Welcome to 47-day series of articles about the revival version of Doctor Who (2005-present). I’ve come up with 47 topics / questions to answer, all of them basically positive and upbeat about the program. Each day (or as often as I can actually write these) I’ll pick one of them at random (using this convenient random number generator) and then write up an answer.
Why 47? It’s my favorite number.
Why Doctor Who? It’s my favorite show.
Why the modern day Doctor Who only? Simply because I remember it better.
Why only positive stuff? Because really, I write enough snark.
Today is Day #4, and consulting the Random Number Generator, we find that today’s number is 10, which means the topic of the day is this:
“Favorite Monster”
Monsters are a pretty essential part of Doctor Who, and have been ever since the beginning of the series in 1960’s. In fact, the occasions where there isn’t any monster kind of stand out for their strangeness (usually, this only happened in the purely historical adventures, or if the Master was involved).
The tricky thing about deciding on a favorite monster is that I know that somewhere along the way there is another entry coming in this series for “Favorite Alien Species”, and so many of the monsters that have featured in the series also fit into that category (eg. Daleks, Sontarans, Slitheen, etc) and there are actually very few alien species on the show that are not monsters.
So bearing this in mind I’m going to make today’s pick based only on creatures from the show that were individual monsters, and not entire species that were invading the earth or whatever. And that pick is…
The Foretold
The what? This the Mummy from The Mummy on the Orient Express. Click here for a look. This thing has only appeared once on the show, but it was a memorable appearance on what was one of the best episodes of the year. The Foretold made an impact primarily based on how awesomely well it was visualized: simply speaking, it might be the scariest looking thing the show has ever produced, with its creepy visage and relentless heartless trudge toward its victims.
But there was also an interesting “explanation” for the Foretold: he was an ancient soldier kept alive and driven by his personal military technology to continue fighting a long-dead war. The explanation makes the menace more interesting than if he’d just been another generic “ancient evil,” and the 12th Doctor’s figuring this out and defeating the Foretold ended up being one his defining character moments in his debut year.
So where the sequel, BBC? Where’s the story in which Gus, the evil computer program manages to summon a whole host of Foretolds from the folds in the universe to conquer some hapless planet? Later in this series we’ll talk about how repeat appearances of various monsters isn’t always a good idea, but in the case of the Foretold I think they have at least one more story in them.
Click here for a master list for this series.
Blue Towel Productions 