, the absolute destruction of every planet, star, and living being in this and every other Universe apart from themselves is what they see as an acceptable outcome. They gleefully work towards being the "rulers" of an absolute, empty void.
 * There have been, however, a handful of Daleks who became something other than the ones described above: Alpha, Beta, and Omega (who had their caring emotions restored), Dalek Caan (who had seen all of the Daleks' deeds and was horrified by them), Dalek Sec (who had become compassionate after being fused with human) and the lone Dalek in "Dalek" (who was actually turned into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds). This demonstrates that it's not the Daleks as individual creatures that are all Complete Monsters, but the Dalek Hive Mind created by Davros that is a Complete Monster making them all act accordingly. Basically, picture Cell's mind and programming split into several bodies...
 * In the novel "Prisoner of the Daleks", we learn why the Dalek guns are able to blow up whole buildings yet leave the human body intact. When targeting a human or otherwise organic victim, they dial the power of the gun down to the level it will take to kill them...and then dial it down a little more, so the victim's death takes longer; the nervous system "burns up from the outside in", causing a slow, agonising death. Proof, as if it were needed, that the Daleks truly are the sickest creatures to appear on television. They don't just kill because of their xenophobia, they do because they enjoy it.
 * Davros exceeds even his creations in evil. Not so much by his actions, but simply due to being a single man who can equal an entire species of monsters. His list of atrocities includes, but is not limited to, genocide against his own people, feeding an entire galaxy the remains of their dead, and "THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSELF!". The Daleks were at least created to be this way and had no choice, whilst Davros just laughed in the face of morality and crossed every line possible.
 * The really horrifying thing? Turning the galaxy into unknowing cannibals was actually a KINDLY action on Davros' part, as he was trying to start anew with a new species of Daleks (which he made out of the frozen bodies of the intellectually worthy). Put simply, when the guy tries to do good, he's even worse than when he's actively seeking out evil goals.
 * Davros is at least quite clearly insane. His henchman Nyder, in "Genesis of the Daleks", appears to be completely sane and rational and more or less emotionless...and will do anything for Davros, including betraying the scientists he works with, arranging for them to have brain surgery to shut down their emotions, and helping Davros destroy his own people. One wonders if Nyder had some of that 'brain surgery that shuts down their emotions' done to him.
 * In "Genesis of the Daleks", the Doctor asks Davros what he would do if he had a virus capable of destroying all life. Davros is clearly delighted with the idea and says he would release the virus, because he loves the idea of holding that kind of power over life and death. For him, killing as many people as you possibly can is the only expression of power, and he is positively jubilant at the thought of destroying reality itself.
 * Following on Davros' heels would be John Lumic, the man responsible for the Alternate Universe Cybermen in "Rise Of The Cybermen"/"The Age Of Steel". He's a coldblooded, amoral asshole who not only takes as many opportunities to essentially channel Davros as much as possible (to the point he emulates how another crippled madman created the Daleks by backstabbing his own people), he is so bent on preserving his own genius and forcing humanity to conform to his vision of reality, he casually has everyone who poses the slightest objection, no matter how reasonable, brutally executed.
 * Minor villain Mr. Crane from the same episodes. While Lumic initially just wanted something that could help him evade his terminal illness, Crane enjoys rounding up the homeless with promises of food and shelter, then has them converted and drowns their screams out with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". He does render Lumic near the point of death at the cost of his own life, but only due to a combination of avoiding being upgraded and simple spite.
 * The Master is regarded by the Doctor to be his worst enemy for very good reasons. In all of his incarnations:
 * The Roger Delgado incarnation is the epitome of Affably Evil and was often quite helpful to the Doctor if it served his purposes. He is also a petty, spiteful, murderous megalomaniac who values nothing more than power and angering the Doctor. Indeed, he admits in "The Sea Devils" that the only reason he's helping the eponymous creatures Kill All Humans is because the Doctor is fond of humans. At the end of his final regeneration and at the brink of death, he values nothing more than survival. Species, planets, even whole sections of the universe; there is no limit to what he will destroy to survive. And he finally achieves this by killing and hijacking the body of Trenas quite probably the friendliest and most helpful person the Doctor has ever met who wasn't one of his companions (and thereby forcing the Doctor to look at the face of a murdered friend every time he fights him from then on).
