H.P. Lovecraft (1880-1937) was an American writer who wrote short horror and science fiction stories, mostly for magazines. He was pretty obscure in his day, but has gathered a large cult following. He is best known for a loose canon of connected stories known as the Cthulhu Mythos.
I got into Lovecraft a few years ago. While I read his books, I felt a strange feeling of de ja vu. I realised that they reminded me of various Doctor Who stories. This lead me to return to my childhood enthusiasm for Doctor Who.
I don't know how familiar the writers of Doctor Who were with Lovecraft's work, but there is often a striking familiarity of theme between Doctor Who and Lovecraft's horrific fiction.
The New Adventure novels made very explicit references to the Cthulhu mythos, even going so far as to identify particular beings in the Whoniverse as equivalents of the Old Ones, the alien deities in Lovecraft's universe. According to the novel, Millennial Rites, the Old Ones are the Time Lord's of the universe that existed before the current universe and posess incredible power.
In this post, I will list the Lovecraftian themes in each Doctor Who story.
The Daleks
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Lost Civilizations, Unearthly Cities
Lost alien civilizations are the key theme of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. He also liked describing strange, ethereal cities. The Daleks features the unearthly metal city of the Daleks.
We only get a brief glimpse of the creature within the Dalek's metal casings, but it is clearly a typically Lovecraftian Slimy Tentacled Horror.
The Keys of Marinus
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors
The TARDIS crew enter a city controlled by tentacled brains.
The Web Planet
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Lost Civilizations
The animus is identified as the Old One, Lloigor in the New Adventure, All Consuming Fire. It posesses incredible power and is a Slimy Tentacled Horror.
The Menoptera have abandoned Vortis, giving us a Lost Civilization.
The Chase
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Unearthly Cities, Aquatic Beings
Aridus is populated by creatures that used to be aquatic when it was covered in oceans. These include Slimy Tentacled Horrors.
The Mechanoids live in a strange, ethereal city made of metal.
The Time Meddler
Mythos themes: Cosmic Insignificance
An important element in Lovecraft's writing is the notion that mankind is insignificant in its place within the cosmos and powerless before a range of unknowable cosmic powers.
The Dalek's Masterplan
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Mythology
Katarina considers the Doctor to be a god within her mythology. She calls the Dalek's 'evil ones'. When the ancient Egyptian soldiers encounter the Daleks, they describe them as 'evil gods.'
The Celestial Toymaker
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities
The Celestial Toymaker posesses godlike powers.
The Tenth Planet
Mythos themes: Lost Civilizations, Cosmic Insignificance
The entire earth is threatened by the return of the planet Mondas and its Cyberman inhabitants.
Mondas was known on earth in the distant past.
The Underwater Menace
Mythos themes: Aquatic Beings, Mythology, Lost Civilzations
Features the mythical lost city of Atlantis. It also features humans that have been turned into fish people that are rather like Lovecraft's Deep Ones.
The Macra Terror
Lovecraft's story The Whisperer in Darkness featured unseen crablike creatures that could disguise themselves as humans. The Macra Terror features a colony controlled by unseen (for most of the story) crablike creatures that hide behind a human image.
The Tomb of the Cybermen
Mythos themes: Lost Civilizations, Ancient Evil
The evil of the Cybermen is buried in a lost tomb on Telos.
The Abominable Snowman/ Web of Fear
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities
The alien entity, the Great Intelligence is identified in All Consuming Fire as the Old One Yog-Sothoth, mentioned in many of Lovecraft's works.
The Ice Warriors
Mythos themes: Reptilians, Lost Civilizations
Like the Elder Things of At the Mountains of Madness, the reptilian Ice Warriors have been buried under ice for a long time.
The Dominators
Mythos themes: Cosmic Insignificance
The Dominators want to turn Dulkiss into a source of fuel, caring nothing for its inhabitants.
The Krotons
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic entities, Cosmic Insignificance
The humanoid Gond regard the alien Krotons as gods, or at least something close to that status. The Gond are simply slaves and pawns for the Krotons.
Spearhead From Space/ Terror of the Autons
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Cosmic Insignificance
The earth is threatened by terrible forces from outer space, namely the Nestenes (and the Master in Terror of the Autons).
