Prisoner of the Judoon - SJA 3.1

In which Sarah Jane Smith goes to the offices of Genetec to interview its director, Mr Yorke, about his nanotechnology advances. She raises concerns about what might happen if the nanoforms escaped into the environment - prompting Yorke to ask her to leave. Later that day, Sarah and her young friends are alerted to an object heading from space towards London. This proves to be a crashing spaceship. Mr Smith picks up a distress call from the pilot - a Judoon officer. UNIT are heading for the main crash site, but Mr Smith has identified the landing place for an escape capsule. Worried about what would happen if UNIT and the Judoon clashed, Sarah decides that they will deal with the capsule and its occupants themselves. They trace its crash site to a derelict housing estate. As they leave Bannerman Road, they are interrupted by Rani's mum Gita, on the lookout for opportunities for her florist business. She hopes that Sarah's connections might be able to open some corporate doors. Sarah sends her to Genetec.
Once at the crash site, they are confronted by an injured Judoon - Captain Tybo. He was transporting a dangerous alien criminal named Androvax, who has now managed to escape.

Whilst Luke and Rani look after Tybo, Sarah and Clyde hear a scream coming from a nearby hall. They locate a small girl who wants to know where her mother has gone. However, Sarah has been scanning and identifies the child as alien. Androvax emerges from her body then merges into Sarah's. He is a member of the Veil species, which can inhabit the bodies of others. Clyde is placed in a trance. He is found by the others who wake him up. The Judoon commandeers a police car in order to give chase. The possessed Sarah goes to the attic where she learns of the earlier visit to Genetec, and decides to go and see Mr Yorke again. Tybo and the others arrive soon after, to discover that Androvax has set Mr Smith to self-destruct...

Luke is able to make Mr Smith halt the countdown, and it tells them that Sarah has gone to Genetec. Gita, meanwhile, has also gone there with Haresh and a load of plants. She intends to leave them around the building in the hope of being given a contract to provide a regular supply. Haresh is worried that they have basically broken in. Sarah / Androvax confronts Mr York and releases the nanoforms, which begin to devour the building. Androvax wants the to build him a new spaceship so that he can flee the planet. Determined that the Judoon captain will not kill Sarah in order to get at Androvax, Clyde and Rani lock Tybo in a laboratory. Androvax captures Luke in order to use him to help create the spaceship, and he will require him to also help pilot it. Tybo calls upon reinforcements as a Judoon spaceship enters the solar system. A number of them beam down to the Genetec premises - witnessed by Gita and Haresh.

The nanoforms become dormant in low temperatures, so Clyde and Rani use fire extinguishers to subdue them. The spaceship is nearing completion on the roof of the building. Luke steals its power source and forces Androvax to release his mother in exchange for it. The Judoon arrive and recapture him before he can use it. Luke then uses the ship's computer to deactivate the rest of the nanoforms. Tybo decides to punish Clyde and Rani for obstructing him in the line of his duties by grounding them - banning them from leaving Earth. When they get back to Bannerman Road, Gita tells them all about her encounter with aliens.

Prisoner of the Judoon was written by Phil Ford, and was first broadcast on 15th and 16th October, 2009. It marks the beginning of the third season of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
To help launch the new series, a popular alien was drafted in from Doctor Who - the rhinoceros-like Judoon police force. Being somewhat dimwitted and pedantic, a lot of fun could be had with them. It was policy that the Daleks and Cybermen would never be used in the SJA, as they didn't fit with the programme's lighter, more optimistic (and death-free) tone.
As with Smith and Jones and The Stolen Earth only one Judoon is ever seen without its helmet - Captain Tybo. The others all wear their helmets, as only one animatronic mask existed. Once again Paul Kasey plays the principle Judoon, and Nick Briggs provides the voice.

Androvax of the Veil - the "Destroyer of Worlds" - is a new reptilian bipedal alien. He is played by Mark Goldthorp. The character was given a long CGI tongue, which was also used for the human characters whom he merged with. The other guest artist is Terence Maynard, playing Mr Yorke.
Rani's parents, Gita and Haresh, have a strong role to play in the proceedings, with a comic subplot of their own - and they finally get a glimpse of the sort of life their daughter leads, although they never catch sight of Sarah, Luke, Clyde and Rani at Genetec's premises. Lis Sladen also gets to play evil for a change, as she is possessed by Androvax for most of the two episodes.