 * The resultant Anthony Ainley incarnation lacked any sort of foresight or consideration for the consequences of his actions, and, in a way, that made him even more dangerous. His first appearance has him accidentally obliterate approximately a quarter of the entire universe and go on to cause further death and destruction almost for the fun of it.
 * The John Simm incarnation reaches new heights in the level of childish glee he experiences from mayhem and death. After conquering the Earth (the planet got better), his first action is to, for no reason whatsoever, order the execution of a tenth of the population, proceeds to rule a horribly and needlessly brutal regime for the sole purpose of eventually waging war against everything, and the only reason he refrains from enacting a Kill'Em All ending is because he would also die. Ironically, John Simm said he took the role because his kids love Doctor Who, then saw what his character did and had no choice but to ban them from watching it.
 * His (or rather her latest incarnation Missy takes things further, she plans to raise countless dead people and convert them into Cybermen. Even being an evil Mary Poppins with a Scottish accent doesn't make her any less horrific.
 * Which made it quite surprising when The Master was put up against the even worse Rassilon (mentioned above) and . Given that it's The Master, hardly anyone expects either the to stick, however.
 * "The End Of Time" gives us Rassilon, the first Lord President of Time Lords, who not only is responsible for the Master's insanity, but whose plan to escape the Time War is destroying all of space and time so that only the Time Lords remain as pure consciousness. The Doctor's decision to destroy both races suddenly seems completely justified.
 * It's also worth noting that an assortment of Eldritch Abominations apparently rose from the midst of the Last Great Time War, such as the Skaro Degradations, the Nightmare Child (which killed Davros by swallowing his flagship whole), the Horde of Travesties, and the Couldhavebeen King with his armies of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The Time Lock around the War is there, in part, to stop these things from ever getting out. Rassilon is releasing them by doing this and knows it.
 * When he returns in Hell Bent, it's heavily implied that he arranged to put the Doctor through 4.5 billion years of torture only to know about what Hybrid, the major threat to Time Lords, is. When Doctor exiles him, it was quite not enough punishment for him. Remember that Doctor has saved Time Lords and all that exists from destruction.
 * Despite being pretty far down the list of major villains, the Marshal from "The Mutants" is arguably one of the biggest Complete Monsters in the show. A ruthless colonial overlord, he takes clear pleasure in hunting and killing the mutated natives, describing them as disgusting and diseased. On learning the humans are turning the planet back over to the natives, leaving him without his position of power, he arranges the murder of the only man who knows this and attempts to wipe out the planet's entire population in order for it to be repopulated by human colonists with him as their ruler.
 * The sentient asteroid called House, from "The Doctor's Wife". Butchered hundreds of Time Lords unlucky enough to land on his surface and stitched their bodies into subservient playthings (also took over the mind of an Ood to act as a servant), then hijacked the TARDIS for use as a new body, leaving the Doctor behind to die on the collapsing remains of his old body - and condemning his playthings to die without his influence, to boot. Nasty enough already, but then he decides to use Amy and Rory as his new toys, forcing them into the labyrinth of the TARDIS corridors and torturing the two of them with nightmarish illusions.
 * Really, you have to hand it to a monster whose catchphrase is: "Why shouldn't I just kill you now?" With House, death is certain, and only suffering will delay it. Better keep him amused or he might suck the air out of your lungs ...
