2. Frankenstein's Monster
Frankenstein's monster, which first appeared in a Universal Pictures film in the 1931 classic "Frankenstein", has been alluded to on a small number of occasions in the Whoniverse. In "The Chase" - an adventure in which the First Doctor starred - the Doctor finds himself in what was then an advanced form of a haunted house from the Festival of Ghana in 1996 (which was, of course, the fairly distant future during the First Doctor's time on screen). While he is being chased through said house of horrors by the Daleks, a robot version of Frankenstein's monster, whom the Doctor had encountered earlier in the episode, reappears and starts attacking and destroying the Daleks, allowing the Doctor the necessary time to retreat to the TARDIS and escape. One of the Fourth Doctor's adventures, "The Brain of Morbius", was heavily influenced by the story of Frankenstein's monster. Morbius was a corrupt and evil Time Lord criminal whose disembodied brain was being kept alive in a large vat of liquid. Mehendri Solon, a respected and genius scientist, had gone mad and joined an order/cult called the Followers of Morbius. At the request of Morbius (who could still speak as a disembodied brain thanks to being wired up to some technology), Solon would build him a body so that he could properly live again. Solon put together a mish-mash of alien parts (pictured above) - much in the same way Frankenstein's monster was put together - and he wanted the Doctor's head for the final piece of the jigsaw (of course, that doesn't happen and the Doctor would ultimately defeat both the scientist and his ghastly creation). A Frankenstein's monster related incident also occurred when the Seventh Doctor regenerated in to the Eighth Doctor in the imaginatively titled "Doctor Who" story. As the Doctor awakens in a morgue, having been thought dead, prior to his regeneration, it is notable that the morgue attendant, Pete, is watching the 1931 Universal classic "Frankenstein" to which we referred in the opening paragraph of this page.