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.

D&D Monsters: Flesh Golems

The flesh golem, as depicted in D&D, is quite clearly based on Frankenstein's Monster. This, of course, has its origin in Mary Shelley's original story, but it's probably fair to say that most people's perceptions of the creature are more heavily influenced by the take on it in the Universal Pictures horror films of the 1930s. So it is with the flesh golem, which owes rather more to the movie version than to that in the novel, despite attempts to transform its look from 2E onwards.

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1E

The debt to Frankenstein's Monster is particularly clear in the 1E illustration, which gives the golem the high, almost cylindrical head seen in the 1930s film version. Otherwise, the golem is an animated humanoid apparently stitched together from pieces of human body; it is hairless with a lantern jaw and distinct brow ridges. It is stated to be 7½ feet (230cm) tall which, given that this is obviously taller than the vast majority of humans, implies that either the magical process which creates it enlarges the original body parts or that multiple pieces are grafted together to make the body.