List of Doctor Who creatures and aliens
This is a list of monsters and aliens from the television series Doctor Who. Not all creatures or characters listed here are evil or villainous. The list includes some beings which are not extraterrestrial, but are nonetheless non-human. Some villains and robots from the series might also be considered monsters or aliens, but they are listed in separate articles.
A
Argolin
Template:Doctorwhorace The Argolin, who appeared in the Fourth Doctor story The Leisure Hive (1980) by David Fisher, are the inhabitants of Argolis. In 2250, the Argolin, led by Theron, fought and lost a 20-minute nuclear war with the Foamasi. As a result of this war, the Argolin became sterile. They were also quite long-lived, but when they neared the end of their life they aged and declined very rapidly. The Argolin who survived the war put aside their race's traditional warlike ways and remade Argolis as "the first of the leisure planets", catering to tourists from many worlds. They built a "Leisure Hive" dedicated to relaxation and cross-cultural understanding; due to radioactive fallout from the war, the Argolin planned to live in the Hive for at least three centuries. Argolis continued to struggle financially, and by 2290 faced possible bankruptcy. A rogue faction of Foamasi known as the West Lodge attempted to purchase the entire planet to use as a criminal base, sabotaging recreation facilities in order to encourage the Argolin to sell. The criminal nature of the offer was exposed by a Foamasi agent, aided by the Fourth Doctor and Romana.
Since the Argolin were sterile, they attempted to renew their race using cloning and tachyonics, but only one of the clones, Pangol, survived to adulthood. Pangol was mentally unstable and obsessed with the Argolin's former warrior culture. He attempted to create an army of tachyonic duplicates of himself, but was unsuccessful and was eventually restored to infancy through the same tachyonic technology that had created him.
In appearance, Argolin are humanoids with yellowish skin. Their heads are covered with what appears to be elaborately coiffed hair, but may not be (since when Pangol is reduced to infancy he retains the distinctive Argolin hairstyle). Their heads are capped with small domes covered in beads, which fall off when the Argolin become sick or die.
Auton
B
Bandril
Bandrigans
The Bandrigans are cyborgs who are programmed to fly through space massacring the inhabitants of any less-developed planets they come accross. The Doctor inverted a time cone around the earth to shield it from their sensors in the comic strip 'The Lodger' [DWM 368].
C
Cheetah People
Chelonian
The Chelonians are a race of cybernetic humanoid tortoises who have appeared in various spin-off novels. The first appearance of the Chelonians was in the Seventh Doctor Virgin New Adventures novel The Highest Science by Gareth Roberts. They returned in Zamper and also featured in the Fourth Doctor missing adventure The Well-Mannered War; as well as in the short stories The Hungry Bomb and Fegovy, both by Gareth Roberts and published in the Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 1995 and the anthology Decalog 3: Consequences, respectively.
The Chelonians are a war-like race from the planet Chelonia. They are hermaphroditic and lay eggs. Some of their cybernetic enhancements include X-ray vision and improved hearing. Chelonians consider humans to be parasites and often try to eliminate them. There is a pacifistic faction, however, and at some point following the Doctor's recorded encounters with them, this took control and the society began devoting its energies towards flower arrangement.
Cryon
Cyberman
D
Dalek
Dominator
Draconian
Drahvin
Dulcian
E
Eternal
F
Face of Boe
The Flesh
- See New Humans
Foamasi
Template:Doctorwhorace The Foamasi are an intelligent, bipedal race of reptiles who appeared in the 1980 Fourth Doctor story, The Leisure Hive by David Fisher. The race's name is a near-anagram of the word "mafioso". The Foamasi fought and won a 20-minute nuclear war with their sworn enemies, the Argolin. They communicate by means of chirps and clicks, this being made understandable by means of a tiny interpreting device held in the mouth. Although they are mostly a peaceful race (having learned the error of their ways from the devastating war) a renegade faction called the West Lodge exists, and frequently attempts to arouse hostilities between the two races.
