Monday 31 August 2015

Monster Monday: Doctor Who Monsters

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This post is all my sister, Tasha's fault, because her Monster Monday post (click on the image above to hop over to her blog) is Doctor Who Monsters and she asked at the end if we had any favourites, and, being a classic Whovian, I had too many to put into a comment reply, so I decided to join her and add my own thoughts on Doctor Who monsters.

I have to say I'm more of a classic Who fan than I am of the reboot, but I do watch the reboot and I'm going to start with one of their monsters that has really stuck: the weeping angels. I have to say I think Blink is my favourite new Who episode ever. It has the power of storytelling and sheer terror that stayed with me even after the episode had ended, and the simple reason is the premise, that any statue could be like the weeping angels of the story, moving unseen, frozen when eyes are upon it, ready to attack with just a tiny flicker of your eyelids. This was proper scariness put to thoroughly good use. P.S. I will add here that the later uses of the weeping angels are no where near as good, in those they just become ordinary Doctor Who monsters, which just don't have the same impact for me.

Now I'm jumping back in time to classic Doctor Who to The Ark In Space and the Wirrn, the giant insects that try to take over the Ark space station and absorb the crew to do so. Now, just looking at them, the Wirrn are a giant paper mache thing with dangly bits for legs, but it wasn't the look of the creature that I found disturbing both as a child and now, it was what it could do. The fact that by a touch it could begin converting and absorbing another living creature, transforming it into a Wirrn while absorbing its knowledge as well just makes my skin crawl!

There are also some human monsters in Doctor Who that I love to hate. You'd think it would be the robots that I was scared of in Robots of Death, but it's not. Okay, yes, they are quite unnerving, especially with their lilting voices, but they are just things, and when one turns out to be a good guy, I found myself liking them, so no, they weren't always scary, No, it was the human who thought he was a robot, Taren Capel, who is the real monster. It is his intent the robots are carrying out. (And I'm not putting a picture of him in here, because that would give away too much of the plot).

It really is amazing what classic Doctor Who achieved with bubble wrap, sticky-backed plastic and some face paint. I know the effects are low budget, the acting sometimes criminal, but I thoroughly recommend folks take the time to follow the stories, because it is them that really make Doctor Who special.

What's your favourite Doctor Who story?
~

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6 comments:

  1. I think my fav, for sheer epicness is Image of the Fendahl - although there are so many that it's hard to choose. Curse of Fenric is a close second.

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    1. I watched Image of the Fendahl again last week - really creepy!

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  2. The Weeping Angels were pretty awesome, although I have to admit that after all the hype I heard about them I really didn't find the episode THAT terrifying. Maybe that's because I'm a bit difficult to scare though. ^_^

    One of my favorite episodes (I can't quite remember the name because it was a while ago when I watched it) was when they landed in war times and there was this little kid wandering around with an old-timey gas mask on his face. That gave me a good creep-out, especially when other people started popping up with gas masks and it turned out that they were actually PART of their face. Gave me the wiggins!

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    1. The Empty Child - 'Are You My Mummy?' - oo that is creepy that one. A very good story.

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  3. The Weeping Angels are my favorite Who villain. They have given me multiple nightmares.

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