50th Anniversary Retrospective: The 10th Doctor

Encountered Villains and Monsters

Lady Cassandra
The insane last human returned for her final appearance in ‘New Earth’ after surviving her apparent death on Platform One. Her brain survived the trauma and was quickly attached to spare flesh and moved to New Earth where she concealed herself underneath the New New York hospital run by the Sisters of Plenitude. After discovering the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler were on the planet too, she secretly used a psychograft to transfer her consciousness into Rose’s body and thereby tried using the Tenth Doctor to discover the Sister’s secrets.

After discovering they had been growing humans for twisted experiments to gain the cures for every illness, Cassandra ultimately teamed up with the Tenth Doctor and stopped their plans (although at first she wished to blackmail them for money). At the end of the adventure Cassandra transferred herself into her assistant Chip and decided to die, but not before being taken back in time to tell her past self that she was beautiful one last time.

The Cybus-Men
In a parallel Earth insane businessman John Lumic attempted to devise a deadly scheme which would bring an end to sickness and mortality. This plan consulted the brain being transferred and grafted into a metal armoured suit. These creatures were none other than a parallel version of the Doctor’s great enemy the Cybermen. John Lumic attempted in ‘Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel’ to convert the Earth into Cybus-men and rule it in his own design. The Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith became briefly trapped within this reality and with the help of an alternative version of Pete Tyler and the rebellious Preachers; the Doctor was able to put an end to Lumic’s sick-twisted scheme before humanities freedom was taken. This was done through using their ultimate weakness, the Emotional Inhibitor, against them by turning it off and allowing the metal men to see themselves for what they had become and in the process drove themselves into an emotional state of distress and died. John Lumic, after being converted into the Cyber-Controller, also died after falling from a zeppelin after he tried chasing after the Tenth Doctor and his friends.

The Cybus-men were all but destroyed and those remaining were left locked away within Lumic’s factories across the planet. While humanity discussed about what was to happen to them, the Cybus-men infiltrated the Torchwood Institute and exited their own reality through a crack in the fabric of reality, leading straight through the Void and into our own universe. The Torchwood Institute of our universe saw their arrival (merely first appearing as ghosts) as a huge experiment and kept allowing them entry in order to try and harness the power generated from the crack in the Void. The advance guard, led by the Cybus-Leader, took control of Torchwood in ‘Army of Ghosts/Doomsday’ and allowed the Cybus-men full entry into our universe and thereby took over the Earth in one fell-swoop. They prepared to convert the entire population of Earth but were suddenly met with the obstacle of the Cult of Skaro who had plans of their own. A full out war broke out between the Cybus-men and the Daleks before the Tenth Doctor reversed the Void and had all his enemies sucked back into the hellish emptiness of the Void.

The Cybus-men appeared one last time in ‘The Next Doctor’ when the last of their kind escaped the Void after the Daleks caused all of reality to shatter. The Cybus-men fell back in time to Victorian London and attempted to rebuild their army within the primitive age of Earth. Using their guard-dogs the Cyber-Shades and their agent Miss Hartigan, they captured the children of the work-houses and had them build and power up the Cyber-King, a massive warship that was used within the Cyber-Wars. Miss Hartigan became the brain of the ship but grew too powerful, with her human emotions taking control of the Cybus-men. Miss Hartigan’s vision of a new and more powerful Cybus-race was cut shut after the Tenth Doctor released the influence the Cybus-men had on her and upon realising what she had become shrieked out in distress and ultimately killed herself and the Cybus-men. The Tenth Doctor then sent the Cyber-King into the Time Vortex where the time winds ripped the metal giant apart.

The Ood

The Ood were a simple creature that somehow became the servants of humanity within the 42nd Century. They first appeared in ‘The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit’ where they accompanied a human expedition to Krop Tor and served as mere servants to their cause. Unfortunately there hive minds were taken over and possessed by the Beast and they were unwillingly used by the evil creature to do its biding. They were forced to attack their masters and ultimately killed some of them. Rose Tyler led the human expedition to discover a way of putting the Ood out of action and eventually devised a scheme that gave them all a brain storm and knocked them unconscious. In the end the Ood were killed after Krop Tor fell into the black hole.

The Ood returned in ‘Planet of the Ood’ where it was discovered that the centre of their slave operation took place on the Ood Sphere, the Ood’s home planet. The sinister Klineman Halpen had the Ood’s giant brain, which served as their telepathic centre, blocked off so that their telepathic link was severed and left the poor creatures as mere cattle. Added to this was the separation of their hind brains which were replaced with the translator. The giant brain eventually managed to slowly break free and managed to cause a massive revolution against humanity. The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble were able to help this revolution and ultimately granted the Ood their long awaited freedom and allowed them to once more sing together through their telepathic link.