Since their victory, the Argolin's home planet of Argolis has been officially owned by the Foamasi government. However, the Foamasi are the only ones who would want it as, being reptiles, they can safely walk on the radioactive surface of the planet. Two saboteurs from the West Lodge (disguised as the Argolin agent Brock and his lawyer Klout) arrive to try to force the Argolins to sell the Leasure Hive to them, so they can use it as a new base for their insidious plans. However they are thwarted when a group of Foamasi, one claiming to be a member of the Foamasi government, use a web-spewing gun to ensnare them and return them back to their unnamed home planet to face justice. Some Foamasi disguise themselves as humanoids by fitting into skin-suits which are smaller than the Foamasi's own bodies. This discrepancy is not explained.
A Foamasi assassin appears in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Placebo Effect by Gary Russell.
Forest of Cheem
Template:Doctorwhorace The Forest of Cheem are an intelligent, bipedal, arboreal species that claim to be direct descendants of the tropical rainforest. Members of the Forest of Cheem appear in the Ninth Doctor episode, The End of the World by Russell T. Davies. According to the Ninth Doctor, they are of huge financial importance due to their land holdings and forests on various planets; and they have "roots" everywhere. They have a noble bearing and exhibit a respect for all forms of life. The group of Trees seen on Platform One was led by Jabe Ceth Ceth Jafe (named in Doctor Who: Monsters and Villains), and also included Coffa and Lute.
They neither respect nor understand technology, referring to computers as "metal minds" or "metal machines". They were also aware of the Time Lords and their fate in the Time War. The Doctor Who Annual 2006 classifies them as one of the higher species who were aware of the course of the war and its history-changing effects and also states that they were mortified by the bloodshed.
G
Gelth
Template:Doctorwhorace The Gelth appeared in the Ninth Doctor episode The Unquiet Dead, written by Mark Gatiss. They were the first new race of alien villains that the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler encountered in the 2005 series. They were also the first element of the new series that attracted attention for being "too scary". Following complaints (many of which were made by Mediawatch UK), the BBC stated that in future, episodes of that nature would be forewarned by a statement of "may not be suitable for under 8s".
The Gelth were intelligent gaseous lifeforms, blue and spectral in nature, who claimed to have lost their corporeal forms as a consequence of the Time War. They arrived on Earth via a time rift at an undertaker's house in 1869 Cardiff and proceeded to take possession of recently-deceased corpses. Their forms could not be maintained for long in Earth's atmosphere and they required a gaseous medium to sustain them — gas from decomposing bodies or coal gas in the gas pipes common to Victorian era households.
Claiming to be on the verge of extinction, the Gelth convinced the Doctor to aid their entrance into our plane of existence via Gwyneth, the undertaker's servant girl who had developed psychic powers due to growing up near the rift. The Gelth proved instead to number in the billions and intended to take the Earth by force and murder its population to provide vessels for themselves. Ultimately, the Gelth were thwarted when Gwyneth sacrificed herself, blowing up the building and sealing the rift. Whether all the Gelth that had entered our world perished as well is unclear.
The scar left by the sealing of the rift continued to emit radiation into the 21st century. It appeared in the episode Boom Town, when the TARDIS was parked on top of it to refuel.
Graske
Main article: Attack of the Graske
Guardian
- Main articles: White Guardian, Black Guardian
Gundan
Template:Doctorwhorace The Gundans were a squad of war robots encountered by the Fourth Doctor in the 1980 story Warriors' Gate by Stephen Gallagher. They were designed by the human slaves of the Tharils and used as a spearhead in the revolution which overthrew the Tharil empire. Designed with the primary purpose to resist and kill Tharils, the Gundans could travel the time winds like their prey and butchered many during the revolt. Each Gundan was armed with an axe and decorated with horns to make the robots seem more fearful. The revolt began on the day of the Great Feast, and several inert and decaying Gundans were found by the Doctor when he visited the feasting hall in the Gateway between the universes. The skeletons of their defeated enemies remained in their seats around the feasting table. The Doctor repaired the memory wafers of a Gundan to discover what had caused the decay of the Gateway.
