The Creator Of Doctor Who Hated These Classic Villains

The BBC show "Doctor Who" premiered in November 1963 and was created by Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson, among others (via Metro). Since then, the show has gone through several different iterations of the Doctor, a rotating cast of companions, the switch to color format, and even several reboots, which is to be expected when a show has continued for over half a century. As such, the Doctor has had plenty of time to pick up different friends, while also making tons of enemies. One might think that people, aliens, and robots alike would try to avoid getting on the bad side of a time-traveling and essentially immortal shapeshifter, but that wouldn't make for great television!

Recurring antagonists in "Doctor Who" are just as varied as the good Doctor themselves. The Weeping Angels are quantum-locked horrors that appear as stationary statues, but the moment nobody is looking, they attack with blinding speed and send their victims to far-flung times in order to feed off of the displaced temporal energy. Cybermen are cybernetic creatures that hail from a twin version of Earth and wish to make everyone they come across into more Cybermen, while the Master is a rogue Time Lord like the Doctor — but the Master would much rather rule all of time instead of trying to heal the universe's wrongs. However, there is another group of iconic baddies that Newman wasn't exactly fond of during their creation, and fans of the show are lucky that Newman didn't exterminate the villains before the public got a chance to see them.

The villains in question are the infamous Daleks, which have become just as iconic as the TARDIS police call box that serves as the Doctor's time machine. Utterly ruthless and genocidal, the Daleks are small, tentacled aliens that are housed in clunky cylindrical bodies with an eyestalk and a single, weaponized arm. Daleks are filled with hate for anything non-Dalek, which is the reason why they always yell out "EXTERMINATE" when coming across differing lifeforms. According to Dr. Who Interviews, Newman stated early in the show, "Being a real aficionado of science fiction, I hated stories which used bug-eyed monsters, otherwise known as BEM's. I write in my memo that there would be no bug-eyed monsters in 'Doctor Who.'"

Continuing in the same interview, Newman explained that producer Verity Lambert actually made the push for Daleks, with Newman saying, "After a few episodes, Verity turned up with the Daleks! I bawled her out for it, but she said 'Honest, Sydney, they're not bug-eyed monsters — they're human beings who are so advanced that their bodies have atrophied and they need these casings to manipulate and do the things they want!'" Newman stated then that the Daleks completely "took off," and that the viewing public couldn't get enough of the fearsome aliens. He noted that some members of the BBC were worried about the terrifying nature of the Daleks, but one of the BBC program controllers said that was "nonsense" and that their children ran around with waste paper baskets on their heads yelling "Exterminate!" Either way, it seems like the creation of the Daleks wasn't exactly a smooth process, but it resulted in some terrific and prolific "Doctor Who" villains.