Overall, a fun way to start the new season. The sequence where Tybo commandeers the police car and insists on sticking to the speed limit, then orders another driver to turn his music down at gun point, stands out.
Things you might like to know:

• This was Nick Brigg's only contribution to The Sarah Jane Adventures. He had already appeared in Torchwood: Children of Earth by this point, so this makes him one of only a handful of people to feature in all three series.
• Mr Smith identifies the spaceship Androvax is creating as similar to one which crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and is stored in Area 51. An animated Doctor Who story featuring David Tennant was in production at the time this SJA story was made - Dreamland - and it used the same spaceship design as the one seen here.
• The third series of SJA begins with an on screen monologue spoken by Daniel Anthony (Clyde), which lets new viewers know a little about the background to the series, and features clips from forthcoming episodes. This had previously been seen in a cinema trailer for the series. It will be used again for the fourth and fifth series, with appropriate new episode footage inserted.
• A number of police / crime TV series are referenced in the dialogue throughout the story - generally courtesy of Clyde. Series mentioned include Softly, Softly (1966 - 69), Starsky and Hutch (1975 - 79), I Spy (1965 - 68) and 24 (2001 - 14).

Inspirations - The Deadly Assassin

Aren't all assassins deadly? You'd have to be a pretty inept one not to be. Some Doctor Who story titles are clumsy, and some make little or no sense, whilst others can be downright misleading. This story title certainly has a certain clunkiness about it.
Once Lis Sladen had announced her departure, Tom Baker - now fully established in the role of the Doctor and with ideas of his own about the character and the programme in general - began to argue against the need for him having a companion. A new companion was already being developed, however - lined up to appear in the last half of the season at least. This would be an Eliza Doolittle-type character whom the Doctor would teach and mentor. She wouldn't be introduced until the fourth story of the season, and so Philip Hinchcliffe decided to indulge his star with a single companion-less story - to demonstrate how this set-up wouldn't work, if anything. As this would need someone very familiar with the format of the show to write it, special dispensation was sought from the Writers Guild for the series' Script Editor to do it. Script Editors commissioning themselves was generally frowned upon, but permission was granted, and so Robert Holmes began work. This would have financial implications for him, as we will see when we get to The Sunmakers.

After a couple of years of horror movie homages, Holmes decided to write a political thriller - to be set on Gallifrey, the Doctor's homeworld. It had first featured in 1969 at the conclusion of Patrick Troughton's tenure, when the Doctor was brought home to face trial for interfering in the affairs of other races. After a brief glimpse at the beginning of Colony in Space, when the Time Lords had begun sending the Doctor on secret missions - breaking their own rules - it was only seen again when it came under attack by Omega. It took three Doctors to defeat him, but the Time Lords rewarded him by lifting the exile imposed after the trial.
Holmes was aware of the seeming hypocrisy of those missions which the Time Lords had sent the Doctor on, and came to think of them as being more than just aloof god-like beings. If Gallifreyan society was so great, why had the Doctor left it? Also, what was it about all these rogue Time Lords knocking about the cosmos - especially his own creation, the Master? As well as the Master, we had also seen the time-meddling Monk, the War Chief, Omega and, more recently, Morbius (in a story heavily rewritten by Holmes himself). If Time Lord society could produce renegades like this, then it had to have a darker side.
Holmes envisaged Gallifrey as something akin to an ancient University, like Oxford or Cambridge - full of elderly male dons who knew little about the world beyond their quads and cloisters. He also based it on the Vatican - an enclosed society of strict hierarchy, again populated by elderly men, out of touch with the modern world.
The names and titles of the characters reflect these influences. Borusa is a Cardinal (a senior Catholic cleric), Goth - from the word Gothic - is a Chancellor (a university title). The Castellan (the governor of a castle or fortress) is named Spandrell - a Gothic architectural feature. The Commentator is called Runcible - a made-up nonsense word devised by the High Victorian poet Edward Lear for his 1871 ode The Owl and the Pussycat. (It was later used as the name for a sort of trifurcated spoon).
The main council chamber is called the Panopticon. This was a type of prison designed by the 18th Century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in which the cells were built in a circle surrounding a central tower, so that the guards could easily observe the inmates at all times. The word comes from 'all seeing' - which is suggestive of how the Time Lords look down upon the universe.