 * Koquillion from The Rescue, also known as Bennett. To cover up a murder he committed, Koquillon murdered everyone on his ship, before wiping out the population of the peaceful planet Dido, unintentionally leaving only two survivors. blames the locals for killing the people to the only other survivor Vicki, whose father was killed. He disguises himself as Koquillion to convince Vicki of his story, and when the Rescue Ship came he wanted to convince the authorities to destroy the planet to removing all traces of his crime. The Doctor showed nothing less than utter disgust at all this, declaring "you destroyed a whole planet just to save your own skin."
 * The Beast, from "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit". It ruthlessly manipulates, possesses, and kills the crew of the Sanctuary base in order to escape its prison. It's happy to go to Earth, and God knows what it would have done there. It's hinted to be The Devil, however, so this trope is not remotely surprising.
 * Madame Kovarian teams up with The Silence to kidnap Rory and Amy's baby. Then, when that's done, she manipulates Colonel Manton and has him ruthlessly humiliated by the Doctor. After that? She makes ganger!Melody explode, damn near trauamatising Amy. Then, she reappears in "Closing Time" with the Silence, drugs River, and sticks her in an astronaut's suit below Lake Silencio, forcing her to kill the Doctor. She first acted as if she was a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but now she just seems gleeful.
 * "The Pirate Planet" has Xanxia. She was so brutal and terrifying back when she was Queen that she is still feared by the populace long after her apparent death, and in an attempt to rejuvenate herself, she manipulates the Captain into obliterating entire planets, along with killing every single living thing on them, so they can be mined for every last scrap of material.
 * What makes her even more jarring is the realisation that the Pirate Captain, despite his Hair-Trigger Temper Large Ham appearance, had qualities of a Noble Demon and genuinely cared about his subordinates, being distressed when the Doctor destroyed his bird. It's quite easy to see his attempt to break free of her manipulations and stop her in vengeance as Alas, Poor Villain and maybe even Redemption Equals Death - especially considering she has an individual body count only surpassed by the Master in "Logopolis", which wasn't initially deliberate.
 * Sutekh from "Pyramids Of Mars" is an Omnicidal Maniac and sadistic monster who desires nothing less than the extermination of all that lives solely so that it cannot challenge him. Once the security chief of the Osirian race, Sutekh grew so paranoid he even had his own loyal people slaughtered by his monster followers which forced the remaining Osirians to band together and seal him away. Upon release, Sutekh planned to use his immense power to exterminate all that lived, knowing not even the Time Lords could challenge his immense power.
 * The Great Intelligence gained a true form solely by harvesting the souls of living beings. It followed this by conquering its world. The Great Intelligence practices a cruel form of destruction on people: manipulating their lives since childhood until it throws their lives away for its own benefit. The Great Intelligence makes a final attempt to utterly break the Doctor by personally undoing every single victory he had ever won and destroying every friendship he had ever made by infecting every moment of the Doctor's lifetime, and forces him to feel this happening to him as he does so, even though this is fatal to the Great Intelligence as well. The reason? Spite at the Doctor preventing its' victory.
 * Mrs Gillyflower from" The Crimson Horror" makes an attempt to wipe out all humanity so she and her 'perfect' chosen people can create a new Eden. She refuses a place for her own daughter Ada because Ada is blind and doesn't fit with Mrs. Gillyflower's version of perfection, knowing this condemns her daughter to death. The kicker to this is she blinded Ada herself by experimenting on her with deadly poison to prolong her own life, revealing her as nothing more than a nasty hypocrite and Smug Snake who was willing to let everyone on earth die so she could live out her fantasies of perfection.
 * The Dalek Time Controller repeatedly proves to be one, having a cold, calm, and calculating personality that sets him aside from his Dalek underlings and being the true power in charge of the Dalek conquests and implicitly the Time War, which coupled with his sadistic attempts to break the Doctor in To The Death by forcing him to watch all life on earth die before killing him lead to the otherwise kindhearted and casual Doctor furiously vowing to exterminate the Daleks from creation if he ever gets the chance.
