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!

DW Monsters: Drashigs

The next two stories, moving us from season 9 into season 10 are:

• The Time Monster – while the monster of the title is described as belonging to a race of beings (the Chronovores) we don’t see any others, so it’s hard to know what their generic abilities might be, and I will therefore leave them out. I will also leave the Minotaur until later.

• The Three Doctors – while there are antimatter blobs in this story, they’re more a peril than a ‘monster’, and the real foe is Omega, so this is another one I will skip.

Next up is Carnival of Monsters. Despite the title, most of the monsters are only seen briefly over the viewing screen. The only exceptions, and the only ones that are original to the story, are the drashigs. This is their only significant appearance on screen so far, but they have proved popular enough in the ‘deadly alien animals’ niche to appear in two of the spin-off novels and two of the audios – in each case, making one appearance inside a miniscope, and one out in the wild. 

The audio Planet of the Drashigs makes the most use of them, as a sort of Jurassic Park homage that introduces two new subtypes of the creatures. But I will stick with the version seen on screen.

DW Monsters: Solonians

Following on from The Sea Devils, the next story we come to is The Mutants. The eponymous monsters here turn out not to be “mutants” at all but are instead a natural form of an alien race native to the planet Solos. While they have since received the odd passing reference here and there, they currently remain a one-off race, never appearing again in any of the novels, audios, or even (so far as I can tell) shorter works such as comics.

DW Monsters: Sea Devils

Next up in season 9, we’re back to present-day Earth and The Sea Devils. The eponymous race are introduced as a variant form of the Silurians adapted to underwater life and, beyond the aquatic theme, provide a similar role in the TV show – although they do appear to be more inherently violent, presumably due to a warrior upbringing. They return much later in the classic run alongside the Silurians in Warriors of the Deep but were not seen again on screen until almost the end of the Thirteenth Doctor’s run. 

Outside of the TV series, they have proved less popular than their Silurian kin, appearing alongside the latter in the 1993 novel Blood Heat, but rarely featuring on their own outside of a few comics and short stories. They have appeared in just a couple of the audios, neither of which feature the Doctor and one of which is part of a larger Silurian plot arc. A mention in a novel that doesn’t feature them directly implies that they are the same as the Deep Ones created by H.P. Lovecraft - although beyond living underwater and being cold-blooded, there doesn’t seem to be much resemblance between the two.

DW Monsters: Peladon

The next story that we come to is The Curse of Peladon, which features no fewer than four different kinds of alien. Chief among them are the Ice Warriors, which I have already covered. Of the three new introductions, Arcturus’ abilities are more a product of the device he is using to move around, which must be customisable, so I’ll leave him out. That leaves Alpha Centauri and Aggedor.

Both reappear a couple of seasons later in The Monster of Peladon, and Alpha Centauri also has a cameo appearance (voiced by the same actress, no less) in the Twelfth Doctor story Empress of Mars. To date, Alpha Centauri has also appeared in five audios and one original novel, all set on Peladon, and the race has been referenced in a number of other novels. Aggedor is slightly less popular, appearing in two novels and one audio – although in their case, it’s different members of the same species rather than the same individual.

DW Monsters: Ogrons

The remaining two stories of season 8 are:

•          The Colony in Space – apart from their leader, the aliens here do not seem very different from humans in their basic biology, although they do have specific skill sets
•          The Daemons – so far as we can tell, most, perhaps all, of the Daemons’ special abilities come from their near-magical technology, so I will pass on them

This brings us to season 9 and Day of the Daleks which, apart from including the obvious (albeit only briefly), introduces the Ogrons. These appear in two more stories during the Third Doctor’s era but have not been seen since then in the TV series. They have, however, often been mentioned or made brief appearances in other media, with significant roles in at least five novels and six audio plays to date. They mostly appear as mercenaries, but the audio Planet of the Ogrons does give us a brief look at their homeworld and native culture adding a little to what we already see in Frontier in Space.

Description and Biology

The Ogrons are tall and heavily muscled humanoid aliens with ape-like faces.  Given that they are alien, we don’t know how distinct they may be from humans biologically, although the implication would be “not by much”, at least to anyone that isn’t, say, trying to perform abdominal surgery on one. At least on TV, we haven’t seen any females of the species, so technically we don’t know that they’re mammalian, although they certainly seem to be and the likelihood is that here, too, they are little different from humans.

DW Monsters: Axos

Moving on to season 8:

·       Terror of the Autons features one of the key races I covered at the start

·       The Mind of Evil features an alien psychic parasite that’s really more of an effect than a monster

And that brings us to The Claws of Axos. Technically, Axos is a single individual, which could be left out on the same grounds that I’m not attempting to stat up (say) the Master. But it functions as an alien race and it’s at least possible that there are more of its kind out in space somewhere.

