Vehicle of the week 10 - Borg Cube

Well, this article will wrap up the weekly articles, covering the vehicles of various Science Fiction franchises, there's plenty more I could have done (and if you've read through my list and are incensed that I've left you're favourite out I'd be more than happy to pick it up again) but for now I think ten is a good number to stop before I run out of steam. I'm having a week off, so there won't be a weekly article for a bit, but hopefully I'll come back fresh with a new category and a bunch of other articles I've got in the pipeline - but for now it's time for the last ship, which falls to Star Trek and the infamous Borg Cube

Borg Cube



















Multi-purpose Borg combat vessel
Manufacturer: Borg Collective
Length: 28 kilometers
Speed: Transwarp capable
Weaponry: Tropedoes and cutting beams
Affiliation: Borg Collective
Captain: Borg Collective

The simplicity of the design for this ship is a remarkable feat in my opinion, before we even meet the borg, the fact that their ships are designed to look like simple geometric shapes says a lot about them. Of course the workings of the cube are much more intricate then it's general shape, but to see the design tells you the owners of this ship don't care about aesthetics, a need to create a tactical superiority or any need to try and prove to you that they are stronger - and that is what makes them scary. Whenever a cube shows up it is always an impressive sight - not least because they are absolutely huge - completely dwarfing pretty much any other ship in Star Trek, with a design as cold and frightening as their merciless inhabitants.

Cubes were the primary vessels of the Borg Collective, serving as bases, warships and centres from bringing new species for assimilation. Their basic design was signature borg, all their ships had simple designs from spheres to rectangular scout ships - even the Borg Queen's ship was a basic diamond. Aside from the sprawling technological masses of their larger bases, such as Unimatrix One, the Borg kept thing simple and always functional. Cubes were always a terrifying sight for any species that shared the Delta Quadrant with them or were subject to their further raids. One cube was sufficient to combat several of the warships of other species - at the battle of Wolf359 only 1 of the 40 Federation ships there survived against a cube. The Cube's strenth was the same strength as the species - assimilation. A Borg vessel could quickly understand the technology of other species and adapt it, and even steal it in the midst of a battle, and the capture of one valuable member would endow the Borg with enough tactical knowledge to hold off most assaults. It took all the combat power and ingenuity of other species just to hold them off.
It is unclear what the primary function of the cubes were - the presence of "Tactial Cubes" with greater armour and firepower suggests that they were not primarily combat vessels, though the Borg certainly used them as such. It is more likely that the cube's main function was to assimilate species and technology, and it was generally assumed that a cube could get past any defences stopping their way. Above all Cubes and thei crew lived to serve the collective and, despite their strength, were considered expendable as demonstrated when the Borg Queen detonated several cubes just to erradicate a small number of disconnected drones aboard them. Very few ships were able to survive multiple encounters with the Borg and escape assimilation - the most notable being the USS Voyager who'se crew proved remarkable adaptable to Borg techniques and successfuly survived attacks and even managed to take the fight to the Borg and win on several occasions. Before returning home Voyager was able to criple Unimatrix One and the Borg Transwarp hub, severely damaging the Collective and killing the queen - but it's unlikely the galaxy has seen the last of a borg cube.

Vehicle of the week 9 - Thunderbird 2

Well I'm just about on track so far with this and I may get lucky enough to bang out one more tomorrow. I've just remembered that I'm on holiday next week, so my Transformers review, a planned review of BBC2's new show Heroes and a new weekly article will have to wait a week I'm afraid, unless I can convince some friends to fill in at short notice. But anyway, back to the subject - while primarily a kids TV show Thunderbirds still brought out some amazing vehicles and its futuristic setting and scenarios surely qualify it as a cool piece of SF.

