In 1970, the story Doctor Who and the Silurians, written by Malcom Hulke and aired on the BBC, presented a new species to the vast universe of Doctor Who. Only this time, these creatures seemed to have a valid and ancient right to the ownership of planet Earth.

The Silurians are a reptilian humanoid species. They were the natural inhabitants of prehistoric Earth. They were a civilised species that was more technologically advanced than humans today.

Some Silurian tribes went underground in hibernation when the moon was formed as they thought it was on a crash course to Earth. Others stayed on the surface, mingled with dinosaurs and explored the unknown.

New Times, New Villians

The Silurians added something different to the show as they considered humans as the invaders of their land. This resulted in the two races having to negotiate an agreement for both species to cohabit on the surface of Earth.

In the Silurians’ TV debut Doctor Who and the Silurians, the Third Doctor was exiled on Earth with a TARDIS broken by the Time Lords. On Earth, he worked as the Scientific Advisor for UNIT and drove around in a car called Bessie.

Green Aliens in your Future

In the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart game, the ability to draw cards or to see the future is given to the different psychics, academics, time travellers or very curious characters. The Curious Paleontologist draws a card for you if you control another Silurian or Dinosaur.

The Psych Patient, who went mad after witnessing a dinosaur in a cave in the 20th century, draws the next Silurian from your future. In addition to the card drawing mechanics, the Silurians offer a broad variety of positive effects for your card deck to combine with.

Many Silurian have direct synergy with Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, especially the T-Rex and the Ankylosaurus Pack, are big creatures with many card stats. The Silurian Researcher can bring these creatures back from the past, and the Expert Dinosaur Tamer gives them extra card stats.

The first set of DW:WA cards explores the episodes The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood (2010). The main Silurian characters are all present: the warmongering Restac and her sister Alaya, the curious scientist Malohkeh and the patient leader, Eldane.

Odd (and lethal) fishes

This specific tribe of Silurians, hidden under the Welsh city, Cwmtaff, had the ability to stretch out their tongue in a venomous attack that would slowly kill the target. This ability has been converted to the keyword “Lethargic Poison”.

Lethargic Poison means that after a creature has taken damage from a Silurian with the keyword, the creature takes one additional damage and loses one attack, which adds to the variety of the Silurians.

The Silurians, when discovered by the Third Doctor in 1970, didn’t have that ability. Instead, they used a third eye located on their forehead to either stun enemies or break through concrete material with a high pitched noise.

The Lethargic Poison makes the Silurians quite useful to trade with the opponent’s creatures, since they can take on creatures bigger than themselves.

Poison, love and Harmony

There are different ways to play your Silurians: bring them all to your future and bring their dinosaur-friends with them in a scary deck that features big creatures and lots of different utilities to help you draw the next big creature.

Or, you could just bring Eldane, Tribe Leader in your pacifistic combo-deck. When Eldane is present, no organic creatures can attack. If you’re still unsure about the situation, you can use one or four Zygon Morphers to copy Eldane to completely freeze the game. Let’s just hope your opponent doesn’t play Daleks.

On the 8th of October, 1966, the BBC began airing the Doctor Who story, The Tenth Planet. These episodes featured the first on-screen regeneration of the Doctor.
They also introduced a new villain, the Cybermen, created by Dr. Kit Pedler.

A long time ago, Earth had a twin planet. It was called Mondas and was very much like it’s sibling, green and blue. The inhabitants of Mondas shared a parallel evolution with Earth and were inhabited by dinosaurs, Silurians and eventually humans.

Mondas and Earth also shared the same orbit around the sun, but when the Earth’s moon was formed, it forced Mondas onto a course away from both the Earth and the sun, making the conditions of life impossible - or at least human life.

In order for the Mondasians to survive they needed to adapt, and they eventually became what we know as Cybermen.

The Story of a Cyborg

The main problem for the humans from Mondas was that evolution couldn’t keep up with the fast changes in their environment. The scientists of Mondas had to rely on their knowledge to survive the dead and cold surroundings, so they upgraded the human bodies.

The scientists removed various organs and replaced them with technology and plastic.
To survive the bittercold reality, they removed the Cybermens’ emotions, as they would complicate their survival.The Cybermens’ ultimate goal is to upgrade every human to become like them.

Cybermen In-game

In the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart game, the Cybermen are part mechanical and part organic. They are all “the same” as their personality and character traits are deleted along with their emotions.

The way the game portrays the Cybermen is inspired by the scene in Doomsday (2006), in which a Cyberman gets upgraded to the new Cyber-Leader via a simple and quick download. Therefore, we have chosen to create more generic non-Companion Cybermen, for example a Cyber-Guard and a Cyber-Warrior rather than actual Cyber-companions.

