R is for... Racnoss

The Racnoss were an ancient race of giant arachnids, who plagued the universe in its early history - a period known simply as the Dark Times. They had a voracious appetite for flesh, and were said to be born hungry. 

As they rampaged through the universe, destroying many early civilisations, the Time Lords of Gallifrey decided that something should be done to stop them. They were very much an interventionist race at this point, determined to use their great powers to shape the cosmos and bring order out of chaos. They went to war with the Racnoss and eventually wiped them out - or so they thought. The Racnoss Queen went into hiding whilst one of her spaceships - a Webstar - had wandered into what would become the Solar System. Still forming at this point - some 4.5 billion years ago - gravitational forces caused a new planet to form around the Webstar. This particular Webstar contained millions of the Queen's progeny, which were in a dormant stage. The new planet became the Earth.

In the early 21st Century, the Torchwood organisation began drilling operations beneath the Thames, to the east of London. The Thames Flood Barrier was constructed at the same time, to mask their activities. Torchwood had detected something buried here - which proved to the Webstar.

The Racnoss Queen had also slept through the millennia, but she now returned to resurrect her species by reanimating her children. Torchwood had fallen, and she engaged a human agent named Lance to help her. He worked for a company named HC Clements, which had been a front for Torchwood. 

In order to reanimate her children, the Queen required Huon Particles - an energy source now extinct in the universe, eliminated by the Time Lords as harmful to humanoid life. The Queen had retained some of this energy source and Lance was to secretly dose a co-worker with the particles. The energy would be released, and the host fed to the waking children. The worker selected was a secretary named Donna Noble.

The Doctor became involved with the Racnoss scheme when the Huon Particles in Donna's body caused her to be transported onto the TARDIS, drawn to the ship like a magnet.

The Racnoss Queen had employed the robot Santas, previously used by the Sycorax, to abduct her

Donna was later captured by the Queen but the Doctor was able to rescue her. Instead, the Queen dosed Lance with the particles and used him instead. To stop the newly wakened children from getting to the surface, the Doctor flooded the drilling chamber - draining the Thames - and the Racnoss offspring were drowned.

The Queen fled back to her Webstar - but it was blown out of the skies over London by the army on the orders of politician Harold Saxon (really an incarnation of the Master).

In an alternate timeline experienced by Donna, the Doctor himself drowned achieving the destruction of the Racnoss children.

Played by Sarah Parish. Appearances: The Runaway Bride (2006).

• Parish had previously acted opposite David Tennant in the dramas Recovery and Blackpool, and joked that the pair would eventually end up doing a sitcom together like George and Mildred.
• Other roles of note have included appearances in Merlin, Cutting It, W1A and detective series Bancroft, in which she starred as the title character. She was also a regular in BBC's Atlantis.
• She is married to Primeval star James Murray (who also featured in RTD's Cucumber), and the pair received MBEs in 2025 for their children's charity work.