Aside from a couple of short stories and comics, Axos only makes a return appearance in a single audio-play, The Feast of Axos, featuring the Sixth Doctor.

DW Monsters: Primords

While the story Inferno is best remembered for the alternate-history sections, it does also include monsters. Never named on-screen, they are referred to as "Primords" in the credits and are bestial transformed humans, rather than aliens. Beyond their one appearance on TV, their only significant story to feature them is the Third Doctor audio play Primord which is a sort of sequel to Inferno and shows a few exceptional individuals in addition to the regular sort I will be concentrating on here.

Description and Biology

Primords are created when a human comes into skin contact with Stahlman’s Ooze, a viscous green fluid extracted from deep beneath the Earth. (Some of the tie-in novels have tried to explain how it got there, but it’s not relevant for our purposes and isn’t mentioned in either of the two main stories to actually feature the race). The transformation can take a few hours, during which time the victim develops green skin and eventually undergoes the more drastic physical changes to reach the final form.

DW Monsters: The Ambassadors

Having completed the seven key humanoid aliens of the show (other than the Time Lords themselves), I’m now going to turn to aliens that appeared less frequently, as well as those that are less humanoid in form. One of the ground rules here is that I will still be looking at races, and not at beings that are said to be unique, or that are unusual or “high level” examples of their kind. I’ll also pass over races that aren’t, in terms of basic game statistics, especially notable, most often because they’re physically indistinguishable from humans.

I’m going to approach this by running through the eras of the various TV incarnations of the Doctor. The first batch consists of “monsters” and other aliens that appear during the Third Doctor’s era, of which there are quite a few.

•        Spearhead from Space is the Third Doctor’s debut story, and features the autons.
•         Doctor Who and the Silurians is the debut for the eponymous reptiles.

The Companions That Weren't: The '70s

Classic Doctor Who changed many times over the years of its run, but two particularly seismic shifts in its production stand out. The first, and most obvious to the casual viewer, was the move in 1970 from black-and-white to colour, which also involved many other major changes in the way the show was made. The second, which is perhaps easier to see with hindsight than it might have been at the time, was the arrival of John Nathan-Turner as producer (or, as we'd say now, "showrunner").

This involved a significant shift in the show's direction and style, with a lot of changes behind the scenes as well. For the purposes of this blog, though, what matters is that, coincidentally, it happened in 1980. And that means that there are three well-defined periods of the show's history, which just happen to line up with chronological decades. I previously looked at four characters from the '60s era of the show who never became companions in reality, but who perhaps could in our own RPG campaigns. Now it's time to do the same for the '70s.

We begin with Hal the Archer from the Pertwee story The Time Warrior. One reason he's a choice is that he came quite close to becoming a companion in real life. The producers dropped the idea before the role was even cast, so it never really got anywhere, but it's easy to see him in the same mould as Jamie, and he's certainly quite heroic in his one story.

DW Companions as PCs: Sarah Jane Smith

Jo Grant leaves the show at the end of the tenth season. (Actually, it's worth reflecting on that statement for a moment; not many genre shows even have a tenth season, and even fewer have so many of their most popular episodes still ahead of them at that point...) Her player has come to the end of what passed for a story arc, and comes up with an idea for a new character.

One of the other players had briefly considered the idea of acquiring an NPC Contact - a mysterious journalist named 'Smith' who would have inside info on weird goings on for the players to investigate. With the campaign definitively moving back to outer space adventure, the idea is shelved as not worth the experience points, but it's given Jo's former player an idea. And so she creates investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith.

In the real world, Sarah is consistently voted the most popular classic series companion. Likely for that very reason, she remains the only classic companion to appear in Nu Who so far, and also appeared in not one, but two, spin-off TV series... even if one of them deservedly sank without trace after the pilot episode. That aside, she clearly had a long and illustrious career, and often as the central character in her own right.

DW Companions as PCs: Jo Grant

Liz Shaw leaves the show after the end of the seventh season. In game terms, her player has realised that there isn't much point in playing a scientist character when the Doctor is already so much better at it. Looking around, and seeing two new military types joining the campaign, along with the Brigadier already there, she sees that there is an empty niche. A 'rogue' type character doesn't directly work in the setting, but the skills such characters normally possess are certainly still useful, and nobody else has focussed on them.

Fitting in with the campaign premise, the player decides to generate a spy as her character. But - and here's the twist - she's going to play a crap one.

