The Ood Cast

Remember the one when the Doctor had just regenerated, had a nap, then woke up just in time to have a sword fight with the Big Skeleton from the Funnybones books? I do, it was called The Christmas Invasion, and introduced us to one of the boniest enemies the Doctor has ever faced: the Sycorax.

Angry, gruff and generally quite grumpy, the Sycorax have had more of a presence in the travels of the Doctor than maybe some initially realise. Sure, there’s the big appearances: the Christmas Invasion of 2005, and a certain bony hand in the trapping of the Doctor in the Pandorica… but there’s also an inspirational literary encounter and a congenial bar-dwelling moment to explore.

As far as origins go, we can glean very little from their visual appearances. We know their language is “Sycoraxic”, and that they frequently suffered at the hands of cartoon dogs and Disney characters in desperate need of something to play their xylophones with. This might go some way to explaining their rage towards the human race.

So, the invasion attempt. It was perhaps technically crude, using a human blood sample to control a large number of people down below. But it was also astonishingly clever – witness the badass brass band of Santas (this is now the accepted collective noun for a group of Santas) and the circular-saw-cum-christmas-tree. Maybe not subtle, but certainly effective and with a degree of sophistication. And the tree wouldn’t have dropped any needles. Just the errant limbs of people getting too close.

Having been beaten in a swordfight by an illegal citrus-fruit-based manoeuvre, the Sycorax invasion rock was blown up by Harriet Jones (Prime Minister) – as if the humiliation couldn’t be complete. Somewhat mysteriously, they subsequently (or previously… or possibly both… hard to tell, it’s all a bit wibbly wobbly) joined the Alliance which imprisoned the 11th Doctor in the Pandorica.

The Sycorax is also one of an elite number of the Doctor’s enemies to have a showbusiness background, appearing in William Shakespeare’s 1611 explosive blockbuster, The Tempest – thanks to the Doctor’s name-dropping on a visit to Elizabethan London.

A well-known race of skeletal lushes, a Sycorax was spotted in the bar where the 10th Doctor used some of his last moments to pair everyone’s favourite intergalactic floozy, Captain Jack Harkness, with the chap off of Being Human for some inter-species naughtiness.

The Essentials

First Appearance: The Christmas Invasion (2005)

Best appearance they can’t remember due to being drunk in a bar: The End of Time pt2 (2010)

Strengths: Asteroid hijacking, Swordplay, similarity to very tall trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

Weaknesses: Men in dressing gowns, airborne satsumas, hungry dogs and falling several hundred thousand feel off an asteroid.

You know those moments when you’re somewhere unfamiliar, and you get the distinct feeling you’re being watched… only when you turn round, there’s just a blue, gaseous cloud floating around waiting for you to die so it can steal your corpse and go terrify a famous author?

This lot do… The Gelth.

The periodic table’s version of the Puss in Boots character off of the Shrek films, this species’ cunning strategy is to make humans feel sorry for them by reanimating their dead relatives and using them to snap their necks (presumably a traditional greeting within their society) and then immediately go all flamey and badass on them.

Aside from that, we don’t know a great deal about them. They once had bodies, lost them in the Time War (very careless, I know) and were converted to gas-forms. Somehow they then discovered the rift, which had opened at a funeral parlour in Cardiff. The gaseous nature of the rift kept them alive, and from this position they were able to dominate the heating and lighting industries of the late 19th Century.

It is thought that their domination of the Cardiff power network led directly to the formation of British Gas (thus explaining their blue flame logo).

But Gelth are also able to survive in the otherwise inhospitable (and unthinkable) conditions of a human corpse, thanks to the gasses produced by a body in decay. They then reanimate the bodies and go out to the theatre, or try and kill a stranger – just like any other friendly neighbourhood joyrider.