H
Haemovore
Template:Doctorwhorace Haemovores appeared in the Seventh Doctor story The Curse of Fenric (1989) by Ian Briggs. Vampiric creatures that fed on blood, they were the end result of human evolution in a possible far future, caused by millennia of pollution. As part of his final game against the Doctor, the entity known as Fenric transported the most powerful Haemovore (called the "Ancient One") through time to Northumbria in World War II. There, the Ancient One was to release the toxin which would pollute the world and thus create its own future.
Fenric's power could create Haemovores, from both present day humans and long-dead corpses. Two varieties were seen — one type looking much as they did in life except for elongated fingernails and a corpse-like pallor; and the other deformed blue-grey humanoids covered in octopus-like suckers. The Ancient One was of the second variety, and was the last living thing on Earth in its time. The Haemovores had the ability to hypnotically paralyse their victims so they could feed and drain them of blood. Not all of their victims were turned into Haemovores, although the selection process was never explained.
The Haemovores were impervious to most forms of attack, surviving being shot at close range by a sub-machine gun at one point. They could be destroyed in the traditional vampire-killing fashion of driving a stake through their chests. They could also be repelled by their victim's faith, which formed a psychic barrier, like the Doctor's faith in his companions, Ace's faith in the Doctor, Captain Sorin's faith in the Communist Revolution, and even the Reverend Wainwright's failing faith in God.
Ultimately, the Seventh Doctor convinced the Ancient One to turn against Fenric, and it released the toxin within a sealed chamber, destroying itself and Fenric's host. Whether this means that the future the Ancient One came from was averted is not clear, although the Doctor seemed to think so.
Horda
I
Ice Warrior
Isolus
J
Jagaroth
Template:Doctorwhorace The Jagaroth are an ancient and extinct race of aliens introduced in the Fourth Doctor serial City of Death. The Doctor remarked that the Jagaroth were “a vicious, callous, warlike race whom the universe won't miss.” The story reveals that life on earth moved from being amino acids in a primordial soup to functioning cells because a Jagaroth space ship exploded on earth 400 million years ago.
The sole surviving Jagaroth, Scaroth, manipulated human civilization to advance the species technologically, in an effort to eventually create a time machine which he could use to prevent the initial explosion.
K
Kaled
Krillitane
Template:Doctorwhorace The Krillitanes are an alien race that first appeared in the 2006 episode School Reunion. They had infiltrated the Deffry Vale comprehensive school on present day Earth, increasing the intelligence of the pupils with Krillitane oil. Using the children as part of a giant computer programme, they hoped to crack the secrets of the Skasis Paradigm, the Universal Theory that would give them control over the basic forces of the universe and turn them into gods. Their scheme was foiled by the Tenth Doctor and his companions, though not before they attempted to ask the Doctor to join them in remaking the universe. This ruse failed as miserably as the main plot of the Krillitanes.
The Krillitanes are a composite race who pick and choose physical traits they find useful from the species they conquer, incorporating them into their own bodies. When the Doctor last encountered them they looked like humans with very long necks, but by the time of School Reunion, they possessed a bat-like form which they obtained from the conquest of Bessan ten generations prior. However, they were able to maintain a morphic illusion of human form, which could be discarded if needed.
A side effect of their rapid evolution made the very oil they were using to enhance the intelligence of Deffry Vale's children toxic to their own systems, reacting with them like an acid. As bat creatures, they sleep in a way similar to Earth bats, hanging from a ceiling with wings covering their bodies. Like Earth bats, they are sensitive to loud noises, as demonstrated when they were temporarily disabled by the school's fire alarm. They are also carnivorous and have no qualms in devouring other sentient lifeforms for food.
Krynoid
Template:Doctorwhorace The Krynoids appeared in the 1976 Fourth Doctor story The Seeds of Doom by Robert Banks Stewart. They are a highly dangerous, sentient form of plant life which are renowned amongst galactic botanists. They spread via seed pods which travel in pairs and are violently hurled through space by frequent volcanic eruptions on their unnamed home planet. The pods when opened are attracted to flesh and are able to infect and mingle their DNA with that of the host, taking over their body and slowly transforming them into a Krynoid. The species can also exert a form of telepathic control over other plant life in the surrounding area, making it suddenly dangerous and deadly to animal-kind. In the later stages of development the Krynoid can also control the vocal chords of its victims and can make itself telepathically sympathetic to humans. Fully grown Krynoids are many meters high and can then release hordes of seed pairs for further colonisation.