Holmes set the action within the Capitol on Gallifrey, citadel of the Time Lords. There are hints that not everyone who lives on Gallifrey is a Time Lord. Who is Commentator Runcible broadcasting to, for instance? Then we have the security forces - the Chancellery Guards. A very lowly position for a Time Lord, surely, and they don't seem to regenerate when they are killed.
Another inspiration for the kind of Time Lord society envisaged by Holmes might be the Gormenghast trilogy of books by Mervyn Peake, published between 1946 and 1959. These describe a vast crumbling castle where everyone is bound by archaic ritual.
For the main villain, Hinchcliffe and Holmes decided to bring back the Master. As Roger Delgado had died in 1973 it was necessary to recast the role. The actor chosen was Peter Pratt, best known for radio drama and who was famed for his work with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Director David Maloney was a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and knew he needed someone with a good voice as the part would be played from under a mask. In order to give the character motivation, it was decided to have the Master reduced to a walking cadaver, barely existing at the end of his incarnations. (Holmes invented in this story the notion that Time Lords can only regenerate 12 times, and so have only 13 incarnations. This would have been a safe thing to do, when they were only on the fourth incarnation in 13 years. Holmes wasn't to know that the 1980's would see them whizz through Doctors). The Master's monstrous appearance, and his lurking in the catacombs beneath the Capitol, seem to have been inspired by The Phantom of the Opera - something which Holmes would revisit at the end of this season.

The Hand of Fear had concluded with the Doctor receiving a telepathic summons to return to Gallifrey - necessitating the departure of Sarah, as she is unable to go with him. This implies a law of the Time Lords, but it might simply be something he made up, as we now see that he had a vision of the President being assassinated - and it is he who has pulled the trigger. When the TARDIS arrives, the Doctor learns that it is Presidential Resignation Day. He slips past the guards and goes to the Panopticon wearing purloined robes, in order to stop the killing. He is decoyed up to the higher levels, and the assassin shoots the President from close at hand - but the Doctor is the interloper found to be holding a rifle.
The inspiration for all this is clearly the assassination of President John F Kennedy, on 22nd November 1963 - the day before Doctor Who was first broadcast. In particular, the inspiration derives from the commonly held belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was merely a patsy - set up as a scapegoat by others, and the shots which killed JFK came from somewhere else (the famous grassy knoll).
Most reference works will mention the book / movie The Manchurian Candidate as a primary inspiration for The Deadly Assassin. This deals with American soldiers being brainwashed by the Chinese, in league with powerful US communist sympathisers, into carrying out a political assassination. The book was written by Richard Condon and published in 1959. It was filmed in 1962, starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury. The 2004 remake, with Denzil Washington, replaced the communists with a big business syndicate.

The problem of not having a companion makes itself felt very early on, as the Doctor is forced to talk to himself for much of the first episode. He is then teamed up with Castellan Spandrell and with Co-Ordinator Engin, who basically become one-off companions in parts two and four.
The third episode is the one that everyone remembers, however. The Time Lords have this thing called the Matrix - which is a repository for the minds of every Time Lord who has ever died. This allows them to predict future events. The Doctor realises that the Master must have access to the Matrix - otherwise how was he able to prevent the Time Lords foreseeing the assassination, and for it to have been transmitted to the Doctor's mind.
In order to track down his old enemy, the Doctor decides that he must join his mind to the Matrix, and so enters a nightmare realm which is under the control of the Master and the real assassin, whose mind is also there. We have a series of adventures in this dreamscape, many of which are quite surreal. Apart from the Third Doctor's fight with the dark side of Omega's mind in The Three Doctors, we haven't seen much in the way of surrealism in the series. The closest would have been the Second Doctor story The Mind Robber, set in the Land of Fiction. The assassin proves to be Chancellor Goth - the man tipped to become the next President. He had learned that he was going to be passed over for the position, however - so assassinating the President before he could announce his successor was his only option.
The Episode Three cliffhanger - in which Goth holds the Doctor's head underwater, and Maloney opts to use a freeze-frame - brought down the wrath of Mary Whitehouse upon Philip Hinchcliffe's head, and would ultimately result in him being moved on from the programme. She had been sniping at the show for a number of years, but this was the final straw. Whitehouse had an objection to the series' cliffhangers at the best of times - feeling that children would be left for a whole week with some traumatic image. With this episode however, it was claimed that a child had told his parent that if his baby sibling did not behave then he would hold him under the bathwater until he went quiet, just like Doctor Who. The BBC upheld the complaint, and the offending sequence was shortened for the story's repeat screening the following summer.

