Monsters

by Adrian Rigelsford

For almost 30 years Doctor Who has been a part of Britain's culture. The Cybermen and Daleks are as well-known, or more so, than almost any other fictional creation. But also remembered are the hideous monsters who contributed so much to the tension and excitement that kept at least two generations of viewers enthralled. This book looks at the monsters featured including Yeti, the Silurians, the Ice Warriors and the Sontarans examining their screen...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 185227283X
• ISBN13: 9781852272838
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Virgin Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 9.4" x 12.2"

Customer Reviews

Monster stories, from a different point of view

A book writing about the prominent and best remembered monsters of Doctor Who (except for the Daleks and Cybermen, who have the distinct honour of having texts exclusively written about them) would be pedestrian if it was a point-by-point history of the making of the monsters. (Well, that is present at the end of the book before they list the cast and crew credits for each story.) But no, Adrian Rigelsford and artist Andrew Skilleter have created an exceptionally imaginative work.The monsters explored here are the Zarbi and Menoptera, the Yeti, Ice Warriors, Autons, Sontarans, the Wirrn, Zygons, Sil, and a group of Earth Demons and supernatural monsters (e.g. The Fendhal, Malus, Fenric, etc.)Those of us who have seen the extant stories of the Who canon know the plot, how the story ends, etc. Rigelsford retells the story from different points of view, and in different formats. For example, the Sontaran stories are retold from the point of view of Sontaran cadet Jago, who has accessed the military databank and reviews the stories of the commanders who encountered the Doctor.Reading the Yeti stories found me wondering how the original stories went, since both no longer exist in the BBC archives. The Abominable Snowman was a six-parter and with the point of view from Professor Travers' diary, it must have been an exceptional one.The Earth Reptile and Auton stories are presented as classified UNIT files for eyes only, with paper clips drawn over photo stills from the two stories. Well, "eyes only" includes us, but think about it from the point of view with the average John Bull. How would he have heard of this from the local media? The Loch Ness Monster in Terror Of The Zygons, for example, was explained as a hallucinogenic fungus being introduced into the water.And who better than Olive Hawthorne, the white witch of Devil's End, to tell the stories of the Earth Demons in a book she wrote? Rigelsford maintains Hawthorne's magic-leaning personality to a tee--remember how the Doctor and she sparred in the debate of science vs magic?Andrew Skilleter's illustrations create various worlds and contribute to those alternate points of view. His gouache drawing of the Wirrn is vintage material, but that is a contrast to the designs of the Peladon epic involving Aggedor and the Ice Warriors. And the militaristic drawing of the Sontaran cover page, accompanied by the Sontaran general's propagandistic quote on the nature of death and defeat being a victory in itself--quite a feat. If the Beeb want a really interesting Sontaran spin-off story/documentary, why not a Sontaran version of Triumph Of The Will?)Spinning these stories from a different POV is a stroke of genius, and something that Stevens and Bishop utilized in their Who Killed Kennedy book, but that's another thing altogether.