DW Monsters: Kaldor Robots

The next story in the series is The Deadly Assassin, which does not have a “monster”, or any aliens other than the Time Lords. In the next story, The Face of Evil, we have a mad computer, but then we come to The Robots of Death. Robots, particularly human-shaped ones, have featured several times on the show, but these remain fondly remembered, at least partly for their Art Deco look. They featured in a 1999 novel, Corpse Marker, by the writer of the original TV story, but it’s really in the audio medium that they have had their greatest success. They have so far appeared in three audios alongside the Doctor, and in two series of their own, one of them reaching eighteen episodes.

DW Monsters: Kastrians

The primary antagonist in The Masque of Mandragora is not only a unique entity, but one that’s more of an abstract threat than something we could stat up; it produces visible effects and controls people, but it doesn’t really qualify as a “monster”. Following that story, though, is The Hand of Fear and Eldrad. Now, Eldrad himself is also unique, in that he’s the last surviving member of his species, the Kastrians, but because we can throw time travel into the mix, that doesn’t mean we could never meet another. Having said that, the Kastrians do not return, or even get much of a mention, elsewhere in the TV series. Indeed, their only other appearance to date is in the audio story Eldrad Must Die! which is, of course, a direct sequel.

DW Monsters: Krynoids

After The Brain of Morbius, which features a unique monster, we come to The Seeds of Doom (not to be confused with the Second Doctor story The Seeds of Death) and the Krynoids. There are only two in the story, but they’re a species of alien that could plausibly be found on many other planets, so they’re within my remit for these posts. The Krynoids are a one-off monster within the series, and have been little used elsewhere. Other than a few short stories, they have featured in only one licensed audio, Hothouse, which acts as a sequel to the TV serial without really expanding the description of the species.

Description and Biology

Krynoids are plants that begin their life cycle as seed pods flying through space. Once they land on a suitable planetary surface they germinate, infecting the nearest large animal by injecting them with bacteria-like cells. The original plant then dies, but the infective cells take over and restructure the host's body using it as the foundation to grow the second, reproductive, phase of the Krynoid. Essentially, then, we have two forms: the plant inside the seed pod, which produces the infective spores, and the much larger form that the spores grow into and that eventually produce new seed pods.

DW Monsters: Androids

Following Terror of the Zygons, the next two stories are:

• Planet of Evil – the anti-matter monster here is an apparently unique entity and, in any case, is more a sort of mobile hazard than something with creature statistics
• Pyramids of Mars – although we only encounter one Osiran, they are a race… however, they’re sufficiently powerful that they are more effectively described as one-off NPCs. I’m also going to pass on their servitor robots for the time being as there isn’t much to say about them other than them being large, strong, robots.

This brings us to The Android Invasion. The alien race here are the Kraals, which have leathery skin, sculpted skulls, and a small nose-horn. Other than their physical appearance, however, there seems little to set them apart from humans, and in game terms they (as with races such as the Draconians) probably don’t need any particular rules. Their titular android creations, however, are a different matter. 

DW Monsters: Skarasen

The next story up is Terror of the Zygons, the only classic series appearance of the eponymous aliens. While I have done those before, as a recurring race in the modern series, the story also includes the Zygons' pet monster, the skarasen. Considering that we're told the creature is essential to Zygon survival, it's noteworthy that it has not appeared again on TV in any subsequent stories involving the race. 

The spin-off media, however, have been more willing to include them. They have so far appeared in two of the licensed audios (and one older one, outside the regular license) and two novels. The most significant of these is probably the Eighth Doctor novel The Bodysnatchers, which features a batch of infant skarasen. Each of these stories has, naturally, also included the Zygons; there have been many Zygon stories without the skarasen, but never the reverse.