With Goth defeated, the Master's true scheme is revealed. He plans to steal Gallifrey's energy source in order to give himself a new regeneration cycle - something which will destroy the planet. He wanted Goth to become President only so that he could acquire the various symbols of Rassilon which would enable him to achieve this aim. (It should be noted that this is the first story to mention the fabled architect of Time Lord society. Actually, pretty much everything we now think about when it comes to the Time Lords derives from this story - from Rassilon to the costumes).
The Doctor manages to win the day, saving the planet and knocking the Master down a crevasse.
The wily old Cardinal Borusa decides to manipulate the truth for public consumption - removing the Doctor's role from the narrative and making Goth out to be a hero who died saving Gallifrey.
Shortly after the Doctor departs, reminded of just why he left in the first place, Spandrell and Engin see a slightly rejuvenated Master follow close behind. Hinchcliffe and Holmes had set this up so a future production team could bring the character back with a new actor playing him.
Mrs Whitehouse was not the only person to take umbrage at this story. One of its biggest critics was the President of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society - Jan Vincent-Rudzki. He was appalled at Holmes' revisionist take on the Time Lords. As far as he was concerned they ought to be the aloof, god-like beings as seen on the programme before. He was shocked to see them portrayed as decadent and corrupt, and resorting to torture to gain a confession from the Doctor. He disliked how a pair of elderly Time Lords were seen to complain of aches and pains. Basically, he didn't like that they were portrayed as human. However, I have already pointed out Holmes' own views on the Time Lords above - a society which the Doctor had rejected, and which was capable of creating monsters of its own.
Next time: One of the best story titles never used. The Doctor experiences the consequences of a previous intervention by himself, in a tale of mad computers and eugenics. Let's face it, having no companion didn't really work, so it's time to welcome Leela...

Story 201 - Planet of the Dead

In which a young cat burglar - Lady Christina de Souza - steals the priceless Cup of Athelstan from the International Gallery in London after it has closed for the night. Discovering that her getaway driver has been arrested, she runs out onto the street and jumps aboard a No.200 bus, which is headed south of the river. She finds herself sitting next to the Doctor, who is using a device to track rhondium particles. As the vehicle passes through a tunnel under the Thames, pursued by police cars, the machine goes haywire. The police at the other end of the tunnel report that the bus has not passed through. It has vanished. On the bus, the Doctor and his fellow passengers are thrown around. When the turbulence passes, they discover that they are now stranded in the middle of a vast desert, in broad daylight. They have passed through a wormhole, which has wrecked the upper deck. Present are the driver, a woman named Angela, an older couple - Lou and Carmen - and a pair of young men, named Barclay and Nathan, as well as Christina. The Doctor has to inform them that they are now on an alien planet. The driver attempts to walk back through the wormhole - and the police back at the tunnel see his burned-up body emerge. The Doctor explains that it was the metal frame of the bus which protected them, and only it will get them all back home again. Back in London, UNIT take charge of operations. In command is Captain Erisa Magambo (whom Rose Tyler and Donna Noble had once met in an alternative timeline), and she is accompanied by the organisation's latest Scientific Adviser, Malcolm Taylor, who is a huge fan of the Doctor's. They are able to establish telephone contact with the bus thanks to the Doctor boosting a mobile phone. Malcolm tells the Doctor that the wormhole is getting bigger.

