Doctor Who: 10 Special Effects That Totally Sucked

8. The Lazarus Creature

The new series has been able to do something the classic one never could, create creatures completely in the computer and then put them digitally into the action. Largely this has worked and, if the effects have been less than ideal, the producers have normally managed to minimise their impact (the quick horror of the CG Slitheen, for example). However, they had little wiggle room in The Lazarus Experiment, a jolly Pertwee-like tale from David Tennant's second season. This is the one where Mark Gatiss plays the old scientist (married to Corrie's Thelma Barlow!) who goes into his rejuvenation chamber, comes out a normal Mark Gatiss but then turns into a giant scorpion thingamajig. Effects company The Mill try their best but the brief is just beyond them. The actual monster isn't that bad but the problem is that it's supposed to have a version of Gatiss' face stuck on the front of it and this is comically awful. It's as if someone has doodled a face on a carrier bag and stuck it over the monster. The Lazarus creature also seems to have taken more Botox than the Montenegro entry for this year's Eurovision Song Contest, so immobile is its expression.