Two pods arrived on Earth at the South Pole during the prehistoric Pleistocene era and remained dormant in Antarctica until discovered at the end of the twentieth century. One of them hatched after being exposed to ultra-violet light, and took control of a nearby human scientist. The Fourth Doctor intervened in the nick of time and ensured the Krynoid was destroyed in a bomb, but the second pod was stolen and taken to the home of millionaire botanist Harrison Chase in England. Chase ensured the germination of the second pod, which overtook his scientific adviser Arnold Keeler, and transformed its subject over time into a virtually full-sized Krynoid. Unable to destroy the creature by other means – and with the danger of a seed release imminent from the massive plant – the Doctor orchestrated an RAF bombing raid to destroy the creature before it could germinate.
L
Lurman
Lombards
The Lombards are an alien race only breifly mentioned in the comic strip 'The Lodger' [DWM 368].
M
Macra
Template:Doctorwhorace
The Macra appeared in the 1967 Second Doctor story The Macra Terror by Ian Stuart Black and they are an intelligent, giant crab-like species from an unnamed planet colonised by humanity in the future. In appearance, they resemble giant vast, lumbering crustaceans with extended eyes on stalks and formidable, enormous claws. The Macra invaded the control centre of the colony and seized the levers of power without the colonists - including their Pilot - knowing what had happened. Thereafter the Macra only appeared at night, after the humans were in their quarters respecting a curfew. Lacking vocal chords, they presumably communicate by some form of telepathy and have strong hypnotic powers which can alter human perception and affect the brain. They also have the ability to ensure messages are vocalised through electronic apparatus such as television or sensor speakers. Both these tools were used to keep the human colonists suppressed and subjected on the Macra planet. The humans instead believed they were blissfully happy. This provided a cover for the Macra to use the colonists as miners in a vast gas mine. The gas produced was deadly to the miners but vital to the Macra, enabling them to move more quickly and rejuvenating their abilities. The Second Doctor effected a revolution on the Macra planet and helped an engineer an explosion in the control centre, destroying the Macra in charge and presumably dooming the species.
Megara
Menoptra
Template:Doctorwhorace The Menoptra (spelled Menoptera in the novelisation of the serial) appeared in the First Doctor story The Web Planet, by Bill Strutton (1965). They are an intelligent, bipedal insectoid species from the planet Vortis. In appearance, they resemble giant bees, with each Menoptra possessing four large wings. They have yellow and black stripes around their bodies and appear to be around six feet tall, but do not seem to have typical insect body parts (such as mandibles or an abdomen).
Peaceful and kindly by nature, the Menoptra move in a unique, stylised way and their vocal inflections are stilted. They were very welcoming of the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki; but showed an animosity towards their fellow insectoids, the Zarbi, as well as an abhorrence for the Animus, a hostile alien intelligence that had taken over the originally passive Zarbi and almost all of Vortis. Once it was clear that the Doctor was willing to help them defeat the Animus, they were only too glad to assist in any way they could.
The assumption is that once the Animus was defeated, the Menoptra, Zarbi and the rest of the inhabitants of Vortis were able to live together in peace.
Mentor
Template:Doctorwhorace The Mentors are an amphibious race native to the planet Thoros Beta. They have two arms but no lower limbs, and speak to other species through a translation device worn around their necks. The most notable of the Mentors is Sil, whom the Sixth Doctor and Peri encountered first on the planet Varos in Vengeance on Varos, and then again on Thoros Beta in Mindwarp. Both stories were written by Philip Martin. Other Mentors include Lord Kiv (portrayed by Christopher Ryan), their leader. Typical Mentor business practice includes arms dealing and slave trading.
