Let's not forget though that Dr Who is aimed at an audience of 8/9 years old and upwards. The Empty Child gave my 8 year old daughter the screaming willies, while still (cheesily) entertaining her cynical 36 year old Dad) so I reckon RTD would consider that a job well done.

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Dave

Anyone seen my marbles? Anyone ... ?

I've heard it said that many Dads also tuned in to the show when the Doctor's assistant was Leela, (Louise Jameson) a barbarian girl in a tight leather outfit.

Right, I'm back from holiday.

Yes, that's the chap. He might look like a chap in a funny hat in the picture, but when you see him move, when you see what he does to other monsters, and when you're hiding in a louvred cupboard and he suddenly realises you're in there (a scene "borrowed" from Blue Velvet)... it is quite scary.

I think smaller is definitely scarier. The larger monsters can almost stand in for prehistoric animals which we were able to unite and battle. Bigger animals may eat or kill you quickly or even fight over you, or at least get in each others way if there are several of them. However, the reverse is true with smaller monsters, they can gang up and take us down, and may kill you slowly (nibbled to death by cats). And when we are the smaller prey we can always hide somewhere the larger monster can't see or reach us, the little monsters can follow you anywhere...

That's why I wasn't afraid of Jaws. I was like, dude, stay out of the water and it's cool. But toss a bunny with giant fangs at me and I'm off. Perhaps the scariest movies would have a big hulking monster to make us run and hide with little larval youngins to find us where we can't escape. That may be why Aliens is scary, not only does it have a big monster but those disturbing little creepers that can also get ya. Godzilla 98 would have done better if Emmerich had made the hatchlings smaller than Matthew Broderick.

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"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax

I actually really like children--but a lot of my picks for most horrific horror involves them, as well. I think I've mentioned, "It's a Good Life," before. It was a print story first, but I think it made it onto the Twilight Zone, and I think it might have partly inspired Village of the Damned. Quite a track record, if I'm right about all that.

I would submit to you that under certain circumstances, laughter itself is scary. Anyone here ever talked with a schizophrenic in a full-blown episode and had him start giggling for no apparent reason? I wasn't even really that surprised; he had been doing word salad a moment ago, I knew he was in pretty poor shape. But it made my neck hairs rise.

(Actually, the entire interview was pretty scary. I basically tried to keep everything very calm, very even, and then I ran up to where the full-time workers were eating lunch so that I could tell them about it. I'd like to think I'm the last person to insult someone with a mental illness, but paranoid schizophrenia is incredibly frightening, IMO--to the poor guy stuck with it, and to everyone around him. But that's a whole other story.)

The standard villain laugh to the side, there's something nasty and creepy about laughter for no good reason. You get the feeling that it might be entirely involuntary--which is scary, because who wants to be forced to laugh? Or you might be dealing with someone so twisted that they humor in really un-funny things, like people begging for mercy. Some time, if you really want to be weirded out, take in the stage version of Little Shop of Horrors. Especially the bit in the dentist's office, if it's staged well. Half the audience laughter will be from humor and half will be from sheer nervousness, and it's a bizarre thing to feel or hear.

Izunya

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Mal: Define "interesting!"
Wash: Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die?

- from Serenity

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - by far and away the best of the new Doctor Who, I thought. (My 6 year old niece is a fan, and she went round going, "Are you my Mummy?" which freaked out her mother.)

Villain laughs - Doctor Who has always been the worst at this. Often the archvillain The Master laughs inappropriately - and it just sounds forced and stupid. Generally, though, I hate it when villains are a mass of affectations rather than actual characters. If a master criminal wants to stroke a cat, then fine, but if he's only doing it to say, "Hey look at me - I'm a master criminal, and, can you believe it, I'm stroking a cat!" Come to think of it, I generally hate villains. "Hey look at me I eat people's livers and I wash it down with Chianti! Ooh, and I lick my lips in memory of how good it tastes!" Go away, Lector - get off the stage and make room for someone with an imagination!

I'm a great believer in the banality of evil. I hate it when people get all excited about Jack the Ripper, or who want to "get into the mind of" a serial killer. Evil people are generally losers who somehow got the chance to bully other people. Attempts to glamourise them are wrongheaded to an extreme.

Other children monsters - there are a fair few of them in Silent Hill, most of whom don't harm you if you don't harm them. Lots of people find them especially scary, but generally creepy kids don't do it for me at all - I think the idea has been vastly overused over the years.

Size generally - within certain limits, size of monster has little bearing on its scariness.

No, I disagree with the above statement. In Jurassic Park, the velocoraptors were much scarier than the t.rex. My wife is scared of spiders but Shelob in Lord of the Rings didn't bother her because it was too big to be credible. Similarly, in Eight Legged Freaks, the spiders were very scary when they were about a metre across, but when they were the size of cars they weren't scary at all. (The stupid noises they made didn't help either.)

I agree about villains. They just aren't realistic. What gets me is the person who commits terrible acts in an attempt to do good. Realistic and very scary.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

What scares me are big monsters that can shrink down very small, chase me , then re-enlarge to attack, feed etc. Either that or small ones that can get inside you and devour you from the inside out

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Clear skies Maksutov.

Hey, that reminds me of one of my favorite comic books: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

Johnny (or Nny, as he calls himself) kills people inorder to teach them a lesson of acceptance. Needless it to say, he dosen't succeed. He's the hero, villian, and victim in the series. By the end of the series (which was seven issues) Nny stopps killiing people because, well, they just don't learn. They're quite funny to read.

No, I'm not sick! Jhonen Vasquez (the creator of Nny) tells his tales in odd ways. Nny usually breaks into his neighbors house and scares the little kid in it while looking for band-aids. And Nny has many voices in his head that he argues with out loud. One voice takes the form of a dead bunny.

Ok, so you still think I'm sick, but you jsut have to pick up a copy to read to see that I'm not... And, um, don't read them if you can't stand gory (even cartoon) images. Oh, um don't show them to children under the age of, like, 14. They're violent... but not neccesarily senseless... rather insightful, really...

They're also kind of scary, beacuse as Canuck said... it's realistic. Sort of. I bet if JtHM got adapted to the big screen, it wouldn't be funny. It'd be one of those stare in terror movies. JtHM is to be read, not seen...

--hippie

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