Doctor Who & Spin-Offs A-Z Game

[Alan]

O ~ Operation Blue Sky - In the 2008 story The Sontaran Stratagem, Operation Blue Sky was an operation headed by UNIT that took place in London in the year 2009. The operation was a raid on the London headquarters of the company ATMOS in order discover whether or not the company was guilty of harbouring illegal aliens. The operation was coordinated by Dr. Martha Jones. The operation ended with an absolute victory for UNIT resulting in them taking over the company's factory and using it as a base. The ATMOS staff didn't attack or resist arrest.
Before long, however, the Sontarans retook the factory, followed a short while later by UNIT attacking again with the help of the Valiant.

[Guest]

P ~ Peinforte, Lady - Lady Peinforte, from the Stuart era, sought to gain control of the Nemesis, a powerful Time Lord weapon, as seen in 'Silver Nemesis' (1988). She fashioned the Nemesis into a statue in her own image when a living silver metal known as Validium fell to Earth. Having knowledge of black magic, she and her manservant, Richard, travelled from 1638 Windsor to 1988 Windsor by drinking a magic potion, in order to reunite the arrow (part of the Nemesis in its statue form) with the statue body when it crashes back down to Earth in a comet. She was an expert archer, wielding a bow and arrows. When the Cybermen took control of the Nemesis, enraged and distraught, she merged herself with it. In doing so, she was killed as the Nemesis destroyed the fleet of Cyber-warships. She knew the Doctor's secret regarding his mysterious past as the Nemesis had told her, but when she threatened to reveal it, the Cybermen were not interested.

[Alan]

Q ~ Question mark - The question mark is a piece of punctuation used by many languages on Earth, usually denoting an inquisitive sentence and, by itself, representing an unanswered, unasked question.

During his fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh incarnations, the Doctor adopted the question mark as something of a personal motif. The 4th, 5th and 6th Doctor's all displayed question marks on the collars of their shirts. The 5th and 6th Doctor's also wore trouser braces displaying question marks. The 7th Doctor wore a jumper covered with the symbol, carried an umbrella with a handle shaped like a question mark, carried a business card with a stylized question mark, and when asked to sign his name, did so with a question mark.

[Guest]

R ~ Rattigan, Luke - Luke Rattigan is one of the main antagonists from 'The Sontaran Stratagem' and 'The Poison Sky'. He was a genius child prodigy who invented a powerful search engine called Fountain 6 when he was twelve years old, making him a millionaire overnight. He created the Rattigan Academy, a special school for young geniuses handpicked from all over the world. Luke worked in league with the Sontarans to conquer Earth. He constructed a satellite navigation/CO2 emission reduction system called ATMOS, which was installed in 50% of all cars worldwide. The Sontarans promised Rattigan a planet for terraforming, Castor 6, which Rattigan affectionately names "Earth.2". Rattigan intends to take some of his most intelligent students with him to Castor 6, though they refuse. After Rattigan learns that the promise of Castor 6 was a lie, he uses a device built by the Doctor (sacrificing himself to save the Doctor) with the dual purpose of destroying the Sontaran vessel and incinerating the gas in Earth's atmosphere.

[Alan]

S ~ Sarah Jane Adventures, The - Second TV spin-off from Doctor Who. It was introduced with the TV movie Invasion of the Bane in 2007 before it's first full series started in September of that same year.

Starring
--------
Elisabeth Sladen as "Sarah Jane Smith" (Invasion of the Bane -)
Tommy Knight as "Luke Smith" (Invasion of the Bane -)
Daniel Anthony as "Clyde Langer" (Series 1 -)
Anjli Mohindra as "Rani Chandra" (Series 2 -)
Yasmin Paige as "Maria Jackson" (Invasion of the Bane - Series 2)
Alexander Armstrong as the voice of "Mr. Smith" (Invasion of the Bane -)
John Leeson as the voice of "K-9" (Invasion of the Bane, Series 1)

[Guest]

T ~ Torajii System Sun - The Torajii System Sun is a manifestation of heat. It appeared in '42'. It has the power to possess humans and aliens.When the SS. Pentallion's Scoop Fusion reactor pulled part of the sun for use as fuel, it possessed Korwin, Ashton and the Doctor to make the ship crash into it to reclaim the fuel. Korwin was pulled into space and devoured by the Sun itself. Ashton was cured when he fell into a cryo-chamber, but died of his body temperature being too low. The fuel stolen from the Sun by Kath McDonnell was ejected into space and consumed by the Sun, so it automatically cured the Doctor.

[Alan]

U ~ Unquiet Dead, The - 2005 story starring Christopher Eccleston as "The Doctor" and Billie Piper as "Rose Tyler".

Synopsis
---------
The Doctor takes Rose back through time to 1869. But in Victorian Cardiff, the dead are walking, and creatures made of gas are on the loose. The time-travellers team up with Charles Dickens to investigate Mr Sneed, the local Undertaker. Can they halt the plans of the ethereal Gelth?

[Spimman]

V ~ Varga plants (sometimes Vaarga) appeared in the First Doctor episode "Mission to the Unknown" and the serial The Daleks' Master Plan, which were essentially a prologue and main epic respectively. 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.
The plants later made an appearance in the Big Finish audio I, Davros: Purity. In this, it was revealed that the Varga plants were one of the oldest species on Skaro, but for most of their history had been immobile. Since the start of the Kaled-Thal war however, exposure to radiation and chemical weapons had caused them to rapidly evolve into a much deadlier form, capable of self-locomotion. It was this discovery that caused Davros to become interested in genetically engineering creatures in order to create weapons of war.

