Okay guys, I'm breaking my own rules and doing something I've never really done before, which is revisiting a topic I have already written on. There is already a "Why I like the Movellans" post kicking around the project somewhere, but (1) that post kinda sucked and (2) the Movellans have suddenly become relevant again in a way I could not have ( Read more... )

Chris Boucher is probably the finest writer of Blake's 7. This is, admittedly, Doctor Who, but still, it's worth saying. I like to think that when he sat down to write "the Face of Evil," he looked around at all the pieces and concepts and themes and ideas that make up Doctor Who, all the raw material he had to work with and though "with all this ( 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... )

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... )

The Sontaran Scout Robot from "the Sontaran Experiment" is probably the worst robot in all of Doctor Who. Hard to say - there are a lot of Killer Robots in Doctor Who, and they're all extremely different from one another. I sometimes think that one of the greatest challenges (and triumphs) of 60s Who was coming up with such a quantity of wholly ( Read more... )

One thing the earlier incarnation has always done extremely well - and in fact has always done unarguably better than the more recent incarnation - is Conversion Horror. The inexorable terror of feeling yourself becoming the Other, the Alien invading your very mind and body, with absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. It's visceral and awful ( Read more... )

To be perfectly honest, I really just like the name. It reminds me of tater tots, which are delicious. It's whimsical, describing a species not typically given to whimsy. It alliterates. And I didn't even have to make it up myself - Douglas Adams did. It comes from the unaired episode "Shada" and Romana's line ( Read more... )

April is Rogue Time Lord month! (remember that thing?) And the only thing better than Rogue Time Lords is malevolent brains in jars. Morbius is both ( Read more... )

The observable universe is made up, by and large, of round things moving in circles. In our immediate neighborhood, this consists of small round rocks that go around the sun, big round gas things that go around the sun, small round things that go around bigger round things, and rocks too small to be round. Most of that last sort hang out in a big ( Read more... )

Tara - like Terra, but different. That's really the whole conceit. Basically feudal Europe, but with sillier hats and killer robots - all the fun of the medieval aesthetic without the horrors of medieval reality or actually history. It's utterly delightful, and great for fishing ( Read more... )