The result is wannabe secret agent and full-time ditz Jo Grant.

Jo has, we're told, undergone a course in spycraft and all its attendant skills. She does not, on the other hand, actually appear to have passed it. A great example of her approach to sneaky rogue-type activities can be seen in her very first story, Terror of the Autons, not just in her failure to spy on the Master, but in how she reacts once she's discovered. On the whole, while she's clearly a very nice person, she really doesn't seem cut out for... well, anything much.

DW Companions as PCs: Sgt Benton and Mike Yates

Around the end of the seventh season and the beginning of the eighth, two new players join our imaginary group, bringing it to the largest it well ever be: five players plus the GM. They're only occasional players, absent for many of the adventures, which the GM begins filling in with off-world science fiction, rather than the military-guarding-the-world that formed the basis of this new campaign. Nonetheless, both decide to play characters that mesh perfectly with the campaign concept, by designing members of UNIT.

The first, like the Brigadier's player, picks up a former NPC already associated with the campaign. Sergeant Benton first appeared (as a corporal) in The Invasion, back in the sixth season, and now returns as a semi-regular PC. As a sergeant, rather than an officer, he has the perfect opportunity to play the tough guy role previously filled by the likes of Ben and Steven. He doesn't really do much with the character beyond this, but it's a solid base.

DW Companions as PCs: Liz Shaw

The third player in the new, quasi-military campaign is the only one to create an entirely new character. Instead of a soldier, she creates a scientist, Liz Shaw, leaving a bunch of NPCs to wreak action-filled havoc backing up the Brigadier. In some respects, the character is a more down-to-earth version of Zoe, and while lacking the same level of genius, she is, if anything, even more of a pure Science Geek.

In the real world, scientists are only highly knowledgeable about specific, narrow, fields - or at least they have been since about the early twentieth century. In the world of TV, however, being a scientist tends to mean you're skilled at pretty well anything science related, unless the show itself is focussed on some particular field. DWAITAS, and many other RPGs, tend to follow this approach, so we can say that, yes, Liz was very good at science, and leave it at that.

For some other systems, however, we might need to clarify just what she's good at. Even in DWAITAS, there's a valid question as to whether she has a speciality, and, if so, what it might be.

DW Companions as PCs: Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

Some time after ending his time travel campaign with The War Games, the GM proposes a new one. This will be about a semi-secret military organisation dedicated to protecting the Earth from alien invasion and investigating the downright weird. He initially gets three players for this new campaign, and they set out about creating suitable characters.

One brings back the Doctor, from the previous campaign, but now suitably changed with the addition of some nifty combat skills and, of course, no time machine. (Maybe the last episode of The War Games is actually a flashback worked out to explain this, or maybe it was planned all along, when the GM got bored of running games about time travel and future worlds).

The second player also brings back a character from the previous campaign, but this time, it's a former NPC. This, of course, is the head of the British branch of UNIT, Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart. (The middle name 'Gordon' isn't added until quite a bit later).

That the Brigadier was originally an NPC seems fairly evident. He first appears (as a colonel) in The Web of Fear, in which he is one of the main suspects in the whodunnit sub-plot. Crucially, he is treated as such by the regular characters pretty much all the way through, and they don't start to trust him until the true villain is unmasked, right at the end. Therefore, I would argue, the players are treating him as they would any NPC suspect. Yes, he's a red herring, but they don't know that, and they aren't treating him like a fellow PC.

DWAITAS: 3rd Doctor Sourcebook

With the third in the series of past Doctor sourcebooks, we reach an era that is, perhaps, one of the most distinctive, quite different in many ways from those that preceded and followed it. It's also, and for much the same reason, rather controversial. For many fans, especially those who were watching in the early '70s, the Third Doctor is their favourite, yet, for many others, the nature of the stories in this era is just too different to really enjoy in the same way as those that came later.

From the point of view of a sourcebook, this is actually something of an advantage. Because the era is unique, there's quite a lot to say about it. It may also help that much of what makes the Third Doctor's tenure different also makes it closer to traditional roleplaying games. It's perhaps easier, for instance, to see how Spearhead from Space could be made into a straightforward roleplaying adventure than more character-driven tales such as The Girl Who Waited.

The most obvious thing that stands out about the era is that over half of the stories are set primarily in the present day, perhaps with a brief excursion elsewhere for a couple of episodes. But there's more to it than that. The Doctor is, in most of these present day stories, backed up by UNIT, a military organisation, and - while he argues with them frequently - he is broadly content to work alongside them. It's hard to imagine the Doctor of Power of Three remaining on Earth for quite so long without going stir crazy.