Thoughts

The Ood. Planet of the Ood is, in my opinion, one of the best episodes of modern Who. It offers such an emotional and compelling backstory for the Ood and personally I don't think the episode gets the recognition it deserves.

Although I personally like both, boom town is a more sinister toned down version of it's predecessor story for the slitheen

Would agree with both the Slitheen and the Ood - the latter come from one of the most well-rounded and strongest stories from the second series as well, so all the more an achievement.

The Weeping Angels nearly had it in my opinion... but were let down by the fact their story ended up focusing on the crack in the wall instead of them.

The Daleks & The Tenth Planet are both pretty much dull as dishwater (the fact the former was designed to be watched in 25 minutes chunks over 7 weeks not withstanding)

So; yes, yes there have been better returns.

Who were those hairy cousin it things, the monoids? Docile and subservient in their first episode, then dark and menacing in their second. Does that count?

Also, I think the return of the Ice Warriors (or atleast Skaldak) was an improvement on the wobbly originals. Dont get me wrong, the original troughton story was great but I preferred them in Matt Smiths' story more.

The Daleks, however, has a very intelligent (and for the time, topical) plotline, although the way it was executed was, as you say, in 7x25-minute chunks.

The only things that let down Tenth Planet are the ineffectiveness of the Cybermen themselves. On the one hand (no pun intended) we have alien beings with a terrifying biology behind them, where the imagination of what the designers were trying to do really shines through. On the other hand, we have (trying to be) scary monsters made out of cardboard, cloth and sellotape who somehow manage to speak without opening their mouths or gawp gormlessly at anything for 20 seconds after they've spoken.

The Master - whilst some were worse than Terror of the Autons, some were far better - (Daemons, Sea Devils, Deadly Assassin)

Black Guardian - Enlightenment (far better than Armageddon Factor)

The execution was better, but the character behind them was assassinated by that story. I mean, making them mutants inside a shell? And getting rid of the lego-hands with sonic gun? Tut tut . . .

Lol, lego hands. I think it would have been cool to have an update to that screen shaking effect of the sonic guns, i thought that was cool in the original.

"They're born with their hearts in their hands!" (whatever the Hell the quote is). Yeah, that episode is one of my very small list of 'can't stand to rewatch' episodes. I guess the emotions I have watching it are different to the ones you have


On the other hand, that is my favourite version of the Cybermen and I don't think they've ever looked better. What I love about the Tenth Planet Cybermen is that they look like augmented humans, not cyborgs, and they're bloody weird and creepy. Later Cybermen could have been in Buck Rogers.

The only other cybermen to give the Tenth Planet ones a run for their money for weirdness are the stockings and suspenders 'Wheel in Space' ones.

I never really understood the whole brain-in-the-hand thing. They even mentioned that they were more trustful because of it. If I had a major organ constantly exposed, I think I'd be less trustful of people.

I'm assuming the posing of this question must be taken as a given: "aside from the Yeti of course"...

So assuming this, hmm -the Silurians with Warriors of the Deep?
..nah okay, just kidding, there's no way you can top the original -this was one of my favourites

I think it has already been posted here -the best monsters (the Daleks & Cybermen) had better follow-up stories, that's probably what made them so durable.

I reckon if the Draconians were brought back we could have a better follow-up than Frontier in Space (although judging from New Who they would probably be on the side of the good, trying to be PC & all).

I agree from the perspective of the return of the species - but as for the episode, I find it difficult to get past the fact that the Doctor and Donna are completely superfluous to the story. It's a nice exploration of Ood culture, but probably could have been a bit more.

Looking down a quick list of recurring alien species, my votes would be:

• Autons: no;
* Cybermen: yes, assuming we mean any old return and not necessarily the second story;
• Daleks: yes, even just thinking of the second story;
• Judoon: only if you really stretch it to count The Big Bang versus Smith and Jones;
• Ogrons: definitely not;
• Ood: no;
• Slitheen: yes, definitely, though all of the stories are at least slightly rubbish;
• Silence: no;
• Silurian: no;
• Sontaran: no;
• Thals: depends whether we can overlook Planet of the Daleks;
• Time Lords: no but very close, and possibly not monsters;
• Weeping Angels: no, by some way;
• Yeti: quite possible because The Web of Fear is good, but I don't know The Abominable Snowman;
• Zygons: yes, but again it's a close-run thing.

Lol. True that.

Cassandra

Although both her episodes are poor, New Earth is still better then The End of World.

Though I disagree about The Tenth Planet, I'm with you on The Daleks. Though not the worst Dalek story of all time it really does drag over the second half of the story and there have been a lot better stories since.

Also, having just watched The Web Of Fear recently, I'd have to say the Yeti were a lot more effective second time around and less cuddly in their appearance. It's a shame they weren't used in the New Series instead of the ineffective snowmen.

Definately agree with both of these.

Should we have a parallel thread for the equivalent 'nice' recurring characters? If so, the White Guardian gets my vote for starters.

What about Travers in 'The Web of Fear'? Having just re-watched both it and 'the Abominable Snowmen' I was struck by how much effort he put into playing the role as an old man in 'The Web of Fear'. His performance was totally different.

I noticed this too and it really is a totally different performance, played not just by the fact that he'd got old but maybe that few people had believed his stories from Tibet and you get the feeling that may have made him bitter.

I did like the fact he just played the old and grumpy part to it's absolute limit. There were times he displayed a bit of the 'Old Git' characters Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse used to do!