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.