Ood Sigma, one of the Ood’s that aided the Tenth Doctor in ‘Planet of the Ood’, returned as a cameo in ‘The Waters of Mars’ to act as a warning towards the Doctor’s inevitable fate.

The Ood appeared again in ‘The End of Time’ where they showed the Tenth Doctor strange visions of the events that were to come, leading the Doctor to realise his nemesis the Master was still alive. They appeared again at the end of the story were they sung the Tenth Doctor a song to aid him with his regeneration.

The Daleks
The deadly creatures of hate returned in ‘Army of Ghosts/Doomsday’ when the Cult of Skaro, an elite group of Daleks created by the Dalek Emperor to create new ways of killing during the Time War, were revealed to be inside the Void Ship. They prepared their plans of awakening the Genesis Ark, a Time Lord prison-ship, in order to release an army of Daleks across Earth. During their battle with the Cybus-men, the Tenth Doctor managed to reopen the Void and pulled both the Daleks and the Cybus-men back within, trapping the two armies within the depths of the hellish voids.

The Cult of Skaro managed to escape the massacre by using an Emergency Temporal Shift which teleported them back to 1930s New York. They then had the Empire State Building built in order to complete their new attempts of rebuilding their once great empire. Without proper technology, the Cult of Skaro were unable to build new Dalek embryos and so decided upon a final experiment which resulted in their leader Dalek Sec merging itself with Mr Diagoras, thus creating a new splice of DNA in order to create a new Dalek race through humanity. Dalek Sec ultimately began to develop human emotions and so wished to ally himself with the Tenth Doctor in order to make a more human Dalek race, believing their current way of thinking will bring about their destruction. The rest of the Cult of Skaro turned against Dalek Sec and took the plan into their own hands and tried making a pure Dalek race through humanity. This plan failed after the Tenth Doctor interfered with the Gamma Rays that were injected into the bodies of the new Daleks and thus gave them Time Lord DNA which rebelled against their Dalek DNA. The Tenth Doctor engineered the Cult of Skaro’s destruction after causing the Dalek Human Hybrids to turn against their masters. Dalek Sec was ultimately killed by his akin after trying to protect the Doctor. Dalek Caan was the last Dalek left in existence and escaped after using another Emergency Temporal Shift.

It was discovered in ‘The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End’ that Dalek Caan entered the Time War, breaking through the Time Lock at the cost of its sanity, in order to save its creator Davros from death. Upon bringing his flagship back to the present, Davros engineered a plan to create a Reality Bomb in order to wipe everything apart from the Daleks from existence. The Daleks stole 27 planets from time and space in order to power up the Reality Bomb and placed them inside the Medusa Cascade a few seconds out of existence where their new empire was concealed. In the process, Earth was stolen and almost ravaged by the might of these new insane Daleks with U.N.I.T. suffering heavy losses during the invasion. The Supreme Dalek then prepared the final phase of their plan and prepared to make the Daleks the only species left in the universe but this plan was thwarted by Donna Noble after being engineered to do so by the now insane Dalek Caan. After she combined her mind with the Tenth Doctor’s spare hand she became the Doctor-Donna, a human with a Time Lord conscious. After messing with their systems, the Daleks were rendered helpless followed by the Supreme Daleks destruction at the hands of Captain Jack Harkness. The Meta-Crisis Doctor then had the Daleks destroyed, at the command of Dalek Caan who wished his race’s destruction due to despising their evil across time, fearing that their numbers were still enough to be a threat even without the Reality Bomb. Once again the Daleks were apparently brought to extinction.

The Daleks made a cameo in ‘The Waters of Mars’ as a flashback to their invasion of Earth during the events of ‘The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End’. It showed a lone Dalek confronting a young Adelaide Brooke before leaving her alone and letting her live.

The Macra
The giant crabs a return/final appearance in ‘Gridlock’ where they had now mutated into rampaging beasts living in the depths of the Motorway underneath New New York. The creatures would attack any vehicle that entered the gas fog but in the end the Tenth Doctor managed to free everyone from the Motorway and thereby made sure no one else would succumb to the Macra’s terror ever again.

The Weeping Angels
The lonely assassins are a deadly creature that can move as fast as lightning once they are not observed but upon being observed freeze into stone angels. This gives them the perfect defence as one cannot kill a stone statue. There other unique and deadly ability is to send their victims back in time, an element they use to their advantage in order to drain the time energy to make them stronger. The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones were sent back in time by the Weeping Angels in ‘Blink’ and then used their knowledge of the future, due to Sally Sparrow giving them notes of their predicament within their past, in order to send messages to Sally in the future to stop the Weeping Angels draining the TARDIS’s energy. Through a timey-wimey conversation, the Tenth Doctor gave Sally the knowledge of how to return the TARDIS to him and thereby caused the Weeping Angels to be locked in time for all eternity after being forced to look at each other.

