Doctor Who’s Most Terrifying Villains Are Too Horrific To Ever Make It To TV
Doctor Who has some pretty horrific villains, but one nightmarish foe will never be seen on TV. The Daleks may be Doctor Who‘s most famous villains, but they’re far from the most terrifying. Time travel means Doctor Who can reinvent itself at the drop of a jelly baby; the show can pivot from hard sci-fi to ghost story, from an alien invasion to a murder mystery. Unsurprisingly, Doctor Who has often explored horror; the show’s well known for turning everyday objects into terrifying monsters, from the Vashta Nerada to the Weeping Angels.
But, surprisingly, I think Doctor Who‘s most terrifying monsters don’t hail from the small screen at all. The BBC cancelled Doctor Who back in 1989, but a generation of writers kept it alive. The so-called “Wilderness Years” were a time of refreshing creativity, with fan-authors working for Virgin and the BBC to produce a stunning range of ongoing (and missing) adventures. But, because these were aimed at hardcore fans, they soon dropped any interest in being child-friendly. That led to the creation of Doctor Who‘s most horrific enemies, Faction Paradox.
Wait, Just Who Are Faction Paradox?
1996’s Doctor Who TV movie was supposed to be a grand relaunch, but it sadly failed to attract the viewership. Still, BBC Books – who’d recently regained the license to Doctor Who novels – launched a series of Eighth Doctor Adventures spinning out of the film, which starred Paul McGann as the latest Doctor. Lawrence Miles, already a respected author in the books, penned a novel called Alien Bodies; a mysterious tale in which the Doctor collided with the future of the Time Lords, discovering an imminent Time War and a group known as Faction Paradox.
Rogue Time Lords, Faction Paradox were brutal and dangerous. They gave Time Lord technology a supernatural twist, with what fans quickly took to calling “voodoo technology.” Blood sacrifices were common, and they used horrific proto-TARDISes called Shrines to travel through time and space. Where Time Lords tried to maintain the sanctity of time, they sought to break it open, drawing power from the resulting paradoxes. Faction Paradox ruled from the Eleven-Day Empire, a conceptual breach in time created when England adjusted calendars in the eighteenth century.
Doctor Who often went creepy. But Faction Paradox? They’re full horror, and they became a terrifying threat as the Eighth Doctor Adventures continued. They were led by a strange being called Grandfather Paradox, eventually revealed to be an alternate version of the Doctor who’d created the greatest paradox of all by murdering his third incarnation. In the end, the Doctor was forced to face this possible future, but he rejected it. He ended the Time War by destroying both Faction Paradox and Gallifrey itself, thus bringing to a close one of the most horrific eras.
But Faction Paradox Came Back…
Behind the scenes, all was not well in Doctor Who circles. Lawrence Miles gave a sense of the drama in an interview still available on the Wayback Machine, but essentially he “rage-quit” the franchise after mixed reviews of two of his books, Interference parts 1 and 2. BBC Books subsequently wrapped Faction Paradox up with the Grandfather Paradox reveal and the destruction of Gallifrey, but Miles still wanted to write them. What’s more, because of the way rights worked with BBC Books at the time, he was able to do so. Surprisingly, the story of Faction Paradox continues to this day, albeit much more loosely linked to Doctor Who now.
And then we come to The Wintertime Paradox (and a prequel story, “Canaries,” published online). As someone who grew up in Doctor Who‘s Wilderness Years, and who’d quite enjoyed Faction Paradox but had been unaware of all the office politics going on at the time, I was staggered when I read these stories back in 2020. They didn’t use the “Faction Paradox” name, but every detail matched up perfectly. Dave Rudden had essentially brought the old continuity back, and he even hinted the recent Timeless Child retcon was a direct result of the Doctor’s personal timeline being rewritten too many times. Suddenly, Faction Paradox was relevant to Doctor Who lore again.
They may be relevant, but there’s absolutely no way Faction Paradox will ever make it to the small screen. Lawrence Miles himself acknowledged that; his dream was that Doctor Who would return, fail (“because inevitably it’ll be aimed at the kind of fan-targeted SF market that didn’t even exist until Star Trek: The Next Generation came along and spoiled everything”), and then maybe he’d get the chance to make an anime series about his Time War. “Epic wars are great for animation,” he said. “Planets getting wiped out, million-strong armies of Cybermen marching across battlefields, Time Lord warships the size of moons… brilliant visuals.”
Essentially, he dreamed of reinventing Doctor Who itself. I admit, reading that interview now – decades later, after 20 years of a Doctor Who revival that has now come to something of a crisis point – Miles’ vision is rather fascinating. He foresees many of the issues that have undermined modern Who, including the overuse of nostalgia. But, despite that, I don’t think an occult cult of time travelers performing blood sacrifices is ever likely to make its way into the TV show, once the BBC’s tendering process is over.