 * The president of the English Empire Nigel Rochester in Jubilee is one of the more disturbing villains in the Big Finish series, being a Dalek worshipping human in charge of a nightmarishly genocidal and xenophobic empire which attempts to emulate the Daleks in all the worst ways, while remaining cheerfully upbeat and affable even when mutilating midgets to fit in his "toy Daleks" or beating his wife for speaking in contractions. The fact he's voiced by Martin Jarvis make him all the creepier.
 * Wendle Marr from the much-maligned Nekromanteia happens to be the most despicable and unlikable character from a cast made up entirely of despicable and unlikable characters. He starts off the play by sending a fleet of ships and their crew to their deaths, then has the gall to order the flagship's commander to die as per his company's protocol. When the guy refuses, he has his assistant prepare to destroy the guy's livelihood and the lives of his family. He later receives funds to help improve the horrid quality of life for the workers on his pet project, but decides to instead pocket the money for himself and kill all the workers once it is finished. He is so evil that even the aforementioned ship commander (who tries to rape companion Erimem) is more likable than him, with his assistant killing him and making the ship commander CEO of the company instead after his greed nearly causes the destruction of the whole universe. Seriously, The Daleks have done more good for the universe than Wendle Marr.
 * Lord Sutcliffe, from season 36’s Thin Ice, is a racist businessman from Regency England who happens to capture an alien sea creature. Trapping it into the bottom of River Thames, Sutcliffe found a particularly vile way of using the creature for personal gain. During the Frost Fairs he would lure innocent people onto the ice where he would feed them to the creature. The creature would then defecate the human remains, which Sutcliffe would then have molded into bricks to burn in his mill, having discovered they burned vastly superior, as well as being cheaper, than coal. Sutcliffe has done this for many years, racking up a body count of possibly hundreds, children included. When the last Frost Fair occurs in 1814, Sutcliffe decides to plant explosives onto the ice's surface to detonate, destroying the ice and causing dozens of people to be devoured by the creature, and later straps The Doctor and Bill Potts, onto them. Upon witnessing them escape and warning people to get off the ice, Sutcliffe goes forward with his plan and detonates the explosives attempting to kill them and anyone else still on the ice. Self-admitting to be without “an ounce of compassion” and solely motivated by greed, Sutcliffe is a perfect example that sometimes Humans Are the Real Monsters.
 * Thawn, from season 16's "The Power of Kroll", is the head of a methane refinery on a satellite to which the native population have already been relocated by human settlers, Thawn's desire to see the operation expand results in him planning genocide against the native Swampies so he can expand onto their settlement. To this end, he pays a gunrunner to supply them with faulty weapons, so they're not actually a threat but he can use the weapons as an excuse to slaughter them and then claim self-defense. When his plans get disrupted by the arrival of swamp monster Kroll, he laughs in delight at the prospect of Kroll wiping out the Swampies during an attack on their village, a moment that has even his crew looking at him with disgust. He then decides to take advantage of the situation by launching a bombardment against Kroll, which will also wipe out the Swampies as "collateral damage". He talks about the Swampies as though they're mere animals rather than the sentient people they clearly are, outright stating that his Swampie servant doesn't count as a person. When one of his crew objects and tries to stop the bombardment, Thawn shoots him in the back. Thawn is planning to wipe out an entire race simply for commercial reasons.
 * Salamander, from season 5's "The Enemy Of The World", while renowned publicly as a genius whose inventions helped the food shortage, secretly has his sights set on world domination. Keeping dozens of scientists prisoner in an underground shelter for five years, Salamander convinced them] that a nuclear war rages on the surface and so they must create natural disasters to fight back at the evil armies ravaging the world. In fact, the disasters are killing innocent people, and Salamander is using them to gain popularity by leading relief efforts and predicting where the disasters will strike, while also discrediting the helpless officials. Others Salamander has been systematically killing, replacing all of them with people under his control. [[Bad Boss|Caring nothing for his followers, Salamander never hesitates to remove those who outlive their usefulness, discrediting his original partner-in-crime and poisoning one of his puppets when he's unable to kill his superior. Suave, cunning and audacious as he is, at heart Salamander is nothing more than a power-hungry mass murderer, who manipulates innocents into killing innocents, all for his own benefit.
