For me, when I was a kid, there was one reason I watched Doctor Who. Not the TARDIS, not the Doctor, not even the time travel, but the monsters. Each storyline, the big thrill would be the monster reveal — sometimes terrifying, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes, er, disappointing (1). I loved the monsters; I wanted to know more about them as species in a wider universe. In just the same way, I liked the cantina creatures and the bounty hunters in Star Wars, and the lizard-man guy from Battle Beyond the Stars. And I'm not alone in feeling the rubbery pull of Who's vast assembly of adversaries. The show's expanded universe, which was the backbone of Who for all the long lean years between McCoy and Eccleston, has done a lot of exploring in the universe of the Time Lords, casting and recasting familiar faces and races in various lights. Below, though, I pen a few words giving my take on how some of the old favourites have fared since the show rematerialised on the small screen back in 2005. Oh — and spoilers for the most recent series, yes, even the last episode. Especially the last episode. Go watch that first, if you're gonna.

Bit Part Players

There are a whole load of cameos, one-episode call backs to beasties that mostly only got an episode back in the day — hard to draw much of a conclusion for most of them, but I will mourn the degeneration of the mind-controlling crab-monster Macra into glorified filter feeders (Gridlock). On the other hand the Ice Warriors, sometime allies as well as foes, got a nice star turn in Cold War and the Zygons even find a kind of redemption in The Day of the Doctor. Why do we love the Zygons so much, weird baby-proportioned bobble-heads that they are? I have no idea. I didn't even see the Loch Ness Monster episode, I only read the Target novellization, and I still loved the Zygons. Baffling.

Daleks

I don't need to do the Daleks, do I? Most iconic and long-running of all Who aliens — possibly one of the most alien, too — constantly reinvented and revised even during the currency of the original run, the new series has given them a variety of good outings, starting with Rob Shearman's excellent Dalek all the way to the recent Into the Dalek (2) (3). Daleks in the new run are basically more kickass than ever — after all they fought the actual Time Lords to a standstill, and arguably survived the Time War better than their enemies. OK, so they've had their hiccups. I wasn't mad on the United Colours of Dalek myself, but overall they're almost the poster child for an old Who adversary writ large in the new series.

Autons

I should say that my Who Fu is not impeccable, so I'm going to make some statements of fact that will be bitterly derided in the comments. So, the Autons were in… two stories from Pertwee's run, I think. Plastic men controlled by an ethereal space squid. What's not to love? A good choice for Ecclestone's first foe, a hark back to the old days without going over ground that was already too well trodden. And then we had the Roman Autons for that Pandorica business, which gave them realistic accessories and therefore kind of made them into the greatest action figures the world never had. Anyone else wish Rory had stayed on as an Auton? If nothing else it might have added an unending number of "toy boy" jokes to the Amy/Rory relationship…

Silurians

My favourites. Even though I never saw any Pertwee stories on the telly, still my favourites. I read the Target book by Malcolm Hulke (I think?) and fell in love. It might just have been that they were lizard men, a concept for which I've always had a soft spot. On the other hand it might have been that, in the book, they were given a whole lot of depth and characterisation. They weren't just about coming over here and invading our planet; they were about retaking their planet. It makes a lot of difference. Silurians seem to have been a big fan favourite in the expanded universe, and the generally sympathetic fan outlook surely informed their new outing in Hungry Earth/Cold Blood — I wasn't necessarily convinced that that story, as it was left, would lead to any human/Silurian détente, but the Silurian concept has gone on in leaps and bounds through the series — we've had Silurian ark-ships in space, and we've had the redoubtable Madame Vastra kicking butts and taking names. In all, the Silurians have had a more positive image shift than any of the old-style aliens. I still want to see a future-set story with a joint human/Silurian space colony (not as the focus of the story, but just because that's the future) but… well, who knows?

Sontarans

It's actually hard to top Linx, the original Sontaran from the Time Warrior. He might have been a bad guy, but he had a lot of style, and again, the Target book gave him considerable depth (Invisible Enemy was, I think, my first Who on TV — anything before that I knew from the books, and I read the books of ones I've watched too, so small wonder its those books that lodged in my mind).  Kind of like Star Trek and various other SF properties, the universe of Who is basically full of an enormous number of genocidal warrior races, because that makes for a useful sort of story. It's a very limited  characterisation, and yet the Sontarans have kind of followed a Klingon-style trajectory where psychopathy turns into warrior honour, and warrior honour turns them eventually from implacable foes into semi-comic friends. Or Strax, as he's known. Strax aside, I don't think his race get a better deal in the new than they did in the old, but then it's hard to to better than old Linx anyway.

The Master

The new series kind of has a hand tied behind its back here, because what it can't have is Roger Delgado. I wasn't quite caught by John Simm's Master, and although Michelle Gomez was superb, I think I kind of preferred the saturnine plotting Master to the Crazy-go-nuts vibe the new series has, and the more localised (aka low budget) evil of Pertwee's nemesis compared to the "I shall transform everyone on earth into a…" global threat of the new. But this, I think, is just me being old. Being old and loving the performance of Delgado. What're you gonna do?

Cybermen

Aaaaaand yes. Cybermen. I always liked the Cybermen. I love the old creepy Troughton-era undead-looking Cybermen, and I remember the box-headed guys that replaced them very fondly. I cried during Earthshock and I was kind of put off by the mass scenes of cybercarnage in Five Doctors. And then we have the new crop, in all their armoured shininess. Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel worked well with the alternative origin story (how many times have the cybermen arisen?) and although it didn't make much sense, I guess I can't really complain about the same hard-shelled look being standard every time they come back (although they seem less scary to me, when you make them that much more robot). But oh, of all the old bad guys, how the mighty have fallen! Poor cybermen, trash-talked by Daleks, and then they can't even convert James Corden because if you really really don't want to become a cyberman, that's apparently a trump card. Even when they go up against Capaldi, it's not really a Cyberman story; they're just an appendix to Missy's conquests. I know that there's some division over Gaiman's Nightmare in Silver (4), but imho that's been the only outing the poor bastards have had that's made them a credible galactic threat. Poor bloody cybermen. But then maybe they've had their day. Transhumanism is a thing now, in SF, after all. The idea of becoming a machine, of living eternal within cold steel and circuitry is something the genre no longer views with unalloyed (sorry) horror. Perhaps the idea of the evil unfeeling cyborg army is finally ready to be sealed in its tomb…

(1) Although some of the monsters that look most dodgy now were the most terrifying then. The stories I remember really scaring me include Invisible Enemy, Power of Kroll and Creature from the Pit.

(2) Not Journey to the Centre of the Dalek as I thought it was called all the way up to writing this.

(3) Which weirdly managed to be a shout-out both to Dalek and to Invisible Enemy.

(4) There is division over every single damn episode. After every Saturday that Capaldi was on I'd pop on FB and a different set of people would be declaring "Worst episode ever!" apparently at random.