With the competition to win a copy of Chicks Unravel Time at my fine co-editor’s blog now over, you might be wondering (if you’re not the winner anyway) where on Earth you can get your own physical copy of this nifty keen book. Well, it’s back in stock at Amazon.com! (For the time being at least.) And there’s a competition in this month’s Doctor Who Magazine where you can win one of five copies they’re giving away. (They also give us rather a nice review.)
Or you can enter a giveaway right here where you can win not only a copy of Chicks Unravel Time, but a copy of Chicks Dig Time Lords (it won a Hugo award, y’know)*and* some lolarious Doctor Who tat top notch Doctor Who merchandise. Of what merchandise do I speak?
This merchandise:
The winner of this lovely giveaway will be the lucky recipient of their very own Cybermat! Now you can begin to build a Cybermat army to take over the world, planetoid or moon of your choice! With Motorised Tail Action this little critter is a sure first step on your road to Evil Overlordship!
And if that’s not enough electronic minion goodness for you, there’s also a K-9 of the BOBBING HEAD variety. That’s right! Issue your directives to take over the universe and K-9 will NOD HIS HEAD IN AGREEMENT! What more could the budding evil overlord possibly ask for?
If you’d like to enter this giveaway, simply reply to either this blog post, or the Facebook post in the Chicks Unravel Time group about this giveaway telling me your favourite Doctor Who monster. The winner will be randomly chosen after the competition closes.
But if you’re the ambitious sort, and you’d like two chances to win, then also tell my why your favourite monster is your favourite monster. I shall judge these answers on my own personal criteria of The Best Answer (which may include any or all of the following: wit, heartfeltness, funniness, movingness, ridiculousness, accuracy, absurdity, and sparkliness.) The winner of this bonus giveaway will receive a copy of Chicks Unravel Time and a copy of Chicks Dig Time Lords along with this TARDIS mini-set:
Tiny wee Doctor! Tiny wee Amy! Make her speak Scottish! (Or don’t…mocking the Scots can have dire consequences, as you may know from such televisual delights as Braveheart, that well known historical documentary.) Build your own TARDIS! Now, I don’t know if the tiny TARDIS *actually* travels in time and space… but I’m not going to rule it out.
So reply right here (or at our Facebook page) and let me know your favourite monster to enter the giveaway. Tell me why they’re your favourite if you’d like a bonus chance to win!
This competition will close on the 1st of December. Winners will be announced by the end of 3rd December (that’s midnight GMT). Open to anyone, anywhere on the planet. If you’re a Moonite resident on the Moon I’m terribly sorry but all our rockets are currently being repaired.
Lizbeth Myles 
My favorite?
The robot mummies from Pyramids of Mars. They terrified me the first time I saw them, and they were a brilliant idea to me once they stopped being scary. Combining Egyptian mummies with SF is peanut butter mixing with my chocolate.
I think Weeping Angels, but only their first appearance… every appearance after the first made them less scary. For stupidest I’d chose The Silence, hands down.
Although he may not technically qualify as monster – my favorite is The Dream Lord from the episode Amy’s choice.
Admittedly, that can be a somewhat insipid episode (with its dream-horror and with a somewhat predictable exit from the dream worlds). And yet, The Dream Lord is a convincingly creepy manifestation of the darkest parts of the doctor. He is insidious and therefore, a potent Bad. He is inescapable and all the more menacing for it. And so it is that The Dream Lord gets my vote for favorite monster.
My favourite Doctor Who monsters are the Tractators.
Yes, really, the Tractators. Firstly, because their ridged carapaces remind me of carpet bugs and I used to love playing with carpet bugs when I was a kid. Secondly because their faces remind me of Sir John Tenniel’s Jabberwock, and I also loved Alice in Wonderland as a kid. Thirdly because they epitomize the spirit of Classic Who monsters to me, in being a brilliant idea tragically limited by a low F/X budget. Fourthly because they somehow managed to be genuinely frightening and formidable in spite of all the above — the idea of creatures who can literally suck you into the earth with their gravitational powers and create a gravity motor to drive the whole planet at will was fantastic.
And also that was the ep in which Five got to wear his Brainy Specs and shout at people, so basically I am weak for Frontios and everything in it. (But biased as my opinion might be, the Tractators are still awesome. So there.)
Perhaps it is cheating, but I am going to argue that my favorite monster is the Doctor himself. He is responsible for the annihilation for at least one race of beings, he compels people to self sacrifice, and he battles with his own conscience. I think he thinks himself a monster, and I think, rightfully so.
I think the best (scariest) Dr Who baddie is the Chief Clown and his mechanical clown posse in the The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. I hate clowns and this one really freaked me out. I still hate watching that group. In the newer ones, I really was creeped out by the beetle on Donna’s back in Turn Left. It is really freaky because she can’t really see it and who wants a big bug on them? Right?
My favorite are the Silence. Why? Because they—wait what am I doing here?
Magnus Greel from The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Magnus Greel, Minister of Justice and “the Butcher of Brisbane”. Greel a desperate man, fleeing from his crimes and attempting to make himself whole. Greel killed without mercy and like a coward he fled, which cost him his body. Growing even more frantic as his body fell apart, Greel collected people who worshiped him and his futuristic ways as a God. But unlike many other villains love and worship wasn’t enough for Greel, he needed his body and began to kill again.
Greel is a cold hearted killer that flaunted power and the title of God in the face of those beneath him. Devotion and human life meant nothing to him, that is why I love to hate Magnus Greel.
The scarecrows in Human Nature. The way they move is just so creepy and relentless.
My favourite monster? The robot in ‘Robot’. So crummily CGI’d, but yet so movingly filmed, you can’t help loving him. (And yes, the ‘King Kong’ homage helps.)
The Weeping Angels would be my favorite monster. They’re creepy and I like the idea that any statue can be an angel. And I have to admit, they terrified me even before I watched Blink. I went to visit a school campus a few years back, with my class – college, I suppose it’s was it’d be called – and they had several statues, and I just couldn’t help but stare at them when we walked past. And this was still before I watched the ep. Actually watching it I only did shortly before s5 begun airing, because I wanted to be all caught up and properly aquainted, knowing they’d be in that season. I have to say, I find them to just get creepier. Zapping you back in time? Not so bad, albeit bad enough. But then they just got worse and worse and well. Here we are. ^^
My favorite villain (more of an anti-hero, perhaps) is Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All. He rules over Not Mum, Also Not-Mum, and Peasants, his voice has such power it can even unwrite Cyber-conversion, and he looks darn adorable in a pastel onesie.
I love the Vashta Nerada because they were actually scary using something so simple as shadows and not over-the-top or overused. Especially creepy how they repeated phrases over and over. Especially creepy how they repeated phrases over and over. Especially creepy how they repeated phrases over and over.
I like the Macra from The Macra Terror. They remind me so much of crabs, and crabs are creepy, so any monster that proves the creepiness of crabs automatically wins some points with me. Besides, they’re scary, effective, and intelligent. I just wish the full episodes still existed so we could see the Macra in all their glory.