Thunderbird 2
















Unique design transport aircraft
Manufacturer: Tracy family
Length: 76 metres
Speed: 5000 mph
Weaponry: None, mutliple rescue equipment
Affiliation: International Rescue
Captain: Virgil Tracy

While Thunderbird 1 has the coolest look, a fast ultrapowered rocket ship, I think that Thunderbird 2 is, when you think about it, the coolest ship and the powerhorse of Thunderbirds. It is slower than T1, but still faster than most other man made machines and of course is the delivery mechanism for International Rescue's myriad machines designed for almost every eventuality - i mean who else would design a series of automated trucks designed to carry a plane that had damaged landing gear?!! Thunderbird two was cool in that its design as a carrier meant detatching a significant portion of it's mass, and it was always exciting to see the vehicles that would come out of the "pods" including the Mole, Firefly and of course Thunderbird 4. This coupled with it's own gadgets and liftof procedure (who can forget the collapsing palm trees?) made this a most memorable vehicle and well deserving of it's place in this humble collection of reviews.

All the Thunderbirds were of unique design, from the mind of Interbational Rescue's resident genius Brains. Constructed with the wealth of Jeff Tracy and using parts aquired from his connections as a former astronaut these custom built machines superceded almost all other human technology. Most of Earth's civilizations recognized their use as vehicles of peace and aid, but the superior technology of the Thunderbirds also earned International Rescue some enemies along the way.

Thunderbird 2 was the primary support vehicle for International Rescue. In most missions Thunderbird 5 would first recieve the information on what the situation was, then Thunderbird 1 would go straight to the scene, liaise with local officials and set up a local base of operation. Then Thunderbird 2, loaded with whatever specialist vehicle suited the occasion, would follow and provide support, dumping it's pod and then lifting off to allow the specialist vehicle to assist in the situation. But Thunderbird 2 was much more than a cargo ship, it's larger frame and bulk made it very useful for lifting operation or stabilising structures long enough to get people out. Of all the ships it was the most versatile and always the most involved in saving the day.

Vehicle of the week 8 - Moya

Well I've fallen far behind with my vehicle of the week articles due to confusion and a bout of slightly more important things going on in my life. It is my somewhat lofty goal that I will get three vehicles covered this week and then move on to another category having brought the articles up to ten. Whether that works is something time will tell, but it's worth a try eh? Next week I'll try and put up a review or article about Transformers - but I'll let you suckers who didn't go to the advance screening have a chance to catch up eh?


Moya











Leviathan transport
Manufacturer: The Builders
Speed: Hech drive, Starbust capable
Weaponry: None
Affiliation: Independent
Captain: Ka D'argo

Moya is the lead ship of a daring new Sci-Fi series that was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Everything about this ship was cool - it's design, the intriguing "Starburst" transportation and of course the fact that it was alive!! I've been out of touch with Farscape for quite a while so I will try my best to do justice to this excellent show and cool ship in this article.

Leviathans were a unique class of ships produced by a mysterious God-like race known as The Builders. Completely organic, they were also sentient beings capable of communicating with the beings they carried on board. They bond with another, almost humanoid, life form known only as Pilots (which accurately describes their role on the ship) who help control things and relay the thoughts of the ship to the crew. The race is able even to produce offspring, though producing warship offspring is frowned upon the the Builders, who regard their creations as emmisaries of peace. Leviathans live an average of 300 cycles (years?) and when they die they go to a Leviathan graveyard in a hidden corner of space.

Moya was a prison transport until it was overrun by its prisoners and fell under their command. The arrival and capture of John Chrichton propelled the ship into somewhat unwanted significance as powerful forces such as the Peacekeepers searched for the wormhole technology hidden in Chrichton's mind. Moya and it's pilot eventually bonded (though not so literally) with it's crew and lead through conflicts with the deadly Scarrans as well as many other dangerous races and individuals even more weird than the ship's own crew. Despite suffering personal injury on many occasions the ship remained loyal and was probably the most loyal of the crew! Moya gave birth to a son, named Talyn, who was engineered by the Peacekeepers to be a warship, much to the dislike to Moya's creators. Talyn had a troubled life and eventually died to protect Moya and her crew and was taken to the Leviathan graveyard. Moya continued to serve Crichton and his company through the Peacekeeper Wars.

Well that was a trip down memory lane - I hope I've remembered enough to be accurate, if a little skimpy on the details. more to come soon I hope!!

