Doctor Who: 5 Things To Learn From Classic Series & 5 Things That Are Better

4. Less Recurring Monsters, More Fantastic Aliens or New Races

So, the easiest way to make this point is to again look at (Who) history. The Tenth Doctor, over the course of 3 years and four specials, met the Daleks three times in double length episodes. The Cybermen got to share two of those and have two of their own in one YEAR (Plus a special.) But this pales with the Eleventh Doctor. Though standalone stories have been a bit more sparse, it's not uncommon for a Cyberman just to show up ("A Good Man Goes To War") or a Silurian to figure in incidentally (Counting Madame Vastra, they've shown up in SEVEN stories since their return in "The Hungry Earth". Really, why aren't they just co-existing with us by now?) Now in contrast, the Fourth Doctor (Who logged SEVEN series at the TARDIS controls) met the Daleks..... Twice. In Seven Years. Cybermen? Once. Sontarans? Twice. There are a host of monsters he never even met (The Ice Warriors and the aforementioned Silurians come to mind) despite having the longest tenure in the TARDIS. Even the Master only showed up in 3 stories over those seven years. Why is this significant? Because the Fourth Doctor has the most iconic STANDALONE monsters/villains. There's a reason Character Options' Action figures dote so heavily on his era, and Big Finish audios return creatures who only showed up once - Likely you've heard of most of them: Morbius, Sutekh the Destroyer, The Giant Robot, The Zygons, the Wirrn, Scaroth of the Jagaroth, Mr Sin and Magnus Greel, The Krynoids - Geez, even Meglos!

And to be fair, the Third before him also had several very memorable creatures that are considered classic. (Drashigs, Draconians, Mutts, The Metebelis III Spiders) And they showed up once. He met the Daleks 3 times in 5 years. And NEVER met the Cybermen. Everyone loves their favourites coming back. But if it's not done well, it somewhat dilutes the power of those creatures - Or makes them seem very easily defeated. The Davies era of the New Series continually brought back the supposedly extinct Daleks en masse only to have to hit a reset button every time the Doctor defeated them. (In fairness, the Moffat era has somewhat redressed this problem.) Bringing them back only every so often makes their return an EVENT. And usually, it means that whatever setback they suffered last time took them awhile to rebound from. But it also makes the universe seem smaller. In the same way we don't get to see all of time and space, we also don't get to see the many aliens and adversaries the Doctor has. And some of those stories have to be worth telling too. No, they aren't guaranteed blockbusters like the Daleks or the Weeping Angels. But the more those Angels come back, the more those rules seem to change for them, don't they? It's almost like a different alien/threat would make things simpler for the story at hand..... Rather than just putting the Angels there instead. Because they're popular.

Come on, Doctor Who. Even in hard times in the 80's the show ended up limiting the Cybermen and the Daleks to one appearance per Doctor in its regular series. It simply was felt it didn't need them to make the stories great (And often, they were).