The self-assured Christina takes charge. Barclay and Nathan are tasked with digging out the bus' wheels, whilst the Doctor and Christina elect to go and explore. Carmen has mild ESP powers - she wins £10 on the lottery every single week. She senses death approaching them. The Doctor and Christina come across the wreck of a gigantic spaceship, and are then captured by a Tritovore - a bipedal insectoid creature with the head of a fly. It takes them into the ship where they meet another of its kind. The creatures accuse them of causing their ship to crash. They discover that this is the planet of San Helios, and up until one year ago it was covered in vegetation and great cities. The Tritovores had come to trade here. The Doctor wonders what could have wiped out all life here so quickly - reducing everything to sand. They discover that the spaceship flew into a swarm of massive flying manta-ray creatures, which are omnivorous. It was the swarm which destroyed all life here. The creatures have metal shells and, when they fly rapidly en masse around the planet, they generate the wormholes - which take them to new worlds to consume. Earth will be the next target. The Doctor realises that he can adapt the spaceship's power source to get the bus moving. Christina elects to use her burglary apparatus to descend into a deep pit to retrieve it. She wakes a dormant manta-ray and it attacks her. The Doctor pulls her to safety, but the creature kills the two Tritovores.

The Doctor and Christina race back to the bus, where Angela breaks the bad news that they have run out of petrol. The Doctor has brought four magnetic clamps from the Tritovore ship, and he these placed on each of the wheels. He needs a special metal to make the new engine work and so compels Christina to hand over the goblet which she had stolen from the museum, as gold will do the trick. As the alien swarm bears down on them, the bus floats up into the air and heads for the wormhole. On Earth, Captain Magambo orders Malcolm to close the portal, to stop the swarm coming through. The scientist refuses to obey her. The bus passes back through the wormhole and reappears in the road tunnel. It soars into the night sky over London. A small number of rays manage to come through after it, but these are soon dealt with, and Malcolm closes the wormhole. Captain Magambo has brought the TARDIS from the grounds of Buckingham Palace, where the Doctor had earlier parked it, and he states that he will divert the swarm to a safer location. Carmen tells the Doctor that she foresees his end. She tells him "Your song is ending, and it is returning. He will knock four times...". Christina wants to travel with the Doctor, but he rejects her. She is placed under arrest, but the Doctor then uses his sonic screwdriver to free her handcuffs and she jumps into the bus - flying off on new adventures of her own.

Planet of the Dead was written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, and was first broadcast on 11th April 2009. It was the second of the special episodes which would lead up to the departure of David Tennant as the Doctor at the end of the year. The end of the Tenth Doctor is foreshadowed by Carmen's ominous prediction in the last few minutes. The broadcast date was Easter Saturday - an occasion marked in the script by having the Doctor eating an Easter egg on the bus when Christina first gets on.
This was the first episode of Doctor Who to be filmed in High Definition, which had previously been used for Torchwood's first two seasons. As such, this was the first story to get a Blu-Ray release.
The 2009 Specials employ guest artists as one-off companions. In this case, it is Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza. She had come to prominence in Eastenders and briefly played the Bionic Woman in a short-lived remake, as well as appearing as a recurring villain in the Merlin BBC TV series. Lady Christina's backstory is that her rich father lost his fortune in the collapse of the Icelandic banking system, which was topical at the time. She steals for fun as much as for profit, and it is this aspect of her character which leads the Doctor to turn down her request to join him in the TARDIS.
The bus is given the route number 200 - an acknowledgement that this was regarded as the 200th Doctor Who story since 1963. As you will have noticed from this post's title, not everyone agrees with this numbering. (See my piece on Utopia to find out why).

Co-writer Gareth Roberts had originally hoped to use his creations the Chelonians in this story. They had been devised for one of his New Adventures novels - The Highest Science. They are later name-checked as one of the alien races converging on Stonehenge in The Pandorica Opens. Roberts' novel also features a group of humans transported to an alien planet in a bus which has been brought through a spatial anomaly. The Chelonians are a warlike race of turtle-like creatures, small and squat, with big shells on their backs. It was realised after the decision was made to film this story in a real desert location that such a costume would prove too hot and bulky for the actors to perform in. The Tritovores were devised instead - Russell T Davies having a liking for creatures which were basically humanoid in form but with a recognisably Earthly animal's head. The large masks meant that they were quite cool to wear.
The story of the bus being transported to Dubai and having an unfortunate accident soon after arrival is well known, but for completeness sake I will summarise. Realising that a sandpit or beach in South Wales just wouldn't work for the story, the decision was made to film oversees - and Dubai was selected. A red London double-decker had to be bought and sent over there. It couldn't be driven, as it would have had to pass over some politically unstable borders, and was too big to be flown out. It therefore had to go by sea. It made it all the way to Dubai safely, only for a crane operator to drop a container on it at the docks. There was an initial panic, until pictures came through of the damage. RTD realised that it wasn't as bad as feared and he amended the script to take the damage into account.
They only had a few days to film, and the first of these was totally ruined by a prolonged sandstorm.

