Recurring Dr Who monsters and villains, number of appearances and when we first saw them

[purplecat]

Daleks (20 - depending how you count): 1963
The Meddling Monk (2): 1965
The Cybermen (12 - depending how you count): 1966
The Macra (2): 1967
The Yeti/Great Intelligence (2): 1967
The Ice Warriors(4): 1967
Autons/Nestenes(3): 1970
Silurians and Sea Devils (2 each, 3 in total): 1970
The Master (21 - depending how you count): 1971
Omega (2): 1972/73
The Sontarans (5): 1973
Davros (5): 1975
The Black Guardian (4/2 - depending how you count): 1979
The Mara (2): 1982
Sil (2): 1985
The Rani (2): 1985
The Slitheen (2): 2005
Cassandra (2): 2005
The Ood (2): 2006
The Judoon (2 - depending how you count): 2007

I feel there should be some way to plot this information to demonstrate diminishing returns. I also feel it's telling that the Slitheen are the only recurring monster to be created in the the four years of the new series which really should have been aiming quite high in that department.

EDIT: Forgot the Ood, who are a much better monster than the Slitheen. Perhaps because I don't actually view them as a true monster or villain, but by that reasoning the Silurians and Sea Devils and the Ice Warriors are also debatable entries.

EDIT 2: Not to mention the Macra, Autons/Nestenes and Omega. I'm clearly not as good at this as I used to be - I assumed I'd spot everything simply by looking down a list of stories. Fairly sure I would have done in my teens!

EDIT 3: Now we've got the Judoon in that list it, looks more like the Cardiff team have made a fairly serious stab at a "new" monster each year. Of which I'd say the Ood are the most successful but the Judoon are perhaps the most likely to appear again.


WHO DAILY: <lj user=louisedennis> has a list of <a href=http://louisedennis.livejournal.com/80320.html>recurring Dr Who monsters, their number of appearances and date of first appearance</a>

Comments

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I also feel it's telling that the Slitheen are the only recurring monster to be created in the the four years of the new series which really should have been aiming quite high in that department.

I have suggested in the past that the new series, and to a lesser extent, the 1980s version of the old series, were built from folk memories of the 60s and 70s version and that the writers consciously prioritised old characters and monsters over new ones because they felt there was an established mythology that they wanted, or felt expected, to use.

Whether this is seen as an act of homage enriching the mythos of the programme or an excuse for lazy writing is a matter of taste.

The Slitheen aren't quite the only recurring monster in four years, by the way; there is also the Ood.

[purplecat]

The Slitheen aren't quite the only recurring monster in four years, by the way; there is also the Ood.

Oh true! entry edited accordingly.

It's hard to tell if its because of lack of ambition, an increasingly competitive marketplace, some sort of embarrassment about creating out-and-out monsters/villians, or just the weight of baggage preventing both the production team and the general public from recognising a good innovative new monster/villain when they see it. The new adventures had a similar problem, though, as people pointed out, what makes a monster work well in prose is rather different from what makes one work well on the small screen.

In the case of Nu Who though I do wonder if it was, despite all the protestations to the contrary early on, that what everyone really wanted to be making all the time was The Stolen Earth/Journey's End not modern quality TV family drama that could stand on its own two feet without the back story.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd go so far as to say that stories like The Stolen Earth were the only things the current/outgoing production team wanted to make, but I think over the years they have narrowed their vision, and also increasingly employed people who share Russell T Davies' outlook rather than those who might bring creative conflict.

[purplecat]

Perhaps only is a little extreme but I do think they've proved and awful lot keener than I would ever have expected on mining/exploiting the back story for its own sake rather than as a way to bring greater depth to the current story or add new meaning to the old one. Or even to do something interesting like actually compare and contrast the Daleks and the Cybermen. It makes you wonder if season "1" was the way it was because they couldn't quite believe they would get away with this sort of thing rather than because they had a real desire to tell those sorts of stories.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much is to do with the change in writers. The 'first' series was written entirely by fans, and fan discourse at the time was that excess continuity killed the programme back in the eighties. Perhaps more to the point, the writers had mostly had their fun playing with at least some of their favourite toys from the Doctor Who box in the novels, audios, comics and (in one case) a Comic Relief special.

With season 'two', Davies brought in a load of writers from outside of fandom who were writing based on their memories of the seventies version of the programme without knowledge of arguments in DWM about whether The Trial of a Time Lord killed the series, or whether epic arcs about Time Wars were rendering the books unreadable.

One other point: it just occured to me that the Judoon are sort-of returning monsters now, if that brief cameo in The Stolen Earth counts.

