This Christmas, Doctor Who gave us the gift of malevolent brains in jars. Just what I wanted! Seriously, what is not to love about malevolent brains in jars? They're brains - in jars! And, in the absence of Barbara Brain-Smasher, they pose a significant problem ( Read more... )

Bellal is a little green man from Exxilon, and functionally Our Heroes' only real ally in "Death to the Daleks." He's super cute ( Read more... )

You can, we are told, always judge a man by the quality of his enemies. Put another way, a good (or poor) villain can make or break a story. "Silver Nemesis" is a story with almost more villains than it knows what to do with, but its heart and soul is Lady Peinforte, in more ways than one ( Read more... )

Every good Supervillain needs a good Henchman, someone to see to the prisoners, to appreciate your maniacal laugh, to blame for your mistakes, to handle the logistics of running your evil empire so you can get on with the scenery-chewing and megalomania. Tobias Vaughn has the incompetent Packer. Davros has Nyder. The Graf Vynda-K from the ( Read more... )

In general I try to keep this blog pretty non-partisan and pan-whovian. That is, rather, the point. But in honor of Moffat Appreciation Week, I want to take a look at Nancy, the hero and lead of "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances." A lot of sweeping generalizations are made about "Moffat's Women," and Nancy is the first woman he ever ( ( Read more... )

Doctor Who episodes with no aliens (outside of TARDIS crew) [ital for stores with terrestrial non-humans]

An Unearthly Child
The Edge of Destruction*
Marco Polo
The Aztecs
The Reign of Terror
Planet of the Giants
The Romans
The Crusade
The Myth Makers
The Massacre
The Gunfighters
The War Machines
The Smugglers
The Highlanders
The Underwater Menace ( Read more... )

One of the common regional dialectology tests is what you happen to call a certain group of little grey isopods that roll up into balls when you touch them. Roly Polies, Pill Bugs, Sow Bugs, Wood Bugs, Wood Lice, Potato Bugs, etc. Turlough calls them Tractators. In between bouts of screaming, quivering, and passing out ( Read more... )

Wait, have I done this already ( Read more... )

Doctor Who, it is sometimes easy to forget, is very much a creature of the 70s. It is also a creture of the 60s and a creature of the 80s and the early 2000s and so on - okay, so there's a lot of Doctor Who. But the 70s have the biggest chunk to date. And with the 70s, we get mustaches, peace conferences, and long-haired hippies. Professor ( Read more... )

No, I didn't mean Ant Man. Although that movie was awesome.I also don't really mean Anti-Man, or at least, not solely. But it's a good way to distinguish the antimatter monsters and such in "Planet of Evil" from the already discussed ones in "the Three Doctors." The antimatter in "Planet of Evil" takes three largely distinct forms, which I will ( Read more... )