The actors who got to go abroad for filming included Tennant and Ryan, as well as the bus driver and some of the passengers. The hapless driver is played by Keith Parry. Angela is Victoria Alcock. Nathan is David Ames, who went on to become a regular on Casualty. Barclay is played by Daniel Kaluuya, one of many of the cast of the Channel 4 series Skins who have gone on to greater things. He starred in the 2017 cult hit Get Out, and appeared in Marvel Studios' massively successful Black Panther.
Lou and Carmen don't ever leave the bus, so it was a trip to Wales rather than Dubai for Reginald Tsiboe and Eastenders' Ellen Thomas.
Also stuck back in Blighty were guest artist Lee Evans, who played Malcolm, and Noma Dumezweni, reprising the role of Captain Magambo after first appearing in Turn Left in Series 4.
The policeman who is relentlessly pursuing Christina, DI McMillan, is played by Adam James, who was an old friend of David Tennant's.
The two Tritovores - Sorvin and Praygat - are played by regular monster performers Paul Kasey and Ruari Mears. Only Kasey was required on location in Dubai.

Overall, it is an middling story. The ingredients should have given us something a little more epic. Evans' slapstick is a little irritating, and Christina comes across as not terribly sympathetic as a character. Between the DWM Mighty 200 poll in 2009, and the 50th Anniversary one in early 2014, it dropped from 99th to 191st place (out of 241).
Things you might like to know:

• There was some criticism of the choice of Dubai for filming, due to its poor reputation for human rights - especially its treatment of gay people.
• Back in 2006, Ellen Thomas had played one of the Clockwork Droids in The Girl in the Fireplace.
• The Doctor complains about humans on buses always blaming him - a reference to the traumatic events of Midnight.
• The Doctor had previously built a device for detecting rhondium particles in The Time Warrior.
• He recommends Nathan and Barclay to Magambo as potential UNIT recruits - as he had earlier helped Martha Jones join the organisation. This seems at odds with his obvious dislike for their militaristic ways.
• Malcolm has read all of the UNIT files on the Doctor. His favourite is the one about the Giant Robot (a reference to 1974 / 5's Robot, written by Terrance Dicks).
• Malcolm likes to give names to units of measurement - including his own. A number of Malcolms (100) are said to add up to a Bernard - as in Quatermass. Remembrance of the Daleks had intimated that Bernard Quatermass exists as a real person in the Doctor Who universe, and the Doctor has never referred to Quatermass as a TV series, in the way he has with Star Trek for instance.
• Having played Hamlet at the RSC for the previous 6 months, David Tennant was worried that he could get the Doctor's voice right. The same thing had happened to Billie Piper when she returned in Series 4 after a long break from playing Rose.
• The bus has a poster for a mobile phone network called "Neon" on its side. This company will prove to belong to the millionaire Joshua Naismith, who will feature in The End of Time Parts 1 & 2.
• Adam James had Jon Pertwee as his godfather.

G is for... Gorgon

Whilst trapped in the Land of Fiction, the Doctor and Zoe found themselves lost in a labyrinth where they were attacked by Medusa, the Gorgon. They saw the snake-haired statue come to life and advance towards them. The Doctor knew that the creature existed only as a myth, but Zoe felt compelled to look at her face. Recalling how the Greek hero Perseus had defeated the Gorgon using his polished shield, the Doctor pulled a mirror from his pocket and had Zoe look into that. The Gorgon then returned to stone.

Played by: Sue Pulford. Appearances: The Mind Robber (1968).