Doctor Who series 3 review

Doctor Who has come a long way since it first returned to our screens in 2005. From risky reinvention to mainstream hit, the big question at the beginning of series 3 was "will they be able to keep up the quality and keep it fresh?"

If anyone doubted the answer to that question was "yes", then the opening story Smith and Jones swiftly laid those doubts to rest, with an assured and action-packed tale that introduced Martha Jones to the Doctor when the hospital she was working in was transported to the moon by a platoon of Judoon. New girl Martha proved to be a warm and likeable character, different from Rose but still very much in the 21st century girl explorer mould. We also got a couple of mentions of some guy called "Mr Saxon"...

This was swiftly followed by The Shakespeare Code, a witty script teaming up the Doctor and Shakespeare against the witch-like Carrionites, who use the power of words for their nefarious ends. The alien invasion by having a small group of villains open up a portal for their army is rather unoriginal even by Doctor Who's promiscuous standards, with stories such as The Unquiet Dead and series 2 finale Army of Ghosts having recently covered similar ground. But it's good to see an historical setting so spectacularly realised, and the whole yarn is told with such style and gusto that it's still massively entertaining despite these elements of unoriginality.

Off to the year 5 billion next for a return visit to New New York, for one of the oddest and most charming Doctor Who stories yet attempted. What other show could have a 20 year long traffic jam, a giant head in a jar, cat nuns, Macra and hymns, and tell a good story with it all? While Russell T Davies freely acknowledges sources like Mega City One from Judge Dread, here it's all remixed into an original and touching meditation on faith and hope. With giant crabs.

Off then back to old New York in the Doctor's latest encounter with the Daleks. Daleks in Manhatten may not have been to everyone's taste story-wise, but few can deny that it looked amazing, with a small amount of filming in New York helping to create spectacular shots of the city in the 1930s. Personally, I loved this two-parter. It was great to see the Daleks scheming and plotting away rather than just blasting in as an army, and I loved the dissent among the Cult of Skaro, with their independent thought and personalities. Yes, some of the science was a bit dodgy, but for a show based around a time-travelling police box, I can suspend my disbelief.

The Lazarus Experiment and 42 took two sci-fi tropes, the mad scientist, and an alien nasty loose on a spaceship, and did them fairly well, too, but coming back to back couldn't escape the feeling of being somewhat generic runarounds. They were lifted by some effective moments, such as the showdown with Professor Lazarus in the cathedral, and the Doctor's fear at being possessed by the alien sun, but up to this point, series 3 was "only" consistently very good, rather than reaching the dizzy heights of excellence achieved by, say, The Girl in the Fireplace. But that was all to change with Human Nature and Blink.

I picked up a copy of the novel Human Nature at Hay-on-Wye a few years ago, and it deservedly has a reputation as one of the best of the original Doctor Who novels published while the show was off the air. It's a simple idea: the Doctor become human. It's the story of the incarnation, or Superman II. From the classy period setting to the delightfully malevolent Family of Blood and their scarecrow servants, it's a great story, and gives the Doctor a very human love story as he falls in love with Joan. The contrast between the humanity of John Smith and the Time Lord nature of the Doctor is fascinating, and the story also examines questions of war and how to respond to evil. The way the Doctor deals with the Family of Blood in the end is brimming with righteous rage and Old Testament fury, both very scary and very cool. The Doctor is good, but don't ever mistake that for nice.

The next episode also didn't have much of the actual Doctor in it, for different reasons. Since Doctor Who started having Christmas specials, there hasn't been enough time in filming for the Doctor and his companion to film 14 episodes-worth of material, and so there's one episode a year in which they only appear briefly on-screen. Last year's "Doctor-lite" episode, Love & Monsters, is the Marmite of Doctor Who stories, with many either loving it or hating it. Personally, I really enjoyed L&M, but Steven Moffat's Blink made a virtue of a smaller budget and a largely absent David Tennant to deliver a brilliantly creepy tale of weeping angels that was on another level entirely. It managed the impressive feat of not seeming disappointing after Paul Cornell's superlative two-parter. Carey Mulligan carried the episode well as Sally Sparrow (and was very cute), putting her at the top of many fans' wish-list for new companions.