The Master
The Doctor’s arch-nemesis made a return in ‘Utopia’ where it was discovered that the kind hearted Professor Yana was in fact the Master in disguise after running away from the Time War. Upon Martha realising that Yana possessed a fob-watch similar to the one the Tenth Doctor used in ‘Human Nature/The Family of Blood’ which allowed him to store his Time Lord consciousness within, it all became clear what the Face of Boe’s final message meant. His words ‘you are not alone’ stood for the initials for Yana’s name. The Master’s consciousness within the fob-watch ordered Yana to release him and was allowed to return to plague the Doctor once again. He killed his assistant Chantho and then stole the Tenth Doctor’s TARDIS, but not before regenerating into a younger, and more insane man after being shot by Chantho’s dying last moments. The Tenth Doctor locked his TARDIS’s coordinates so the Master could only travel to the end of the universe and modern-day Earth. After the Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones and Captain Jack Harkness managed to return to Earth in ‘The Sound of Drums’ using Jack’s Vortex Manipulator, they discovered the Master had hypnotised the entire population of Britain into believing he was Harold Saxon and became Prime Minister.

He then turned the TARDIS into a Paradox Machine and brought the dreaded Toclafane, who were later revealed to be the last of humanity seen in ‘Utopia’, from the end of the universe to murder mankind and help the Master become the ruler of the universe. In ‘Last of the Time Lords’ the Tenth Doctor had been aged by the Master’s Laser Screwdriver with Captain Jack and Martha’s family being made the renegade Time Lord’s slaves. Martha had meanwhile escaped a year prior to this and travelled the Earth to give the last of humanity a message; think about the Doctor upon the Master’s countdown to launching his war-rockets to attack the universe. Upon the world doing this, the Tenth Doctor was able to use the psychic energy to regain his strength and over power his nemesis. The Master attempted to detonate the bombs within the war-rockets to prevent the Tenth Doctor from gaining the victory but the Time Lord called his bluff knowing too well he would never destroy himself. The Paradox Machine was reversed and his year of terror was undone. Before the Tenth Doctor could deal with the Master in his own personal way he was shot down by his terrified wife Lucy Saxon. The Master refused to regenerate and decided to die rather than remain the Tenth Doctor’s prisoner. A saddened Tenth Doctor then burnt his body.

In ‘The End of Time’ it was revealed that the Master’s ring survived and was used as part of a scheme to resurrect him should his plans in ‘Last of the Time Lords’ have failed. However Lucy Saxon interfered with the resurrection process and caused him to only be half reborn. His body began to break apart, revealing his skeleton within from time to time, and he required to constantly eat the energy of others to maintain stability. The Tenth Doctor tried to help him, also in the process discovering that the drumbeat from within the Master’s head was in fact real and not a side effect of his insanity, but was captured by Joshua Naismith. Naismith wished him to fix his Immortality Gate but instead the Master used it for his own purposes by turning everyone on Earth into himself.

The Master and his Master Race then finally attempted to discover the origins of the drumbeat within his head and soon discovered the dark secret. It was in fact President Rassilon who placed the drumbeat within his head in order to form a bridge-way out of the Time Lock of the Time War. President Rassilon then humiliated the Master by spoiling his plans of turning the Time Lords into the Master Race and reversed all of his plans. President Rassilon then discarded him as an abomination. The Tenth Doctor realised the only way to send them back was to kill the Master; thereby severing the link between our universe and the Time War within the Time Lock. The Master at one point believed his nemesis was going to shoot him but the Tenth Doctor ultimately chose to spare the Master and destroyed the Immortality Gates’ control circuits instead. The Master then decided to sacrifice himself for the Tenth Doctor and asked him to step aside instead of accepting his fate of death at the hands of President Rassilon. The Master then used his energy blasts to attack President Rassilon due to his rage of discovering his entire life had been manipulated by the tyrant Time Lord. In the process of gaining his revenge he burnt up his energy and ultimately got sent back into the Time War with the rest of the Time Lords.

The Sontarans
The clone warrior race returned in ‘The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky’ when General Staal of the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet attempted to turn Earth into a new clone world in order to gain an advantage against the Rutans in their long bloody war. The Tenth Doctor ultimately cottoned onto their scheme and destroyed their deadly cloud of clone gas by setting the higher atmosphere ablaze to cancel out the cloud. The Sontarans then attempted to resort to invasion but were destroyed after their servant Luke Rattigan took revenge, after they discarded him, by blowing up their ship with the same device that destroyed their cloud.