During his one encounter with this species, the Ninth Doctor offered to help them find a planet of their own until he realised their deceit and their actual intention to take control of the planet by force. They were defeated by the servant of the funeral parlour’s owner, who just happened to have psychic abilities and the knowledge of how to close a rift in time and space. When the rift was closed on the invading creatures, the remaining Gelth were destroyed by fire. The servant died and then became a key member of Torchwood…

The Essentials

First appearance: The Unquiet Dead (2005)

Sworn enemy: Neon, Argon, Mercury vapour. You know, any of the show-offy fluorescent ones.

Strengths: Gaseous form – can enter spaces undetected.

Weaknesses: Strong gusts of wind, naked flames…

The Doctor Who universe is home to a great many unusual and unlikely creatures. But not even there would a creature who looks a bit like a bipedal balloon animal exist, surely?

Well, even there we’re spoilt by the great children’s entertainer in the sky. Enter, the Slitheen.

Coming from Raxacoricofallapatorius, Slitheen is a family name rather than a species – but that didn’t seem to stop anyone from mixing them up. Although, to be fair, it is a lot easier to say than Raxacoricofallapatorian… Either way, this is the universe’s version of the Krays, and after escaping their fate, they decided that the earth was a suitable place to convert into starship fuel and scrap.

The Doctor’s first encounter with these creatures came when they dressed a pig in a spacesuit (insert your own joke about Barack Obama / Sarah Palin here, folks) and made it crash into the Houses of Parliament and down into the Thames.

So, with the spaceship ringing Big Ben, their invasion began. While scientists were baffled by the terrified pig, the Slitheen family had moved into 10 Downing Street, killing and using high-profile victims as dress-making patterns for their handy skin suit disguises, which were very poorly designed. As anyone who’s ever tried to get a small person into a baby-gro will know, a suit with just a small opening at the top is not going to be easy to get in and out of. And if they were going for stealth, the whole breaking wind and lighty-up zipper thing probably isn’t good design either…

Here, two things were learnt about the species. Firstly, that they explode if they come into contact with vinegar. Secondly, that they are vulnerable to nuclear attack. Useful to know – to be safe from Slitheen attack, just open a fish &chip shop up in Chernobyl.

But disguise and covert existence seems to be their major strength – managing to infiltrate positions of authority is something unique to the Slitheen. And the Autons. And Zygons. Oh, and the Master too.

But disguise and covert existence seems to be their major strength – managing to infiltrate positions of authority is something they are moderately good at.

A lone Slitheen managed to escape the Downing Street explosion and resurfaced in Cardiff just six months later – proving the family’s reputation for being quick-to-rise political talents by already being installed as Mayor of the city. Using her powerful position, Margaret Slitheen managed to get a badly-wired nuclear power station approved at the planning stage – the model of which hid a hover board that she’d either borrowed from the Jetsons or Marty McFly (we’re never quite told) and on which, she intended to ride to freedom… She was then defeated in true Doctor fashion, by being given a second chance and regressing to an egg.

Slitheens, or at least fellow Raxacoricofallapatorians, were also part of the Alliance that shut the Doctor into the Pandorica. So maybe that second chance didn’t work out so well after all…

The Essentials

First Appearance: Aliens of London/World War Three (2005)

Telltale signs of their presence: Lots of windy smells, fidgeting, evil giggling. (actually, that could just be children, couldn’t it?)

Strengths: Surprise (as long as you don’t notice the farting or flashing lights), strength, disguises.

Weaknesses: Vinegar (any type is fine, although Balsamic is preferable if you’re having a salad after), nuclear explosions, and pregnant women with a good sob story.

In 1970, The Doctor changed. But not only that, a new terror stalked the high streets and shopping centres of Britain… Something that would make shopping a more frightening experience than it already was. Plastic mannequins with weapons concealed within poorly-manufactured hands… The Autons.

Autons are basically deadly shop window dummies brought to life by the Nestene Consciousness – one of the oldest beings in the universe, a disembodied alien life-form, which created the form of a large, be-tentacled cuttlefish after invading the earth using hollow plastic meteorites. The control of their plastic warriors was generally done through an advance form of short wave radio signal.

