DW Monsters: Androids

Following Terror of the Zygons, the next two stories are:

• Planet of Evil – the anti-matter monster here is an apparently unique entity and, in any case, is more a sort of mobile hazard than something with creature statistics
• Pyramids of Mars – although we only encounter one Osiran, they are a race… however, they’re sufficiently powerful that they are more effectively described as one-off NPCs. I’m also going to pass on their servitor robots for the time being as there isn’t much to say about them other than them being large, strong, robots.

This brings us to The Android Invasion. The alien race here are the Kraals, which have leathery skin, sculpted skulls, and a small nose-horn. Other than their physical appearance, however, there seems little to set them apart from humans, and in game terms they (as with races such as the Draconians) probably don’t need any particular rules. Their titular android creations, however, are a different matter. 

DW Monsters: Skarasen

The next story up is Terror of the Zygons, the only classic series appearance of the eponymous aliens. While I have done those before, as a recurring race in the modern series, the story also includes the Zygons' pet monster, the skarasen. Considering that we're told the creature is essential to Zygon survival, it's noteworthy that it has not appeared again on TV in any subsequent stories involving the race. 

The spin-off media, however, have been more willing to include them. They have so far appeared in two of the licensed audios (and one older one, outside the regular license) and two novels. The most significant of these is probably the Eighth Doctor novel The Bodysnatchers, which features a batch of infant skarasen. Each of these stories has, naturally, also included the Zygons; there have been many Zygon stories without the skarasen, but never the reverse.

Trouble at t'Mill (con game report)

This weekend, I ran a Doctor Who game at the annual Continuum convention in Leicester. I've had relatively little to run the game before, despite having written about related topics here, although this was the third in a loose series where I have previously run the other two (including one at last year's Continuum). The game was run using the Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space system (2nd ed.) - one that I haven't used in my "monster" posts since, of course, the relevant information already exists in print. For those who haven't previously encountered it, it's available here.

Unfortunately, I'm not terribly good at coming up with ideas for adventures. I can tweak stuff that already exists, and throw in ideas but writing the adventure itself, not so much. (My recent fantasy sourcebooks, which are available here and here, consist of settings, NPCs, and plot hooks, but cannot reasonably be described as "scenarios"). Fortunately, there is a readily available source of plot ideas for Doctor Who: the expanded universe.

DW Monsters: Cybermats

The Wirrn are the only new race introduced in season 12, with their story being followed by, in order:

• The Sontaran Experiment 
• Genesis of the Daleks  
• Revenge of the Cybermen

All of which feature their titular returning “monsters”. However, the last of these three does include, in addition to the Cybermen, their creations, the cybermats. These had previously appeared in a couple of Second Doctor stories, in slightly different form, and have also appeared once in the modern series. Outside the TV series, they have so far featured (typically quite briefly) in nine audio stories and one original novel – all, of which, of course, also include the Cybermen in more prominent roles. Two of the audios address the question of the cybermats’ origin and nature, which is probably the most detail we’re ever going to get on them; the two answers given are, however, contradictory.

DW Monsters: Wirrn

We don’t see any newly introduced races in the remainder of the first revived season after Dalek, but for the record, the relevant stories are:

• The Long Game – The “monster” here is the Jagrafass, which is, so far as we can tell, a unique being, not a race.
• Father’s Day – The Reapers are said to be completely impervious to damage, which makes them more of an obstacle than something that can be described with creature statistics so I will, at least for the moment, pass on them.
• The Empty Child – The real threat here are the nanites that create the empty children and they are only doing what they are doing because of a very specific malfunction. Thus, the empty children themselves are a one-off thing and the malfunctioning nanites are (game mechanically speaking) a disease, not a monster.
• Boom Town – features the Slitheen.
• Bad Wolf – features the Daleks.

With the Ninth Doctor’s run completed, I am heading back to the classic era, and looking at the monsters of the Fourth Doctor’s run. The first story of his run is Robot, which features a unique… robot… but after that, we get The Ark in Space, which introduces the Wirrn. 

Although we do briefly see a dead Wirrn in a later story, they otherwise do not appear again in the TV show. They do, however, feature in the 1998 novel Placebo Effect and in four audio stories. The most notable of the latter are perhaps Wirrn Isle, a direct sequel to The Ark in Space, and Wirrn Dawn, which is essentially Aliens with Wirrn instead of xenomorphs. As usual, a few comics and short stories round out the total.

DW Monsters: Daleks

The next story is Dalek, and it’s finally time to try and cover the most iconic, and frequently-used, of all the Doctor Who “monsters”. I’ve left them this long mainly because they’re such a big topic that it’s easier to do other races first, but also because they are quite complex. Given their greater number of appearances than Cybermen, it’s notable that they’ve changed rather less than that race has, but even so, and ignoring unique and variant individuals, I’ll need to cover at least three different versions in their evolution over the 60 years of the series so far.

Appearances

The race first appeared way back in the first season in 1963, as literally the first “monster” in the series’ history. That first appearance was followed by at least fourteen further Dalek stories in the classic series (arguably more, if you count brief appearances) with at least one for every Doctor up to the Seventh. As I write this, there have been sixteen unequivocal Dalek stories in the modern series, but such is their popularity that if you are reading this even one year after I penned it, there’s a good chance that that number will have increased.

DW Monsters: Slitheen

Next, we reach Aliens of London, which introduces us to the Slitheen. These turned out to be memorable, often being referenced in later stories, although only being the focus of one other, Boom Town, later on in the same season. They (or members of their species) have, however, also had major roles in three episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures, as well as two original novels, and four audio releases to date – the latter including one Torchwood release and one other not featuring the Doctor. 

It may also be worth noting that the alien race the Foamasi, from the Fourth Doctor TV story The Leisure Hive, are essentially the same concept as the Slitheen, although they look quite different out of their skin suits and lack the biological peculiarities. They’ve proved less popular, only re-appearing in one of the ‘90s novels.