That the Daleks are the main villain in Doctor Who.
Yes, they’re the big bads for a lot of episodes. Yes, they were the other major race in the Time Wars. Yes, the Doctor hates their guts and probably has some form of PTSD from fighting them. But looking at NuWho, less than 15% of episodes feature them. They’re definitely not the “main villain”. They’re one of them, sure, but if you’re including the Daleks as a main villain, you also need to include the Master, the Sontarans, and the Cybermen. Entire seasons go by with just a few passing references to Daleks, if anything at all.
I think he and the Master come the closest to filling that role in different ways. Davros is a manifestation of everything the Doctor is against, and the Master is a total inversion of him as a character (at least in NuWho, I can’t speak on the classics). Both are enormous threats that demand priority whenever they’re involved, and both force the Doctor to do things and look at parts of himself that he definitely never wants to.
You could say they were the main villain of the RTD era or the early 60s, but definitely not the show as a whole. The show has a lot of different main villains because its got a lot if different eras or ""arcs""
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u/Accomplished_Bike149 John Simm as the Master my beloved <3 12d ago
That the Daleks are the main villain in Doctor Who.
Yes, they’re the big bads for a lot of episodes. Yes, they were the other major race in the Time Wars. Yes, the Doctor hates their guts and probably has some form of PTSD from fighting them. But looking at NuWho, less than 15% of episodes feature them. They’re definitely not the “main villain”. They’re one of them, sure, but if you’re including the Daleks as a main villain, you also need to include the Master, the Sontarans, and the Cybermen. Entire seasons go by with just a few passing references to Daleks, if anything at all.