The Tedium of the Recurring Villain

Why is it that writers and producers seem to think that viewers want to see recurring villains, well recur, in films and TV series?  Personally, whenever I see an old villainous character reappear, despite an apparently definitive ending last time they appeared, my reaction is 'Oh, for fuck's sake!'.  I always take it as a lack of ambition and imagination on the part of writers and producers when they resort to this gambit.  Can;t they come up with new antagonists and scenarios (because the reappearance of an old villain usually means a repetition of their previous antics with minor variations) to try and boost ratings?  Because, inevitably, the man reason for bringing these characters back is a desire to prop up sagging viewing figures - on the basis that the last time they appeared their story line garnered a boost in viewing figures.  But the reality is that the law of diminishing returns kicks in as the novelty of these characters wears off, forcing writers and producers to up the ante for each reappearance, with their schemes becoming ever more evil and outlandish, with the character eventually turning into a caricature of their original persona.  Just this evening I watched two soaps trying to rely on the returns of villainous past characters in order to create a buzz: Eastenders brought back Janine Butcher for the umpteenth time, (it beggars belief that she wasn't banged up for life years ago for her crimes), while Holby City, one a relatively realistic hospital dram, was resorting to bringing back the terminally dull Cameron and having him blow up the hospital with a bomb.

The fact is that neither were particularly interesting characters in the first place, making their elevation to the status of soap super villains all the more ludicrous.  It would be easy to blame Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the perception on the part of modern creative types that every heroic character needs an evil nemesis or a super villain to oppose, having created Professor Moriarty to oppose Sherlock Holmes.  But the fact is that Conan Doyle knew that Super villains or evil nemeses for ongoing heroic characters should be restricted to fleeting appearances, otherwise they would soon lose their impact.  The fact is that Moriarty only ever appears in a single short story - 'The Final Problem'.  His influence (from beyond the grave) is felt in 'The empty House' and his portrait appears in the novel The Valley of Fear, but the reality is that he isn't really a prominent character in the original canon as a whole. He was only created by Conan Doyle when he wanted to kill Holmes off and realised that only an opponent of the same magnitude of the Great Detective could achieve such a thing.  Sadly, both film makers and other writers who have taken up Conan Doyle's mantle have failed to realise that one of the things that keep the original stories continually interesting is the variety of villains and crimes Holmes investigates.  Being tied to continually having to battle the 'Napoleon of Crime' makes these Holmes continuations tiresome, forever repeating the same tired tropes.  

I just don't like recurring villains - they are tedious.  Even as a kid, my heart used to sink when The Master turned up yet again in Dr Who.  Like Sherlock Holmes, one of the pleasures of the series for me was the sheer variety of foes and situations the doctor was involved with, but the Master was just boring - a one dimensional character along the lines of the moustache twirling villains of silent movies.  What's his motivation?  Well, he's just evil! Or crazy!  Or maybe both!  At one point in the seventies, the character was even more over used than the Daleks, (who are at least actually scary and sometimes actually vary their nefarious schemes), being revealed as the villain in every bloody story of Pertwee's second series.  Even when he's regenerated, The Master has remained the same dull, one dimensional character.  Increasingly, in fact, he's less of a character than a convenient deus ex machina.  Yet producer after producer seems to think that he's some kind of fan favourite.  Not with this fan, I can tell you.  Can't we just accept that once one of these super villains is defeated, that's it, they are finished and we never have to put up with them again?  OK, I know that Dr Who has a whole host of recurring monsters, but they, at least, represent entire races so, short of extinction, it is plausible that other examples will turn up after one lot has been defeated, but to have one individual keep bloody turning up is just ridiculous, not to mention boring.  Besides, monsters are inherently interesting.  (Except zombies, which I also, increasingly, find tedious, but that's mainly because they are too often poorly used in badly made films as just a convenient threat, rather than giving the concept underlying them any depth).  So, can we just have a moratorium on these bloody soap villains and evil nemeses returning and come up with new characters and plots instead?