Doctor Who & Spin-Offs A-Z Game

[Guest]

H ~ Happiness Patrol, The - Having heard the rumours of untoward happenings, the Seventh Doctor and Ace visit a human colony on the planet Terra Alpha where they find unhappiness to be an illegal act. In a perverse society ruled by the vicious and egotistical Helen A, the Happiness Patrol is a secret police force which hunts down killjoys and eliminates them. It also repaints the TARDIS pink as a more joyous colour than blue. The disappearances also worry Trevor Sigma, the official galactic censor, who is visiting Terra Alpha too to discover where so many of the population have gone – 17% at the most recent count.

[Alan]

I ~ Imperial Daleks - Faction of Daleks that appeared in the 1988 story Remembrance of the Daleks. They were led by the Emperor Dalek (actually their creator Davros). The Imperial Daleks are distinguishable from the Renegade Daleks by their white and gold colourings.

[Lilith]

J~Janto: the term used to refer to the the romantic relationship between Captain Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones

[Alan]

K ~ Kennedy, John Fitzgerald ~ 35th President of the United States of America. In the 2005 story Rose, it was revealed that the 9th Doctor was present at President Kennedy's assassination in Texas on 23rd November, 1963.

Photo evidence in the spoiler tag below:

Spoiler:

[Kidwizz]

L ~ Lazarus Experiment, The - Earth, London, present day. The Doctor, Martha and her family attend a scientific demonstration by the aged Professor Lazarus. But when the experiment goes wrong, a horrific product of genetic manipulation is unleashed, leaving a trail of death in its mission to live indefinitely. Meanwhile the wheels of a deadly trap are set in motion.

[Guest]

M ~ Macra - The Macra first appear in the 1967 Second Doctor story 'The Macra Terror'. They are an intelligent, giant crab-like species from an unnamed planet colonised by humanity in the future. The Macra invade the control centre of the colony and seize the levers of power without the colonists — including their Pilot — knowing what had happened. Thereafter the Macra only appear at night, when the humans are in their quarters, observing a curfew. They have strong hypnotic powers which alter human perception. They also have the ability to ensure messages are vocalised through electronic apparatus such as television or sensor speakers. Both these tools are used to keep the human colonists under control, believing they are blissfully happy. This provides a cover for the Macra to use the colonists as miners in a vast gas mine. The gas is deadly to the miners but vital to the Macra, enabling them to move more quickly and rejuvenating their abilities. The Second Doctor effects a revolution on the Macra planet and helps engineer an explosion in the control centre, destroying the Macra in charge.

The Macra also feature in the 2007 episode "Gridlock", becoming the only one-off opponent of the Doctor in the classic series to appear in the revived series so far. In the episode, some Macra are found to be alive below New New York, a city of New Earth. They live in the thick fog of exhaust gases on the main motorway under the city, tracking the flying cars by their lights and snatching at them when they get too close. The Doctor says that the species is billions of years old and once developed a mighty empire as "the scourge of this galaxy", but the Macra beneath New New York must have devolved into nothing more than beasts.

[Kidwizz]

N ~ Nostravite - Shapeshifter

[Guest]

O ~ Ood - 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 pine away and 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).

According to the Official Doctor Who Annual 2007 the Ood live on a planet in the Horsehead Nebula where they were governed by a Hive Mind but it was destroyed by Human colonists. According to the monster book Creatures and Demons, published in 2007, it says they come from the "Ood Sphere", close to the "Sense Sphere" planet, home to the Sensorites, who share a similarity with the Ood. With no hive mind the Ood offered themselves to the Human colonists and became a slave race.

When encountered by the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler in "The Impossible Planet", a large number of Ood accompanied 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, the Ood 'zapped' and killed two human security guards by throwing their translation spheres at them.

[Kidwizz]

P ~ Pig Slave -In "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" (2007), the Cult of Skaro experiments on humans and turn them into Pig Slaves if they present a low level of intelligence. Just why the Daleks chose such a form for their slaves is unknown, though it is quite possible they wished to do so purely for their own amusement. The Pig Slaves took people down into the sewers of Manhattan for the Daleks to experiment on in the basement of the Empire State Building.

[Guest]

Q ~ Quark - The Quarks appeared in the Second Doctor serial 'The Dominators' 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 five of the corners of the octants were directional crystal beam transmitters (the sixth 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.