Series 3 managed to better disguise its penny-pinching towards the end of the series than series 2, where we ended up with two cheap contemporary Earth stories back-to-back before the Cybermen vs Dalek epic finale. Utopia takes us to an alien planet at the end of the universe, distracting us from the cheap, old-school filming in a quarry by making it a pivotal "event" episode and giving us some cracking performances from regulars and the supporting cast. The first big hook was the return of Captain Jack, but he wasn't the only time-traveller from the Doctor's past making a reappearance. Although the episode probably didn't make enough of its end of the universe setting, it crackled into life in the final quarter of an hour with the return of the Master. Derek Jacobi masterfully manages the transition from kindly human Professor Yana to evil Time Lord, and John Simm is just electric as the regenerated Master in the final scenes.

The series finale goes bigger than ever before, with the Master actually succeeding in outsmarting the Doctor and taking over the world, and ready to start his takeover of the rest of the universe. Some fans seem to want a serious Master more like Jacobi, or Roger Delgado who first played the role, but I love John Simm's manic mirror-image of the Doctor, casually taking over the country and murdering the cabinet, stealing many of the best lines from the Doctor. It's a pity that after starting by defying supervillain convention by refusing to tell the Doctor all his plans so the Doctor can work out how to defeat him, the Master then falls into the trap of keeping all his opponents alive so that he can gloat. It's just a pity that the production team didn't stick to their guns and kill him off without the Flash Gordon-style "The End... or is it?!?" scene of someone (Lucy Saxon?) picking up his ring from the funeral pyre.

The "one year later" conceit allows for a refreshingly different post-apocalyptic setting for the final episode, though it makes it rather inevitable that Russell was going to hit the reset button by the end of the story. But he actually makes it work: the Paradox Device is set up in advance, and the characters have to struggle through a year of hell to put things back to normal. This is no easy victory.

And while the world is saved, there are consequences for all the characters: the death of the Master, the Doctor's loss both of his old enemy and Martha Jones as she leaves him, Martha taking charge of her life and giving up on her unrequited love for the Doctor, and her family needing to face up to what they've all been through. While it doesn't quite manage to pack the same punch as the Ninth Doctor's regeneration or Rose's departure, it finishes off the series in fine style.

Now that's my episode-by-episode analysis, but what of the themes of the series? One of the big themes of the revived Doctor Who is the question of "what does it mean to be human?", which was explored more in this series than ever before. It crops us for the first time in Smith and Jones with the Judoon cataloguing people as human or not human. The Doctor describes Shakespeare as "the most human human who ever lived", while Professor Lazarus set out to "change what it means to be human" with disastrous consequences.

Daleks in Manhatten has Dalek Sec attempting to create Dalek/human hybrids, leading to a discussion of what defines humanity - is it our compassion, creativity and the like, or our aggression, our propensity for self-destruction and war? Human Nature faces the Doctor with the choice - the life of a Time Lord, a wandering lonely god, or the life of a human, to have a wife and family, and to grow old and die. This is one of the things the show does best - by showing us all these monsters and aliens, casting a fresh light on our own nature as humans.

This series also saw the development of the Doctor as a messiah-figure. From the Doctor's own incarnation as a human being and his heart-wrenching choice to end his life as a human to save the world in Human Nature, to Martha walking the world spreading the Gospel of the Doctor in Last of the Time Lords, the Christ-like parallels have rarely been more blatantly drawn. Is this just to give a bit of extra mythic zing to the show, or is something more going on?

Russell T Davies seems to be deliberately giving Christian imagery a humanist spin. The whole world saying "Doctor" in the finale was very prayer-like, but it inverted the Christian idea of prayer, where power comes from the one being prayed to, God. Here, power came from those "praying", from humanity's combined psychic power, which the Doctor attunes himself to using the Master's telepathic field. It's a homage to the power and potential of humanity, to hope as a source of strength in itself.