Monoid
Morok
Movellan
Moxx of Balhoon
N
Naglon
New Human
O
Ogri
Ogron
Ood
Template:Doctorwhorace The Ood are a humanoid species with coleoid tentacles on the lower portions of their faces. In the distant future, the Ood are a slave race to humanity, performing menial tasks, and it is claimed that every human has an Ood servant. The Ood offer themselves for servitude willingly, having no goals of their own except to be given orders and to serve. It is also claimed that they cannot look after themselves, and if they do not receive orders, they simply die. However, mention is made of a group called the "Friends of the Ood" who are apparently lobbying for Ood freedom.
The Ood require a translator device, a small sphere connected to their "mouths" by a tube, to facilitate speech between them and humans. There appears to be no gender differentiation among the Ood, and they say they require no names or titles as they are "one", but they do have designations such as "Ood 1 Alpha 1". The Ood are empaths, sharing among themselves a low-level telepathic communication field, rated at "Basic 5" (with "Basic 30" being the equivalent of screaming and "Basic 100" meaning brain death).
When encountered by the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler in The Impossible Planet, the Ood were part of a human-led expeditionary force on the planet Krop Tor, orbiting a black hole. The empathic nature of the Ood seemed to make them susceptible to psychic possession by the Beast, who formed the Ood on the base into his "Legion". While possessed, an Ood electrocuted a human guard by throwing its translation sphere at him.
The Ood were defeated when Danny Bartok, the expedition member in charge of them, broadcast a telepathic flare which reduced their field to "Basic Zero", creating a "brainstorm" which caused them to collapse. However, their telepathic field began to reassert itself after a time. When Krop Tor was sucked into the black hole, the Doctor was unable to save any of the Ood on the base, who had been freed of the Beast's control, and all of them perished.
Optera
The Optera appeared in the First Doctor story, The Web Planet by Bill Strutton. These caterpillar-like creatures were once Menoptra, but they elected to instead burrow under the ground and abandon the world of light and flight above. It is implied that they may have been driven there by the malevolent Animus.
They have larger eyes than their Menoptra brethren, and have no wings. However, they have numerous arms and appear to "hop" in a stylised way (although whether or not they actually have legs is unclear). They speak with inflection different to that of their bee-like cousins, but their speech is a strange dialect of the language of the "upper world" and words and phrases they have coined for themselves (for example, when they refer to how they plan to dig a hole in a wall they say, "We shall make a mouth in it.")
At the story's end, the Animus is defeated and the Optera are persuaded to return to the surface, where they look forward to their children learning the joys of flight; implying that once back on the surface the Optera will redevelop wings. It is assumed that all of species indigenous to Vortis are now living peacefully together.
P
Pakhar
The Pakhar are an alien race from the planet Pakha, resembling metre-high hamsters. They were introduced in Gary Russell's Virgin New Adventures novel Legacy. The Pakhar are generally a peaceful, if rather excitable, race, and Pakha is a centre of tourism and trade for the Galactic Federation. A planetary survey describes the planet and its people as "in every sense of the word, nice", although individual Pakhar have been known to become criminals. The pollen of Earth flowers has a hallucinogenic effect on them, sometimes causing them to become violent.
The main Pakhar to appear in the book is Ker'a'nol, a reporter for GFTV, nicknamed Keri. She is possibly based on Australian Doctor Who novelist Kate Orman (described as "a fiery Pakhar" in the aknowledgments). In her second appearance, in Happy Endings by Paul Cornell, the similarity of the name "Keri Pakhar" to Kerry Packer (another Australian) is noted.
The Pakhar (including Keri) have also been featured in the Big Finish audios Buried Treasures and Bang-Bang-a-Boom!.
Primord
Q
Quark
Template:Doctorwhorace The Quarks appeared in the Second Doctor serial The Dominators by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman in 1969.
The Quarks were used on Dulkis by the Dominators to enslave and terrorise the indigenous Dulcian population to ensure the drilling of bore holes through the planet's crust. The Dominators planned to use their technology to fire seeds down the holes which would force the core to erupt, thus providing a new fuel source for their fleet.