The Nestenes are identified in All Consuming Fire as the children of Shub Niggurath, an Old One from the Cthulhu Mythos. When the Nestene appears in material form it is a tentacled creature.
Doctor Who and the Silurians
Mythos themes: Reptilians, Lost Civilizations, Cosmic Insignificance
Lovecraft describes a lost city of intelligent reptiles in The Nameless City. In this story, the Doctor encounters a lost reptilian civilization from prehistoric times.
Humanity is threatened by the revelation that it is not the first intelligent life-form to inhabit the earth.
The Ambassadors of Death
Mythos themes: Cosmic Insignificance
The earth is threatened by a largely unseen and mysterious alien race.
The Claws of Axos
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Cosmic Insignificance
A strange alien race nearly destroys the earth.
Although the powerful Axos creatures are Slimy Tentacled Horrors, they masquerade as angelic beings.
The Time Monster
Mythos themes: Mythology, Lost Civilizations, Godlike/ Demonic Entities
Features the lost civilization of Atlantis and a being from Greek mythology called Kronos.
The Daemons
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Mythology, Ancient Evil, Strange Cults
Doctor Who does not get more Lovecraftian than this story. Azal is a demonic and godlike being from the ancient past. He is identified with various mythological beings. He is worshipped by Satanic cults.
The Sea Devils
Mythos themes: Aquatic Beings, Lost Civilizations, Reptilians
Another lost reptilian civilization from earth's prehistoric past. This lot are from under the sea.
The Three Doctors
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Slimy Tentacled Horrors
Omega, once a Time Lord wields godlike power in his antimatter realm. His Gel Guards remind me of the Shoggoths in At the Mountains of Madness.
The Time Warrior
Mythos themes: Cosmic Insignificance
The people of the Medieval England is unaware of its place within a vast panorama of intergalactic warfare.
Planet of the Spiders
Mythos themes: Strange Cults, Godlike/ Demonic Entities
A strange Buddhist cult summons up strange demonic spiders from another time and planet. The queen of these spiders is called the Great One and posesses godlike power.
Terror of the Zygons
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Aquatic Beings, Mythology, Ancient Evil
The presence Zygons have affected the mythology of the Loch Ness area. They are slimy aquatic creatures and can disguise themselves as humans, like the Migo in Lovecraft's Whisperer in Darkness.
Planet of Evil
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Cosmic Insignificance
Features demonic beings from an antimatter universe. Material from the antimatter universe has the potential to destroy the matter universe.
Pyramids of Mars
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Beings, Strange Cults, Mythology, Ancient Evil, Cosmic Insignificance
A very Lovecraftian story. Sutekh is an alien who posesses godlike powers. He regards humans as worthless and intends to destroy all life on earth. He and his fellow Osirians have entered Egyptian mythology. Sutekh is worshipped by some humans.
The Brain of Morbius
Mythos themes: Ancient Evil, Strange Cults
Morbius is an evil Time Lord from ancient Gallifrey. He has a cult-like following.
Seeds of Doom
Mythos themes: Ancient Evil, Slimy Tentacled Beings
Like the Elder Things of At the Mountains of Madness, the Krynoid is buried under ice. This story is influenced by The Thing, by John Campbell, which was probably inspired by Lovecraft's antarctic tale.
Lovecraft had some vegetable monsters, his Migo are fungus creatures (despite also being crab-like) and his Elder Things have vegetable qualities.
The Masque of Mandragora
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Strange Cults, Mythology, Cosmic Insignificance
The Mandragora Helix is a strange alient intelligence that takes over the cult of the ancient god Demnos.
Human science in this story is shown to be utterly ignorant of the bizarre wonders of the Whoniverse.
The Hand of Fear
Mythos themes: Ancient Evil, Lost Civilizations
The alien Eldrad of Kastria survived only as an apparently fossilised hand; buried for long ages on earth.
The civilization of Kastria has been completely destroyed some time in the past.
Horror of Fang Rock
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Cosmic Insignificance
The jellyfishlike Rutan is typically Lovecraftian in appearance.
The earth is in danger of getting caught in the crossfire of the ancient Rutan-Sontaran conflict.