[purplecat]

It's an interesting thought that its the non-fans who think that loads of continuity references are "better" in some sense than stand-alone stories.

I seem to remember, at some point, some suggestion that the Judoon would be Sontaran substitutes - and then they went and bought back the Sontarans anyway.

Actually, one of the more interesting things, looking a that list is the 1975-1979 gap in the creation of recurring monsters - corresponding, broadly speaking, to Phillip Hinchcliffe's tenure as producer (allowing a little leeway for hangovers from previous teams in a new producer's first season). There are also relatively few returning monsters during his tenure. It suggests that whatever he was doing he wasn't interested in encouraging stories that fed off the past, and ones that, while creating several striking monsters and villains, didn't create ones that lent themselves to re-use.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember, at some point, some suggestion that the Judoon would be Sontaran substitutes - and then they went and bought back the Sontarans anyway.

I think that was based purely on the perceived similarity of the costumes in the season three trailer!

I'd agree with your point about Philip Hinchcliffe, and I'd say that the same goes for Graham Williams (one pair of new characters (the Guardians) and one return appearance each for the Sontarans, the Daleks and Davros, although there are two Time Lord stories if you count Shada).

Over the whole of Doctor Who there are at most four seasons with no returning characters or monsters at all of which one was produced by Hinchcliffe and one by Williams: 1, 16 and 7 and 13 (depending on whether you count UNIT as a regular part of the format at those times or as recurring characters).

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Nestene / Autons - 3

[purplecat]

I remembered the Macra and the Autons overnight. Not Omega though - clearly not as good at this as I used to be.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Macra (2)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Omega (2)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You've only listed the recurring monsters in the new series, but as we've only had 4 years of the new series, is this not a little unfair? The old series monsters have had longer to recur in, haven't they?

There are quite a lot of monsters that have only appeared once in the new series - if in the next series, say we had more Gelth or Krilitane or Sycorax or whatever, would they not then become recurring monsters, or am I missing something in your definition of recurring?

I felt some of the later 'classic' Dalek stories made them far too wimpy and easy to defeat, one of the things I liked about the new series Daleks was I thought they did a good job of making them properly scary again.

[purplecat]

Part of the reason I started this list was a feeling that nu who hadn't been trying on the monster front but, with philophlegm's help I think it quite clear that they have and my perception is probably based on the fact I'm not watching it the same way.

That aside, I think it interesting that there are those two huge successes early on in Doctor Who's history. Of course, without the Daleks, there probably wouldn't be any Who now and I'm sure I read somewhere that a decision was made by the production team to heavily push the Cybermen, partly because they were concerned they might lose the rights to the Daleks. Certainly they first appear October 66, then February 67 (the Daleks get what was meant to be their last appearance May 67 - end of that season) and the Cybermen open the next season in September 67, appear again April 68 and November 69 - so the production team was commissioning Cybermen stories every six months for three years which helped fix them in the public mind and I don't think that has been quite so deliberately done with a monster since except, perhaps for the Slitheen (the surrounding publicity for the Slitheen very much made me think they were being put forward as the next monster in the pantheon).

Anyway after those first two (and you could argue that the popularity of the Cybermen was not a natural phenomenon) you get a handful of monster through the late 60s and early 70s which have legs (and the Master - another manufactured phenomenon who appeared in every story of the season which introduced him). Then that odd period 75-79 coinciding which the era of the classic shows greatest popularity when there seems to have been little interest in reusable monsters/villians. Then in the 80s there are several attempts at new recurring monsters/villians but I think its debatable that any are particularly successful or enduring.

The new series, as you point out, is hard to judge. The Slitheen, I think, are the only monster to have had a second story comissioned before the first has aired (a la the Cybermen and the Master) and they seem an odd choice since the farting does stop them having the broad appeal across the family audience you probably want from a recurring monster (they work much better in the Sarah Jane Adventures, I think, which doesn't have a remit to try and engage Mummy and Granny as well). At the moment it looks more like a series of experiments, like the 80s and, not being around in school playgrounds of the right age its hard to tell which ones are enduring in people's minds.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Debating this with philmophlegm last night, we also felt that recurring might not necessarily be the sign of a great monster - the Angels from Blink should probably qualify, but that at the same time, they would be hard to re-use in a new story.

[purplecat]

Of course not. But I'm fairly sure it correlates!

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Cassandra (2)


(Not the one from The Myth Makers.)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The Loch Ness Monster (sort of)

[purplecat]

Since it was two different Loch Ness Monsters I'm not accepting that one!