The Quarks were rectangular in shape, with four arms: one pair which folded into the body, the other pair being retractable. On the end of each arm was a solitary claw. The legs extended out below the Quark body. The spherical head was visibly divided into octants; the upper four octants formed the sensory hemisphere, which detected changes in light, heat and motion. At the corners of seven of the octants were directional crystal beam transmitters (the eighth corner joined with the robot's extremely short neck). Quarks communicated by means of high-pitched sound waves. Their major weakness was a tendency to run out of energy rather quickly.
The Quarks were portrayed by children (requiring them to have a chaperone whilst on set.) One Quark was also seen in the serial The War Games, while one of the children who portrayed one of the Quarks appeared as an Axon (in their humanoid guise) in The Claws of Axos. The Quarks were designed as an, albeit unsuccessful, attempt at creating a merchandise property, as the Daleks had become earlier.
Quarks are also referred to in the Big Finish Productions audio drama Flip-Flop. When they attacked the space yacht Pinto, the Seventh Doctor and Mel went searching for leptonite crystals in order to defeat them. It is not known whether the Doctor succeeded in defeating the Quarks on that occasion. The Quarks were also mentioned, and mocked viciously, in the Doctor Who Unbound audio play Exile.
The Quarks can also be seen on the VHS cover of the The Five Doctors, although they did not appear in the story because they were drafted out at an early stage. They were replaced by a Raston Warrior Robot that was encountered by The Third Doctor.
Additional information on the Quarks can be found in:
- Harris, M. The Doctor Who Technical Manual 1983. Severn House London/J. M. Dent Pty Ltd Boronia/Australian Broadcasting Corporation Publishing, Sydney.
R
Raxacoricofallapatorian
Reaper
Template:Doctorwhorace Reapers appeared in the Ninth Doctor episode Father's Day, written by Paul Cornell. Although not called Reapers on screen, they were referred to as such in the publicity material for the episode. The production team based their design on the Grim Reaper, with their tails shaped like scythes.
Reapers are multi-limbed, flying reptiles similar to pterosaurs, with a large wingspan, sharp teeth both in the form of a beak and a secondary mouth in their torsos, coupled with a rapacious attitude. The Reapers are apparently extradimensional, materialising and dematerialising out of the spacetime vortex. They are attracted to temporal paradoxes that damage time, like bacteria swarming around a wound. They then proceed to "sterilise" the wound by consuming everyone in sight.
Once in this dimension, however, they can be blocked by material barriers. The older the barriers, the more effective they are, but even the oldest of barriers cannot stop them forever. Paradoxes can also allow them to directly materialise at the spot of the paradox. If the timeline is restored, they vanish, with their actions reversed as if they had never happened.
In Father's Day, the Doctor explained that when the Time Lords were still around, there were laws to prevent the spread of paradoxes and that such paradoxes could be repaired. This implies that the Reapers are a natural phenomenon whose manifestation could be prevented if the paradox was resolved quickly. However, with the elimination of the other Time Lords in the Time War, there was no longer any agency that could repair time.
The Reapers are reminiscent of the Vortisaurs of the Big Finish Productions audio plays, the Hunters of the Virgin New Adventures novel The Pit by Neil Penswick, and the depiction of the Chronovores (first featured in The Time Monster) in Cornell's own novel No Future.
Rill
Rutan Host
S
Sea Devil
Selachian
The Selachians were created and used exclusively by Steve Lyons in two Second Doctor novels, The Murder Game and The Final Sanction. They had an aquatic respiratory system, highly developed linguistic skills, and spacefaring technology. They were a mercantile race not naturally given to xenophobia. However, centuries of being the objects of sport hunting made them wary of at least some races who breathe air. This gradually emphasized their latent aggression, revealing a deadly form of siege mentality. In time, they began to take decisions on the basis of what would allow them to defend through strength. For this reason, they eventually came to attack humans — a race with whom they had traditionally enjoyed a mutually beneficial trading relationship — because they saw a human colony on Terra Alpha as a potential threat.
Shalka
Shrivenzale
Silurian
Sisters of Plenitude
Slitheen
Sontaran
Sycorax
The Sycorax first appeared in the debut Tenth Doctor story The Christmas Invasion in 2005.
