Last month CultBox asked you to vote for your favourite Matt Smith era Doctor Who monster…
5. Minotaur Creature
A distant cousin of the papier-mâché headed bull-folk, the Nimon (see ‘Horns of the Nimon’), the Minotaur thuds around menacingly, giving the worst room service this side of [REDACTED].
What makes it a refreshingly scary foe is that, unlike a lot of Doctor Who monsters, it’s primal, unceasing, and can’t be slowed down by a quick burst of linguistic flailing from The Doctor.
4. The Snowmen
Was it a traumatic childhood experience while watching Channel 4’s The Snowman? Or the fact that the Christmas Special was barely two months ago?
Either way, a good deal of you think Sir Ian McKellen’s icy army are one of The Moff’s top monsters. And actually, there’s good reason. For a start, just their whole modus operandi is cool: carnivorous psychic snow(!). There’s also the fact they’re one of the few Doctor Who monsters to properly kill a companion stone dead. Brrr!
3. The Dream Lord
A sort of somnambulists’s Valeyard, the Dream Lord has the makings of a great recurring villain, because he’s tied directly to The Doctor’s darkest fears.
And while there are no boundaries as to the Dream Lord’s appearance, we’d be sad if he returned and wasn’t played by the criminally under-appreciated Toby Jones, who brought a great oiliness to the role of what essentially was the ‘Anti-Doctor’.
2. The Silence
The who? Oh, yes, sorry – looked away there for a second. From their Munch-inspired look to their sinister anti-mnemonic power, The Silence are iconic villains. And most tantalisingly of all, their ‘forget-me-now’ ability means the Doctor could have encountered them hundreds of times across his regenerations and never known it.
Why, one could be looking at you right now as you read this, and you wouldn’t even be aware…
1. The Weeping Angels
Almost 60% of you voted for The Weeping Angels as your favourite Moffat monster, and it’s not hard to see why. They’re the ultimate predators, because our weakness is their strength.
Although introduced in 2007’s ‘Blink’, “the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely” returned regularly in Series 5-7 to cause trouble for Amy Pond and co.
Only deadly when we look away from them, the quantum-locked creatures strike at the quivering nerve of our most base evolutionary traits. It’s a power that lends itself nicely to well-edited shocks and frights in the show, and in the real world makes for a great cheap game to keep the kids entertained: just sit them in front of any statue in the park and tell them not to blink. Hours of fun!
Who’s your favourite villain or monster from Matt Smith’s era? Let us know below…