During the first invasion attempt, the Nestene Consciousness stuck to their simple initial 2 ranges: The Basic (Which lived in shop windows and wandered around killing indiscriminately) and the Deluxe (more advanced and realistic human replicas, living in waxwork museums which were used to take the place of leaders and other important figures). Both were armed with the now-familiar weaponry – guns concealed in the hands of the Autons, which could only be activated when the fingers dropped down.

Their first invasion attempt failed when UNIT attacked the plastics factory the Nestene Consciousness was hiding in, but as the soldiers discovered that the Autons were impervious to traditional bullets, it was left to Liz Shaw to save the planet by finding the off switch on the tank containing the consciousness.

But the Autons were genuinely scary, and returned to have another crack at humans a year later, this time with a more developed plastic power thanks to an alliance with the Master – who convinced them with some joke shop daffodils. Eventually (and uniquely maybe) the Doctor convinced the Master that the Nestenes would double cross him and they teamed up to send them back off into space.

The Ninth Doctor later discovered them in Henrick’s Department Store, London where he helped a certain shop assistant to escape before blowing the activated Autons up (along with the store). This much later invasion attempt showed the Nestene Consciousness as an angry blob of putty hiding under the London Eye, near Westminster Bridge. He defeated them with “Anti Plastic” (bit like De-Icer. Only for plastic and that).

Their eye for detail has clearly improved over the years, and when they returned at the moment the Eleventh Doctor discovered the Pandorica, they were capable of very accurate human reproductions – and had decided to make a whole new Roman Army for the occasion.

The Essentials

First appearance: Spearhead From Space (1970)

Most heartbreaking appearance: The Pandorica Opens (2010) [Poor Rory!]

Most “handy” appearance: Rose (2005)

Strengths: Resistant to conventional earth weapons, can activate any number of inanimate plastic objects

Weaknesses: Extreme heat, being switched off, over-simplified opposites.

Best known as the mortal enemies of the Sontaran Empire (you’d be disappointed if you’d been battling someone for more than 50,000 years to only be considered a minor irritation), Rutans – or Rutan Hosts – are famous in the Doctor Who universe for having the highest mention-to-appearance ratio*, only appearing once in the long history of televisually documented encounters but being mentioned on numerous occasions. Mostly by Sontarans.

The only recorded encounter the Doctor had with a Rutan took place when his Fourth incarnation visited a delightful holiday spot called Fang Rock, and it was his investigation into the deaths of the lighthouse keeping team there which uncovered the ability and methods of the Rutans. It also uncovered their true appearance – that of a mis-shapen cloudy green jellyfish with a lightbulb underneath. In fact, I could swear I won a marble that looked exactly like that Rutan in a playground game when I was 7…

As their appearance suggests, they are essentially amphibious but can happily function on dry land – and are even able to cling to sheer surfaces – like the side of the Fang Rock lighthouse. Their voice doesn’t quite go with the appearance, sounding a little like small man trapped in a tin box.

Tactically, they are similar to Sontarans in that they have a habit of sending down single scouts ahead of a larger number of soldiers. But these scouts were just as dangerous and more cunning than a Sontaran would be. The Rutan scout discovered in the lighthouse, for example, targeted specific humans, killed them and then impersonated them in an effort to disguise its presence.

Knowing that the Rutans’ home planet, Ruta 3, was an icy world, the Doctor killed the scout by rigging a weapon to overheat him before he could be rescued, and dealt with the mothership by reflecting the light from the top of the lighthouse at it using a diamond. A pretty blingin’ end.

What do we learn after all of this? That jellyfish and potatoes do not play well together. Also, as a species, they may get less love than Sontarans, but they’re much more interesting…

The Essentials

First (and only – and therefore best and worst) appearance: The Horror of Fang Rock (1977)

Sworn Enemy: Sontarans.

