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!

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.

D&D Monsters: Oozes

We reach the final post in this series with the monsters that are, anatomically speaking, the simplest of them all. The idea of monstrous slime is essentially a modern one; some antecedents may exist here and there, but generally, we're thinking of the likes of the 1958 film The Blob or Clark Ashton Smith's formless spawn of Tsathoggua, which made their debut in 1931. 

The 1E Monster Manual includes a number of creatures that could loosely be described as oozes but only four of these have consistently appeared in the core rulebooks (excluding 4E, as I usually do, which retains just two of them in the MM1). Three of these are entirely amorphous, although the one that's perhaps the most notorious does at least have a shape.

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.

D&D Monsters: Noncorporeal Undead

The concept of ghosts or other restless spirits is an ancient one, found, in some form or another in pretty much every human culture. The details vary considerably, and ghosts may not necessarily be malevolent, or even frightening but the basic idea is essentially universal. They're the sort of thing that just had to be included in D&D, albeit with the addition of generally making them more dangerous - and thus a meaningful threat - than they usually are in legend. There are several different types in the game, arguably a different sort of being from the corporeal undead, united by lacking a physical body and with various other means of inflicting harm. Four of these types are consistently present in the core rulebooks, although their details can vary significantly.

D&D Monsters: Succubi

The word "succubus" comes from Latin, referring to a type of demon that seduces men and slowly saps them of their vitality over a series of sexual encounters. This basic concept, however, long precedes even the Romans, with the general idea of  'evil demonic seductress' being fairly common across many cultures. It may, in part, be connected with the same sort of hypnogogic phenomenon that is responsible for the night hag myth - albeit interpreted in a more pleasurable manner. Indeed, succubi were not originally regarded as being attractive in their natural form - although, as with the D&D creature, they could shape-shift - the 'sexy' form only starting to become the standard in modern times.

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.

D&D Monsters: Shambling Mounds

The most obvious inspiration for the shambling mound is the DC horror character Swamp Thing, a plant-based monster popular enough to appear in a rather naff '80s film and a far superior '20s television mini-series. Swamp Thing first appeared in 1971, well before the shambling mound's debut in 0E, so the timing works, although that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a coincidence. Notably, for instance, the shambling mound is literally a mass of vegetation, which is a fair description of Swamp Thing... but only following the characters' reinvention by Alan Moore, five years after the Monster Manual. Since there isn't much further resemblance between the two, it seems likely that the shambling mound is an original creation, with no apparent antecedents in myth or legend.

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.

D&D Monsters: Treants

Although the idea of magical and possibly animate trees does exist in mythology and folklore, the idea of a race of such beings, in the form of ents, seems to be original to Tolkein. He took the name from a variant form of  "ettin", the original English word for what we now call a "giant", and not from any pre-existing tree-person. (Other giants exist in Tolkien's world, but they are very much bit players unlike, say, the giants of Narnia). D&D 0E included ents in its original rulebook, but legal problems led to them being renamed as "treants" from 1E onwards. For similar copyright reasons, it's this newer name that has stuck in fantasy games in general, even though, really, there isn't much difference between the D&D version and their entish inspiration.

D&D Monsters: Xorns

Xorns are an original creation of D&D, with no particularly obvious antecedents. The name was almost certainly chosen so that the 1E Monster Manual had at least one monster for every letter of the alphabet... the same is probably true of the quasit. Which, other than that it's a monster largely built around defence rather than offence, is about all one can say about the general concept.

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1E

The original xorn has a barrel-shaped body covered with scales that basically take the form of roof slates, and are likely made of a similar, if less fragile, material. It is notable for its (mostly) triradial symmetry, something that makes it look particularly alien. It has three legs, which seem to lack knees and are similarly covered in the armoured stone scales - if anything, it's a wonder it doesn't move even more slowly than it does. The arms look to be less heavily armoured, and are clearly more flexible; they're positioned above the spaces between the legs rather than directly above the hips. 

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.

D&D Monsters: Salamanders

Salamanders are, of course, real creatures - long-tailed amphibians with a vaguely lizard-like appearance. The Ancient Greeks and Romans attributed a number of magical abilities to them, some of them related to fire, but it's clear that they were describing the real animal when they did so. In the Middle Ages, however, there's more of a split between the amphibian and the fantastic creature, with the latter taking on more exotic forms and powers. This culminates in the 16th century with Paracelsus adopting the name for what he termed "fire elementals" and it's this that's most likely the inspiration for the D&D monster.

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1E

The salamander in 1E is roughly humanoid from the waist up, with the legs replaced by a single tail that keeps the creature in broadly human proportions. A series of narrow frills extends along the back, and also down each of the arms; these are partially erect, but whether they are buoyed aloft by hot air or are self-animated tendrils isn't something we can determine from the picture. The head has a flattened cranium and a triangular jaw with sharp carnivorous teeth. The ears are significantly elongated, with further frills on them and a pair of branching tendrils project out from either side of the nose, which we might suppose to be sensory. The creature has a partly striped and partly mottled pattern, with the background colouration shading from yellow to red along the length of the body.

D&D Monsters: Efreet

Ifrit are a type of demon in Islamic folklore, associated with the jinn, and in some cases having similar powers (such as the ability to grant wishes), although their exact relationship is nebulous. They are associated with the underworld, fire, and smoke, and are generally hostile. This explains many of the attributes of efreet in D&D, which are specifically described as the fiery counterpart to djinn. (The idea that therefore must be watery and earthen versions of the same thing does not appear in the original Monster Manual, although it was introduced later during the 1E era, with the name "marid" being borrowed from another kind of Islamic demon, and "dao" seemingly being original to the game).

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.

D&D Monsters: Djinn

The djinn originate in Middle Eastern mythology; they are typically associated with Islamic beliefs today, but pre-date that religion. They were originally human-like beings with magical powers, perhaps associated with a creation preceding that of humans and, at least by Islamic times, were regarded as neither inherently good nor evil. In modern western culture, they are mainly thought of as granting wishes and being trapped in lamps, ideas that come from an 18th-century edition of One Thousand and One Nights, although the specific legend is presumably older - they are not part of the original concept of djinn.

In D&D, djinn are described as powerful inhabitants of the Elemental Plane of Air, since many  (although by no means all) of the magical powers associated with them in myth are linked with the air. In the game, the alternative Anglicised name for the beings, "genie", instead refers to a broader category of being, of which the djinn are merely one of the most common. While the wish-granting, oil lamp dwelling, sort of djinn are stated to exist in the universe they are, at best, extremely rare and not typical representatives of their kind.