[Kidwizz]

R ~ Rani, The - The Rani is a renegade Time Lady, an evil scientific genius whose villainy comes not from the usual variety of lust for power and suchlike, but from a mindset that treats everything (including morality) as secondary to her research; she has been known to enslave entire planets such as Miasimia Goria in order to have a ready supply of experimental subjects and a place to carry out her experiments uninterrupted. Her major interest is in tinkering with other species' biochemistry — she was exiled from Gallifrey after some of her lab mice, as a result of an experiment, grew to enormous size and ate the President's pet cat. A past relationship between the Rani and the Doctor is hinted at, but never elaborated upon. It is established they are the same age.

[Guest]

S ~ Shada - 'The Horns of Nimon' was originally intended to be followed on transmission by another story - a concluding six-parter entitled 'Shada' - but a recurrence of an industrial dispute that had previously caused difficulties during 'The Invasion of Time' and 'The Armageddon Factor' eventually led to its cancellation, even though extensive location filming in the Cambridge area and the first of its three planned studio sessions had already been completed.

Written by Douglas Adams as his final contribution to Doctor Who, 'Shada' was envisaged as a Time Lord story without a Gallifreyan setting. It sees the Doctor bringing Romana to present-day Earth to visit Professor Chronotis, an elderly Time Lord who absconded from Gallifrey and now lives a quiet academic life at St Cedd's College in Cambridge. Also seeking Chronotis is a scientist called Skagra who has a device, in the form of a floating sphere, with which he intends to steal the Professor's mind and thereby learn the location of a book entitled The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. Skagra eventually succeeds in obtaining the book, which has been borrowed from the Professor's study by a student named Chris Parsons. He then kidnaps Romana and hijacks the TARDIS.

The book turns out to be the key to Shada, the ancient prison planet of the Time Lords. Skagra's objective is to use his sphere on one of the inmates, Salyavin, whose unique mental powers he can then exploit to project his own mind into every other creature in the universe. When the TARDIS reaches Shada, however, he discovers that Salyavin's cell is empty.

After a number of close encounters with the Krargs - Skagra's monstrous crystalline servants - the Doctor, Chronotis and K9, along with Parsons and his friend Clare Keightley, arrive on Shada in Chronotis' TARDIS, which has been disguised as his study. Chronotis admits that he is in fact Salyavin; he escaped from Shada centuries ago and has been living on Earth ever since. The Doctor thwarts Skagra's plans by winning a mind battle against him.

'Shada' was formally dropped from the seventeenth season in December 1979, it having become apparent that due to the backlog of Christmas specials waiting to be recorded there was no prospect of studio time being found for its completion. A number of attempts were subsequently made to remount it but these ultimately came to nothing, and in June 1980 it was officially cancelled. A version of the story was eventually released on video in 1992 with Tom Baker providing a narration to cover the missing scenes.

[Kidwizz]

T ~ Torchwood - Awesome TV show!

[Guest]

U ~ Underworld - The TARDIS arrives on a Minyan space craft, the R1C, commanded by a man named Jackson. Jackson and his crew are on a long quest to recover the Minyan race banks from a ship called the P7E which left their planet centuries ago. The Doctor helps to free the R1C after it becomes buried in a meteorite storm, but it then crashes into another newly-formed planet.

Inside the planet is a system of caves at the heart of which is the P7E. The P7E's computer, the Oracle, was programmed to protect the race banks but subsequently went insane and - with the aid of its robotic servants, the Seers - imposed its rule upon the Minyan survivors and their descendants. It allows Jackson to take what appear to be the race banks, but they are actually imitations containing fission grenades.

The Doctor realises the deception and obtains the genuine race banks. He then tricks the Oracle's guards into taking the grenades back to their leader. The resulting explosion destroys the planet and the P7E and boosts the R1C off on a voyage to Minyos II, carrying with it the Minyan survivors.

[Alan]

V ~ Vengeance on Varos - 1985 story starring Colin Baker as "The Doctor" and Nicola Bryant as "Peri Brown". This 2-part story marks the first appearance of Nabil Shaban as "Sil".

After the TARDIS depletes its supply of Zeiton-7 ore, the Sixth Doctor and Peri are forced to land on the planet of Varos in search of more. But the colony is a former prison and the current society lives off entertainment from torture and execution. And the Doctor might be next on the listings…