1. The Fendahl From Image Of The Fendahl (1977)
The designers who got that script with the Rutan in it weren't the same ones who worked on this story, which aired only four weeks later, but I'm betting they ran into much the same problem: "OK, Visual Effects finally got the last of those snake-dick creatures done for the latest Doctor Who, but we still need to come up with a makeup for the Fendahl herself. Anyone got any ideas?" "Well, we could go for something that makes her look related to the Fendahleen - why not give her a snake's head? Or better yet, snakes in her hair like Medusa?" "Too expensive, and besides, they already did something like that in The Mind Robber. We need to do this on the cheap, boys." "...I've got it! Let's put her in a fancy gown, do her face up all in gold makeup, have her close her eyes, and then paint giants eyes on her eyelids!" "...Eh, why not. Maybe someone'll use the idea again in a year or three." And yes, they did, in The Keeper of Traken, but it didn't work so well there. And really, it had no business working here, either. The Fendahl, when she finally appears after three episodes of build-up, is clearly poor Wanda Ventham in gold makeup trying desperately to act with her eyes closed and with these great big honking eyes painted on her eyelids. Any seven-year old (as I would've been at the time) should be able to see through it. But...those snakey dick thingies, the Fendahleen, are pretty scary by themselves, as puppet-like as they are, and there's something about watching a perfectly normal human woman transform via the magic of lock and rollback (or whatever the technical term is) into a quite alien-looking woman, having her levitate upwards into a standing position, and then just
look at you and smile just...like...this:
Yeah, that's enough to make even a grown man say, "Oh, poopie." It's things like this that makes us love Doctor Who so much: the ability to scare the living beejesus out of us with a few subtle camera angles, some simple makeup work that isn't so simple at all, and a well-written story (and sometimes, we don't even need the well-written story).