Strenths: Victim impersonation, electric tentacles. Great sense of humour.

Weaknesses: Extreme heat, sea shanties, the plays of Bertholt Brecht **

*This statement is based purely on speculation to make a point. Please don’t be mean and picky about it if it’s not quite true.

**Well, if you swallowed the first unsubstantiated bit…

A rule or pattern that specifies how a certain input sequence (often a sequence of characters) should be mapped to an output sequence (also often a sequence of characters) according to a defined procedure.

Ah. No. Now that there is a “macro”, isn’t it?

Macra are giant, crab-like and crabby in all sorts of ways, living on gases which would be poisonous to humans and prone to eating one or two ape descendants when peckish or feeling rather peeved after a hard day.

When the Tenth Doctor discovered them prowling underneath the motorways of “New Earth”, he called them the “scourge of the galaxy” – a race which once owned and ruled over a large empire. However, when the Second Doctor found them, they were roughing it in a gas refinery – brainwashing the inhabitants of a nearby holiday camp into continuing the production of the vital gases they need to survive. They were masters of manipulative mind control techniques, duping their RC humans into keeping them alive and putting on a fake smile in the process.

If you ask me, it’s not the Macra’s fault – I mean what type of idiot wants to holiday next to a whopping great gas plant in the first place?! And frankly, you’re just asking for trouble if you shove your holiday camp next to the one with the infestation of gigantic crabs, too…

Having been outwitted by the Second Doctor (who incited a revolution and blew them up using a combustible mix of gases), the Tenth Doctor found them hiding from Rick Stein underneath New New York, surviving on the traffic fumes, nicking cars and eating the contents on his way to have a chat with the Face of Boe. It seems that billions of years on from their explosive first encounter with the Doctor, all evolution had done for them was reduce them to nasty, bullying predators.

I read somewhere that these were the only monsters to have appeared just once in the new series. But that’s blatant nonsense, so I’m not going there. Only returning monsters to only feature once, I can believe, but then, how do you fit a Crabzilla into caves under Stonehenge?

The Essentials

First Appearance: The Macra Terror (1967)

Best complimented by: mayonnaise and lemon wedge. Maybe some of that pink seafood sauce.

Weaknesses: Explosions. Large pans of boiling water.

Green and glinty, sharp-toothed and soggy (and not just because he’s just come in an airlock to attack some humans), the Myrka is the highlight inthe undersea inter-species war of 2084 – a war so fleeting, hard-fought and lop-sided that it lasted barely a week, in four 20 minute bursts.

In their subterranean cave-type base, the Silurians and their Martin Clune-like servants the Sea Devils had managed to capture a sea dragon. They had a long-term strategy which, like all good strategies, needed a dragon to progress.

In two separate incidents, first the Silurians themselves, and later their flappy-eared, string-vest-wearing cannon fodder, raided the towns of Wales and the south coast of England in a carefully co-ordinated attempt to buy remote controlled cars from the nearest branches of Argos.

Over the next few years, the slippery cousins worked away in secret, improving the life of their sea dragon friend – eventually creating a sort of scaly Steve Austin – a million-dollar-Myrka, if you will… equipped with the best remote controlled technology available under the earth (complete with the very latest in spring-loaded suspension and high-traction rubber tires. You know the one Buzz Lightyear and Woody ride in Toy Story? Bit like that, but in dragon form…)

The Silurians put the final stage of their plan into action by carefully coating the Myrka in green emulsion and sending it across the sea bed to attack an airlock of the humans’ seabase. Once through the first section of airlock, the Silurians realised that the emulsion had washed off their robodragon on the way to the seabase and decided to put on one last coat before he broke into the base.

Once inside, he fought bravely. He eventually fell heroically when the Fifth Doctor waved a mini-sunbed at him. It turns out that UV light is to cyber-genetically-modified Sea Dragons what Kryptonite is to Superman. Or vinegar is to Slitheen.

He was survived by a wife and two of those mini robotic Godzilla things you see advertised on TV at Christmas.