Arguably, however, the show gives a lopsided view of humanity, showing its potential for great good, which is undoubtedly true and one of the real strength of the show, but without dealing honestly with our corresponding capacity for great evil. Although the show's monsters are often warnings of what humanity could become, it would be interesting to see the show pick up on the idea in The Christmas Invasion where the Doctor says he ought to have warned the Sycorax to "Run and hide because the monsters are coming: the human race." But overall, Doctor Who's broad humanism is one of the great things about it, and Russell T Davies resists the temptation to make it an explicitly and exclusively secular humanism.

To return to the original question, they didn't just keep up the quality of Doctor Who in series 3, but surpassed it. There's some concern over the casting of Catherine Tate as the new companion, but from only really seeing her in the Christmas special, I'm inclined to think it could be a lot of fun, as long as Donna is developed as a character. She seems unlikely to fall in love with the Doctor, which would get a bit repetitive a third time around. But if the last three series are anything to go by, series 4 of Doctor Who will continue to surprise and delight.

Doctor Who - New Series, new species part 5

Well I thought I'd have one more bash at this before Christmas, so I'll do my best to give as much info as I can on the species that appeared in the Doctor Who cartoon miniseries The Infinite Quest. Details on all the species featured are sketchy, most don't have names and some have only one individual to represent them, but I'll do my best anyway with the material I've got.

Baltazar










Baltazar was a pretty cool villain, a great take on a pirate scourge of the future. His end was a bit anticlimatic, with the quest of this evil genius turning out to be nothing more than a fool's errand. With many of the new creatures featured there's pretty much zero info on his species, I guess they just had no time to cram that kind of info into into the individual shorts.

Baltazar was a powerful pirate lord of an undefined species in the distant future. He had a typical humanoid frame and could almost be taken to be human where it not for his plan to annihalate the entire human race for profit! Baltazar seemed dependent on technology, notably a strange breathing aparatus - it's unlikely that this was for hazardous atmospheres as he wore it on his own ship so it could just be a personal health issue for him, possible related to his metallic claw hand. Little else points to his identity other than that he constructed a ship susceptible to bacteria and had an affinity for the robotic bird species Caw belonged to - even designing his ship after one - what this tells us about him is unclear.

Caw









Caw was an interesting one with his shifting loyalties an curious design. I wasn't too keen on the sentient robot at first, but then my enthusiasm for the upcoming Transformers flick made me give them a chance!

Caw, and his son Sqwak belonged to a species of robotic birds that had their own civilization in the distant future. Despite their robotic natures they posessed many signs of life (intelligence, eating, growing, offspring) to qualify them as a sentient species. They were dependant of gold for life and were thus obsessed by it, the promise of gold enough to sway their loyalty. They grew from small creatures that could fit in a hand to a human sized bird in a few years, provided they had enough gold to keep their reactors burning. They come from the planet Pharos, which was swarming with similar mechanoids when the doctor visited it so the species may be "Pharosians" or something similar but this hasn't been confirmed.

Animated Skeletons










I'm not sure if these qualify as a species but they're probably worth a mention. I get the feeling they were put in just so the crew could make a "skeleton crew" gag. However their desire for skin made them interesting enough to watch.

In the future on the planet Bouken where war was always close over dwindling oil supplies humanity found a solution to crew employment. they were able to reanimate skeletons so they could think independently and serve without needing to spend money and food and comforts. Captain Kaliko, a pirate fighting the powerful oil firms, employed a crew of these forms. However she found a downside to them, the temptation of getting a new fleshy body was enough to tempt away these servants.

Anuran










The Anuran known as Meergrass was an interesting character, but I'm probably the least interested in his species as he was essentially a "green human" (my term) - a character shoved into a lizard suit just to make things a bit more interesting - though I suppose it made sense since he was supplying arms against humans.

Meergrass belonged to a saurian species known as Anurans from the water covered world of Anura and was a weapons dealer. He had no interest in war, only in getting paid and so turned his back on those he was supplying when they refused to pay, leaving them unarmed. It hasn't been verified whether this is exemplary of his species, or just good business sense.

