The new era of Doctor Who kicked off in 2024 with Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor. Despite already facing plenty of threats, he’s yet to come face to face with two of his biggest foes: the Daleks and Cybermen.
If you’ve been an avid fan of Doctor Who over the years, you’ll know that the Daleks and Cybermen have been staple villains in the many decades the show has been on air. Every single Doctor has faced at least one of the two, many battling them on more than one occasion. All except for the Fifteenth Doctor (and Tennant’s Fourteenth, although he only had three episodes).
Of course, Ncuti Gatwa’s era is different from the rest; the entire franchise, or ‘Whoniverse,’ got rebooted. With showrunner Russell T Davies back at the helm, the show is now being made with American money. New episodes are on Disney+ as well as on BBC in the UK, allowing the beloved sci-fi to air in front of an enormous worldwide audience. Naturally, this means a much bigger budget.
The rebooted era of Doctor Who has been a mixed bag. Season 1 was a rocky start with poor episodes like Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord, but it picked up with such instalments as 73 Yards and The Legend of Ruby Sunday. Season 2, however, has been fantastic, delivering memorable episodes Lux and The Well.
This brings us to the question that many long-time fans have been asking: where are the Daleks and Cybermen? For answers, look no further than showrunner Russell T Davies. When he first revived the franchise back in 2005, he introduced the Daleks as the main threat instantly. But with the new era, he’s keen to lean into different territory.
“The show is taking a sly step towards fantasy, which will annoy people to whom it’s a hard science-fiction show,” he told Radio Times back in 2023
In addition, given that the Doctor’s two arch-nemesis have been rampant throughout the show’s 60-year history, Davies sees Gatwa’s era as a chance to introduce new enemies for a new generation. He recently said:
“I’m shifting it away from Daleks and Cybermen and the Master… partly because I came in off the back of a story that had literally the Daleks and the Cybermen and the Master all in one episode fighting Jodie Whittaker – which was brilliant, but once that’s happened, it’s just common sense to take a different step.”
That said, super-fans will notice a few subtle nods. “But little moments, little nods, little references… if anyone can say, ‘Oh, you look like a Drahvin!’ then I’m happy! I love that stuff – sometimes the writers put that into scripts and we enjoy it, but they’re just nods and Easter eggs. That’s the flavour of transmission today, I think.”
None of this means we’ll never see some of the franchise’s most iconic villains return to our screens. The Daleks and Cybermen will no doubt make their triumphant return in due course. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen villains disappear. For instance, the Sea Devils first appeared in Doctor Who in 1972 before making their return in 2022. And later this year (or sometime in 2026), they’ll harken back to the Whoniverse in spinoff series The War Between the Land and the Sea.
Funnily enough, the Fifteenth Doctor has already faced the Cybermen in Everyone Must Go — a new comic featuring him and companion Ruby Sunday. Check out our review here.
