What if monsters came in a range of rainbow colors?

There’s an old saw in Doctor Who circles, apparently going back to the thirtieth anniversary documentary “More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS” (and perhaps the originally broadcast version, which lacked the “More Than”), when long-time script editor Terrance Dicks famously pointed out a de facto trend in design on the show: “The colour for monsters is green.”

It sounds a little odd, stated baldly that way, but upon reflection it’s clearly true. There are the Silurians and Sea Devils, Alpha Centauri, the Draconians, the Krynoids, the Rutans, the Jagaroth… The list goes on and on. And if any of the aforementioned can be argued to be anything other than green, it’s a muddy brown instead.

Occasionally we’ll see something further into the red part of the spectrum—the Zygons, for example—but other hues are distinctly lacking. Where are the bright yellow critters, or the blue ones? I guess we’ve had the golden Axonites in The Claws of Axos and the occasional blue-faced humanoid (e.g., Dorium Maldovar), but in the grand scheme of things, the pre-Hiatus palette in particular definitely trends to green.

One wonders what part of the human psyche is at fault. Are we so unimaginative that we cannot conceive of anything except literal “little green men” when we devise new alien species? Can reptilian species really only be green or brown or octopus-red?

Perhaps the designers had an overabundance of green rubber, or it was just the easiest kind to procure. Maybe the crew all grew up reading the same pulp SF novels, and when the scripts came down, those cover images sneaked their way into the collective vision. Then again, perhaps it was the writers themselves who indicated their creatures should have that characteristic coloration; without detailed research, it’s impossible to say.

The post-Hiatus show hasn’t really fared any better. Aside from various critters on Platform One, our first new species was the Raxacoricofallapatorians. They certainly stayed true to type, as did the Absorbaloff, the Vinvocci—not to be confused with the red-skinned Zocci (like Bannakaffalatta), and the Siren. These days, though, red-brown seems to be the new favorite; see the aforementioned Zocci, the Jagrafess, the Krillitane, the Sycorax, the Hath, the Racnoss, etc.

I, for one, would like to see a little more variety. Give me purple avians, turquoise canids, fuchsia simians. Give me creatures that boggle my mind with their pigmentation as well as their physiology and psychology. The whole point of Doctor Who is that it should stretch our imaginations, so let’s stretch them beyond those green or red defaults.

If nothing else, more colorful creatures can momentarily distract me when the plot goes sideways.