10 Things Doctor Who Should Never Have Got Away With

9. The Fat Just Walks Away

By the time new Who entered its fourth year, the audience thought it knew what to expect from the monsters. Probably any new alien menace would be a terrifying high-concept nightmare (the Weeping Angels, the Clockwork Robots), a pseudo-animal (rhino people, cat people), a CGI horror (Krillitanes, Reapers) or a Dalek. Jaws dropped and eyes boggled, therefore, when season opener Partners in Crime introduced the Adipose, a race of tiny, cute things (apparently) inspired by the dolls from the Vauxhall Corsa adverts. To make matters zanier, the Adipose were made out of fat (rather appropriately, too given their name). The story showed these adorable yet deadly little aliens forming from the excess body fat of dieters suckered into taking an innocuous-looking pill. In nauseating scenes sure to make the average 10 year old giggle, one poor woman is seen on screen dissolving entirely into waddling fat-creatures, one of whom then waves cheekily at the camera before disappearing through the bathroom window. The Adipose work because they are a one off. There€™s no other Doctor Who monster before or since which is anything like them. The show has often dipped into the body horror genre as arms transformed into green bubble wrap and men peeled off their scalps to reveal the Ood beneath, but writer Russell T Davies created something unique in this story. You wouldn€™t want to see them again, though, any more than Star Trek would have benefited from making the Tribbles a recurring threat.