For its first series back in 2005 Russell T Davies elected to keep the focus on Earth and on human beings. Every episode was set on Earth or, in four cases, in Earth's orbit.
The reason for this was that RTD was afraid that the casual viewer would not be able to empathise with overtly alien creatures - but could do so with people who were recognisably like us.
(He referred to aliens as "Zog, from the planet Zog").
As well as this lack of empathy / identification with their inhabitants, alien worlds had always been hard to realise on TV budgets. A lot of the sci-fi series of the 1990's were filmed in Canada for financial reasons, and had a tendency to always depict similar locales, such as a distinctive pine forest area. You'll spot it in the X-Files, Stargate and other shows.
Doctor Who, from The Savages in 1966 onwards, had tended to use quarries or similar (clay or sand pits) as alien planets - to the point that it became cliché (especially when Blake's 7 was using the exact same locations for its alien planets at the same time). It was joked about that whilst Douglas Camfield was filming Beau Geste in one sand pit, Doctor Who and Blake's 7 were just round the corner in the same location - that the Foreign Legion soldiers would run around a bend and come face to face with Servalan or the Daleks.
RTD wanted to avoid these clichés for as long as possible, until the series was well established, and the viewing audience more accepting of what they were being shown.
The first two thirds of Series 2 maintained the Earth connection, but eventually it was time to feature a totally alien world - and the only way to do it was to pay a visit to a quarry.
Rather than film the location in broad daylight, however, RTD elected to have it filmed at night, and to have it feature as a subterranean part of the planet - so that it did not look like the old cliché (even if it was one).
The alien servitors in the Sanctuary Base were originally going to be Slitheen. However, a new race was then decided upon (being a much more practical costume to film around) and so the Ood came into being. They were inspired by the Sensorites, who first appeared in the series in 1964 in the story of the same name.
The most famous image of the Sensorites was the one featuring a pair of the creatures, which appeared in the Doctor Who Monster Book of 1975.
Both have a large bald cranium. The Sensorite beard is replaced by the tendril / fronds of the Ood, and the translator ball is inspired by the Sensorite telepathic communicator.
The connection to the Sensorites will be reinforced in Series 4 when it is explained that the Ood planet is in the same region of space as the Sense-Sphere, and has a similar name structure.
Another inspiration for this pair of episodes is Pyramids of Mars. Not only is Gabriel Woolf employed to voice the Beast, after portraying Sutekh, but the Beast is said to be an incarnation of the Devil, as Sutekh was also supposed to be. In both cases we have a Devil-like figure who claims to be the inspiration for Devil-like figures on other planets. As such, we could also add in a link with The Daemons here. A number of other planets do get mentioned - ones which are supposed to have a Devil in their mythology. One is Skaro - a Kaled god of war - and another is Draconia.
Daemos is also mentioned, though it seems a bit of a stretch to say that a planet of Devil-looking beings were influenced by someone Devil-looking by coincidence. Possibly the Beast caused them to have their horned demon appearance in the first place, and they would have evolved quite differently if left to their own devices.
Coincidentally, the BBC were very cautious when it came to making The Daemons, for fear of upsetting the Church. Likewise, great care was taken with Matt Jones' story, for fear of upsetting Christian Fundamentalists, especially in the US. As it was, there were complaints about the name "Satan" appearing in the title of the second instalment. This from people who ban Hallowe'en and probably think Harry Potter promotes Satanism.
The notion of using the Slitheen had come about because this story was originally going to come much earlier in the series, and be a very cheap one - hence recycling of existing costumes.
Some ideas for the image of the Beast which were not used included a creepy little girl, a creepy old man, the BBC Test Card girl, and a great big eye. The latter had, of course, already been used in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy to symbolise the Gods of Ragnarok, and creepy girls / old men had featured in Torchwood. (The idea of the Doctor encountering a god / devil type figure from the dawn of Time is very Virgin New Adventures).
The Mill, who provided the CGI for the series, came up with a Black Hole which was based on the known science of the time. Though technically realistic, it didn't look very impressive on screen so RTD asked them to come up with something closer to what the general public might think a Black Hole looked like - a "whirlpool"-shaped one such as the one in the Disney movie The Black Hole.
The final look of the Beast was based partly on Tim Curry's villain in Legend, and a character from 2000AD's Slaine comic.
Scientists unwittingly unleashing a great evil after decoding an ancient script reminds us of films such as John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. As here, the Devil is extra-terrestrial in origin.
Next time: a story about fandom which has greatly divided fandom...
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