The Sontarans were seen again in a cameo within ‘The End of Time’ when Commander Jask attempted to kill both Martha Jones and Mickey Smith but was thwarted by the Tenth Doctor during his farewell tour.

Davros
The insane Kaled scientist returned after being saved during the Time War by Dalek Caan. He then set about coming up with a plan to destroy all of reality with a Reality Bomb, thereby making his creations the only creatures left in existence. Davros grew a new Dalek empire by using his own flesh to grow new embryos. The Dalek Supreme then held him in the lower levels of the Cruciform as their pet. Davros then gained his final victory after capturing the Tenth Doctor and showcasing to him and his companions that the Time Lord’s blood-soaked life had influenced and damaged so many different people during his travels by either turning them into a deadly weapon or causing their death. After Donna Noble interfered with the Daleks plans and the Meta-Crisis Doctor initiated their destruction, Davros refused the Tenth Doctor’s hand of help and decided to remain onboard the Cruciform as it perished. Before the Daleks creator died he told the Tenth Doctor that he would be remembered by him as ‘the destroyer of worlds’.

President Rassilon
Rassilon had been the figure-head for the Time Lord society since the dawn of their race and as such became a part of their mythical legends. During the Time War however Rassilon was resurrected and became corrupt by the darkness surrounding him. Knowing his great race would soon become extinct at the hands of the Doctor after he possessed the Moment, he engineered a final plan in order to escape the Time Lock and complete the ultimate sanction. Rassilon did this by manipulating the Master throughout his life in order to transform him into a bridge-way from the Time War back into our universe. Once returning he and the rest of the Time Lords would ascend above time after the damages they caused by unleashing the Time War into reality, thereby ripping time apart, allowed them to become creatures of conscious. Rassilon was eventually stopped by the combined efforts of the Tenth Doctor and the Master and he was ultimately sent back into the Time Lock to die in the hellish nightmares within.

The Three Must See Episodes

• 3. ‘The Waters of Mars’
• 2. ‘The End of Time’
• 1. ‘Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords’

Special Mentions to:

• ‘School Reunion’
• ‘The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit’
• ‘Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks’
• ‘Human Nature/The Family of Blood’
• ‘Blink’
• ‘The Fires of Pompeii’
• ‘Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead’ ‘Midnight’
• ‘Planet of the Dead’

First Words

“Hello! Okay–ooh. New teeth. That’s weird. So, where was I? Oh, that’s right. Barcelona!”

The Incarnation Speech

“I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I’m 903 years old and I’m the man who’s going to save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?”

Last Words

“I don’t want to go!”

The Regeneration

The Tenth Doctor regenerated due to exposure to radiation after sacrificing himself to save Wilfred Mott in ‘The End of Time’. His death was prophesied to him back in ‘Planet of the Dead’; it was foretold the events of his last adventure and the circumstances behind his regeneration. When the Master was resurrected by his sinister decibels, it brought about a chain reaction which ultimately led to the Time Lords return from the Time War. After the Master duplicated himself via turning everyone on Earth into him, he attempted to discover the origins of the drumbeat inside of his head and this led him to locate a White-Point Star diamond that was sent to him by the Time Lords. The Master then used that diamond to release the Time Lords from the Time Lock and granted them what they wanted – freedom from hell in order to rip apart time. President Rassilon revealed that he planted the drumbeat inside of the Master’s head in order to use him as a tool to escape. The Tenth Doctor managed to reverse their escape and sent them back into the Time War by destroying the link granting them freedom. The Master then sacrificed himself in order to save the Tenth Doctor from Rassilon’s wrath.

The Tenth Doctor briefly believed he had escaped his fate but ultimately realised Wilfred Mott was the one to bring his downfall and had to rescue him from the Immortality Gates radiation booths at the cost of his own life. After having a small tantrum, he decided to complete the prophecy and suffered a huge dosage of radiation running through his body. This in turn forced him to begin regenerating which he managed to prolong long enough to save goodbye to all of his different companions before finally returning to the TARDIS. He then tried one final attempt to fight against death but ultimately succumbed to his fate and changed into yet again a younger and more enigmatic person…

• Find the First Doctor Retrospective here
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• Find the Fourth Doctor Retrospective here
• Find the Fifth Doctor Retrospective here
• Find the Sixth Doctor Retrospective here
• Find the Seventh Doctor Retrospective here
• Find the Eighth Doctor Retrospective here
• Find the Ninth Doctor Retrospective here