enemies of The Doctor including the Daleks

Simon Rogers at The Guardian compiled a list of every Doctor Who villain. He writes

If you really want to wind people up, don't write about budget cuts or school buildings or the world economy. Ask readers to help you compile a list of every Doctor Who villain. Ever. I know because that's what the Guardian's Datablog and Datastore website did last week – with dramatic results.

Doctor Who is made for data. It's the longest-running sci-fi show in Britain, possibly the world. The good doctor has battled monsters and aliens in 769 episodes since William Hartnell's first appearance in 1963. Our project was inspired by a user on the "data visualisation website" Many Eyes. xxnapoleansolo had compiled a list of every Doctor Who villain since the programme was relaunched in 2005. But that wasn't completist enough for us. So we tried asking the BBC for a list. "Good God," a spokeswoman replied. Another press officer came back with the suggestion that, if you really want to get this done, you need to ask the fans. So we did.

I'm not sure the Guardian Datablog has ever had an article re-tweeted on Twitter more than 200 times in 10 minutes before.It spread around the Doctor Who web faster than a Cyber battle fleet; the comments on the article now read like the ultimate distillation of Doctor Who knowledge.

The list in spreadsheet form can be found here.

Needless to say, the Daleks featured in the most stories at 32, followed by the Cybermen and The Master at 22 each. Each story had multiple episodes.


from Genesis of the Daleks (1975) featuring Davros, their creator (BBC)

From BBC

The Daleks were created by the Kaled scientist, Davros as travel machines. He had deduced that the years of radiation and chemical poisoning from an ongoing war would lead his race to mutate into immobile organisms.

The Dalek travel machines would house these creatures and allow the Kaleds to survive. However, in the course of his experiments, Davros deliberately removed what he considered to be debilitating emotions from the mutants and a force of evil was spawned!

The Daleks were born without any ability to feel compassion or pity and were motivated only by hate, fear and an implacable belief that they were the superior creatures in the Universe.

They have battled the Doctor many times throughout the centuries, with confrontations on Earth, Skaro and planets right across the universe from Exxilon to Spiridon. Powerful, pitiless and with a genius for warfare they have proven fearsome opponents for the Doctor but he has always managed to protect humanity from their attacks. They return in the new series... let's hope the Doctor can maintain his record against his most enduring enemies.

Definitely the scariest.