Countdown to 60: Monster Men

It's time now to pay homage to the men behind the monsters, for what would Doctor Who be without its monsters?

This post was inspired by the remarkable performance by Julian Bleach as Davros in The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar. He was a guest artist, performing a significant role in the story, following in the footsteps of the likes of Stephen Dartnell who played Yartek, Leader of the Alien Voord - the series' first ever individual alien character - and Peter Glaze, who was the villainous City Administrator of The Sensorites. Later we had Bernard Bresslaw's Varga, quite literally head and shoulders above his Ice Warrior minions, or Michael Kilgarriff's Cyber-Controller or K1 Robot.

When Hinchcliffe and Holmes took over the series, they made a conscious move away from the ranks of generic monsters, usually seen battling UNIT, to feature only a single individual of the species - a representative character with whom the Doctor could interact.

Names like Michael Wisher, Peter Pratt, Gabriel Woolf, Kevin Lindsay, Christopher Robbie, Michael Spice, Stephen Thorne, Martin Friend, Judith Parris are all well-known to fans, despite the rubber and latex.

But what of the unsung monster performers, who often backed up these "hero" monsters?

Just for a change, this is a photo-essay, focussing on the earliest years of the series - images of the likes of Jack Pitt, Tony Harwood and John Scott Martin, bringing the monsters to life...

From the top: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Web Planet (Jack Pitt on the right), The Chase (Robert Jewell), Power of the Daleks (John Scott Martin - the real "Dalek Supreme"), Tomb of the Cybermen (including Gregg Palmer and John Maxim), The Abominable Snowmen (Tony Harwood on right), The Invasion, and The War Games (Pat Gorman as the Cyberman and Tony Harwood as the Ice Warrior):