Doctor Who & Spin-Offs A-Z Game

[Alan]

P ~ Pyramids of Mars - 1975 story starring Tom Baker as "The Doctor" and Elisabeth Sladen as "Sarah Jane Smith".

Synopsis
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Returning to UNIT HQ on Earth, the TARDIS is thrown violently about by a mysterious force and Sarah and the Doctor arrive instead at an old priory in the year 1911. The owner, Marcus Scarman, has been excavating ancient tombs and is possessed by the spirit of Sutekh, bringer of 'the gift of death to all mankind'.

Sutekh has lain for thousands of years in his pyramid prison and Scarman and his robot mummies plan to release this ancient and evil power. Will Sutekh the all-powerful be freed from his bonds and destroy the world, or will the Doctor manage to bring about his destruction?

[Guest]

Q ~ Question Marks - Starting from the 1980 story 'The Leisure Hive', the 4th Doctor started wearing shirts with Question Marks on the collar. The 5th Doctor and the 6th Doctor also wore shirts with Question Marks on the collar and also wore trouser braces displaying them too.

The 7th Doctor wore a pullover with Question Marks on and from the 1987 story 'Delta and the Bannermen', he started carrying a Question Mark-handled umbrella too.

[Alan]

R ~ Renegade Daleks - Faction of Daleks. Originally the Renegade Daleks were the ones that were White and Gold in appearance and served Davros on the planet Necros in the 1985 story Revelation of the Daleks. When Davros rose to power on Skaro and became Emperor Dalek his White and Gold Daleks became known as the Imperial Daleks whilst a small group of Daleks that were Grey and Black in appearance, led by the Supreme Dalek and opposed Davros' rule became known as the Renegade Daleks. This group of Renegade Daleks appeared in the 1988 story Remembrance of the Daleks.

[Guest]

S ~ Spiridons - The Spiridons featured in the serial 'Planet of the Daleks' (1973). They were the dominant species of sentient humanoids on planet Spiridon in the Ninth System. They had developed a form of invisibility but became visible after death. They had been subjugated, to be used as experimental subjects and slaves, by the Daleks who were attempting to discover the secret of the Spiridons' invisibility and reproduce it for their own use. Some of the Spiridons, including one called Wester, resisted. They wore furs to keep themselves warm.

[Alan]

T ~ Two Doctors, The - 1985 story starring Colin Baker as "The Doctor" and Nicola Bryant as "Peri Brown". Guest starring Patrick Troughton as "The Doctor" and Frazer Hines as "Jamie McCrimmon".

Synopsis
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When the 6th Doctor lands on a space station in the Third Zone, he suspects he's been there before and when he discovers his old assistant - Jamie - he's certain.

Accompanied by Jamie and his present assistant Peri, the Doctor follows himself (in his second incarnation) to 20th Century Seville. There he discovers his old enemies, the Sontarans, about to dissect him in a genetic operation.

But just why are they operating on the Doctor? And how will their findings aid their enslavement of the universe? Deadly questions to which the Doctors must find answers in order to escape their own excruciating death...

[Guest]

U ~ Usurian - The Usurians from the planet Usurius are a species that abandoned military conquest in favour of economic conquest. They enslaved humanity after their engineers made Mars suitable for human habitation, humans having depleted the Earth's resources. Once humanity had depleted Mars's resources as well, the Usurians engineered Pluto so that humans could inhabit it. They created six artificial "Suns" around it and installed the Collector, seen in 'The Sun Makers', to oversee the collection of taxes from their human workforce. They intended to abandon Pluto and leave humanity to become extinct once the humans had exhausted its resources, there being no economically viable planet to relocate humanity to once more. The humans on Pluto revolted against the Collector and seized control of Pluto. The revolutionaries intended to relocate to Earth as the Doctor assured them it would have regenerated in their absence.

The Usurians have knowledge of the Time Lords, graded as "Grade 3" in their "latest market survey", considering it to be of low commercial value. Usurians can adopt a humanoid form but in their natural state they resemble seaweed. Shock can force them to revert to their natural form. According to the Doctor, Usurians are listed in a "flora and fauna" of the universe written by a Professor Thripthead under poisonus fungi.

[Alan]

V ~ Void, The - The Void is the space between universes. "The Void" is only the name given to it by the Time Lords, it was also known to the Eternals as "the Howling", and to others as "Hell."

It contains no temporal or spatial dimensions, but language which employs them may be used to conceptualise it. For example, the Doctor confirms that the Void has no 'up' or 'down', but also talks about the universes within it being 'stacked' on top of each other.

The Cult of Skaro travelled to the Void by use of a Void Ship to escape from the impending destruction of the Dalek Empire in the Last Great Time War by the Doctor, taking with them the Genesis Ark, a prison ship containing millions of Daleks, and hid in the Void until the time was right.