[Guest]

V ~ Vynda-K, Graff - The Graff Vynda-K, played by Paul Seed, appeared in 'The Ribos Operation' (1978). He was a deposed, tyrannical ruler whose brother overthrew him from the Levithian throne whilst he was fighting with the Cyrrhenic Empire. A duo of con-men attempted to sell him the planet Ribos, pretending that there was a rare Jethrik (an element used for space warp) mine on the planet, although when he discovered that he had been tricked, he followed them (along with the Fourth Doctor and Romana I) into the Ribosian catacombs. Obviously mad, he attempted to seal the catacombs with a bomb, although the Doctor, disguised as one of his guards, managed to switch the bomb with a lump of jethrik he was carrying, meaning that the Graff was carrying the bomb at its time of detonation and was presumed dead.

[Alan]

W ~ Wheel in Space, The - 1968 story starring Patrick Troughton as "The Doctor", Frazer Hines as "Jame McCrimmon", and introducing Wendy Padbury as "Zoe Heriot".

Synopsis
---------
When the TARDIS materialises inside a rocket the Doctor and Jamie are alarmed by the presence of a hostile Servo-Robot. They discover that the rocket is drifting in the orbit of a giant space station - the Wheel in Space.

Once inside this magnificent space ship they are bewildered by its complexity and sheer size. The technicians and programmers are highly trained, but who are they working for?

Suspecting the worst, the Doctor is still horrified to find the deadly Cybermen in control. What evil plan are they plotting? Can the Doctor trust anyone on board to help him stop the Wheel as it spins relentlessly through space?

[Guest]

X ~ Xanxia - Queen Xanxia was the evil queen of Zanak ('The Pirate Planet'), she was practically frozen at extreme age in time dams and watched over by the Pirate Captain. At some point she created a hologram of herself, pretending to be the Captain's nurse and persuaded him to continually jump Zanak plundering planets for rare minerals to feed the time dams, with the aim of creating a permanently youthful viable body. She was defeated by the Doctor when Zanak was prevented from materialising around Earth, the time dams and the mountain they were enclosed within were finally destroyed by the Mentiads.

[Alan]

Y ~ Yeti (Robot) - Robot Yeti are devices created by the Great Intelligence. They appeared in the 1967 story The Abominable Snowmen, the 1968 story The Web of Fear, and one appeared in the 1983 TV movie The Five Doctors.

The Yeti robots were large and hairy to disguise the control spheres that provided their motive power. The sphere was hidden under a flap at the chest. Their hands, feet and eyes where the only parts not covered in fur. The hands and feet were black and bumpy.

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. They are similar in appearance to the real Yeti.

More than thirty years later, dead Robot Yeti, on display, awoke and took over London.

The latter attempt was one of the events which caused the formation of UNIT.

A lone Yeti, left over from Rassilon's game, was found by the 2nd Doctor and Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart under the Dark Tower. It was maddened by a firework thrown at it by the Doctor, causing a rockfall.

[Guest]

Z ~ Zero Cabinet - A cabinet made from the remnants of The Zero Room which was a room in the TARDIS. The room had walls that shielded it from the rest of the universe, providing a restful environment for the Fifth Doctor to recover from his regeneration in 'Castrovalva'. When the room is later jettisoned in an emergency, its doors are made into the "Zero Cabinet", a coffin-sized box with the same shielding properties.

[Alan]

A ~ Ace - Ace, real name Dorothy (Dorothée) Gale McShane, was a companion of the 7th Doctor. She was a human from late 20th century Earth. A native of the London suburb of Perivale, she was born on 20th August 1970.

Ace, in her youth had been a troubled teen on Earth, having been expelled from school for blowing up the art room as a "creative statement". Gifted in chemistry (despite failing it for her "O"-levels), she was in her room experimenting with the extraction of nitroglycerin from gelignite when a time storm swept her up and transported her to the deck of Sabalom Glitz's spacecraft docked at Iceworld far in her future. Trapped on Iceworld she got a job as a waitress and sometime later met the Doctor and his companion Mel Bush. When Mel left the Doctor at the conclusion of their battle with Kane, he offered to take Ace with him in the TARDIS, and she happily accepted.

Over the course of her travels on-board the TARDIS, Ace became more and more frustrated with the Doctor's manipulations, eventually leaving his company at age 26 to remain in the 26th century. She joined Spacefleet and fought the Daleks for three years, later rejoining the Doctor and his new companion Bernice Summerfield, older and more hardened.

Ace left the Doctor again to become Time's Vigilante, using a short-range time hopper mounted on a motorcycle to patrol a particular segment of time; in effect doing what the Doctor does, but on a smaller scale.

Ace's first TV appearance was in the 1987 story Dragonfire. Her last TV appearance was in the 1989 story Survival. The details of Ace's departures were told in the New Adventures range of books. Her first departure happened in the novel Love and War and her return was told in the novel Deceit. Her final departure from the TARDIS was told in the novel Set Piece.

[Guest]

B ~ Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, played by Nicholas Courtney. He works for UNIT (UNified Intelligence Taskforce, formerly United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats. He is one of UNIT's founders and commander of the British contingent, and is generally referred to simply as the Brigadier or "the Brig". Almost 20 years since his last appearance, the character returned in the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures in late 2008.