Doctor Who is no stranger to the return of existing
monsters. There have been quite a few monsters and enemies that have appeared
multiple times, but when you've been running for as long as Doctor Who has, you
need to expect to re-tread old ground at some point. How it is done, however,
is a fine art. Sadly, to me it seems many recurrences of monsters are rather
ham-fisted, ranging from simple fan service to forced inclusion that requires changes
to established canon.
If a particular monster resonates with the fandom,
there's a very good chance it will return, even if that means changing the
background of the monster. The big danger here is diluting what was a great
one-off monster by making it essentially over stay its welcome.
The prime example of this is the Weeping Angels. They
were great in Blink, but
continual appearances made them boring. Their nature also needed to be
expanded, because we already knew how to counter the threat, meaning some of
what made them scary was diminished. So the Angels get new and increasingly
silly powers in each appearance until they are every statue on earth and can
throw people back in time, as well as be colossal, hollow, and made of copper rather
than stone.
No. Just no.
Asylum of the Daleks is another example of this one.
Daleks were changed from hugely xenophobic creatures so certain of their
genetic superiority that they simply exterminate anything non-Dalek, to
suddenly being cool with using alien corpses to make pseudo Daleks. This
simultaneously flies in the face of established Dalek background and steals one
of the scariest aspects of the Cybermen, all for some new monster type that is
essentially a person with a Dalek eyestalk.
Seriously now?
If you have to change or add to the established rules for
a monster to make it fit or make it threatening, why are you using that
monster? Could you not create some new monster that has the powers or
motivation you require? On the other side of the coin, if you've been asked to
do a story featuring a specific monster, can you not (aside from asking why)
stick to the established canon for that monster?
This is also a rather selfish act, as it often strikes me
that an attempt is being made to build a pantheon of New Who monsters over
the old classics like Cybermen and Daleks. It's clear from the marketing
materials that the focus is on these new monsters that often appear more than
they should. Angels, Ood, Silence, all could have been left at a single
appearance without subsequent outings.
I include the Ood tentatively, as out of all the returned
monsters their subsequent appearances were best integrated without feeling too
forced or piling on additional powers. What is helpful in that case is that the
Ood in their natural state aren't threatening. They are just a fairly normal alien race that requires external forces to
make them malicious.
Luckily they're easy to spot
Sometimes monsters reappear as nothing more than a
self-referential nod to previous episodes. This can work well, such as some of
the brief appearances of Judoon after their introduction in Smith and Jones. If it’s just a subtle
“remember these things exist in a wider universe” kind of reference, it works,
but it can easily turn into a farce, such as much of The Time of The Doctor.
It's a big universe out there, and unless a monster is
part of some kind of galaxy-spanning empire out for conquest such as the
Daleks, Sontarans or Cybermen, bringing them back every season limits the scope
of the Whoniverse with the only benefit the fleeting feeling of familiarity for
fans to find... felicitous.
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