Editorials
Meet the Dreg: The Latest Monsters to Terrorize the World of “Doctor Who”
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.
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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