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.

D&D Monsters: Mimics

The 1E Monster Manual includes several monsters that are essentially animate traps of one kind or another - floors that try to eat you, ceilings that try to eat you, stalactites that try to eat you, and so on. All of them with bland descriptive names rather than even an attempt at something atmospheric. The only one of these to remain consistently in the core rulebooks, however, is the mimic. Which is essentially a treasure chest that tries to eat you. It's certainly a contender for "silliest monster in D&D" (although it has some pretty stiff opposition) and it should come as no surprise that it's original to the game. Indeed, it's tailor-made for the "dungeon crawl" genre that D&D basically invented, since it makes even less sense in any other context than it does in that one.

So... yup, time for the mimic.