[Guest]

W ~ Wirrn - 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 Andromeda (whether they meant the galaxy, the constellation, or even a planet named "Andromeda" is unclear), but were driven into space by human settlers. They are slightly larger than humans, 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 living hosts; the larvae emerge to consume the host, absorbing its memories and knowledge. A Wirrn larva is a green slug-like creature, varying in size from a few inches to 1 or 2 metres across. It can "infect" another organism through contact with a substance it excretes, mutating them into an adult Wirrn and connecting their consciousness to the 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. The Wirrn intended to use the sleepers as a food source and claim the empty Earth for their own, as both a means of survival and an act of revenge against the human race for taking their former territories. In the course of their plan, Noah, leader of Nerva, was infected and converted to their kind. However, Noah still retained "more than a vestige of human spirit", probably thanks to the encouragements of the Doctor, 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 and the Big Finish audio story 'Wirrn Dawn' by Nicholas Briggs. A dead Wirrn appears briefly in 'The Stones of Blood'.

[Alan]

X~ Xenon - Xenon is the home planet of the shapeshifting Whifferdills, of whom Frobisher, a companion to the the 6th Doctor that featured in several comic strip and audio adventures, is an example.

[Guest]

Y ~ Yana, Professor - Professor Yana appeared to be a Human scientist, who was in reality an incarnation of the renegade Timelord known as the Master.

Just as John Smith had false memories concerning his early life, Yana's might have remembered false memories created when Yana came to existence. It can be said with some degree of certainty that at least 17 years of Yana's memories prior to Utopia are real, as that is how long he had been with Chantho.

Physically Human, Yana was an orphan found on the coast of the Silver Devastation with only a fob watch, which in reality held the Timelord self of the Master. He could never keep time and was always late for things. He spent his life moving from one refugee ship to another and all his life he heard the sound of drums every waking hour as if they were getting closer.

In actuality, as the Doctor had done, he had subsumed his identity into that of a human form and locked his actual Timelord identity into the fob watch. As the Master later observed, this disguise was so perfect that he forgot who he was, although Yana was plagued by half-remembered fragments of his former life (a fallout of the fob watch) and terrible headaches in which he heard the beat of drums (which had been harassing the Master's mind since he stared directly at the Time Vortex, at Gallifrey). Yana retained the Master's brilliant intellect and ultimately became responsible for sending the remnants of Humanity to Utopia.

He eventually became friends with the last of Malmooth race, scientist Chantho, thought to be the last of her kind. Together, they worked on the Utopia Project to get the humans from the planet Malcassairo to Utopia.

Yana met the Doctor and Martha Jones who said phrases curiously familiar to him, phrases such as Time Vortex, Time War and regeneration. Martha made the Professor suspicious of a watch in his possession, so that, hearing voices in his mind that commanded and entreated him; he activated the device and returned to his true identity.

As the Master, he let down the defences allowing the Futurekind in and dismantled the components, which allowed the system for the rocket to start up in the first place. Chantho held him at gunpoint. The Master grabbed the loose end of the live electrical cable and first threatened and then fatally attacked her, incidentally killing the last of the Malmooth.

As the Master grabbed the Doctor's hand, which Jack Harkness had brought to Malcassario, the dying Chantho managed to shoot him before she died herself. The Master stumbled into the Doctor's TARDIS with the hand, locked the door with a deadlock seal and regenerated.

The name Yana is thought to be an acronym of "You Are Not Alone", a reference to the Face of Boe's dying words.

[Alan]

Z ~ Zarbi - The Zarbi appeared in the 1965 story 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 1st Doctor, Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, & Vicki Pallister. It is presumed that the various species on Vortis are now living peacefully together.

[Guest]

A ~ Argolin - The Argolin, who appeared in the Fourth Doctor story 'The Leisure Hive' (1980), 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 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 greenish 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.

[Alan]

B ~ Brigadier - Military rank. Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart was promoted to Brigadier when he was given command of the newly-formed UNIT in 1968. One of his successors, Winifred Bambera, also held the rank of Brigadier.

In the story Remembrance of the Daleks, the Doctor met one of the people who would be responsible for founding UNIT, Ian Gilmore. The Doctor accidentally called him "Brigadier".

[Guest]

C ~ Charged Vacuum Emboitment - Abbreviated CVE, this is part of a system created by the mathematicians of Logopolis to allow the universe to survive past its point of heat death by shunting excess entropy into other universes ('Logopolis'). The Fourth Doctor and Romana unwittingly travel through a CVE into a parallel universe known as E-Space at the start of 'Full Circle'.

[Alan]

D ~ Day of the Clown, The - 2008 story of the second series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. This introduced Anjli Mohindra as new regular character Rani Chandra.

Synopsis
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The new girl on Bannerman Road, Rani Chandra, is being haunted by a sinister clown -- does it have anything to do with the local children that have gone missing? When Clyde's friend Dave disappears, the trail leads them to a strange circus museum- and the legend of the Pied Piper.