Mr Waites

Mr Waites was the name given by the Eleventh Doctor to a mind parasite. Waites referred to himself as the Eternal Ordeal, the Guardian of Sorrow and the God of Worst Days. Clara Oswald considered the creature to be a "sick, twisted monster".

Mr Waites used his tendrils to connect people's minds to his own, as he fed off the "hellscape" dreams they created in their minds where the victims visualised "the worst thing [they] could ever imagine". In the Doctor's dream, he lived the life of a coward in a bureaucratic job, where Mr Waites appeared to be a human boss who promoted the Doctor to assistant mediator to deal with members of the public the Doctor was unable to help. In Clara's dream, she existed in a world without the Doctor. The Doctor and Clara were able to escape from their dreams as they knew something was wrong about them. Clara woke the other victims of Mr Waites by removing them from his tendrils, while the Doctor attached Waites' tendril to Waites' mind, destroying him. (COMIC: John Smith and the Common Men)

Behind the scenes
Mr Waites shares the surname of the Hon. Aubrey Waites, who was mentioned in the television episode "An Unearthly Child" as taking on the stage name "John Smith" when he joined the band John Smith and the Common Men, the story's namesake.