 * Morgus, from season 21's "The Caves of Androzani", is the leading businessman of a human colony and descendant of the original settlers, whose power comes from his control of spectrox, which when refined can extend human life. He gained the monopoly by going into business with android builder Sharaz Jek, who built the androids needed to harvest the toxic raw spectrox, then set Jek up to be killed in an eruption of boiling mud. Jek survived and took revenge by using his android army to take control of the spectrox cave, but Morgus responded by financing a military expedition against him and then paying gunrunners to supply Jek with weapons in exchange for spectrox, deliberately prolonging the war so spectrox will remain scarce and he can charge higher prices. In addition to this scheme, he commits several casual acts of cruelty. He arranges to have one of his own mines blown up just to increase the scarcity of the copper produced there, with massive loss of life, and closes down several factories, making the workers unemployed, then has them shipped to labor camps on the opposite side of the planet where he has just opened factories, turning his paid labor force into his slaves. When the Doctor and Peri are suspected of being gunrunners, he orders them executed without trial as scapegoats. Then, learning the Doctor is still alive, he assumes he's part of a government investigation and kills the president by pushing him down a lift shaft, then spins it as an assassination attempt on himself and orders the lift maintenance man shot. Willing to murder any number of people for even the slightest personal gain, even in a Crapsack World Morgus manages to stand out as a monster.
 * Gavrok, from season 24's "Delta and the Bannermen", leads the Bannermen in a genocidal war against the Chimerons, wiping out the whole race except their queen Delta, who flees with the egg containing her daughter. (The television version gives little explanation for this but the novelization indicates they have wrecked their home planet and are looking to depopulate the Chimerons and occupy it.) Determined to wipe out this last Chimeron and the only surviving witness to his crime, Gavrok first goes to the tollport where she was last seen, gets all the information the tollmaster has out of him, tells him he's free to go then shoots him In the Back. He puts up a bounty for information on Delta's whereabouts, and when a Bounty Hunter contacts him to say she's on Earth, he gets a fix on the man's beacon and then blows it up, killing him. He blows up a bus full of innocent tourists, killing dozens, in case Delta is on board. When the Doctor approaches him under a white flag, Gavrok casually blows it away. And just to make his monstrosity plain, he Would Hurt a Child: On leading his final assault, he tells his men to kill everyone else but leave the princess, who has now developed to the appearance of a young teenager, for him, seemingly just for the satisfaction.
 * Max Capricorn, from the 2007 Christmas Special "Voyage of The Damned", is a cyborg businessman who founded and owns a space liner company. Seeking revenge against the company's new board for voting him out, he attempts to frame them for genocide. Bribing the terminally ill captain of one of the cruise liners to lower shields and allow the ship to be critically damaged by a meteor storm, he causes the deaths of most of the two thousand crew and passengers, with Capricorn reprogramming the ship's robot servants to wipe out any survivors. Capricorn's plan is to have the ship crash into Earth, where the explosion of its engines will wipe out the entire population. The board will be blamed and Capricorn can retire quietly with money he has hidden away. To top it all off he ensures he himself is hidden aboard the ship, so he can watch as his plan comes into fruition. Possessing perhaps the pettiest reasons to commit mass murder in entire franchise, the Doctor rightfully views Capricorn with the disgust and contempt he deserves, stating "Two thousand people on board this ship, six billion beneath us, all of them slaughtered and why? Because Max Capricorn is a loser!"
 * John crukking Harrison. Bought extraterrestrial slaves whom he keeps in line with a Cold-Blooded Torture collar, and almost certainly murdered his boss so he could pass off a hologram as the man. Plans to Mind Rape everyone in the world who owns a television, so that they will buy up his second-rate computers.


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