The Sycorax appear to be skinless humanoids wearing mantles of bone, usually keeping their features concealed under helmets. They are proficient in the use of weapons like swords and whips, the latter which can deliver an energy discharge that disintegrates the flesh of its target. Their language is called Sycoraxic. The Sycorax also appear to have technology that is either disguised or treated as magic, referring to "curses" and the Doctor's regenerative abilities as "witchcraft". The Sycorax leader referred to an "armada" that they could use to take Earth by force if the blood control failed. They also appear to have a martial society, with traditions of honourable combat.
According to a write-up by Russell T. Davies on the BBC website, the Sycorax (whose individual lifespan is over 400 years) originated on an asteroid in the distant JX82 system, known as the Fire Trap. They were uplifted when a spaceship crashed on their asteroid and the Sycorax Leader enslaved the survivors, forcing the aliens to teach them about their technology. The asteroid was then retrofitted into the first of many spaceships, which the Sycorax then used to raid other planets, becoming feared interstellar scavengers. Their armada is permanently in orbit around the Jewel of Staa Crafell.
The name Sycorax is from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. She was a witch who was the mother of the beast Caliban. It is also the name of one of the moons of Uranus, all of which are named after Shakespearian characters.
T
Taran beast
Terileptil
The Terileptils appeared in the Fifth Doctor serial The Visitation by Eric Saward. They are a reptilian humanoid species, they cannot survive long without breathing soliton gas, which is highly combustible when combined with oxygen. As an advanced society, they enjoy a heightened appreciation of both aesthetics and warfare, and have been known to employ bejeweled androids. Criminal punishment in Terileptil society includes life imprisonment working in tinclavic mines on the planet Raaga, often with sub-standard medical care.
In 1666, a group of Terileptil prison escapees hidden near London attempted to use a genetically enhanced version of the Black Plague to destroy humanity. The destruction of their lab in Pudding Lane - with a little help from the Doctor - causes the Great Fire of London.
According to the Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Dark Path by David A. McIntee, by the 34th century, their homeworld Terileptus is a member of the Galactic Federation, and a noted builder of starships. A Terileptil also appears as the chief engineer on a Federation starship. The planet is destroyed during the events described in the novel; however, as with all spin-off media, the canonicity of this information is uncertain.
Tetrap
The Tetraps are a bat-like race from the planet Tetrapyriarbus. A pack of Tetraps was employed by the Rani to help defend her Giant Brain in the Seventh Doctor's debut story, Time and the Rani (1987) by Pip and Jane Baker. The Rani armed a pack of Tetraps for this purpose and used them as general henchmen to terrorise the native Lakertyans.
Tetraps have four eyes, one on each side of their head, giving them all-round vision, and put this to good use in stalking fugitives. Like bats, they sleep by hanging upide-down in a cavern. They feed off a dark red-coloured sludge that the Lakertyan leader releases down a chute into a trough.
They possess limited intelligence, but soon realise that the Rani's plans would have them all killed on Lakertya. This is confirmed when their leader, Urak, hears of her plans and she later leaves him to guard over her laboratory rather than take him with her in her TARDIS, thus condemning him to death. Urak and the enraged Tetraps capture the Rani in her ship and take her back to their home planet to force her to help solve their natural resource shortages.
Thal
Tharil
Time Lord
Tractator
U
V
Vampire
Varga plant
The Varga plants appeared in the First Doctor serials Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks' Master Plan, which were essentially a prologue and a main epic. They were created by Terry Nation.
Varga Plants grew naturally on the Daleks' homeworld, Skaro, and when the Daleks set up a base on the planet Kembel they brought some Varga plants with them to act as sentries in the jungle surrounding their base. They were suited to this as they could move around freely by dragging themselves along with their roots.
Varga plants resemble cacti; they are covered in fur and thorns. Anyone pricked by a Varga thorn will be consumed by the urge to kill, while simultaneously becoming a Varga plant themselves.
This grisly fate happened to astronauts Jeff Garvey and Gordon Lowery, and their commander, Marc Cory, was forced to kill them.