Trouble at t'Mill (con game report)

This weekend, I ran a Doctor Who game at the annual Continuum convention in Leicester. I've had relatively little to run the game before, despite having written about related topics here, although this was the third in a loose series where I have previously run the other two (including one at last year's Continuum). The game was run using the Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space system (2nd ed.) - one that I haven't used in my "monster" posts since, of course, the relevant information already exists in print. For those who haven't previously encountered it, it's available here.

Unfortunately, I'm not terribly good at coming up with ideas for adventures. I can tweak stuff that already exists, and throw in ideas but writing the adventure itself, not so much. (My recent fantasy sourcebooks, which are available here and here, consist of settings, NPCs, and plot hooks, but cannot reasonably be described as "scenarios"). Fortunately, there is a readily available source of plot ideas for Doctor Who: the expanded universe.

DW Monsters: Cybermats

The Wirrn are the only new race introduced in season 12, with their story being followed by, in order:

• The Sontaran Experiment 
• Genesis of the Daleks  
• Revenge of the Cybermen

All of which feature their titular returning “monsters”. However, the last of these three does include, in addition to the Cybermen, their creations, the cybermats. These had previously appeared in a couple of Second Doctor stories, in slightly different form, and have also appeared once in the modern series. Outside the TV series, they have so far featured (typically quite briefly) in nine audio stories and one original novel – all, of which, of course, also include the Cybermen in more prominent roles. Two of the audios address the question of the cybermats’ origin and nature, which is probably the most detail we’re ever going to get on them; the two answers given are, however, contradictory.

DW Monsters: Wirrn

We don’t see any newly introduced races in the remainder of the first revived season after Dalek, but for the record, the relevant stories are:

• The Long Game – The “monster” here is the Jagrafass, which is, so far as we can tell, a unique being, not a race.
• Father’s Day – The Reapers are said to be completely impervious to damage, which makes them more of an obstacle than something that can be described with creature statistics so I will, at least for the moment, pass on them.
• The Empty Child – The real threat here are the nanites that create the empty children and they are only doing what they are doing because of a very specific malfunction. Thus, the empty children themselves are a one-off thing and the malfunctioning nanites are (game mechanically speaking) a disease, not a monster.
• Boom Town – features the Slitheen.
• Bad Wolf – features the Daleks.

With the Ninth Doctor’s run completed, I am heading back to the classic era, and looking at the monsters of the Fourth Doctor’s run. The first story of his run is Robot, which features a unique… robot… but after that, we get The Ark in Space, which introduces the Wirrn. 

Although we do briefly see a dead Wirrn in a later story, they otherwise do not appear again in the TV show. They do, however, feature in the 1998 novel Placebo Effect and in four audio stories. The most notable of the latter are perhaps Wirrn Isle, a direct sequel to The Ark in Space, and Wirrn Dawn, which is essentially Aliens with Wirrn instead of xenomorphs. As usual, a few comics and short stories round out the total.

DW Monsters: Daleks

The next story is Dalek, and it’s finally time to try and cover the most iconic, and frequently-used, of all the Doctor Who “monsters”. I’ve left them this long mainly because they’re such a big topic that it’s easier to do other races first, but also because they are quite complex. Given their greater number of appearances than Cybermen, it’s notable that they’ve changed rather less than that race has, but even so, and ignoring unique and variant individuals, I’ll need to cover at least three different versions in their evolution over the 60 years of the series so far.

Appearances

The race first appeared way back in the first season in 1963, as literally the first “monster” in the series’ history. That first appearance was followed by at least fourteen further Dalek stories in the classic series (arguably more, if you count brief appearances) with at least one for every Doctor up to the Seventh. As I write this, there have been sixteen unequivocal Dalek stories in the modern series, but such is their popularity that if you are reading this even one year after I penned it, there’s a good chance that that number will have increased.

DW Monsters: Slitheen

Next, we reach Aliens of London, which introduces us to the Slitheen. These turned out to be memorable, often being referenced in later stories, although only being the focus of one other, Boom Town, later on in the same season. They (or members of their species) have, however, also had major roles in three episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures, as well as two original novels, and four audio releases to date – the latter including one Torchwood release and one other not featuring the Doctor. 

