Doctor Who & Spin-Offs A-Z Game

[Alan]

U ~ Underworld - 1978 story starring Tom Baker as "The Doctor", Louise Jameson as "Leela", and John Leeson as the voice of "K-9 Mk. I".

Synopsis
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Exploring the very edge of the known universe, the Doctor, Leela and K-9 discover a group of astronauts searching for the lost gene bank of Minyan race. During the perilous voyage, the astronauts' craft plunges into the heart of a recently formed planet, wherein an awesome secret is hidden.

How will the Minyan quest end? What must the Doctor wrest from the Heart of the Oracle?

[Guest]

V ~ Vengeance on Varos - 1985 serial starring Colin Baker as "The Doctor" and Nicola Bryant as "Peri Brown".

Synopsis:

On the planet of Varos, prisoners and guards alike are subject to the severest forms of punishment, which are then broadcast to the masses as entertainment.

For the Doctor, Varos is the only hope for him to locate the rare mineral Zeiton-7, which powers his ailing TARDIS. But when he and Peri arrive, they are caught up in events beyond their control...

Freeing the rebel leader Jondar and incurring the wrath of the sinister alien Sil are just the beginnings of their ordeal. Hunted through the concealed terrors of the Punishment Dome, the Doctor becomes the subject of Varos's latest TV entertainment. But this is one show where he is not expected to survive beyond the cliffhanger.

[Spimman]

W - Waterhive is the description given to an unnamed alien race from the New Series Adventures novel The Feast of the Drowned. They are composed of water 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 sailors and their loved ones to their watery graves. Their plan was to use the living drowned as human incubators for their larvae, this failed when the doctor reduced the hive to atoms.

[Guest]

X ~ Xeraphin - The Xeraphin were an ancient species encountered by the Fifth Doctor in the story 'TimeFlight'. 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 coincided 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.

[Spimman]

Y - Yeti of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, although resembling the cryptozoological creatures also called the Yeti, are in actuality alien robots. Their external appearance, that of a huge hairy biped, disguises a small spherical mechanism that provides its motive power. The Yeti serve the Great Intelligence, a disembodied entity from another planet, which tried to form a physical body in order to conquer the Earth. The Yeti are initially a ruse to scare off curiosity seekers, and later form an army serving the Great Intelligence.

[Guest]

Z ~ Zarbi - The Zarbi appeared in 'The Web Planet' 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.

[Spimman]

A - Adipose were seen in the episode "Partners in Crime" and briefly again in "Turn Left". In the story, their breeding world was lost, causing them to turn to the alien "Miss Foster", or Matron Cofelia of the Five Straighten Classabindi Nursery Fleet, Intergalactic Class, to create a new generation. She formulated a drug that would cause human fat (anatomically: 'adipose tissue') to parthenogenetically morph into Adipose children. This process is completely harmless to the host beyond the loss of body fat. In an emergency situation the process can be accelerated by using the host's bone, hair and muscle tissue as well as fat, but this makes the Adipose ill and weak, and kills the host by completely using up its body. The official Doctor Who website's Monster Files feature states that the baby Adipose were taken into care by the Shadow Proclamation.

[Guest]

B ~ 'Battlefield' - First broadcast in four weekly parts from September 6 to September 27, 1989.

The TARDIS materialises in the English countryside near the village of Carbury, where a nuclear missile convoy under the command of UNIT's Brigadier Winifred Bambera has run into difficulties. Lying on the bed of the nearby Lake Vortigern is a spaceship from another dimension containing the body of King Arthur, supposedly held in suspended animation, and his sword Excalibur.

Ancelyn, a knight from the other dimension, arrives on Earth to aid the King but is followed by his rival Mordred and the latter's mother, a powerful sorceress named Morgaine. They all recognise the Doctor as Merlin - a fact that the Time Lord attributes to events in his own future.

A battle breaks out between UNIT and Morgaine's men. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has come out of retirement to assist in the crisis and ends up using silver bullets to kill the Destroyer - an awesomely powerful creature unshackled by Morgaine to devour the world - although he himself is almost killed in the process.

Morgaine tries to fire the nuclear missile but is overcome by shock when the Doctor tells her that Arthur is in fact dead. She and her son are then taken prisoner by UNIT.

[Spimman]

C - Caxtarids are humanoids with metallic red hair and eyes, who appear in the Virgin New Adventures novels Return of the Living Dad and The Room with No Doors, both by Kate Orman. They come from the star system Lalande 21185, and are expert torturers. Amongst the planets they have conquered is Kapteyn 5, home of more than sixty sentient species including avians and butterfly-people.

