Howling:What IS the Nightmare Child?

Because the Nightmare Child was mentioned yet again in The End of Time, it raises the question: what is it? But this time the Doctor appeared a bit more... frightenved when mentioning it. He spoke of it as if it was one of the biggest, baddest, mnost evil things out there. Even its name really creeps me out, sounds pretty weird/creepy/sinister, in my opinion.

By what it is, I mean by what form is it? Is it an entity, a monster, something else? The Doctor had always described it as something not nice at all. But the name is damn creepy. Delton Menace 17:12, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

The Doctor seemed to be scared of the things in the time war and what scares the doctor the most... somthing that just kills. In my mind the nightmare child is a white skinned demon with flesh rotting and falling off it's black bones with a face like The Beast in The Satan Pit. The nightmare child also does not care about good or evil it simply kills everything and its large enough to grab a small comand ship out of the sky and eat it so I'd say 700 ft esily. Lutennant Vell the jugde. 6:15, oct 26, 2010

I think it's Paris Hilton when she was younger. The evil dude. 17:29, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

While that's very possible, I think that it's some sort of entity, think Unicron from Transformers, it doesn't strike me as being small enough to be a monster.Excalibur-117 17:40, January 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * I vaguely remember one of the writers (Paul Cornell? maybe even Moffat?) speculating that when the Eternals and the Guardians left the universe at the start of the LGTW, all kinds of spooky things that had been hiding from them came out of the woodwork. But I did a search and can't find any references to this idea anywhere, so I could be completely wrong.


 * I'm just surprised that nobody has yet speculated that it's the Midnight entity. :) --99.157.75.211 02:13, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

Because the Midnight entity is incorperal, and the Nightmare Child is described as having been something corperal: they knew it was male, they mentioned jaws, they could see it. They mentioned "his emtpire." It sounds like the Nightmare Child may have been a huge, demonic monster, or something.

Midnight was an incorperal entity, but similarly frightening. Except, the freaking thing is, how on Earth did it knock when it didn't have a physical form? That really freaks me out when I think about it. Weird... Delton Menace 02:39, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

The Nightmare Child is one of those Time War things that can't be shown or described, because it's too complicated for the human mind to grasp. Hope that clears things up! Jim393 19:57, January 8, 2010 (UTC)

I recon it is a giant bug like thing that Davros flew into. --Catkind121 21:47, January 8, 2010 (UTC)

Wait a sec, can anyone tell me if this was mentioned anywhere apart from in The End of Time? 'Cos I cannae remember it being mentioned previously! Feumas 23:12, February 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * The series 4 finale. The Doctor remarks that's where Davros died, before Caan changed the future. N3onkn1ght 00:56, February 17, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I am going through all the episodes in order, haven't got there yet. Thanks! Feumas 11:08, February 17, 2010 (UTC)

I actully think the nightmare child is a demon, like monster, or some sort of giant thingy that floats around in space eating things all around. That is generated from child time lords fear. Or something like that and was used by the Time Lords as a weapon agianst the Daleks. Hence thats why Davros flew into it. But it would be good to see it in the new series. --Catkind121 12:03, February 17, 19237142010 (UTC)

Maybe, like the tardis, its a living ship. but maybe not enough to swallow a dalek ship (mother ship), just plain ships, but also something living. Saxon 3 20:54, February 20, 2012 (UTC)

I think it could be a giant star, or black hole, or some other spacial anomoly. That would make sense as Davros' ship was swallowed by the nightmare child and that could mean it crashed into the star or sucked into a black hole. Do you get what I mean :P ? Matta jr 21:04, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

I think that it is meant to be something beyond the realms of post-childhood imagination, so you are therefore all wrong. Russel has said so about the events of the Time War, it is beyond visualisation, otherwise there is no mystery to it. So keep imagining, but as yet you haven't quite got there!Feumas 23:52, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

I think it is some sort of large creature capable of consuming planets and ships,it has been said it has Jaws and i remember hearing on this wiki somewhere that in a comic strip the doctor claimed to have 'laughed in the face of the nightmare child'.Now if something has jaws and a face that sounds like some sort of creature to me.Something else from the time war i would like to know more about is the could've been king and his armies of meanwhiles and never weres,i assume from the names that he is an entity which creates alternative and rejected timelines in a simmilar way to the trickster.--666hotline 13:53, February 27, 2010 (UTC)

To agree with 6666hotline, I thought of him as similar to Faction Paradox from the novels 86.183.23.10 17:37, February 27, 2010 (UTC)

Unless ofcourse when the Doctor meantions it has a face, and jaws, its like reffering to "the jaws of defeat" or "the face of evil" ya know? Maybe the Nightmare Child is simply death. The ultimate demise to which nothing can escape, a neverending cataclysim...either that or it's one REALLY scary bloody monster. -- Olle1306 22:49, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Simply death? Death itself appeared in Torchwood series 2, literally came from the darkness itself. Delton Menace 13:50, March 6, 2010 (UTC)

I thought he meant it more as a metaphor... like saying a Christian saying "with the angels" for a peaceful death, "the jaws of the Nightmare Child" could be a Time Lord euphemism for hell. Though, saying a metaphor will return with the breaking of the Time Lock seems to stretch it a little :P Cannon881 21:09, March 6, 2010 (UTC)