Image of the Fendahl
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Ancient Evil, Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Strange Cults, Lost Civilizations, Cosmic Insignificance
Another very Lovecraftian story. The Fendahl gestalt creature is almost a kind of god of death. It is worshipped by a secret cult. The planet of Fendahl was destroyed by the Time Lords in the distant past. The Fendahl played some role in the evolution of humanity.
The Ribos Operation
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Cosmic Insignificance
The Doctor is given a quest by the godlike White Guardian and is warned to beware of his opposite number, the Black Guardian.
The people of Ribos are utterly ignorant of the vastness of the cosmos.
The Pirate Planet
Mythos themes: Cosmic Insignificance
Whole worlds and their populations have been consumed by the pirate planet Xanak.
The Stones of Blood
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Mythology, Strange Cults
The alien Cessair of Diplos impersonated a goddess from Celtic mythology. She is worshipped by a Druidic cult.
The Power of Kroll
Mythos themes: Mythology, Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Strange Cults
The giant squid, Kroll, worshipped by the Delta Magnan natives reminds me a lot of Cthulhu.
City of Death
Mythos themes: Cosmic Insignificance, Mythology, Ancient Evil
The alien Jaggaroth created life on earth by accident, very much like the Elder Things of At the Mountains of Madness. The Jaggaroth appears to have entered Egyptian mythology.
The Creature from the Pit
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors
The creature in the pit appears to be a Slimy Tentacled Horror, though it turns out to be friendly.
Horns of Nimon
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Strange Cults
A gang of extradimensional entities moving from planet to planet, starting cults.
Full Circle
Mythos themes: Aquatic Beings, Cosmic Insignificance
The Marshmen are a bit like Lovecraft's Deep Ones. It turns out the Alzarians have evolved from the Marshmen. I can hear echoes of Shadow Over Innsmouth.
State of Decay
Mythos themes: Ancient Evil, Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Strange Cults
A cult of vampires worshipping the Ancient One, an evil creature that threatened the Time Lords in their dark time.
Kinda/ Snakedance
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Mythology
Features a demonic being called the Mara. In Snakedance, this is shown to play a role in the mythology of the planet Manussa.
Enlightenment
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities
Features godlike beings called Eternals.
Twin Dilemma
Mythos themes: Slimy Tentacled Horrors, Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Mythology
The slug-like Gastropods were sent by the gods, according to the mythology of Joconda.
Remembrance of the Daleks/ Silver Nemesis
Mythos themes: Cosmic Insignificance
The earh is caught up in vast cosmic events.
Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Mythos themes: Godlike/ Demonic Entities
The Gods of Ragnarok are identified as Old Ones in All-Consuming Fire. The Doctor has fought them across time and space (perhaps he means the Old Ones in general). Perhaps the Celestial Toymaker is one. The novel Conundrum states that the Land of Fiction in the Mind Robber was created by the Gods of Ragnarok.
Battlefield
Mythos themes: Mythology, Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Cosmic Insignificance
The earth is caught up in events from beyond this universe. The Arthurian legends are of extra-dimensional origin. Morgaine summons up a demon, The Destroyer, who eats worlds.
Curse of Fenric
Mythos themes: Ancient Evil, Godlike/ Demonic Entities, Cosmic Insignificance
The evil god Fenric is identified as the Mythos deity Hastur in All-Consuming Fire.
Ace finds out that major events in her life have been manipulated by Fenric.
Another fellow fundamentalist who is fascinated with Lovecraft and Dr. Who! o_O
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping in
ReplyDeleteThe new series has quite a bit of Lovecraft in it as well--The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit in particular is a loose adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu. I believe this was intentional, as the design of the Ood is very like the description of Cthulhu himself and they are the psychic receptors for the beast's reawakened thoughts (as were artists and lunatics in the Lovecraft tale). If you list all the similarities between the stories it's pretty clear the one sprang forth from the other.
ReplyDeleteI remember a Tom Baker episode where they were in the Tardis and started being chased through time space by creatures like The Hounds of Tindalos. They were even working there way in side the Tardis.
ReplyDeleteI suspect you are thinking of Pyramids of Mars
Delete:o
ReplyDelete