Mantasphids











This species were probably the most interesting of the bunch, moving from good guys to bad guys and back again. I liked the perspective on what resources mattered with them ready to fight a war over something considered distasteful to humanity and humanity struggling to get light and heat, which the Mantasphids created naturally.

Mantasphids were an insect species that invaded the world Myarr for the resources, particularly animal dung, which contained the nutrients that they needed. The species varied in size from miniature insects to the queen which dwarfed a human. They despised the "fleshy bipeds" (also known as humans) that occupied the world and engaged in war against them for the resources they needed. It took the Doctor's intervention to broker peace between them and humanity so they could share resources for each other's mutual benefit.

Well that's it, like I said it's sketchy, but the best I can do under the circumstances and I hope it's been interesting enough. There'll be another Vehicle of the week coming up soon and I've spotted a few draft articles from my co-writers so hopefully things will keep going.

Vehicle of the Week 7 - Pillar of Autumn

This week's vehicle represents the Science Fiction world of HALO, which I have blogged about before. This greatly thought out game, which was used to launch the X-box way back when, has infuriated me due to the difficulty in getting it, especially with Mr Gates using the success of the games to try and force players to buy his latest operating systems or consoles. But nonetheless I played and thoroughly enjoyed both games and I'm eagerly looking forward to the release of Halo3 and Halo Wars to see the conclusion of the exciting and mystifying war.

Pillar of Autumn
















Halcyon class cruiser
Length: 1,170 metres
Speed: Slipspace drive installed
Weaponry: Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, mutliple missile launchers
Affiliation: United Nations Space Command
Captain: Jacob Keyes

This ship has it all. Power, armamaents, a cool design and above all a very cool name. How the crew came up with Pillar of Autumn as the name for the main spaceship (in fact it's the only named spaceship in the first HALO game) I have no idea, but it works and makes the imaginitive names of other genres look like they were drawn out of a hat without thought. The design is great too- far more boxy than many would dare to design, but it works the whole ship looks like a weapon...which it is! Lastly an added bonuc to understand a ship is being able to walk around it - something HALO gives right from the start as you gun your way past alien boarding parties to get to the bridge, which is unbeliavably cool. From the glowing information panels to the gun turret you have to climg down to it feels like a real space ship right through, as computer games will inevitably be a much bigger part of how Sci-Fi expands I think the Autumn sets the bar fairly high.

The Halcyon class cruiser was outdated by the time war between humanity and the union of alien races known as the Covenant broke out. Had the war not put all humanity in great danger the class would have been decomissioned before one Halcyon and it's crew would play a critical role in the war. The design was succeeded by the Marthon class which had a similar design but greater firepower and durability, but the need for resources kept several Halcyons on the front line, fitted with hasty reconstructions to make up for design flaws. These ships, while outdated and in some ways flawed, served well during the war.

The Pillar of Autumn, refitted for war was stationed at the colony world of Reach, and was one of only two ships to escape when it fell, carrying a very precious cargo - one of the Spartan 2 super soldiers known as the Master Chief. Protocol demanded that the ship make a random Slipstream jump to protect Earth's location, but the ship's onboard AI engineered the jump so that the ship came out near an alien artifact she'd heard of. The ship came out by the planet of Threshold where instalation 04, otherwise known as Halo was located. Fighting off a far superior force as well as boarding parties the ship managed to crash land on the installation - a large, inward facing, ring covered in luch terrain and dotted with strange temples. Fighting broke out as the survivors of the ship fought against alien invaders and then a new parasitic threat known as the flood which posessed members of both races turning them into horrific soldiers. The Master Chief realised the full scale of the threat and uncovered the mystery of the flood, an ancient race and the most dangerous threat in the universe. So he initiated the Autumn's last act in the war - self destruction to destroy the installation and end the threat of the Flood as well as taking out a large portion of Covenant troops.

But then, Halo was known as Installation 04 for a reason...

My thanks to the Halo Wiki which I've basically plaguerised!!