Erroneously named* and similar in many ways, these two ancient subterranean species are often referred to as “cousins”, so the guide will treat them as one. The Silurians having once ruled the planet with their Sea Devil relations acting as the foot soldiers (presumably to keep dinosaurs in check…

Reptilian humanoid creatures with ancient origins and had the run of the place long before the humans appeared on the surface, these usually peaceful creatures are only really inclined to attack in self defence. It’s just that their idea of self defence appears to be creeping onto sea forts and murdering defenceless crewmen one by one. Or creating a remote control cyborg sea dragon to attack undersea bases.

The pattern of their appearances are clear – they are sleeping or hibernating, and are woken up by the activity of the people up above. Like a grumpy tenant in a block of flats, but one that resents being suddenly awake so much that they go on a bit of a violent spree. So far, they’ve been woken by nuclear research plants, the British Navy adapting a sea fort into a SONAR testing station, the presence of a Sea Base on the ocean floor and a whacking great drill almost caving in their homes – but not, strangely, by their alarm clocks…

Sea Devils and Silurians can be easily told apart in a similar way to African and Indian elephants: the Sea Devils are the ones with large ears… but also in their weaponry: Sea Devils have to carry sonic guns, while Silurians have enough dangerous bits of the body to control a large crowd. In some cases, it is their third eye at the top of their head which emits rays and does the damage – and later on they possessed a flicky forked tongue which injects poison into their target.

Defeating them has always proved difficult – as they use their well-developed intellect to their advantage. But the fall back option of blowing them up did the trick on their first two appearances. But on the last two occasions, the Fifth Doctor resorted to gassing the creatures (having already killed the Myrka with a sort of portable sunbed) and when the Eleventh Doctor met them Marvin out of off of the Hitchhiker’s Guide decided to gas his own rebellious subjects…

* Just to prove I do sometimes pay attention to my own blather, I did point this out in series 2, episode 12 of the Ood Cast.

The Essentials

First Appearance: The Silurians (1970)/ The Sea Devils (1972)

Most unprepared appearance: Warriors of the Deep (1984)

Weaknesses: Pretty much as in human life – poisonous gas and bombs. Oh, and as their third eye can also act as a telepathic link, keeping secrets is a nightmare.

Leather jacketed baked potatoes with a general disposition to violence and long-lasting warfare, often quoted as being short, stocky and unbelievably powerful due to the extreme gravitational pressure on their home world: Sontar. Their chief impulse is to die with honour in battle, and therefore frequently try to construct reasons to fight anything that steps in their way.

These warriors are a neat little combination of the genetic integrity of a GM tomato and the tactical awareness of a lemming, and their frequent wars often resulted in huge losses to their number. Their solution was simply to clone waves upon waves of warriors to battle their perpetual enemies, the Rutans (incidentally, large green light-up jellyfish).

Over the course of the Doctor’s many travels, the Sontarans have cropped up a number of times – usually on earth, which they seem to view as a marvellous little maternity ward for their baby Maris Pipers.

Their first appearance being memorable because the Sontaran causing havoc in late-medieval England wasn’t beaten by the Doctor at all, but by a quick-witted archer who managed to hit the one point of weakness on the Sontaran body: the probic vent (a small aperture at the back of the “neck”).

Since then, they have been discovered performing nasty experiments on humans (imagine Mr Potato Head swapping your limbs around), using a group of Vardans as a smokescreen for their attempted invasion of Gallifrey, a brief but baffling visit to a Spanish villa (with a captive Second Doctor and a small troupe of savage Androgums) and most recently when Mike from the Young Ones improbably joined forces with an obnoxious teenage genius to gas the world using sat-navs.

One lone Sontaran was discovered trying to destroy some nuclear power stations and was sent packing by Sarah Jane Smith and her school-age friends using some high heels and a little persuasion. She probably used her lipstick. I mean, why not?