Still, there are some exceptions: The Cyber-converted Bill Potts withstood her Cyber-Conversion and retained her emotions and opinions in the episodes World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls (2017).

You will be Upgraded!

“Upgrade” is a subtype to the Card Type called “Attachments”. Attachments are cards that represent weapons, technologies or wearables such as the “Dalek Gunstick”, “Chameleon Field” and the “Eleventh’s Fez”.

These Upgrades and Attachments have good synergies with the Cybermen, as the various leaders of different Cyber-fractions can distribute their knowledge to other Cybermen. The Cyber Leader and Cyber Controller both have positive synergies with Upgrades and can create a strong Cyber-Army to victory.

Old tech

The cybermen cards have great synergy with Attachments which add complexity to the Cybermen. The cards in a Cyber-deck have a purpose and must be played in the right order to give the Cyber-army the best outcome.

Cards such as “Disarm” and UNIT Cards with the Gather Intel-keyword, are great opponents against the Cybermen since they strip them off their Upgrades and use them against you. As Kate Lethbridge-Stewart told the Cybermen in London in 2014: “Sorry, you left this behind on one of your previous attempts.” (Death in Heaven, 2014)

“You will become like us”

The Cybermen are interesting in many ways. Dr. Kit Pedler, the creator of the Cybermen, created this species as a reaction to contemporary perception of biology and technology, but also to the ideas and beliefs of the future of the human race.

The Cybermen can make you reflect on how humans might end up in our future, considering the biotechnological improvements already made.

Doctor Who first presented The Daleks in the eponymously-titled story on the 21st of December, 1963. These villains are today considered one of the greatest enemies of the show’s protagonist the Doctor.

Created by Terry Nation, their personality and mindset are inspired by various groups of fascists throughout modern human history. A popular interpretation is that they portray an exaggeration and even a parody of the Nazis.

They have screaming, robotic voices and were designed with a gunstick pointing straight ahead, and a “plunger” always extending up into the air. What’s more, a single, iconic and menacing eyestalk that quite literally forces them to perceive the world through a narrow lens.

The Daleks’ philosophy is akin to that of the Nazis: races can be divided hierarchically, and the Dalek race is superior to everyone else. Their downright evil quest is to EX-TER-MI-NATE every other race in existence.

A generic Dalek card, the standard foot trooper in a TARDIS-frame.
Drawn by Kris Chua.

How to build a Dalek

In the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart game, the team has decided to give some Daleks the keyword “EXTERMINATE”. Which means that the Dalek automatically attacks a chosen target directly at the start of your turn.

In the series, Daleks want to exterminate everything that isn’t Dalek or which doesn’t have strategic value in their quest. Very often though, the Daleks’ orders to EXTERMINATE come from a leading Dalek or Davros, their creator.

Daleks are aggressive. They seek to exterminate the lives of their opponent entirely as quickly as possible.

The keyword, EXTERMINATE, makes the Dalek fight another specific creature in the beginning of your turn. This disables the Dalek for the rest of your turn. If the opponent can’t deliver what the Daleks want to kill, the Dalek can attack the opponent directly.

Daleks don’t exterminate each other. If you meet your opponent in a Dalek mirror-match, the present will be filled with Daleks who all refuse to exterminate each other. As they can’t find any non-Daleks other than you and your opponent, they will all begin exterminating you both.

Rebel Daleks

Though some Daleks have been blessed with a very extreme hate towards every other race, we’ve created some Daleks with other synergies:

As a counter card to the Daleks, the episode “Into the Dalek” (2014) introduces a “good” Dalek - Rusty. Rusty is a faulty Dalek and wants to exterminate every Dalek.

Rusty is physically and mentally equipped like every other Dalek and will therefore exterminate a Dalek every turn.

Daleks can show up in other circumstances.
A Rusty combo-ed with a Chula Nanogenes can turn every creature in the present into Rusty. Now watch them EXTERMINATE each other!

A Dalek Sec can transform into the Human-Dalek Hybrid by sacrificing a human, but it doesn’t have to be Mr. Diagoras from episodes Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks (2006).

Over 60 years of Doctor Who, we’ve learnt a lot about the Daleks. How they emerged as a species, the Thousand Year War against the Thals, the Movellans, the Time War and many more. We’ve also learnt that there is a genetically engineered being with an eye and tentacles inside the casing.

Daleks are Superior

When you’ve watched, read or listened to Doctor Who, you’ll know that a Dalek will only fight for the Dalek race. In the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart game, it’s not really different, as Daleks will take over the match if they become too strong in numbers.

The result is the same as seen in Revolution of the Daleks (2021), Day of Reckoning from the new animated series Daleks! (2020), Daleks in Manhattan, Evolution of the Daleks (2006) and Victory of the Daleks (2010). But in the right environments, if you play your cards right, you can make a Dalek do the dirty work for you.