Doctor Who - New Series, new species part 4

So this is the last one for this series of Doctor Who, though I hope to make one for the Infinite Quest series too. I'm planning to do a bunch of articles on Star Wars Legacy and then some on the Science Fictioney aspects of Lost once I've caught up on series three. So let's have no more ado eh?
















Weeping Angel

The Weeping Angels were brilliant in my opinion, and it was great to see how such a simple device - moving a statue (actually a person in a very detailed suit) closer all of a sudden to scare the living daylights out of you. It's a testament to Sephen Moffat's (writer of the Gas Mask boy episodes and also the new series Jekyll) ability to put the Doctor Who audience back behind the sofa where they belong. The concept behind them was great as well, a really good SF device.

The Weeping Angels were an ancient race, from the dawn of the universe and were a bunch of ruthless, though at the same time merciful, killers. They fed of potential energy, and they found a good way to harvest this was to find a victim and shunt them into the past living off the energy that resided from the life they should have lived. This method of killing was cruel, though often the victim would find satisfaction and happiness in their new life.
Evidently not all their victims were so pleased with this idea so the Angels created a defense called quantum locking. whenever a living being saw them, they would instantly turn into stone, which meant they could not be killed. As soon as a victim looked away or blinked they could move with incredible speed to attack. This defense had a drawback, meaning that they could never look at each other or be locked in stone for eternity, a fate that met four angels who tried to cross the Doctor.
















Futurekind

The futurekind, were simple and obvious and yet somehow they worked. They presented a very obvious threat and the time old "what humanity might become" angle. Yet they coexisted with good old fashioned humans in the last days of the universe which made it more interesting, especially as they seemed to have a loathing of their possible progenitors.

The futureking were a race that existed in the closing days of the universe, living on the dead world of Malcassairo. Seemingly a deviant of humanity it was feared that they were what humanity might become if they did not escape to Utopia. Primitive creatures they resembled humans in everything except their sharp predatory fangs, but despite a very likely conection they loathed humanity and visciously hunted them down, the humans holding them off in armoured silos with what remained of their formerly advanced weaponry- which still bested the crude weapons of the futurekind. After the humans left for Utopia the fate of the futurekind is unknown.
















Malmooth

Cantho and her long lost race where quite cool, a reminder that there is a vast universe out there with all sorts of weird and wonderful beings interacting with humans. With her being the last of her species that was an obvious connection to the Doctor who turned out not to be the last member of his. The animatronic head and curious verbal rules made her an interesting addition.

The Malmooth were an insectoid race living on the planet Malcassairo in the final days of the universe. They were humanoid in body structure with a hard shell outer casing and flexible mandibles on their heads. They lived in giant warrens built into the natural rock formations of the planet. They exhibited curious social rules where each sentence had to begin and end with the first and last syllables of their name- presumable this made all Malmooth names two-syllabic. By the end of the Utopia project only one Malmooth remained, the scientist Chantho, and unfortunately the race ended completely when the Master killed her too. It is unknown whether the extinction of the rest of her species had anything to do with the arrival of the Futurekind...or even the humans.

Toclafane (human-cyborg mutation)












The Toclafane were a good addition to the show, particularly after their true nature was revealed. Their childlike nature made them intriguing as well as creepy, and to reveal that they were in fact the remnants of humanity made them extra eerie.

Named after a fairy tale moster of Gallifrey, the Toclafane were in fact the remnants of humanity who participated in the Utopia project. They found that the planet had no hope for them so they encased their heads in metal bodies, arming themselves with slicing blades and powerful laser beams and also creating a hive mind. The Master found them and, with the help of a Paradox machine they started to wipe out and subjugate the population of 21st century Earth. The only vulnerability they showed was to lightning, which could disable their electronic components. The Toclafane threat was eventually stopped with the destruction of the paradox machine the fate of the Toclafane and of humanity remains unknown.

Well that's your lot for this series, hope you enjoy it - I've certainly had fun doing these. Again I'd like to thank the Tardis Wiki which has been invaluable in reminding me of stuff I'd inevitably forget, as well as the official site for the great pictures.