Doctor Who owes its success to the strange alchemy of a few things: smashing together sci-fi and horror tropes, lots of protagonists running through rock quarries, and actors in rubber monster suits. This formula has worked so well that it has forced a majority of British youth to watch from behind their living room sofas. It’s a mix that has fit the show well during its fifty-plus year tenure, and this week’s episode, Orphan 55, was no different.

After their run-in with the newest incarnation of The Master, played exceptionally manic by Sacha Dhawan, The Doctor and company are beyond knackered. Luckily, Bradley Walsh’s Graham wins an exclusive holiday at the high-end outer space Tranquility Spa. This vacation is cut short though by an invading hoard of mutant beasts hiding just beyond the resort’s holographic walls. These bipedal beasts invade the alien resort and begin feasting on crowds of holidaymakers in bucket hats and Bermuda shorts.

It’s no secret that many Doctor Who fans have been clamoring for familiarity. Series Eleven offered fans a run of episodes without a single returning foe or alien. For others, this writer included, it was a welcome change of pace that gave us new villains and creatures to fall in love with. While this new season is attempting to balance the scale, bringing back villains and aliens like The Master and Judoon, it’s always a welcome sight when a creature like this week’s, the Dreg, makes their Doctor Who debut. 

The inclusion of the Dreg offers some of the best makeup and creature design the show has seen in quite some time.

Compared to the ghostly CGI Kasaavin from the previous episode, the Dreg are a feast for the eyes of monster loving Doctor Who fans. Donned head to toe, the performers rocked a full-body costume featuring an exquisitely frightening headpiece. The dedication of Doctor Who‘s costume and makeup team shows in the Dreg’s appearance, and the camera obviously can’t get enough of it. Where many episodes choose the Jaws route and hide the monster whenever possible, this episode showcased the exceptional design as much as it could, with staggering jump cuts to their horrifying forms whenever possible. 

In terms of inspiration, The Doctor remarks that the Dreg are apex predators, able to adapt to anything thrown at them. The Alien comparisons are unavoidable, but the design team has done a great job to craft a monster that both honors what’s come before while innovating a new take on the idea. Unlike the sleek black domed head of the Xenomorphs, the Dreg are ghostly pale and retain their humanoid build. Their extended snout harkens to the additional biting tongue of the Xenomorph, but feel far more ape-like, hinting at the twist reveal to come in the final act.

Underneath the ferocious exterior of the lead Dreg is an alum of Doctor Who, Spencer Wilding. A longtime cast member of the sci-fi series, Wilding has played several monsters and villains including the Minotaur in Series Six’s The God Complex and Skaldak the Ice Warrior in Series Seven’s Cold War. Outside of Doctor Who, Wilding has utilized his imposing physicality to bring back everyone’s favorite Sith Lord Darth Vader in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If anyone was going to be cast to play a gargantuan mutated monster, you would be hard-pressed to find a better fit than Wilding. His hulking presence is excellently realized. While he spends most of the episode chasing and roaring after fearing guests, one faceoff between himself and Jodi Whittaker’s Doctor displays a far more patient and predatory nature, which feels far scarier than the rest of his performance.

While the Dreg appear to be anything but human, their bipedal and human-like muscle structure turns out to be far from a coincidence. The planet that the spa has been built on, named Orphan 55 due to its abandonment, is none other than a future version of Earth, ravaged by war, climate change, and nuclear fallout. The Dreg are the surviving human race that has mutated and adapted to the harsh environment of this atomic winter. 

Though Ed Hime’s writing is far from elegant, wasting a powerful critique on the state of our planet for the final few minutes, the reveal includes some eye-opening implications for the inspiration and design style of the Dreg. The idea of humans mutating into strange alien-like creatures isn’t a new one for the series. The Curse of Fenric and Last of the Timelords both explored similar ideas, but Orphan 55 utilized the trope to really drive home its environmental horror. An alien force like The Master didn’t genetically manipulate these monsters. The Dreg are a monster of our own design.

In many ways, the episode and the Dreg themselves feel like an ultimate throwback to not only classic Doctor Who tropes, but aesthetics and themes that have defined a lot of pulpy time travel and science fiction narratives. The episodes explore the cataclysmic warnings of what could happen to Earth centuries from now if we don’t diverge from our current path, with the Dreg standing in for H. G. Wells’ Morlocks. This terrifying race of beasts embodies the worst of us, scrambling by any means for survival. It just so happens that their hunger for life has turned their exteriors into an image to match said instincts. 

Orphan 55 was a muddled mess of a narrative, but the Dreg’s presence made the strange character choices and pacing worth it. While you sit pondering what in god’s name is actually happening on the screen, at least bask in the glory of these gorgeously horrifying new Doctor Who baddies. Their beautifully sculpted costumes paired with the powerfully hulking presence of the actors behind them is sure to please current and future Doctor Who fans for years to come. Perhaps, if they are as lucky as the Daleks or the Ood, the Dreg will return to face off against the Doctor and their companions again.

Maybe give the script another look over next time.