The Essentials

First appearance: The Time Warrior (1973/4)

Most baffling appearance: The Two Doctors (1985)

Known weaknesses: Probic Vent in the back of their “neck”. Also known to get nervous at the sight of coleslaw or butter. In fact, any popular jacket potato dressing.

Just as in any species, there is light and shade in Gallifreyan society.  Here’s a little list of naughty Time Lords (and Ladies).  It’s not exhaustive but all of them even appear in some of the classic series: the Rani, Morbius, the Monk, the War Chief… You could also say Borusa and Rassillon were “bad apples”.  And of course there’s also Salyavin.

But the renegade the Doctor encountered most often was the Master.  Here at the Ood Cast, we think there are 4 distinct stages in the many lives of this shady figure: childhood; suave villainy; ridiculous re-birth as an A-Lister’s brother and finally the positively chilling Tony Blair impression (yes, even the bit where he went properly mental and leapt about eating people).

Sardonic, often beardy, always charming, the Master was the epitome of cool villainy in earlier stages of the Doctor’s lives, delighting in chaos and mostly using others to carry out his evil work for him rather like a well-dressed Simon Cowell.  But he was not always so maladjusted.

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Childhood

He grew up with the Doctor, but was taken (as Gallifreyans chosen to be Time Lords are) at 8 for training and forced to look into the Untempered Schism.  Some say this sent him mad, which might explain a fair bit.  This event later came back to haunt the Master’s every waking hour in the form of a constant drumming sound in his head.

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Suave Villainy

When the Doctor fled from Gallifrey, it is thought the Master was charged with pursuing and capturing him, following him to earth during his period of exile in order to defeat him.  But because the Doctor had made friends in military circles, it was never so simple a battle.  UNIT even managed to imprison him once – until he hypnotised the prison governor…

These inept soldiers (always happy to fire a gun but rarely hitting anything that posed any real danger) were always on hand to help send the Master off with his tail between his legs – even when he’d teamed up with Sea Devils, circus impresarios, Autons, convicts, and ancient demons to name a few.  Not even his possession of WMDs or his renowned shrinking weapon could gain him enough of an edge to beat his compatriot.

He reappeared variously across the next few incarnations – including memorably using a professorial alias to conduct an experiment called TOMTIT (Brilliant – never mind the benefit cheats, it’s the psychotic aliens nicking taxpayers’ university science funding we need to deal with)… and stealing the body of the father of someone who would soon be a companion of his old enemy.  And then there was the whole living with cat people on an exploding planet thing.

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Ridiculous Re-birth

He was eventually tried and executed by the Daleks for being just as mean as they are (don’t tread on their skirting boards), and was being transported back to Gallifrey by the Seventh Doctor – as that had been his final wish.  He forced the TARDIS to land on earth, took the body of Julia Roberts’ less-famous brother and almost had the Doctor defeated… until he fell into the Eye of Harmony.

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Frightening Blair Impressionist

The Time Lords somehow resurrected him (because every civilisation needs a Bruce) to help fight the Time War, only to see him desert them as soon as it got a bit hairy, disguising himself as an elderly professor until the Doctor got him to check the time and his memory came back…  He regenerated into the Prime Minister of Great Britain, took the Doctor prisoner (making him elderly and tiny but refusing him winter fuel allowance) and conquered the earth with some floating footballs and a “Paradox Machine”.  He was then shot by his own wife and refused to regenerate… and died.

A sinister cult worshipped him and eventually brought him back using a Potion of Life – a process jeopardised when his wife turned up with a Potion of Death… but he was then simply kidnapped to work on an Immortality Gate, which he fixed to turn every human into another one of himself.  He then brought the Time Lords back too, although Rassilon undid his GM work.  He disappeared back into the Time War with Rassilon and the other Time Lords when the Doctor broke their link with the earth by destroying the White Point Star diamond.

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You know, summing that up just sort of clarifies for me how much more ridiculous the “nu-Who” Master stories have been…