The Nightmare Child was born in the most firerce war in history (as in, BORN?!), so perhaps it was born from the bloodshed and hatred? All of that war, suffering, fire and insanity from the Time War could have manifested into an entity which would be dubbed the Nightmare Child, becoming a vile, vicious entity that feeds on chaos, pain destruction, insanity, and life itself. And it is dipicted as a child, like a demonic child. Delton Menace 01:28, March 7, 2010 (UTC)

I think the Nightmare Child is an ancient crap head, rather like the Beast, Abaddon and Durac. I agree when the Eternals left reality, it would've come out to play. It defenantly has a face and jaws, which are bigger than a borg cube. I've always imagined it as a large, demonic child head, but that's just me. I'm A Hydroponic Tomato! Bigredrabbit (talk to me) 04:12, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

I think it's something the daleks made. The cult of skaro was in the time war, maybe it was one of their mad experiments that went out of control. Some sort of dalek/cthulhian horror hybrid of some sort. Or maybe he was the ultimate dude in the time war, walking around causing trouble for both the daleks and

the time lords, obliterating whole platoons on both sides on a whim or a tantrum. 123.2.98.12 14:10, March 13, 2010 (UTC)

OR it could be something the Time Lords made possibly with the help of the Master (as he was bred for war) and it could have gone out of control. DalekVictor554 08:59, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

if we were told what it was or looked like it would spoil it lots of thing about the time war.

i think that it hasnt been described becauses it is something too terible for the human mind to concieve, (like one of the previous posts said) born in the fires of war, pain, suffering and hate, literaly the child of nightmares.217.23.232.194 09:07, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

A rupture in the fabric of reality due to the all the paradoxes produced by both the Daleks and Timelords through their time manipulations and time travelling within the Time War. Like a crack of some sort.

I don't think it's very likely that it's a literal animate creature...as the Doctor said Davros' ship flew into the jaws of Nightmare Child, people usually don't fly into an animate creature....and it's a pretty odd image to conjure up.

If we are lazy...the stuffs the Doctor mentioned could pretty much just be abstract labels of normal stuff we expected out of a Time War:


 * the Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres: People (possibly only Daleks due to the Master's stance) erased in the Time War due to time manipulation on both side as said in The End of Time...or more abstractly, just people trapped in the Time War (since they can no longer affect other time periods, so they are sort separated from the current timeline of the Doctor and the Master)


 * the Could've Been King: The could've been victor of the War (possibly Dalek Emperor due the Master's stance)


 * the Horde of Travesties: Just bad stuffs in general that costed many lives during the War


 * the Skaro Degradations: what it says literally, since we know Skaro is ruined...

Moreover, we know how bloody fragile Timelord technology is: blow a TARDIS, the Universe collapse; random stuff for meaningless rituals is actually a superpowerful random stuff that can destroy the Universe and rip open realities (something like that); and creating a superprison that would be opened if any timetraveller touched it despite that Davros or other parties may want to release Daleks. The Daleks are not any better: progenitor machine that have the intelligence of accepting testimony from a deceitful enemy but not good enough to automatically generate Daleks when the Dalek race is about to extinct; control panels that could disable or control all Daleks are always placed in a location convenient to the enemies and made so that Doctor/DoctorDonna could operate it; and make a reality bomb because they have too much time on their hands...sorry, I mean plungers (come on, if you have enough time to steal planets across all of time and space then you probably have enough time to just invade the Universe...especially when you know that the Doctor will come across one of these missing planets at some point because he also has too much time on hand, and you bloody stole Earth, the planet that he is always on). With these two races: one is igorant, the other is idiotic, and both equally reckless, they are bound to create something catastrophic...I mean look at Gallifrey, the Doctor thinks it's beautiful, EEA and UNEP people would probably get heart attacks if they see what the planet look like. --203.168.176.42 13:12, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

I think the nightmare child was a timelord(or other faction) super ship, (somewhat like a vorlon planet crusher), and the whole "devros" flying into its jaws was akin to the crucible attempting to take it out while it was firing its primary weapon (like in independence day, where they took down the ships by destroying the main weapon as they fire) but failed and was obliterated. The whole "birth" of the nightmare child could've just been in reference to the construction of a vessel so powerful, as the time lords are supposed to be a peaceful race. The whole army of meanwhiles and neverwheres could just be timelord soilders, recall the council members did say that at the very heart of the time war people were dieing, and being revived only to die in another more dire way, these "people" would of course have been driven mad by the constant war. also the Master ran from the time war before the Nightmare child was introduced so i doubt he had any involvement in its creation/construction/or birth... As for the creature from midnight, it had to be somewhat corporal as it managed to rip off the entire front section of the train.

whatever it is, it was probably way bigger than a dalek command ship(which is most likely very big) to be able to enter its jaws Sclera1 13:33, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

A possiblitiy is that: we don't know all of the factions in the Time War. Someone mentioned earlier that it sounded 'Cthulu'. We know that there are cthulu-like monsters in Doctor Who.

plausibly, the Time Lords during the Time War could have attempted to circumvent their reproductive issues, creating for themselves the children they wished they had been able to have; and that unwise effort spawned something horrible beyond all imagining. --AleXM 09:59, December 5, 2010

There isn't an episode that suggests that timelords can't reproduce, and the fact that they only have 12 regenerations, and didn't go extinct before the time war proves that they can reproduce. Even if they couldn't, that is not something that they would be worrying about during the timewar, since they could bring people back to life to fight in it anyway, without waiting for them to grow up. If the timelords did create the nightmare child, than they meant for it to be some kind of monster, or whatever it was, so that they could use it against the Daleks.Icecreamdif 00:25, December 7, 2010 (UTC)