• In Greek myth there were three Gorgons - the sisters Medusa, Stheno and Euryale. They were the daughters of Phorcys and Ceto. Medusa appears in both versions of the film Clash of the Titans, in which Perseus is aided by the winged horse Pegasus. In the original Greek myths, however, Pegasus was only born after she was killed - springing from her dead body.

G is for... Gonds

A humanoid race encountered by the Second Doctor on an obscure alien planet. Generations ago, this world had been visited by another race called the Krotons. Their ship crashed and there were only two survivors - not enough to power the vessel, which required mental energy. The Gonds attacked the Krotons but were defeated, with a large area near the spaceship reduced to a wasteland where the Gonds were forbidden to go. The Krotons went into hibernation but their ship manipulated the Gonds' development so that they would provide the mental energy needed to replace the dead crew. Some science was denied them, in case it could be used against them. Each year, teaching machines would identify the two brightest students who would then be summoned into the Kroton ship. It was thought that they were transported away to the Kroton planet, but the Doctor and his companions had landed in the Forbidden Zone and they had seen that the students were killed after their mental energy had been drained. The Gonds were led by a man named Selris, but his position was under threat from a man named Eelek. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe rescued one of the students - Vana, whose boyfriend was Selris' headstrong son, Thara. The Doctor joined forces with Thara and a scientist named Beta to find a way to destroy the Krotons, who had been reanimated after Zoe had used the teaching machines. Beta and Jamie created an acid which would attack the Kroton spaceship, and Selris sacrificed himself to get a phial of the acid to the Doctor after he and Zoe had been forced by Eelek to hand themselves over to the Krotons and enter the vessel. The acid destroyed the Krotons and their ship, leaving the Gonds free to develop at their own pace.

Played by: James Copeland (Selris), Philip Madoc (Eelek), James Cairncross (Beta), Gilbert Wynne (Thara), and Madeleine Mills (Vana). Appearances: The Krotons (1968 / 69).

• This was Philip Madoc's first appearance in Doctor Who. Cairncross had previously played the character of Le Maitre / James Stirling in The Reign of Terror.

G is for... Golightly, Reverend

The Rev. Arnold Golightly was one of the guests at a weekend house party hosted by Lady Clemency Eddison. Guest of honour was the celebrated crime writer Agatha Christie. A series of brutal murders were carried out which mirrored plots from Christie's books, of which Lady Eddison was a huge fan. The Doctor and Donna Noble joined forces with Agatha to investigate, and discovered that the culprit appeared to be a giant wasp, which the Doctor identified as an alien Vespiform. It transpired that Lady Eddison, whilst a young woman, had lived in India where she met and fell in love with a man named Christopher. She became pregnant by him, but he was killed in a flood before the child was born. Christopher was really a Vespiform, come to Earth to study humans. He left her a beautiful jewel - the Firestone - which was really a telepathic recorder device. On her return to England, Lady Eddison had given the child up for adoption. The Doctor discovered that Golightly had been brought up in a children's home, and that he had recently managed to overpower a couple of thieves in his church. The Doctor deduced that this violent act had triggered his latent abilities. Lady Eddison's passion for crime mysteries had then been implanted into him through the Firestone. He was killing everyone who stood between him and a reunion with his mother. Agatha drove off with the jewel and Golightly gave chase in his wasp form. Donna threw the Firestone into a lake and Golightly dived in after it, drowning him.

Played by: Tom Goodman-Hill. Appearances: The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008).

G is for... Gold, Ed

Ed Gold was the second-in-command of Bowie Base One, the first human settlement on Mars. He was often criticised by the commander, Adelaide Brooke, even being blamed for things he wasn't responsible for. This was because he and Brooke had a past together. In 2059, when the base came under attack from the water-borne Flood infection, Ed was sent to prepare the rocket when Brooke ordered an evacuation. However, one of the infected crew - Maggie Cain - had got into the ship and she was able to pass on the infection to him. Ed then decided to sacrifice himself, blowing up the rocket on its launch pad.

Played by: Peter O'Brien. Appearances: The Waters of Mars (2009).

• O'Brien first came to prominence in the Australian daytime soap Neighbours. He appeared in Russell T Davies' second series of Queer As Folk, where his character was dumped by Doctor Who fan Vince when he couldn't name all the actors who had played the Doctor.