It may also be worth noting that the alien race the Foamasi, from the Fourth Doctor TV story The Leisure Hive, are essentially the same concept as the Slitheen, although they look quite different out of their skin suits and lack the biological peculiarities. They’ve proved less popular, only re-appearing in one of the ‘90s novels.

DW Monsters: Gelth

The third story in the revised series is The Unquiet Dead, for which the alien menace are the Gelth. They are a one-off monster in the TV series, and, apart from a few minor mentions here and there, have only appeared once since, and that in a short story, rather than anything more substantial.

Description and Biology

We are told that the Gelth were originally regular organic beings. They somehow lost their physical bodies during the Time War, becoming gaseous instead. How this would work is obviously unclear, but, in fairness, we have little idea from the TV series of how exactly the Time War was fought or what the weapons brought to bear in it were capable of.

DW Monsters: The Forest of Cheem

The second story of the modern show is The End of the World, which features quite a few different aliens. It’s difficult to say too much about many of them, however, either because they are represented only by a single individual (the Moxx of Balhoon), they aren’t really aliens (the Adherents), or both (the Face of Boe and Lady Cassandra). This leaves only the Crespallions, who don’t seem all that different from humans, and the Forest of Cheem.

The Forest have not appeared again in the TV series, but have returned in a couple of stories in the audio anthology Tales of New Earth (which reveals "Cheem" to be the name of a planet to which they were transplanted), and occasionally in the comics.

DW Monsters: The Nestene Consciousness

The first story of the modern series features the Autons, which I have already described. However, the story also features the creators of the Autons, the alien race known as the Nestene, and it is now time to look at those specifically.

One could argue that, strictly speaking, any Auton story is also a Nestene story. However, not all such stories include a direct appearance by a member of the race. In the TV series, we have only seen them directly twice, in Spearhead from Space and Rose, although they have perhaps been more common in the assorted spin-off media. But, for the most part, there is, as one might expect, considerable overlap and, unsurprisingly, there are no Nestene stories that don’t also feature Autons.

DW Monsters: Eight-Legs

The next story we come to is The Monster of Peladon, which, for the most part, features the same aliens and creatures we have already seen in The Curse of Peladon. There is one new alien race introduced, the Vegans (yes, that’s actually their name), but the one individual we see isn’t around long enough to tell us much about his wider race. The tie-in novel Legacy does add that the race can see in the infrared and adds some further detail about their culture, but they remain tangential enough in the TV series itself that I am going to leave them out. Which brings us to the final Third Doctor story, Planet of the Spiders.

DW Monsters: Exxilons

The first two stories of season 11 are:

• The Time Warrior – The first appearance of the Sontarans.

• Invasion of the Dinosaurs – Dinosaurs are real-world creatures and often already statted up in RPGs

The story that follows is Death to the Daleks, which has exactly the main foes that you would expect it to have. It does, however, also feature the Exxilons. While there’s no reason to suppose Exxilons are dramatically different from other humanoids, they can serve as an example of a primitive race and do at least have some minor differences from regular humans. They appeared only once in the TV series, but have appeared twice in audio stories and, because of their history as an advanced space-faring power, have occasionally been mentioned in tie-in novels and elsewhere.

DW Monsters: Giant Maggots

Continuing through season 10, we get:

• Frontier in Space – While the Draconians are undeniably interesting, this is primarily due to their culture. In terms of basic attributes, they don’t seem that different from humans and can probably be described in the same way. Therefore, I will pass on them.

• I will also pass on the unnamed Ogron-eating blob monster from the same story, on the grounds we know almost nothing about it.

• Planet of the Daleks – It’s still not quite time for the Daleks on this blog yet…

Which brings us to The Green Death… and giant maggots!