The Caxtarids were wiped out by a virus that destroyed DNA. This was created by the government to be used against "the rebels". The Doctor attempted to prevent its use, but it was activated ten years after his involvement, during another rebellion.

A green-eyed Lalandian, who says she is a "different caste" from the Caxtarids, appears in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Seeing I, by Orman and Jonathan Blum. The same book states that the Caxtarids (or Ke Caxtari) do not deal in weapons, but do trade in people.

[Guest]

D ~ Destroyer - The Destroyer was an other-dimensional entity summoned by the sorceress Morgaine in 'Battlefield' (1989) to aid her in defeating the Seventh Doctor. Known by many titles, including "Destroyer of Worlds", he was kept subdued by chains of pure silver, and even Morgaine hesitated in unleashing him on the world until he allowed the Doctor to gain the upper hand, thus forcing Morgaine to free him in a desperate attempt to avoid defeat.

At the time, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had been called out of retirement to assist UNIT against Morgaine's invasion. Taking a box of silver bullets meant for combating werewolves from UNIT stores, he loaded a revolver with them. The Destroyer taunted the elderly Brigadier for being the best Earth could offer as its champion; the Brigadier's response was to fire the silver bullets into the demon. The building the Destroyer was in subsequently exploded in a burst of magical energy, and presumably the creature was destroyed with it.

[Spimman]

E - Everlasting matches first appeared in the Target novelization Doctor Who and the Daleks, in which the First Doctor states that they are "an invention of his". They have subsequently appeared in the Virgin New Adventures novel Sanctuary, the Virgin Missing Adventures novel Venusian Lullaby and the Telos Publishing novellas Time and Relative and The Cabinet of Light. The latter includes a brand name Promethean Everlasting Matches, made by the Eternity Perpetual Company (which also made the everlasting generators in Carnival of Monsters).

The Doctor carries a box of everlasting matches in the New Series Adventures novels The Resurrection Casket and The Nightmare of Black Island. In The Resurrection Casket he explains they are made from Umbeka wood, which comes from the planet Umbeka, where winter lasts for centuries, and the summer is very hot and only last a couple of weeks. The heat from the flame makes the wood grow as fast as the flame consumes it, so the match never burns down.

[Guest]

F ~ Fenric - Fenric a.k.a. Hastur the Unspeakable was an immensely powerful sentient force, at least as old as the universe itself and an intelligence of pure evil. Appeared in the serial 'The Curse of Fenric'.

The being known as Fenric was one of two forces, one good, one evil, which were present at the Dawn of Time. Some sources state that Fenric originated not in the beginnings of this universe but, like the other Old Ones, in a universe before this one. These accounts state that Fenric bore (and still bears) the name of Hastur the Unspeakable. The name Fenric came from a mythic figure in Norse mythology. The myths described a monstrous wolf which would, during the final battle between gods and beasts, destroy the world at the end of time.

[Alan]

F ~ Full Circle - 1980 story starring Tom Baker as "The Doctor", Lalla Ward as "Romana", with John Leeson as the voice of "K-9 Mk. II", & introducing Matthew Waterhouse as "Adric".

Synopsis
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The Doctor discovers the TARDIS has fallen into E-Space, an alternate universe, and landed on the planet Alzarius. The Doctor and Romana find its only inhabitants are living on a vast, crashed spaceship they have been repairing for generations to return to their home planet, Terradon. But Mistfall, a mythical time of terror, is coming again to Alzarius, and an eerie menace is rising out of the misty marshes.

But why have huge poisonous spiders begun to appear in the Alzarian food supply? And what is the secret of the strange marshmen? The Doctor and Romana must solves these riddles and more if they are to have any chance of returning to their own universe.

Trivia
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• First chapter of "The E-Space Trilogy". The story begun here continues in State of Decay and concludes in Warriors' Gate.

[Guest]

G ~ Gelth - The Gelth appeared in the Ninth Doctor episode 'The Unquiet Dead'. They were a 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 life-forms, 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 the spacetime 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.

[Spimman]

H - Huon particles Ancient particles from the Dark Times, created independently by Time Lords and later the Torchwood Institute. They are potentially deadly and contain a great amount of energy. Huon particles will magnetise with other sets of Huon particles, causing people to inadvertently teleport. A remnant of them exists in the heart of the TARDIS.