Venom Grub
Vervoid
Vortisaur
W
Waterhive
The Waterhive is the description given to an unnamed alien race composed of water (much like the Gelth are gaseous) and can take over the body of a drowned being. The body is thus preserved, although the eyes of their host will become "pearly", forcing glasses to be worn. They infiltrated the high ranks of the Navy in order to send more sailors to their watery graves.
Werewolf
Wirrn
Template:Doctorwhorace The Wirrn are an insectoid race that made their debut in the 1975 Fourth Doctor story, The Ark in Space. The name is sometimes spelled Wirrrn, which is a spelling originating from the novelisation of the story.
The Wirrn claim to have originated from a world called Andromeda, but were driven into space by space settlers. They are dark green and wasp-like in appearance and live mostly in space, although their breeding colonies are terrestrial. Their bodies are a self-contained system, their lungs being able to recycle waste carbon dioxide and only needing to touch down occasionally on planetary bodies for food and oxygen. The Wirrn's life cycle involves laying their eggs in human hosts, the larvae emerging to consume the host and absorbing their memories and knowledge. A grown Wirrn can also "infect" another person through contact with a substance it excretes, mutating them into another Wirrn and connected to their hive mind.
In The Ark in Space, the Wirrn found Space Station Nerva in orbit around an Earth devastated centuries before by solar flares. The survivors had lain in suspended animation waiting for the planet to recover but had overslept by several millennia. They intended to use the sleepers as a food source and claim the empty Earth for their own, infecting Nerva's leader, Noah. However, Noah's human side reasserted itself and led the Wirrn into Nerva's transport ship even though he knew it was rigged to explode. It did so, ending the Wirrn threat.
The Wirrn have also appeared in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Placebo Effect by Gary Russell, and in the audio play Wirrn: Race Memory, produced by BBV. A dead Wirrn appears briefly in The Stones of Blood.
Wolfweeds
X
Xeraphin
Template:Doctorwhorace The Xeraphin were an ancient species encountered by the Fifth Doctor in the story Time-Flight by Peter Grimwade. Originating from the planet Xeriphas, they possessed immense psychokinetic and scientific powers. The Doctor believed the race to have been wiped out during the crossfire during the Vardon/Kosnax war. Instead, the entire race fled to Earth in an escaping spacecraft. The ship crashed near present day Heathrow some 140 million years ago. When the Xeraphin emerged they built a Citadel to mark their new home but the Xeraphin were so plagued with radiation that they abandoned their original humanoid bodies and transformed into a single bioplasmic gestalt intelligence within a sarcophagus at the heart of the Citadel.
The arrival of the Master co-incided with their emergence from the gestalt state when the radiation effects had subsided, and his influence caused the emergence of a split personality of good and evil, each side competing for their tremendous power while yearning to become a proper species once again. The Master, who was stranded on Earth at the time too, succeeded in capturing the Xeraphin as a new power source for his TARDIS. However, the Doctor's intervention meant his nemesis' TARDIS was sent to Xeriphas where events became out of his control.
Before fleeing Xeriphas and the Xeraphin, the Master took with him Kamelion, a Xeraphin war weapon with advanced shape-changing abilities dependent on the will of its controller. Kamelion was freed from the Master and joined the Doctor's TARDIS crew in The King's Demons.
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Yeti
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Zarbi
The Zarbi appeared in the 1965 First Doctor story, The Web Planet written by Bill Strutton and are an (ant-like) insectoid species, with some characteristics associated with beetles, from the planet Vortis, which were controlled by the power of the Animus. They are roughly eight feet long, and the Menoptra claim, perhaps a little callously, that they are "little more than cattle".
They possess little intelligence but were not at all aggressive until the Animus arrived. They were enslaved to the alien consciousness and considered the butterfly-like Menoptra (with which they once lived peacefully) their mortal enemies. Only they could control the woodlouse-like venom grubs (also known as larvae guns).
They returned to their normal ways after the Animus was defeated by the First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki. It is presumed that the various species on Vortis are now living peacefully together.
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