Doctor Who has seen its titular Time Lord defend the Earth from all manner of alien invaders. While some, such as the Daleks and the Cybermen, have returned time and again to menace the human race, some other enemies of the Doctor have only appeared for a single episode. While some monsters seen on the sci-fi series may only warrant a one-off appearance, others certainly have potential to return for a rematch.
One Doctor Who monster that is yet to receive a second appearance is the Racnoss. First introduced in the 2006 Christmas special, “The Runaway Bride,” the Racnoss were a giant spider-like species that the Doctor believed had long since been wiped out by the Time Lords. The episode only featured one member of this species, their Empress, whose plan to awaken her millions of carnivorous children on Earth was thwarted by the Doctor. However, the story also gave the Racnoss a compelling reason to return to Doctor Who.
The Racnoss Have a Stronger Claim to Earth Than Doctor Who’s Other Invaders
“The Runaway Bride” saw David Tennant’s Doctor meet Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble for the first time, when she was caught in the middle of the Empress of the Racnoss’ sinister machinations. After dosing Donna up with the Huon particles that were used by the Racnoss as a power source, the Empress intended to use Donna as the key to unlock something buried at the center of the Earth. In order to find out what it was the Empress was after, the Doctor took Donna back in time to the creation of the Earth.
Arriving billions of years in the past, among the dust and the rocks that would eventually become the Earth, the Doctor and Donna watched as the Racnoss’ ship emerged. With the Doctor using the TARDIS to “fast-forward” through time, they saw the Racnoss craft start to act as a center of gravity, pulling the rocks and elements towards it to form the Earth. The Doctor suddenly realizes the Racnoss haven’t buried something at the center of the Earth — they became the center of the Earth. The Empress has been trying to awaken her children, who have always been lying dormant at the Earth’s core.
Doctor Who Should Bring the Racnoss Back to Earth
The revelation that, in Doctor Who canon, the Racnoss created the Earth gives these arachnid invaders a hugely significant place among all the various aliens who have come to the planet throughout the series’ history. While plenty of aliens have come to Earth on Doctor Who in order to claim the planet as their own, the Racnoss are in a unique position to stake a legitimate claim to the world as its creators. The Doctor may have killed the Empress and her children, but the ship at the Earth’s core is still the Racnoss’ to command, giving them the ultimate leverage over humanity.
Of course, the Empress of the Racnoss and her children were supposedly the last of this ancient species, with their defeat rendering the Racnoss utterly extinct. However, this hasn’t stopped other monsters from returning to Doctor Who on multiple occasions. The Daleks in particular have been utterly wiped out on multiple occasions, only to return en masse. There’s no reason a fresh band of Racnoss survivors couldn’t make their way to Doctor Who to either demand ownership of the planet they created or to threaten its destruction in an attempt to reclaim their ship from within the Earth.